Basking Quotes

The car housed a hysterical bumper sticker: Save the Planet, and I permitted a moment of contemplation to truly bask in this thought. Save the planet? What a joke. Save the planet from what? From ourselves? And save it for what? For ourselves? It was a kind of perpetual stupidity in a tug-of-war battle over trivial matters. Only imbeciles see things in black and white: liberal or conservative, yes or no, this or that. Those in power laugh at those people in their morally inverted shades of grey, basking in the labels they've created so the people are easier to control. ~ Bruce Crown

My body had never felt so small or so fragile. In one sense, it was a moment of ecstasy and I was comforted with soft, almost compassionate, encouragement.

"Delicate," she said. The word imprinted on me like the cold before it. I was weak and going numb, but I was delicate. This is what I had wanted. I wanted to lose weight and retain some ounce of delicacy to resemble that of the spider-figured women I had seen in all those flashing images. Suddenly, the lack of strength displayed by my body was counterbalanced with a surging lease of mental satisfaction and might. As I lay in bed, buried under all my layers of clothes and bed sheets, the warmth still could not reach me. It was too late for that now and I didn't care. I just wanted to sleep, basking in my success and enduring the cold until I could finally slip into a forgetful slumber. ~ Leanne Waters

It had been impossible to get away from her own darkness. Or so she thought.
Here she was basking in the light of a beautiful bad man. ~ V. Theia

But Holms had proven stalwart and valiant. When Miss Jones had shown up to discover them in the castle hallway, because she'd heard a suspicious noise and had feared for her schoolchums' safety, they' d had to bring her along. She'd wanted to run straight to the headmistress, of course, but Armand had persuaded her not to. How he regretted that decision now!
The duke had fired his guns at them all. They'd retreated, thought to go to the automobile to fetch a doctor and the sheriff, but they'd stumbled the wrong way and fallen down the slope to the beach instead. All three of them. And there, noble Jesse had died.
Fact. Fiction. Likely because so much of it had happened, and because Armand's red-eyed, stoic distress seemed so genuine, the adults around us had accepted it as truth.
Mostly.
I think if I hadn't been discovered wearing only Armand's coat as I knelt next to Jesse's body, Mrs. Westcliffe might have found the whole thing easier to swallow.
Yet the official version ruled the day. And here we all were basking in it, breathing fresh sea air, warmed by the generous spring sun. Burying a hero. A far, far greater hero than anyone standing around me at his funeral would ever suspect.
Somewhere in deep-blue briny waters, a U-boat rested, filled with live torpedoes and solid-gold men.
I thought I better understood Rue's letters now. I understood her warning about the pain that would come with my Gifts.
I understood my sacrifice. ~ Shana Abe

Syn shamelessly buried his nose in Furi's armpit, enjoying the light-headed sensation basking in his man's scent caused. Furi ~ A.E. Via

The best thing you can ever have is peace of mind, it is a basking fire to keep a cold heart in warmth, and a fortified confidence to be proud of. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

I'm just basking in the glory. ~ Johnny Knoxville

Yeah, it's terrible really. Little fucking minions in there hacking away with their teeny individual pick axes, tearing away the lining of my uterus piece by piece, basking in glory every time I let out a little cry of pain. ~ Laurel Ulen Curtis

Acknowledgements!
My thanks to Hollywood
When you showed me John Rambo
Stitching up his arm with no anaesthetic
And giving them "a war they won't believe"
I knew then my calling, the job for me

Thanks also to the recruitment adverts
For showing me soldiers whizzing around on skis
And for sending sergeants to our school
To tell us of the laughs, the great food, the pay
The camaraderie

I am, dear taxpayer, forever in your debt
You paid for my all-inclusive pilgrimage
One year basking in the Garden of Eden
(I haven't quite left yet)

Thanks to Mum and thanks to Dad
Fuck it,
Thanks to every parent
Flushing with pride for their brave young lads
Buying young siblings toy guns and toy tanks
Waiting at the airport
Waving their flags ~ Danny Martin

