A Tale Of Two Lovers Quotes

I'm thinking, he said. To bed or not to bed his wife? That was the question. ~ Maya Rodale

This is a tale of a beauty much deeper than that. It is the story of two people drawn together under the most interesting of circumstances, two people who learn to truly see what matters only after they meet each other and their tale - one both as old as time and as fresh as a rose - begins. ~ Elizabeth Rudnick

This is nuts," Travis said, putting A Tale of Two Cities back where he'd gotten it. "I'm giving plot synopses to a dog, for God's sake!" Dropping ~ Dean Koontz

What's wonderful is to read the different translations - some done in 1600 and some in 1900 - of the same passage. It's fascinating to watch the same tale repeated in such a different way by two different centuries. ~ Martin Cruz Smith

At the end of that class Demian said to me thoughtfully: "There's something I don't like about this story, Sinclair. Why don't you read it once more and give it the acid test? There's something about it that doesn't taste right. I mean the business with the two thieves. The three crosses standing next to each other on the hill are almost impressive, to be sure. But now comes this sentimental little treatise about the good thief. At first he was a thorough scoundrel, had committed all those awful things and God knows what else, and now he dissolves in tears and celebrates such a tearful feast of self-improvement and remorse! What's the sense of repenting if you're two steps from the grave? I ask you. Once again, it's nothing but a priest's fairy tale, saccharine and dishonest, touched up with sentimentality and given a high edifying background. If you had to pick a friend from between the two thieves or decide which one you'd rather trust, you most certainly wouldn't choose the sniveling convert. No, the other fellow, he's a man of character. He doesn't give a hoot for 'conversion', which to a man in his position can't be anything but a pretty speech. He follows his destiny to it's appointed end and does not turn coward and forswear the devil, who has aided and abetted him until then. He has character, and people with character tend to receive the short end of the stick in biblical stories. Perhaps he's even a descendant of Cain. Don't you agree?"

I was dismayed. Un ~ Hermann Hesse

Never trust the teller, trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it. ~ D.H. Lawrence

The summer dresses are unpacked and hanging in the closet, two of them, pure cotton, which is better than synthetics like the cheaper ones, though even so, when it's muggy, in July and August, you sweat inside them. No worry about sunburn though, said Aunt Lydia. The spectacles women used to make of themselves. Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings on them, no wonder those things used to happen. [...] And not good for the complexion, not at all, wrinkle you up like a dried apple. But we weren't supposed to care about our complexions any more, she'd forgotten that. ~ Margaret Atwood

Tom" softly over the coach-roof.
"Hallo", Joe."
"Did you hear the message?"
"I did, Joe."
"What did you make of it, Tom?"
"Nothing at all, Joe."
"That's a coincidence, too" the guard mused, "for I made the same of it myself. ~ Charles Dickens

Uncoupling is primarily a tale of two transitions: one that begins before the other. Most often, one person wants out while the other person wants the relationship to continue. Although both partners must go through all the same stages of the transition in order to uncouple, the transition begins and ends at different times for each. By the time the still-loving partner realizes the relationship is in serious trouble, the other person is already gone in a number of ways. The rejected partner then embarks on a transition that the other person began long before. ~ Diane Vaughan

I am a lover of love and I am a lover of words, and the two together spin visions of airy castles, but also may pierce the heart of hope. And so I remind you that I am a fool, a poet, and what matters is reality, not lovely words. Words are full of promise, yet empty of matter. ~ Waylon H. Lewis

In the window were displayed the covers of several pornographic videos.
"The Story of O-Positive," Armod said aloud. "I don't understand. Is that like HIV positive?"
"Idiot," Mordr said, slapping Armod lightly upside the head.
"Ah, but I am in the mood for good literature," Ivak said with a grin. "How about these? A Tale of Two Vampyres. The Stakes of Wrath. Or that one." He pointed to the left. "Great Neckspectations."
"I still don't understand." Armod was frowning, although his white skin did color when he craned his head from side to side and realized what one of the pictures depicted.
"Now me, I always did like a good classic mystery movie," Sigurd added, also grinning. "A Tomb with a View."
Vikar worried that they were embarrassing Alex, but then she said, "My favorite is Vlad Really Did Impale Her."
His brothers glanced at him, then Alex, and burst out laughing.
"Mayhap I will not kill her after all," Mordr declared, giving Alex a wink that did not sit well with Vikar. Not one bit.
"Can we buy some?" Armod asked. ~ Sandra Hill

I have a bold plan to break from the Bloomberg years, and end the 'Tale of Two Cities' by providing real opportunity to all New Yorkers, no matter where they live. ~ Bill De Blasio

There are people in this country who will argue that because of the demise of morals in general, and Sunday school in particular, kids today are losing their innocence before they should, that because of cartoons and Ken Starr and curricula about their classmates who have two mommies, youth learn too soon about sex and death. Well, like practically everyone else in the Western world who came of age since Gutenberg, I lost my innocence the old-time-religion way, by reading the nursery rhyme of fornication that is the Old Testament and the fairy tale bloodbath that is the New. Job taught me Hey! Life's not fair! Lot's wife taught me that I'm probably going to come across a few weird sleazy things I won't be able to resist looking into. And the book of Revelation taught me to live in the moment, if only because the future's so grim.

