Bleeding Hearts Quotes

It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be. ~ Bram Stoker

Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, 'May I come in?' is not the true laughter. No! he is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person; he choose no time of suitability. He say, 'I am here.' ... Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when King Laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall - all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be. ~ Bram Stoker

There are a lot of bleeding hearts around who just dont like to see people with helmets and guns. All I can say is go and bleed It is more important to keep law and order in society than to be worried about weak-kneed people Society must take every means at its disposal to defend itself against the emergence of a parallel power which defies the elected power. ~ Pierre Trudeau

That sounds about right for this group. You bleeding hearts are going to be the death of me, I just know it. ~ Julie Kagawa

Love is the line that draws the shape of God.
Bleeding Hearts (Demimonde #1) ~ Ash Krafton

Seeing as this is probably my last hurrah, I don't suppose I could get you two bleeding hearts to massacre a village with me? For old time's sake. - Jackal ~ Julie Kagawa

It is not easy to be the citizen of a Superpower, nor is it getting easier. I would feel isolated with my shame if I were not sure that I belong, among millions of Americans, to a perennial minority of the nation. The obstinate bleeding hearts who will never agree that might makes right and know if the end justifies the means, the end is worthless. Power corrupts, an old truism but why does it also make the powerful so stupid? Their power schemes become unstuck in time, at cruel cost to other; then the powerful put their stupid important heads together and invent the next similar schemes [written 1987]. ~ Martha Gellhorn

To desperation," he said, and raised his glass. She raised hers as well, toward the altar.
"And to bleeding hearts," she added, and they drank. ~ Max Gladstone

I was too awestruck to speak. Vines of bright pink flowers danced over a wrought-iron arbor. I recognized them immediately as the very same variety, bougainvillea, that grew in Greenhouse No. 4 at the New York Botanical Garden. Just beyond, two potted trees stood at attention- a lemon, its shiny yellow globes glistening in the sunlight, and what looked like an orange, studded with the tiniest fruit I'd ever seen.
"What is this?" I asked, fascinated.
"A kumquat," she said. "Lady Anna used to pick them for the children." She reached out to pluck one of the tiny oranges from the tree. "Here, try for yourself."
I held it in my hand, admiring its smooth, shiny skin.
I sank my teeth into the flesh of the fruit. Its thin skin disintegrated in my mouth, releasing a burst of sweet and sour that made my eyes shoot open and a smile spread across my face. "Oh, my," I said. "I've never had anything like it."
Mrs. Dilloway nodded. "You should try the clementines, then. They're Persian."
I walked a few paces further, admiring the potted orchids- at least a hundred specimens, so exquisite they looked like Southern belles in hoop skirts. On the far wall were variegated ferns, bleeding hearts, and a lilac tree I could smell from the other end of the room. ~ Sarah Jio

Look at us," Emerson laughs, "A couple of bleeding hearts. ~ Colleen Masters

Whatever your grievances, I'm sure we can address them without resorting to war," persisted Argyle ...
Nonsense," said the alien. "Do you know how many laborers and industries we'd put out of work if we were to stop the war just because a few bleeding hearts think we can talk out our grievances? ~ Mike Resnick

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,- - This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile And mouth with myriad subtleties. Why should the world be otherwise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see thus, while We wear the mask. We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask! ~ Paul Laurence Dunbar

Sometimes, women are so internalized and consumed with their own lives that they can't see the bleeding hearts in front of them. ~ Crystal Jones

All alone, or in two's,
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands.
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand.
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall. ~ Roger Waters

The more you suffer the deeper grows your character, and with the deepening of your character you read the more penetratingly into the secrets of life. All great artists, all great religious leaders, and all great social reformers have come out of the intensest struggles which they fought bravely, quite frequently in tears and with bleeding hearts ~ D.T. Suzuki

Maybe in this nation of the flesh,
Distance will hold us together,

as I try to remember her bent low
to the bleeding heart's small petals,
and around us, buds of wild lilies
where once there was a shallow gorge
that dipped into the clearing and horses
claimed the fields; and that one night
she couldn't sleep, she walked

into the same field to behold
the stars she once named for me.
Maybe now I will understand what secrets
she wanted to share that night
while I pretended to sleep.
Years later, we returned to that place
only to discover that the rains
had flooded the field into a lake,
as if all memory was fiction,
as if memory had turned things around. ~ Eugene Gloria

It is a defect of God's humor that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them. ~ Tom Stoppard