Faith is not a question of basking in the certainty that there is a God and that God is taking care of us. Many of us are never granted this kind of assurance. Certitude is not the real substance of faith. Faith is a way of seeing things. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

Someday decades from now, when you and Sabine are hobbling around in your old-people pants and orthopedic shoes, yelling at grandchildren and reminiscing about the days when you could still see your feet, unimpeded by the view of your gut, I will still be basking in the glow of eternal youth, forever young, forever golden, forever - "
"In love with the face in the mirror and the sound of your own voice," I finished for him, and Nash laughed. ~ Rachel Vincent

Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft. ~ Charlotte Bronte

They lay there like that, in a different kind of silence now, watching the lake and the stars, listening to the night, each basking in the warmth of the other. ~ Kimberly Derting

There is a secret earth gyrm, a place where the unbelievable, the unthinkable, the terrible, takes place every day. A place hidden by the veils of ignorance and cowardice and fear. On occasions we glimpse it, when its hidden terrors fall through that veil into plain sight, but mostly we just dismiss it as something else, somewhere else, to be dealt with by someone else. Long ago I found the veil and lifted it. And knowing as I do what is behind, what those behind it get away with, with impunity ... I cannot grow old basking on the bank of some safe-haven, no. ~ Shaun Hick

We learn to love by basking in the love of other people. We learn how to express our love and our warmest feelings whenever other people grace us with the privilege of besetting upon them many acts of kindness. We unleash a germinal of internal tenderness by affectionately doting upon pets and by generously spending time admiring the natural world. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Every time I am shown to an old, dimly lit, and, I would add, impeccably clean toilet in a Nara or Kyoto temple, I am impressed with the singular virtues of Japanese architecture. The parlor may have its charms, but the Japanese toilet truly is a place of spiritual repose. It always stands apart from the main building, at the end of a corridor, in a grove fragrant with leaves and moss. No words can describe that sensation as one sits in the dim light, basking in the faint glow reflected from the shoji, lost in meditation or gazing out at the garden. The novelist Natsume Soseki counted his morning trips to the toilet a great pleasure, 'a physiological delight' he called it. And surely there could be no better place to savor this pleasure than a Japanese toilet where, surrounded by tranquil walls and finely grained wood, one looks out upon blue skies and green leaves. ~ Junichiro Tanizaki

In ancient China, the Taoists taught that a constant inner smile, a smile to oneself, insured health, happiness and longevity. Why? Smiling to yourself is like basking in love: you become your own best friend. Living with an inner smile is to live in harmony with yourself. ~ Mantak Chia

In my vast experience, I've found it always wiser to go along with female advice ... First, you make them happy by doing what they tell you. That's the main thing. Let them think they're in control. They love it. Then, if it turns out they were right, everything's cool. If it turns out they were wrong ... then you have the pleasure of basking in the glow of superiority. ~ Richard Laymon

You will never know just how thrilled my heart is to behold such a throng of people; especially as they have gathered to pay tribute and love's greatest honor to loved ones who, today, are basking in the sunshine of God's heaven. ~ Reverend Ada Slaton Bonds

There has come into existence, chiefly in America, a breed of men who claim to be feminists. They imagine that they have understood what women want and that they are capable of giving it to them. They help with the dishes at home and make their own coffee in the office, basking the while in the refulgent consciousness of virtue. Such men are apt to think of the true male feminists as utterly chauvinistic. ~ Germaine Greer

Some actors are like flowers basking in the sun - they love the attention, and the fans get what they want. With me it's different. I know the fans aren't getting what they want. And I'm certainly not getting what I want. ~ Natascha McElhone