Being a fundamentalist means going straight to the source. I was asked to not only read the Bible, but to memorize Bible verses. If it wasn't for the easy access to the sordid Word of God I might have had an innocent childhood. Instead, I was a worrywart before my time, shivering in constant fear of a god who, from what I could tell, huffed and puffed around the cosmos looking like my dad did when my sister refused to take her vitamins that one time.

God wasn't exactly a children's rights advocate. The first thing a child reading the Bible notices is that you're supposed to honor your mother and father but they're not necessaril ~ Sarah Vowell

There are really only two ways, it seems to me, in which we can think about our existence here on earth. We either agree with Macbeth that life is nothing more than a "tale told by an idiot," a purposeless emergence of life-forms including the clever, greedy, selfish, and unfortunately destructive species that we call Homo sapiens - the "evolutionary goof." Or we believe that, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, "There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth." In other words, a plan, a purpose to it all. ~ Jane Goodall

Waiting for the end, boys, waiting for the end.
What is there to be or do?
What's become of me or you?
Are we kind or are we true?
Sitting two and two, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall I build a tower, boys, knowing it will rend
Crack upon the hour, boys, waiting for the end?
Shall I pluck a flower, boys, shall I save or spend?
All turns sour, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall I send a wire, boys? Where is there to send?
All are under fire, boys, waiting for the end.
Shall I turn a sire, boys? Shall I choose a friend?
The fat is in the pyre, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall I make it clear, boys, for all to apprehend,
Those that will not hear, boys, waiting for the end,
Knowing it is near, boys, trying to pretend,
Sitting in cold fear, boys, waiting for the end?

Shall we send a cable, boys, accurately penned,
Knowing we are able, boys, waiting for the end,
Via the Tower of Babel, boys? Christ will not ascend.
He's hiding in his stable, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall we blow a bubble, boys, glittering to distend,
Hiding from our trouble, boys, waiting for the end?
When you build on rubble, boys, Nature will append
Double and re-double, boys, waiting for the end.

Shall we make a tale, boys, that things are sure to mend,
Playing bluff and hale, boys, waiting for the end?
It will be b ~ William Empson

(Take a deep breath for this next run-on sentence) I believe that two people can fall madly in love and sift that fairy-tale feeling up through the raging sands of reality to settle on top as a polished stone of true joy, where the "happily ever after" will be something two mortals are working towards and not a finished product. ~ Zack Oates

A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No
that is a thought which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a little tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times. ~ Mark Twain

As I thought about endings and – being a lover of fairy tales – I knew immediately that the deeply rooted last line in folk stories, 'And they lived happily ever after', is the core of what we think we know about endings. We hear it always in our hindbrain because it's the last line most of us in the West have grown up with. That line stops the story at the point of greatest happiness. The wedding, the homecoming, the mystery unraveled, the villain disposed of, families reunited, babies born. If we went on in the story Cinderella, she might be whispered about in court: after all, her manners are not impeccable, she always has smudges of ash on her nose, and no one can trace her bloodline back enough generations. Perhaps she has grown fat eating all that rich food in the castle, and the prince's eye has strayed.

If we went on in The Three Little Pigs, the brother who builds with bricks will have kicked the other two lay-abouts out of his house, or hired them to run his successful company and they – angry at their lower status – plot to kill him. But, having little imagination, do it the only way they know how, by trying to boil him in the pot that still holds the memory of the wolf's demise, so of course the brick building pig finds them out.

But modern books pose a different problem. They present harder choices. It's no longer fairy tale endings we are talking about, but the other stuff, more realistic, stronger, difficult, and maybe not happy-ever-after ~ Jane Yolen

If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest ... she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death. ~ Ned Rorem

Nothing ends. There is matter and there is energy, and some believe these two the only things in existence. But a third exists. It infuses both matter and energy, and yet also stands alone. Let us call it potential. Only in the realm of potential can we act, to effect changes upon all existence. Indeed, it is the realm in which we live, we living things, in our stubborn battle with success and failure.

Yet the truth remains. Of the two, success and failure, only one ends the game.

Now, poet, I see the shock writ deep upon your lined face, and yet it must be clear to you, even in this moment of despair, that love was at the heart of this tale, and now we must once more settle back and take breath, steadying ourselves for what is still to come.

The warriors wallow in what they will, in all that they make of the world, which is little more than destruction and suffering. Recall the child with the stone, on her knees in the grass, a boy's crushed face beneath her? Such is the glory of the belligerent.

Revel in it, if you're of the mind to.

What comes next, my friend, is entirely another kind of glory.