Think of that person you knew when you were a kid, who you always thought you could have loved completely and forever.Well, you could have. It's the truth, and it's the saddest and simplest thing. There isn't just one person for each of us in the world. There aren't many, but there are always a few people we could have made it with, that maybe we still want to make it with, that press themselves so close to our hearts they leave scars, and then slip through our fingers and disappear from our lives. And it doesn't make a difference if you're thirteen or ninety- eight because some things you feel are real, no matter when. ~ Abigail Tarttelin

Life is dangerous, but just because we do what we do doesn't mean we're to live our lives in constant fear that something's going to happen. So when you start to feel that way, like your heart's going to explode from the intensity of the situation - use that adrenaline, channel it toward adventure. ~ Rachel Van Dyken

No one will be offended if we tell them that they are good people who could be a little better. The offense comes when we tell them that they - and we - are ungodly people who cannot impress God or escape his tribunal. Until our preaching of the law has exposed our hearts and God's holiness at that profound level, our hearers will never flee to Christ alone for safety even if they come to us for advice. ~ Michael Horton

The power to transform your life is in your heart, I dont make people successful, I open hearts ~ Dr Lloyd Magangeni

People die of broken hearts. They have heart attacks. And it's the heart that hurts most when things go wrong and fall apart. ~ Markus Zusak

We ask that streams of Easter light might flow into the intimacy and privacy of our hearts this morning, to heal us and encourage us and enable us to make again a new beginning. ~ John O'Donohue

This faith in themselves was in the hearts of our ancestors, this faith in themselves was the motive power that pushed them forward and forward in the march of civilisation, and if there has been degeneration, if there has been defect, mark my words, you will find that degeneration to have started on the day our people lost faith in themselves. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Men have commonly more pleasure in the criticism which hurts than in that which is innocuous, and are more tolerant of the severity which breaks hearts and ruins fortunes than of that which falls impotently on the grave. ~ John Ruskin

If only i could get that under control then i feel like i could stay here a long time, watching the days leaking into the nights, swilling over the buildings, bleeding back again.
I could lie and not think of anything but ways to describe the sky, the clouds, the light. ~ Gwendoline Riley

The fact that Aracely might understand what he could not say, it seeded in him a want, new and raw, like not knowing he was thirsty until water was in front of him. No one else, not his mother, not even Miel, could understand this wanting to live a life different from the one he was born into, so much that his own skin felt like ice cracking.

It shouldn't have mattered, not when Miel and the other girls in his class wore jeans more than they wore skirts. Not when they went out as late as they wanted. Not when they told their brothers what to do, and borrowed their fathers' books.

But there was everything else. The idea of being called Miss or Ms. or, worse, Mrs. The thought of being grouped in when someone called out 'girls' or 'ladies.' The endless, echoing use of 'she' and 'her,' 'miss' and 'ma'am.' Yes, they were words. They were all just words. But each of them was wrong, and they stuck to him. Each one was a golden fire ant, and they were biting his arms and his neck and his bound-flat chest, leaving him bleeding and burning.

'He. Him. Mister. Sir.' Even teachers admonishing him and his classmates with 'boys, settle down,' or 'gentlemen, please.' These were sounds as perfect and clean as winter rain, and they calmed each searing bite of those wrong words. ~ Anna-Marie McLemore

For wordsmiths and masters of words, without necessarily being harsh with words, the words have a tendency to shoot straight to the hearts of people, and this either deeply touches them or deeply angers them. Like the apostles in all their loving controversies are those who are masters of words while combining this gift with truth. ~ Criss Jami

Best listened to in a windowless room, better than best in an airless room - correctly speaking, a bunker sealed forever and enwrapped in tree-roots - the Eighth String Quartet of Shostakovich (Opus 110) is the living corpse of music, perfect in its horror. Call it the simultaneous asphyxiation and bleeding of melody. The soul strips itself of life in a dusty room. ~ William T. Vollmann

I would learn fifteen years too late that asking for consent, granting consent, surviving sexual violence, being called a good dude, and never initiating sexual relationships did not incubate me from being emotionally abusive. Consent meant little to nothing if it was not fully informed. What, and to whom, were my partners consenting if I spent our entire relationship convincing them that a circle was not a circle but just a really relaxed square? I'd become good at losing weight and great at convincing women they didn't see or know what they absolutely saw and knew. Lying there on that floor, I accepted that I'd actually never been honest with myself about what carrying decades of lies did to other people's hearts and heads. ~ Kiese Laymon

