Topped Quotes (page 19)
Most people think, when they're young, that they're going to the top of their chosen world, and that the climb up is only a formality. Without that faith, I suppose, they might never start. Somewhere on the way they lift their eyes to the summit and know they aren't going to reach it; and happiness then is looking down and enjoying the view they've got, not envying the one they haven't.
Dick Francis
I'm Draco Malfoy, I'm Draco, I'm on your side!"Draco was on the upper landing, pleading with another masked Death Eater. Harry Stunned the Death Eater as they passed: Malfoy looked around, beaming, for his savior, and Ron punched him from under the cloak. Malfoy fell backward on top of the Death Eater, his mouth bleeding, utterly bemused."And that's the second time we've saved your life tonight, you two-faced bastard!" Ron yelled.
J. K. Rowling
THIS TORTURE
Why should we tell you our love stories
when you spill them together like blood in the dirt?
Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor,
or a fire we can’t see,
but how does saying that
push us through the top of the head into
the light above the head?
Love is not
an iron pot, so this boiling energy
won’t help.
Soul, heart, self.
Beyond and within those
is one saying,
How long before I’m free of this torture!
Rumi
Grand," I said. "Just grand. I get myself into the army, stand up in battles I have no business in, get nailed in the back by sorcery, accept an impossible assignment to be carried out in the middle of it all, and then, just to top things off, I have to go have a mystical fucking experience. This is just great.
Steven Brust
But on top of all that, the feelings about Princess, I'd also gone through an entire year of celibacy based on my feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and death and I had really no lie come to a point where I regarded lust as offensive and even cruel. "Pretty girls make graves," was my saying, whenever I'd had to turn my head around involuntarily to stare at the incomparable pretties of Indian Mexico.
Jack Kerouac
Think of your life as an hourglass. You know there are thousands of grains of sand in the top of the hourglass; and they all pass slowly and evenly through the narrow neck in the middle. Nothing you or I could do would make more than one grain of sand pass through this narrow neck without impairing the hourglass. You and I and everyone else are like this hourglass...if we do not take [tasks] one at a time and let them pass...slowly and evenly, then we are bound to break our own...structure.
Dale Carnegie
Extreme intelligence is accused of being as foolish as extreme lack of it; only moderation is good. The majority have laid this down and attack anyone who deviates from it towards any extreme whatever. I am not going to be awkward, I readily consent to being put in the middle and refuse to be at the bottom end, not because it is the bottom but because it is the end, for I should refuse just as much to be put at the top. It is deserting humanity to desert the middle way. The greatness of...
Blaise Pascal
A big, sandy-haired man held his daughter on his shoulders, showing her the Statue of Liberty. I would never know what this statue meant to others, she had always been an ugly joke for me. And the American flag was flying from the top of the ship, above my head. I had seen the French flag drive the French into the most unspeakable frenzies, I had seen the flag which was nominally mine used to dignify the vilest purposes: now I would never, as long as I lived, know what other saw when they saw...
James Baldwin
I am cool with people. I am not the one at the top of the water tower with the rifle at all. I am cool when they are cool. I am not a people person. I live alone and don't visit much with people. I do answer all the mail and meet anyone after the show though. I have no problem with this. These people took the time out to check me out, there's no way I am blowing that off or in any way disrespecting that. The Black Flag years were turbulent and it took a lot of work to be cool with people...
Henry Rollins
I love you, i love your smile your snarl your grin, your face when your sleeping. I love your hair streaming behind you as we fly, with the sunlight making it shine, if it doesn't have too much mud or blood in it, I love seeing your wings spreading out, white and brown and tan and speckled, and the tiny downy feathers right at the top of your shoulders. I love your eyes, whether they're cold or calculating or suspicious or laughing or warm, like when you look at me.
James Patterson