What is the secret of sorcery? It is potential. Now then, on the dawn of magic's burgeoning, let us see what they make of it. ~ Steven Erikson

I had read a Tale of Two Cities and found it up to my standards as a romantic novel. She opened the first page and I heard poetry for the first time in my life ... her voice slid in and curved down trough and over the words. She was nearly singing. ~ Maya Angelou

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too. ~ Alain De Botton

A cult hero? I don't think of myself as any kind of hero. I don't want to say it's a fairy tale, but two years ago if you would've told me I'd be in this position, I wouldn't believe it hardly. ~ Jeremy Shockey

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact.
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself. ~ Karl Marx

The power of the big fish in general to regroup is hardly restricted to banking. When Standard Oil was broken up in 1911, the immediate effect was to replace a national monopoly with a number of regional monopolies controlled by many of the same Wall Street interests. Ultimately, the regional monopolies regrouped: In 1999 Exxon (formerly Standard Oil Company of New Jersey) and Mobil (formerly Standard Oil Company of New York) reconvened in one of the largest mergers in US history. In 1961 Kyso (formerly Standard Oil of Kentucky) was purchased by Chevron (formerly Standard Oil of California); and in the 1960s and 1970s Sohio (formerly Standard Oil of Ohio) was bought by British Petroleum (BP), which then, in 1998, merged with Amoco (formerly Standard Oil of Indiana).

The tale of AT&T is similar. As the result of an antitrust settlement with the government, on January 1, 1984, AT&T spun off its local operations so as to create seven so-called Baby Bells. But the Baby Bells quickly began to merge and regroup. By 2006 four of the Baby Bells were reunited with their parent company AT&T, and two others (Bell Atlantic and NYNEX) merged to form Verizon.

So the hope that you can make a banking breakup stick (even if it were to be achieved) flies in the face of some pretty daunting experience. Also, note carefully a major political fact: The time when traditional reformers had enough power to make tough banking regulation really work was the time when ~ Gar Alperovitz

Brad Green, almost overnight, became the poster boy for the common Wall Street tale - proving once again that greed, most definitely, kills. Giving away about 99% of his fortune was also front page news, but Green barely blinked at having to scrape by with only $200 million. The government seized all five of his homes, his three boats, two jets, a helicopter, 14 cars, and all of his assets except the $200 million he stashed for a rainy day in an offshore bank account. ~ Phil Wohl

To know what is right and to do it are two different things. ~ Chushingura, A Tale Of The Forty-Seven Ronin

It is a long time,' repeated his wife; 'and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.'
'It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning,' said Defarge.
'How long,' demanded madame, composedly, 'does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me? ~ Charles Dickens

In a court of law,' he said at last 'a witness takes his oath to speak the truth: his own truth, that is. He agrees to two parameters. His testimony must be the whole truth, and his testimony must be nothing but the truth. Only the second of these parameters is a true limit. The first, of course, is largely a matter of discretion. When we say the whole truth we mean, more precisely, all the facts and impressions that are pertinent to the matter at hand. All that is impertinent is not only immaterial; it is, in many cases, deliberately misleading. Gentlemen, [...] I contend that there are no whole truths, there are only pertinent truths----and pertinence, you must agree, is always a matter of perspective. I do not believe that any of you has perjured himself in any way tonight. I trust that you have given me the truth, and nothing but the truth. But your perspectives are very many, and you will forgive me if I do not take your tale for something whole. ~ Eleanor Catton

What is wrong with the [tale of] Two Swords?" he asked, even more surprised. "Don't you care for it?"
"There is too bloody much romance in it," she said curtly.
Ah, well, here was the crux of it, apparently. "Don't you like romance?" he ventured.
She looked as though she were trying to decide if she should weep or, as he had earlier predicted, stick him with whatever blade she could lay her, hand on. "I don't know," she said briskly.
"I see," he said, though he didn't. He wished, absently, that he'd had at least one sister. He was very well versed in what constituted courtly behavior and appropriate formal wooing practices, thanks to his father's insistence on many such lectures delivered by a dour man whose only acquaintance with women had likely come from reading about them in a book, but he had absolutely no idea how to proceed with a woman whose first instinct when faced with something that made her uncomfortable was to draw her sword.
...
"I'll stop provoking you, but I will have the answer to a question. Why do you think most men woo?"
"Because they have no sword skill and need something with which to occupy their time? ~ Lynn Kurland

The Story of the Woman with Three Brothers"

A woman once had three brothers. They all had wives, but she was not married. Though she was virtuous and hardworking, her brothers would not offer a dowry. How unhappy she was! What could she do?

She's so miserable, she goes to the garden and hangs herself from a tree.

The eldest brother walks through the garden and pretends not to see her. The second brother walks through the garden and pretends not to see that she's dead. The third brother sees her, bursts into tears, and takes her body inside.

A woman once had three brothers. When she died, no one wanted to care for her body. Though she had been virtuous and hardworking, her brothers would not serve her. How cruel this was! What would happen?

She is ignored in death as in life, until her body begins to stink.

The eldest brother gives one piece of cloth to cover her body. The second brother gives two pieces of cloth. The third brother wraps her in as many clothes as possible so she'll be warm in the afterworld.

A woman once had three brothers. Now dressed for her future as a spirit, her brothers won't spend any money on a coffin. Though she was virtuous and hardworking, her brothers are stingy. How unfair this was! Would she ever find rest?

All alone, all alone, she plans her haunting days.

The eldest brother says, "We don't need to bury her in a box. She is fine the way she is." Th ~ Lisa See