Presents Quotes (page 9)
How long your closet held a whiff of you, Long after hangers hung austere and bare. I would walk in and suddenly the true. Sharp sweet sweat scent controlled the air. And life was in that small still living breath. Where are you? since so much of you is here, Your unique odour quite ignoring death. My hands reach out to touch, to hold what's dear. And vital in my longing empty arms. But other clothes fill up the space, your space, And scent on scent send out strange false alarms. Not of your...
Madeleine L'Engle
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.
Charles Dickens
Would that Christmas could just be, without presents. It is just so stupid, everyoneexhausting themselves, miserably hemorrhaging money on pointless items nobody wants: nolonger tokens of love but angst-ridden solutions to problems. (Hmm. Though must admit, pretty bloody pleased to have new handbag.) What is the point of entire nation rushing round for sixweeks in a bad mood preparing for utterly pointless Taste-of-Others exam which entire nation thenfails and gets stuck with hideous unwanted...
Helen Fielding
What will you do with the lazy ones, who would not work?'
No one is lazy. They grow hopeless from the misery of their present existence, and give up. Under our order of things, every men would do the work he liked, and would have as much as his neighbor, so could not be unhappy and discouraged.
Emma Goldman
What is death? A "tragic mask." Turn it and examine it. See, it does not bite. The poor body must be separated from the spirit either now or later, as it was separated from it before. Why, then, are you troubled, if it be separated now? for if it is not separated now, it will be separated afterward. Why? That the period of the universe may be completed, for it has need of the present, and of the future, and of the past. What is pain? A mask. Turn it and examine it. The poor flesh is moved...
Epictetus
I see no reason in morality, why literature should not have as one of its intentions the arousing of thoughts of lust. It is one of the effects, perhaps one of the functions of literature to arouse desire, and I can discover no grounds for saying that sexual pleasure should not be among the objects of desire which literature presents to us, along with heroism, virtue, peace, death, food, wisdom, God, etc.
Lionel Trilling
So never give in? continued the girl, and restated again and again the vague yet convincing plea that the Invisible lodges against the Visible. Her excitement grew as she tried to cut the rope that fastened Leonard to the earth. Woven of bitter experience, it resisted her. Presently the waitress entered and gave her a letter from Margaret. Another note, addressed to Leonard, was inside. They read them, listening to the murmurings of the river.
E. M. Forster
Winning or losing an argument, receiving an acceptance or rejection, is no proof of the validity or value of personal identity. One may be wrong, mistaken, or a poor craftsman, or just ignorant - but this is no indication of the true worth of one's total human identity: past, present and future!
Sylvia Plath
Zedar was gone...As an owl, though, I was able to drift silently from tree to tree until I caught up with him...He wasn't really hard to follow, since he'd conjured up a dim, greenish light to see by --and to hold off the boogiemen. Did I ever tell you that Zedar's afraid of the dark? That adds another dimension to his present situation, doesn't it?
He was bundled to the ears in furs, and he was muttering to himself as he floundered along through the snow. Zedar talks to himself a lot. He...
David Eddings