Took Quotes (page 39)
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When he went blundering back to God,
His songs half written, his work half done,
Who knows what paths his bruised feet trod,
What hills of peace or pain he won?
I hope God smiled and took his hand,
And said, "Poor truant, passionate fool!
Life’s book is hard to understand:
Why couldst thou not remain at school?"
A poem by Charles Hanson Towne
Mitch Albom
The fact that we had independently decided to sweep our apartments on that Sunday afternoon after spending the weekend together, I took as a strong piece of evidence that we were right for each other. And from then on when I read things Samuel Johnson said about the deadliness of leisure and the uplifting effects of industry, I always nodded and thought of brooms.
Nicholson Baker
Lara walked along the tracks following a path worn by pilgrims and then turned into the fields. Here she stopped and, closing her eyes, took a deep breath of the flower-scented air of the broad expanse around her. It was dearer to her than her kin, better than a lover, wiser than a book. For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of her life. She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name, or, if this were not within her power,...
Boris Pasternak
It is grim reading’, he said. ‘I fear their end was cruel. Listen! We cannot get out. We cannot get out. They have taken the Bridge and second hall.... Then there are four lines smeared so that I can only read went 5 days ago. The last lines run: the pool is up to the wall at Westgate. The Watcher in the Water took in. We cannot get out. The end comes, and then drums, drums in the deep. I wonder what that means. The last thing written is in a trailing scrawl of elf-letters: they are coming....
J. R. R. Tolkien
Fred started to follow, but Nita caught him in cupped hands, holding him back for a moment. "Fred! Did we do right?" Even here she couldn't keep the pain out of her question, the fear that she could have somehow have prevented his death. But Fred radiated a serene and wondering joy that took her breath and reassured her and filled her with wonder to match his, all at once. Go find out, he said.
Diane Duane
You're enjoying this, aren't you?"I'd feel better if I could guard your back."You're going to do that with a rifle from the closest hill, remember."Night vision and scope, fine, but I can't kill them all from a distance."You couldn't kill them all if you were johnny on the spot, either," I said. No but I'd feel better."Worried about me?" He shrugged. I'm your bodyguard. If you die under my protection, the other bodyguards will make fun of me." It took me a second to realize he was making a...
Laurell K. Hamilton
I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me.
Shirley Jackson
She felt a board indifference toward the immediate world around her toward other children and adults alike. She took it as a regrettable accident to be borne patiently for a while, that she happened to be imprisoned among people who were dull. She had caught a glimpse of another world and she knew it existed somewhere, the world that had created trains, bridges, telegraph wires and signal lights winking in the night. She had to wait she thought, and grow up to that world. - Dagny Taggart
Ayn Rand
I marvel at how good I was before I met him, how I lived molded to the smallest space possible, my days the size of little beads that passed without passion through my fingers. So few people know what they're capable of. At forty-two I'd never done anything that took my own breath away, and I suppose now that was part of the problem - my chronic inability to astonish myself.
Sue Monk Kidd