Lily's taste of beneficence had wakened in her a momentary appetite for well-doing. Her visit to the Girls' Club had first brought her in contact with the dramatic contrasts of life. She had always accepted with philosophic calm the fact that such existences as hers were pedestalled on foundations of obscure humanity. The dreary limbo of dinginess lay all around and beneath that little illuminated circle in which life reached its finest efflorescence, as the mud and sleet of a winter night enclose a hot-house filled with tropical flowers. All this was in the natural order of things, and the orchid basking in its artificially created atmosphere could round the delicate curves of its petals undisturbed by the ice on the panes. ~ Edith Wharton

Soon you catch your first glimpse of a vineyard basking in the sun, its broad leaves silently turning sunlight into sugar, ripening vitis vinifera, the European grapes that make the world's finest wines. For a moment you might imagine you've been mysteriously wafted to the French countryside, but no, this is the East End of Long Island, the most exciting new wine region in North America. You've reached your destination, but your journey of discovery has barely begun ~ Jane Taylor Starwood

If division and negitivity is overcoming goodness and if darkness is overtaking the light...don't blame mother nature. She's just basking in her majestic beauty for all who truly want to peacefully enjoy. ~ Timothy Pina

The Aussies have spent so much time basking in the glory of the last generation that they have forgotten to plan for this one. It's just like the West Indies again; once their great names from the 1970s and 80s retired, the whole thing fell apart.

The way things are going, the next Ashes series cannot come too quickly for England. What a shame that we have to wait until 2013 to play this lot again. ~ Geoffrey Boycott

All of us lived life when sex was the farthest thing from our minds. Try to remember the careless freedom of play, basking in the beingness of others. As adults, responsibilities and obligations can often bind us to a daily grind. For some adults, then, sex might be one of the few interactions that restores their openness and sensory exploration of play. It's not hard to see why sexual preoccupation might take over when people become locked out from experiencing fulfilling lives. ~ Alexandra Katehakis

I love this place; I love mountains and big skies and forests. And the weather is still supremely beautiful even though the lower peaks are powdered with fresh snow. But Heavens! What sun. It never has an ending. I am basking at this minute - half past four - too hot without a hat, & the sky is that transparent blue only to be seen in autumn - the forest trees steeped in light. ~ Katherine Mansfield

We lie on the blanket, our bare bodies basking in the sun like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Only our apples were bitten a long time ago, and we ate them too. ~ Henry Martin

Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined
future, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or
a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced
that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was
charged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, and
one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-
loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by the
high, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so
many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like fireflies
in the perfumed heat of summer night. ~ Mark Strand

They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic rays from the star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing. The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. ~ Douglas Adams

The prompt Paris morning struck its cheerful notes - in a soft breeze and a sprinkled smell, in the light flit, over the garden-floor, of bareheaded girls with the buckled strap of oblong boxes, in the type of ancient thrifty persons basking betimes where terrace-walls were warm, in the blue-frocked brass-labelled officialism of humble rakers and scrapers, in the deep references of a straight-pacing priest or the sharp ones of a white-gaitered red-legged soldier. He watched little brisk figures, figures whose movement was as the tick of the great Paris clock, take their smooth diagonal from point to point; the air had a taste as of something mixed with art, something that presented nature as a white-capped master-chef. The ~ Henry James

The elegant and beautiful Lotus flower must toil through the mud and mire of murky swamps and shadowy waters of darkness before it can finally bloom. Above the fray of struggle yet firmly rooted in rugged beginnings, it ultimately lies pristinely above the water, basking in the sun of triumph. So no matter what you've endured or where you come from...you are no different and no less beautiful. There is simply no greater beauty than when a flower blossoms despite its tough and humble beginnings. ~Jason Versey ~ Jason Versey

Thank fuck the camera loved him more than he loved himself.
He could recline on silk sheets for cologne or seethe in a sportscar. His life became the silk sheet he had once reclined upon: smooth, compliant and without substance. In pursuit of that something, he enterprised. His upbringing on Lake Como receded as he found himself sipping sangria on a Monte Carlo balcony, basking on his cruiser in Cannes or cheering Chelsea within a glass suite above the stands. Whether he felt dead inside wasn't up for discussion. ~ Charles J. Harwood

