Gwenda > Gwenda's Quotes

“Valdin softened slightly. “Ramon you have been very well paid for this trip and I am sure that for a little extra gold the crew will not miss their shore leave. My job is done.” With that the huntsman shook Ramon’s hand and left the ship.
Robert Reid – The Son”
― Robert Reid, The Son

“That evening Vaselik stood at his window watching Leah leave, her baby swaddled in the shaw tied over her shoulder. Leah looked like an apparition from another world.”
― Beverly Magid, Sown in Tears: A Historical Novel of Love and Struggle

“There was a different smell in the hall. I knew it well enough. Festering death is pungent, but that says nothing about how bad it smells. It saturates the air you breathe with a sickening sweetness that makes you feel like retching until that sweetness is a faded memory. It is an entity that does not belong inside your body.”
― Eli Wilde, Orchard of Skeletons

“The ministry of violence is a spiritual conflict. It’s a ministry that every child of God cannot afford to sweep under the rug. If they do, they will suffer spiritual loss, and will never be more than conquerors in Christ Jesus.”
― John Ramirez, Fire Prayers: Building Arsenals That Destroy Satanic Kingdoms

“His family could not understand the attraction to Marxism. It offered nothing and demanded everything, including your soul.”
― Rafael Polo, Growing Up American

“#metooasachild”
― Aimee Cabo Nikolov, Love is the Answer, God is the Cure: A True Story of Abuse, Betrayal and Unconditional Love

“When people grow up in a home where extramarital sex is condoned, they’re much less likely to regard it as a deal-breaker. Jacqueline Bouvier’s father, ‘Black Jack,’ confided in her about his female conquests, even going so far as to play a game with Jackie when he visited her at boarding school. She would point to a classmate’s mother, and Jack would respond, ‘Yes’ or ‘Not yet’ — answering the silent question, had he slept with that one?”
― Anne Michaud, Why They Stay: Sex Scandals, Deals, and Hidden Agendas of Eight Political Wives

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“Sometimes in our job you feel you just can't win. If you take too long you're no good, if you're too quick the visit wasn't necessary.”
― James Herriot, All Things Bright and Beautiful

“I again recall provoking resentment by dubbing the American bard “a male lesbian,” much as Shakespeare was when writing the sonnets.”
― Harold Bloom, The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime

“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“Hugo headed off toward the door to leave, but the bookstore was warm and quiet, and the teetering piles of books fascinated him.”
― Brian Selznick, The Invention of Hugo Cabret

“There had never been guarantee that conception would lead to a live birth, or that birth would lead to a life of any great length. Nature allowed only the fit and the lucky to share this paradise-in-the-making. Look inside the cover of any family Bible and you’d see the facts. The graveyards, too, told the story of the babies whose voices, because of a snakebite or a fever or a fall from a wagon, had finally succumbed to their mothers’ beseeching to “hush, hush, little one.”
― M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans

“Oo, I like a good cat fight – especially when it doesn’t involve me,’ Oscar said.
‘Shut up!’ Bryony and Raya said simultaneously. A hairline crack formed in the ice between them.”
― Sara Pascoe, Being a Witch, and Other Things I Didn't Ask For

“Do flyers become archers when you give them a bow? No. They need arrows, too.”
― Andri E. Elia, Borealis: A Worldmaker of Yand Novel

“The Order? Here inside such a weak soul?”
“His spirit is failing, his faith too old."
“He cannot be saved."
“Few have tried."
“He is consumed by the lion."
“He is overtaken by pride.”
― J.B. Lion, The Seventh Spark: Volume One – Knights of the Trinity

“The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything except what is worth knowing.”
― Rebecca Rosenberg, Gold Digger: The Remarkable Baby Doe Tabor

“As Aristocleia raised her cup to toast Xanthippus, her gown slipped from her shoulders, exquisite as Aphrodite’s, and flowed like the water that slid over her naked breasts when she allowed him to watch her bathe. It was wonderful to possess a gem of a woman. It made a man feel beautiful and godlike himself, briefly.”
― Yvonne Korshak, Pericles and Aspasia: A Story of Ancient Greece

“Looking over the Ethan's bowed head, amidst the tangled forest of Wilderness littered with the bodies of men dead and dying, Victor saw the serene image of his mother.  She smiled at her son, her unbound black hair blowing wildly in the breeze.  She reached a hand out towards him, and this time, he went with her.”
― Barbara Sontheimer, Victor's Blessing

“Every morning when I wake up, I ask myself, "Why was I born?" Then I answer myself, "You were born to be successful." If you can learn to define your own success and not let others dictate it, you can find      fulfilment.”
― Max Nowaz, The Polymorph

“I've not been right for any man or myself since I met you.”
― Leon Uris, Trinity

“You haven't broken his heart yet, have you?"
"No," Tessa said. Just torn my own in two. "I haven't broken his heart at all.”
― Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Prince

“A brief whiff of her mother had come through a cracked window that opened to a weed-infested courtyard. It was a fragrance that almost spoke to her, saying, 'Yes, it was an unjust end to the life of a good man.' A man who had accepted gratitude in the place of love, and who knew Magdalena's heart would always remain with Ales's father.”
― Victoria Dougherty, The Bone Church

“saying. ‘I want it as a birthday present to my venerable”
― Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain

“The Kingdom of Hereford was unique in the Ununited Kingdoms for having driving tests based on maturity, not age, much to the chagrin of a lot of males, some of whom were still failing to make the grade at thirty-two.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Last Dragonslayer