My own kind. I'm not sure there's a name for us. I suspect we're born this way: our hearts screwed in tight, already a little broken. We hate sentimentality and yet we're deeply sentimental. Low-grade Romantics. Tough but susceptible. Afflicted by parking lots, empty courtyards, nostalgic pop music. When we cried for no reason as babies, just hauled off and wailed, our parents seemed to know, instinctively, that it wasn't diaper rash or colic. It was something deeper that they couldn't find a comfort for, though the good ones tried mightily, shaking rattles like maniacs and singing, "Happy Birthday" a little louder than called for. We weren't morose little kids. We could be really happy. ~ Steve Almond

I never wanted to forget all the ways we were connected that day: By our shadows and sunlight. By pounding hearts and a starry maybe. ~ Natalie Lloyd

We spent a century closed up within four walls
and a roof.
We are claustrophobic.
We prefer the sun and the wind and the sea
though it bites some of us
who are made of metal, and tears papery hearts. ~ Catherynne M Valente

…The heavens could not bear my debt
And wrote me as a madman in my fate.
But lovers bled their hearts
And on the face of the Beloved
Did a beauty spot create.

The fire that burns
In the flame of the lamp
Is not the fire;
It burns in the essence of
The moth and consumes him entire… ~ Hafiz Shirazi

It is Nixon himself who represents that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise. Our Barbie-doll president, with his Barbie-doll wife and his boxful of Barbie-doll children is also America's answer to the monstrous Mr. Hyde. He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable, full of claws and bleeding string-warts on nights when the moon comes too close ... ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Weapons'

Up the crag
In the searing wind,
Naked and bleeding
I fought blind.

Then at dawn
On the snowy height
I seized a spear
By the eastern light.

On I trudged
In the eye of the sun
Past the cromlech
I found a gun.

Then I strayed
In the cities of men,
In the house of my Love
I found a pen! ~ Anna Wickham

and we wouldn't have to put our hearts on the line and try to make it anything more. ~ Christina Lauren

Bright beads of red are rising through the ink, Hearts-blood bubbles smearing out into the black stream ~ Sylvia Plath

Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men and beasts; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts beating. We will sit on a mound and muse, and not try to make these skeletons stand on their legs again. Does Nature remember, think you, that they were men, or not rather that they are bones? ~ Henry David Thoreau

Free your hearts of anxiety, pain and anger, to have peace within your heart and soul. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

For such is the noble nature of man, that his heart will never wholly lose itself in one single passion or idol, or, as people call it apologetically, one idea. On it goes from one devotion to the next, not because it is ashamed of its first love, but because it must be on fire perpetually. To fall for Reason, as our grandfathers did, is but one Fall of Man among his many passionate attempts to find the apples of knowledge and eternal life, both in one.
When a nation, or individual, declines the experiences that present themselves to passionate hearts only, they are automatically turned out from the realm of history. The heart of man either falls in love with somebody or something, or it falls ill. It can never go unoccupied. And the great question for mankind Is what is to be loved or hated next, whenever an old love or fear has lost its hold. ~ Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

In the dance of infatuation, we see others not as they are, but as projections of who we want them to be. And we impose on them all the imaginary criteria we think will fill the void in our hearts. ~ Neil Strauss

Our land is the dearer of our sacrifices. The blood of our martyrs sanctifies and enriches it. Their spirit passes into thousands of hearts. How costly is the progress of the race. It is only by the giving of life that we can have life. ~ Edward Joseph Young

One could not stand and watch very long without being philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog-squeal of the universe ... Each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him, and a horrid Fate in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, all his protests, his screams were nothing to it. It did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. ~ Upton Sinclair