He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged with existence. ~ Virginia Woolf

I liked my days spent basking in the sun, not dancing in the rain. ~ Jay Crownover

Then her eyes narrowed. The sun was spilling in the window behind her and Dageus's eyes were golden, dappled with darker flecks. Smoky and sensual, fringed by thick dark lashes, but gold nonetheless.
"What is with your eyes?" she exclaimed. "Is it part of being
a Druid?"
"What color are they?" he asked warily.
"Gold."
He flashed her another unguarded smile. It was like basking in the sun, she thought, tracing her fingers over his beard-shadowed jaw, smiling helplessly back. ~ Karen Marie Moning

We're basking in language itself. The silence of my friend. My love. The one beyond words in her silence. She is always eternally before. When she speaks it is shit, a gift, something to do. In our moment, of waiting, pointing, silent gear, what we went out for - that is pointing. Shit is the award. The award is shit. ~ Eileen Myles

After a while in a very gentle voice he asked, 'Would you like to leave now? We'll be better off in the boat.' 'All right my pet,' she said. Awash with forgiveness and with tears still in his eyes he held her two hands tightly and helped her on board. Basking in the warmth of the afternoon they rowed upstream again past the willows and the grass-covered banks. When they reached Le Grillon once more it was not yet six, so, leaving their skiff, they set off on foot towards Bezons across the meadows and past the high poplars bordering the banks. The wide hayfields waiting to be harvested were full of flowers. The sinking sun cast a mantle of russet light over all and in the gentle warmth of the day's end the fragrance of the grass wafted in on them mingling with the damp smells of the river and filling the air with easy languor and an atmosphere of blessed well-being. He felt soft and unresistant, in communion with the calm splendour of the evening and with the vague, mysterious thrill of life itself. He felt in tune with the all-embracing poetry of the moment in which plants and all that surrounded him revealed themselves to his senses at this lovely restful and reflective time of day. He was sensitive to it all but she appeared totally unaffected. They were walking side by side when suddenly, bored by the silence, she began to sing. ~ Guy De Maupassant

Kelly tried to soothe his racing heart as he took a seat and leaned back. This was going to be a long night, but he had learned long ago that dark times are best weathered with those you love. And when the dawn of a new day greeted them, he prayed that the skies would be clear, the rest of their days spent together basking in the light. ~ Jay Bell

Sometimes I don't realize how badly I need something until I see someone else with it. I want to be happy and basking in the glow of early love; that prelude to the delicious things to come. ~ B.N. Toler

It didn't occur to me that I was glistening with sweat and wearing a bikini top until they turned off the bikes, pulled off their helmets and turned to scope me out. To make my own personal cliché perfect, Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar On Me blasted through the radio. I winced – I must look like a white-trash princess from hell, basking outside my trailer in a bikini to outdated butt rock. ~ Joanna Wylde

No matter the joy in heaven, its coldness will make you bask beside the flames of hell. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Vicinity to the sea is desirable, because it is easier to do nothing by the sea than anywhere else, and because bathing and basking on the shore cannot be considered an employment but only an apotheosis of loafing. ("Expiation") ~ E.F. Benson

I have always enjoyed watching women dress. The appeal isn't sexual. Most girls' first glimpse of private female life is watching their mothers dress and put makeup on. It makes sense that we'd find it comforting. Childhood fascinations often crystallize this way. Isn't beauty forever defined, in a sense, by the first things we found beautiful? Surely part of my pleasure results from the inundation of images that we all experience. But I also love ritual, and it is a mesmerizing one. I enjoy the ritual of dressing myself, too. It is a form of basking in a kind of femininity that I am opposed to as an ideal, but for better or worse, I think we all fetishize the female body, and intellectualization doesn't spare anyone the obsession. ~ Melissa Febos