Dom rose from his kneeling position, a keen hunger shining in his eyes. "Was that wicked enough for you, sweeting?" he drawled as he used his cravat to wipe his mouth.
With her heart thundering loudly in her ears and her breathing staggered, it took her a moment to answer. "Not quite," she managed, then tugged at the waistband of his drawers. "You still have these on."
That seemed to startle him. Then one corner of his lips quirked up. "I never guessed you were such a greedy little--"
"Wanton?" she asked before he could accuse her of being one.
But he just shot her a smoldering smile. "Siren."
"Oh." She liked that word much better. Feeling her oats, she gestured to his drawers. "So take them off."
With a laugh, he did so. "There, my lusty beauty. You have your wish."
"Yes…yes, I do." Now she could study him to her heart's content.
But the reality was rather sobering. His member, jutting from a nest of dark curls, couldn't possibly be hidden behind a tiny fig leaf like the ones on statues. "Oh my. It's even bigger and more…er…thrusting without the drawers."
"Are you rethinking your plan for seduction now?" he asked, with a decided tension in his voice.
"No." She cast him a game smile. "Just…reassessing the…er…fit."
"It's not as fearsome as it looks."
"Good," she said lightly, only half joking. She looped her arms about his neck. "Because I'm not as fearless as I look."
"You're a great deal more fearless than you ~ Sabrina Jeffries

She understood as never before that home wasn't a place but rather a place in the heart. In this troubled world, everything was transient except what we could carry with us in our minds and hearts. Every home ceased to be a home sooner or later, but not with its demolition. It survived destruction as long as just one person who had loved it still lived. Home was the story of what happened there, not the story of where it happened. ~ Dean Koontz

Of course you're afraid of being judged and condemned. Some people will judge and condemn you, but most won't. Our minds are small, but our hearts are big. Just about every one of us has fucked up at one point or another. You're in a pickle. You did things you didn't hope to do. You have not always been your best self. This means that you're like the rest of us. ~ Anonymous

What the Vatican did will be indelibly and eternally engraved in our hearts. Priests and even high prelates did things that will forever be an honor to Catholicism. ~ Israel Zolli

These were officials accorded high respect. Yet they conspired, and still I destroyed them. If your abilities surpass theirs, then make your play. Otherwise, change your hearts and serve me, to save the Empire from further ridicule. ~ Jonathan Clements

When I create works of art, I do it because it is part of me and I must create. But afterward, when the work is done, I hope that it'll speak to people, that it'll open up their hearts or their minds. That cannot happen if the art is buried for safekeeping. ~ Nalini Singh

Summer's Coming"

"I wish we had acted sooner."

"The struggle for a sustainable future is not just a battle between people and ideologies, it is the struggle in our hearts and minds that is revealed in the choices we make every day. ~ Ned Tillman

True hearts have ears and eyes, no tongues to speak;
They hear and see, and sigh, and then they break. ~ Edward Dyer

It is through the multitudinous mass of living human hearts, of human acts and words of love and truth, that the Christ of the first century has become the Christ of the nineteenth. ~ Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

Cupid's bloody bow is strung with a million hearts, wisdom bought at a terrible price, and love laid to rest on the river of Time. ~ Laurence Overmire

He shook his head pityingly. "This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft."
"Not all men are destined for greatness," I reminded him.
"Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?"
"This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things."
"No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day? ~ Robin Hobb

When my nose finally stops bleeding and I've disposed of the bloody paper towels, Teddy Barnes insists on driving me home in his ancient Honda Civic, a car that refuses to die and that Teddy, cheap as he is, refuses to trade in. ~ Richard Russo

Also everyone's hearts are in the right place when you do a small movie. You're not doing it for the money; you're not doing it for the possibility of an Oscar nomination. You are doing it because you love the material. ~ Kyra Sedgwick

So if we can't express it or repress it, what do we do when we feel angry? The answer is to recognize the anger, but choose to respond to the situation differently. Easier said than done, right? Can you actually imagine trying to strong-arm your anger into another, more amicable feeling? It would never work. Determination alone won't work. It takes a new intelligence to understand and manage our emotions. By getting your head and heart in coherence and allowing the heart's intelligence to work for you, you can have a realistic chance of transforming your anger in a healthy way. ~ Doc Childre

It is quite beyond me how anyone can believe God speaks to us in books and stories. If the world does not directly reveal to us our relationship to it, if our hearts fail to tell us what we owe ourselves and others, we shall assuredly not learn it from books, which are at best designed but to give names to our errors. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

There are transcendent collective events. There is anger spreading through the streets of Port-au-Prince in Haiti, anger marking in black the unallowable, the intolerable, anger that hurls itself beyond all that can reasonably be expected or demanded. This anger is the most precious gift of the disinherited to tourists and academics who have imprisoned their hearts through so many years of well-paid compromises and betrayals ~ Alphonso Lingis

Uncontrolled temper is soon dissipated on others. Resentment, bitterness, and self-pity build up inside our hearts and eat away at our spiritual lives like a slowly spreading cancer. ~ Jerry Bridges