It is not just saying prayers that gets results, but it is spending time with the Father, learning His wisdom, drawing on His strength, being filled with His quietness, and basking in His love that bring results to our prayers. Praise the Lord! ~ Germaine Copeland

His hand stilled on her hair and he said, very carefully and calmly, "There is never any excuse for a man to hit a woman - any woman - let alone one he professes to love." She was quiet a moment, just basking in his gentle strength. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Just because they were homey didn't mean they were ordinary. Most versions of this recipe relied on butterscotch chips, waxy little chunks of hydrogenated oil and synthetic butterscotch flavor. Bev's used malted milk powder and a truckload of butter, relying on the interaction between the oven's heat and the milk powder to give that toasty, caramelized flavor that suggested rather than screamed butterscotch. Melody's version also subbed brown sugar for some of the white with a healthy shot of molasses to add a deep, earthy note. At the last moment, she added some chopped hazelnuts from a little glass jar in the cabinet for extra texture and flavor.
Thoughts of Justin faded as she mixed and spread the batter, then slid the shallow jelly roll pan into the oven where it would bake into a sheet of butterscotchy, nutty deliciousness. When it came out dozens of minutes later, fragrant and golden brown, she inhaled the aroma, basking in her sense of accomplishment at a perfect result. There was nothing like taking basic ingredients and transforming them into something both beautiful and tasty. ~ Carla Laureano

It was a light that shone over our faces, our wounds and scars. It was a light so brilliant and white it could have been beamed from heaven, and Brian and I could have been angels, basking in it. But it wasn't, and we weren't. ~ Scott Heim

To regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of Heaven, is as if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flutter through the air, roving at will from flower to flower, sipping sweet honey from their cups, or basking in their sunny petals. If these little creatures knew how great a change awaited them, no doubt they would regret it; but would not all such sorrow be misplaced? ~ Anne Bronte

Which is better off, a lizard basking in the sun or a philosopher? ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The photograph is in my hand. It is the photograph of a man and a woman. They are at an amusement park, in 1959. [ ... ] I'm tired of looking at the photograph now. I open my fingers. It falls to the sand at my feet. I am going to look at the stars. They are so far away, and their light takes so long to reach us ... All we ever see of stars are their old photographs. [ ... ] It's October, 1985. I'm basking in the two-million-year-old light of Andromeda. I can see the supernova that Ernst Hartwig discovered in 1885, a century ago. It scintillates, a wink intended for the Trilobites, all long dead. Supernovas are where gold forms; the only place. All gold comes from supernovas. ~ Alan Moore

When you aren't drinking or using drugs or spending lots of money on fancy toys or basking in the glow of fame or working all the time or eating your way through the refrigerator, being hateful and angry is a very handy shield from the truth. It lets you focus on everyone else's shortcomings, and all the ways they have let you down. You can bemoan how all these broken people keep finding you somehow. That way you don't have to focus on what really matters
the tough work of fiing what is broken inside you. ~ Glenn Beck

Basking in the attention of the people who gathered around me, I didn't just feel like a backpacking expert. I felt like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. ~ Cheryl Strayed

You drank acid, and it turned a vitality drink in your stomach. You had an accident, and you find yourself sleeping comfortably on your sofa. Robbers shot you, and the bullets became a basking fire on your skin. Your enemy cursed you, and you became a president next year. You were headstrong and rude, then suddenly, you find yourself very humble and compassionate. Don't think all these things are magic, you're not under the possession of the world nor its people, but God is the power behind your metamorphosis. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

They will have time enough, in those endless aeons, to attempt all things, and to gather all knowledge no Gods imagined by our minds have ever possessed the powers they will command
But for all that, they may envy us, basking in the bright afterglow of Creation; for we knew the Universe when it was young. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

God is love. But love can also be hated when it challenges us to transcend ourselves. It is not a romantic "good feeling." Redemption is not "wellness," it is not about basking in self-indulgence; on the contrary it is a liberation from imprisonment in self-absorption. This liberation comes at a price: the anguish of the Cross. The prophecy of light and that of the Cross belong together. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

Once upon a time there was a bear and a bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the bee collected nectar from morning to night while the bear lay on his back basking in the long grass. When winter came the bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself 'I hope that busy little bee will share some of his honey with me.' But the bee was nowhere to be found - he had died of a stress induced coronary disease. ~ Banksy

The Redwood Tree

My father once told me a story about an old redwood tree - how she stood tall and proud - her sprawling limbs clothed in emerald green. With a smile, he described her as a mere sapling, sheltered by her elders and basking in the safety of the warm, dappled light. But as this tree grew taller, she found herself at the mercy of the cruel wind and the vicious rain. Together, they tore relentlessly at her pretty boughs, until she felt as though her heart would split in two.

After a long, thoughtful pause, my father turned to me and said, "My daughter, one day the same thing will happen to you. And when that time comes, remember the redwood tree. Do not worry about the cruel wind or the vicious rain - but do as that tree did and just keep growing. ~ Lang Leav

When the ship cracks in the typhoon, we cover our heads and tell ourselves that all will resolve back to normal. But we are unbelieving. This time may not be like the other times that with time grew into cheerful anecdotes. The stories we heard, about the ten thousand buried in the quake, were, after all, true.

And more irredeemable than any human catastrophe, the dinosaurs trailed across the desert to their end. They left no descendents to embellish their saga, but only the white bones and the marks in the clay for archeologists to make into footnotes. Our hour may be this hour, and our end the dinosaurs'.

So perhaps there will be no revolving back at all, and only archives, full of archetypes, like the composite photographs of movie heroines.
But with or without us, the Day itself must return, we insist, when the Joke at least sits basking in the sun, decorating her idle body with nameless red, once blood.

Philosophy, like lichens, takes centuries to grow and is always ignored in the Book of Instructions. If you can't Take It, Get Out.

I can't take it, so I lie on the hotel bed dissolving into chemicals whose adventure will pursue time to her extinguishment, without the slightest influence from these few years when I held them together in human passion. ~ Elizabeth Smart

That night, she was neglecting her pen in favor of rereading one of the most-favored books in her library. It was a small volume that had appeared mysteriously when she was only fifteen. Josephine still had no idea who had gifted her the lovely horror of Carmilla, but she owed her nameless benefactor an enormous debt. Her personal guess was a briefly employed footman who had seen her reading her mother's well-worn copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho and confessed his own forbidden love of Poe. The slim volume of Le Fanu's Gothic horror stories had been hidden well into adulthood. As it wasn't her father's habit to investigate her reading choices, concealment might have been more for dramatic effect than real fear of discovery. Josephine read by lamplight, curled into an old chaise and basking in the sweet isolation of darkness as she mouthed well-loved passages from her favorite vampire tale.

"For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me."

She slammed the book shut. How had she turned so morbid? For while Josephine had long known she would not live to old age, she thought she had resigned herself to it. She made a point of figh ~ Elizabeth Hunter

Edges
I am a child throwing rocks into the stream.
Challenging the rushing water.
Raising my fist and daring fate to do it worst.
I am a dancer in the waves of the ocean.
Swaying in time with the tide.
Pirouetting, the current my only friend.
I am the sun, rising across the canyon
Ascending, and shinning down.
Giving the illusion of perception and motion.
I am thoughts like a rolling river.
Water cascading over the rocks of my soul.
Shaping, forming, conforming.
I am the peace of the rain forest.
Basking in solitude
Tranquil, serene, transfixing angles.
Reflecting from within.
Dripping and dropping. Shaking it off.
I am the dust of the galaxy.
Yearning to know itself.
I am the wind.
Wandering. Searching.
A storm brewing from within. ~ Tosha Michelle

The author extols the power of having significant portions of God's Word read in public worship with the following analogy. He says that by reading a few short verses, we are like someone glimpsing nature through window from across the room. But by taking in more lengthy passages of Scripture, we are like someone who, intrigue, gets right next to the window to take in more of the view that it offers, basking in more of the arc of the whole the whole narrative. ~ N. T. Wright

Every day take a few minutes and focus on SEEING yourself in joy. FEEL yourself in joy. IMAGINE only joy ahead in your life and see yourself basking in it You can't be in joy if you have money worries, or health worries, or relationship problems with friends or family. So deposit some joy in the bank of the Universe as often as you can. There isn't an investment that is more worthwhile. ~ Rhonda Byrne

The purple butterflies fluttered about with gold dust on their wings, visiting each flower in turn; the little lizards crept out of the crevices of the wall, and lay basking in the white glare; and the pomegranates split and cracked with the heat, and showed their bleeding red hearts. Even the pale yellow lemons, that hung in such profusion from the mouldering trellis and along the dim arcades, seemed to have caught a richer colour from the wonderful sunlight, and the magnolia trees opened their great globe-like blossoms of folded ivory, and filled the air with a sweet heavy perfume. ~ Oscar Wilde

Gulls shriek plovers and sandpipers run up and down the beach. The tide is all the way out. The stone jetty from which people fish in the summer is covered with seals basking in the light. ~ Kathleen Valentine

One of my biggest problems in dealing with the breakdown of my body is that I keep looking in the wrong direction. I look to the past and the capabilities I once had, instead of looking to the future and what I will someday become in the presence and by the grace of God. Perhaps that is the strongest temptation for you too. Our culture reinforces that mistake by its refusal to talk about heaven, as if it were an old-fashioned and outdated notion. We also intensify the problem by craving present health (as limited as it can be) more than we desire God.

A friend once said to me. "This is so hard getting old - there are so many things we can't do any more. I guess the Lord wants to teach us something." Indeed, our bodies will never be what they previously were, and we find that difficult because we miss our former activities. But God wants to teach us to hunger for Him, our greatest treasure. Instead of rejecting the notion of heaven, we genuinely ache in our deepest self to fill that concept with a larger landscape of the Joy of basking in God's presence. ~ Marva J. Dawn

Sentimentality is a basking in feelings that in reality you don't take seriously enough to make the slightest sacrifice to or ever translate into action. ~ Hermann Hesse

Let us find inner freedom in each lucky moment that we encounter, like a sun-basking butterfly that finds peace on a cherry blossom petal. ("I seek you") ~ Erik Pevernagie

At the end of the day, nobody can tell you how to tackle failure or how to handle change. The world is very good at encouraging you to go along with the status quo and at basking in your successes. ~ Viola Davis

I know I want her body more than I want my next breath. And I know that meeting her, basking in her smiles and wanting her on me like a second skin has forever changed me. But can there ever be more? Can I spend every night counting her freckles, like I once counted the stars? Can I replace my sunrise with the vision of her sleeping beside me, fiery hair, wild and tangled all over her face? Can I swim in those too-big turquoise eyes and drown myself in her laughter every night?
I think the biggest question is, How can I not ~ S.L. Jennings

Lesbian?"
Payton turned around and saw J.D. standing there.
Maybe it was the wine. Maybe she was basking in the glow of their successful pitch to Gibson's. Maybe it was her promise to Laney to be the "New Payton," or maybe it was a combination of all those things. But Payton actually found herself smiling at J.D.
It's just an excuse, the lesbian thing," she said. ~ Julie James

Has she glanced you way yet?"
Twice," Nick said on a note of satisfaction.
Meaning?"
Nick glanced at him. "She's not completely disinterested."
I see Moreland. That makes it an even half dozen hanging out for a rich wife. Four looking for their second. Rossman, the old satyr, certainly isn't likely to be much competition. What in the hell does he think he's doing anyway? He must be sixty."
Basking, I should think. She hasn't given him the cold shoulder yet," Nick responded coolly. ~ Jaide Fox

Basking in the light and glory that comes with not giving a damn. ~ Alice Oseman