Callused Feet Quotes

Yes, I could have traveled quickly. But all men have the same ultimate destination. Whether we find our end in a hallowed sepulcher or a pauper's ditch, all save the Heralds themselves must dine with the Nightwatcher. And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. Is it the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived. In the end, I must proclaim that no good can be achieved of false means. For the substance of our existence is not in the achievement, but in the method. The Monarch must understand this; he must not become so focused on what he wishes to accomplish that he diverts his gaze from the path he must take to arrive there. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Urban callused feet
Walking barefoot on the beach
Worn smooth by the sand ~ Richard L. Ratliff

And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived. ~ Brandon Sanderson

After asking Humphrey to name his native city, Khrushchev bounced to his feet and drew a bold blue circle around Minneapolis on a map of the United States hanging on his wall - "so that I don't forget to order them to spare the city when the rockets fly. ~ Frederick Kempe

This corner of history was as real as the tiled floor under our feet or the wooden tabletop under our fingers. The people to whom it had happened had actually lived and breathed and felt and thought and then died, as we did - as we would. ~ Elizabeth Kostova

Sunday morning dawned bright and cloudless. Ernest awoke early as always. He put on the red "Emporor's robe" and padded softly down the carpeted stairway. The early sunlight lay in pools on the living room floor. He had noticed that the guns were locked up in the basement. But the keys, as he well knew, were on the window ledge above the kitchen sink. He tiptoed down the basement stairs and unlocked the storage room. It smelled as dank as a grave. He chose a double-barreled Boss shotgun with a tight choke. He had used it for years of pigeon shooting. He took some shells from one of the boxes in the storage room, closed and locked the door, and climbed the basement stairs. If he saw the bright day outside, it did not deter him. He crossed the living room to the front foyer, a shrinelike entryway five by seven feet, with oak-paneled walls and a floor of linoleum tile. He had held for years to the maxim: "il faut (d'abord) durer". Now it had been succeeded by another: "il faut (apres tout) mourir". The idea, if not the phrase, filled all his mind. He slipped in two shells, lowered the gun butt carefully to the floor, leaned forward, pressed the twin barrels against his forehead just above the eyebrows, and tripped both triggers. ~ Carlos Baker

Your mom isn't going to let me step foot inside this place. I've seen the gun she keeps on the top shelf of the pantry. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Nineteen years since that day. Nineteen whole years! And I'm still looking for you. I will never stop looking for you.

Often you appear when I expect it least. Earlier today I was trapped in some pointless dark thought or other, my body clenched like a metal fist. Then suddenly you were there: a bright autumn leaf cartwheeling over a dull pewter lawn. I uncurled and smelled life, felt dew on my feet, saw shades of green. I tried to grab hold of you, that vivid leaf, cavorting and wriggling and giggling. I tried to take your hand, look straight at you, but like an optical black spot you slid silently sideways, just out of reach.

I will never stop looking for you. ~ Rosie Walsh

He made himself refocus on Inej's feet. "Saints," he said.
Inej grimaced. "That bad?"
"No, you just have really ugly feet."
"Ugly feet that go you on this roof. ~ Leigh Bardugo

This is textbook Bad Idea. We're driving with a stranger, no one knows where we are, and we have no way of getting in touch with anyone. This is exactly how people become statistics."
"Exactly?" I asked, thinking of all the bizarre twists and turns that had led us to this place.
Ben ceded the point with a sideways shrug. "Maybe not exactly. But still..."
He let it go, and the cab eventually stopped at the edge of a remote, forested area. Sage got out and paid. "Everybody out!"
Ben looked at me, one eyebrow raised. He was leaving the choice to me. I gave his knee a quick squeeze before I opened the door and we piled out of the car.
Sage waited for the cab to drive away, then ducked onto a forest path, clearly assuming we'd follow.
The path through the thick foliage was stunning in the moonlight, and I automatically released my camera from its bag.
"I wish you wouldn't," Sage said without turning around. "You know I'm not one for visitors."
"I'll refrain from selling the pictures to Travel and Leisure, then," I said, already snapping away. "Besides, I need something to take my mind off my feet." My shoes were still on the beach, where I'd kicked them off to dance.
"Hey, I offered to carry you," Sage offered.
"No, thank you."
I suppose I should have been able to move swiftly and silently without my shoes, but I only managed to stab myself on something with every other footfall, giving me a sideways, hopping gait. Every few m ~ Hilary Duff

Come closer." "I…I need to take a shower." "I can see the grimace on your face when you walk. Come. Here." I turned to him and shifted my feet across the floor. "It won't happen again without a prior discussion. And it will be the first and only time that I don't make you come. Okay? ~ Courtney Lane

Scouting teaches a boy to take care of himself and stand on his own two feet. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Wanderlust is like itchy feet. It's when you can't settle down. But Wanderlove is much deeper than that ... it's a compulsion. It's the difference between lust and love. ~ Kirsten Hubbard

How about life's too short to be second-guessing yourself the whole way? You can only go with what you feel right now and if you feel like it might make you happy, even for a while, jump in with both feet, girl, and get wet. ~ Ciara Smyth

Her chest full of crisp air and inspiration, her feet atop a forgettable mountain where the stars make you feel insignificant and important all at once.
And she sang. ~ Ben Montgomery

O Christ Jesus, really present upon the altar, I cast myself down at Your feet; may all adoration be offered to You in the Sacrament which You left to us on the eve of Your Passion, as the testimony of the excess of Your love! ~ Columba Marmion

They scorned neighbors who drank tea and concocted an entirely fictitious sickness narrative around the beverage; they claimed tea stunted growth, turned men into pygmies, and transformed women into…'God knows what.' They claimed tea was stomped into chests by Chinese men with dirty feet, that it was infested with bugs. ~ Joseph Cummins

I felt a warm hand touch mine.
"Are you okay?"
"If you mean am I injured, then the answer is no. If you mean am I 'okay' as in am-I-confident-I'm-still-sane, the answer is still no."
Ren frowned. "We have to find a way to get across the chasm."
"You're certainly welcome to give it a try." I waved him off and went back to drinking my water.
He moved to the edge and peered across, looking speculatively at the distance. Changing back to a tiger, he trotted a few paces back in the direction we had come from, turned, and ran at full speed toward the hole.
"Ren, no!" I screamed.
He leapt, clearing the hole easily, and landed lightly on his front paws. Then he trotted a short distance away and did the same thing to come back. He landed at my feet and changed back to human form.
"Kells, I have an idea."
"Oh, this I've got to hear. I just hope you don't plan on including me in this scheme of yours. Ah. Let me guess. I know. You want to tie a rope to your tail, leap across, tie it off, and then have me pull my body across the rope, right?"
He cocked his head as if considering it, and then shook his head. "No, you don't have the strength to do something like that. Plus, we have no rope and nothing to tie a rope to."
"Right. So what's the plan?"
He held my hands and explained. "What I'm proposing will be much easier. Do you trust me?"
I was going to be sick. "I trust you. It's just-" I looked into his concerned blue eyes an ~ Colleen Houck

She started to rise, for she feared Dash might become angry, lose his temper as he had before with Finn, but this Dash, this man who was struggling to find his footing, planted his feet solidly on the deck.
"She married someone else, Finn," he said quietly. "There was no battle to fight once she'd done that. I'd lost, and sometimes when you lose, there is nothing you can do but move on."
Finn sighed and shook his head, the arguments and problems of adults far beyond his ken, but he still persisted, struggling to understand. "Did you?"
"Did I what?"
"Move on? After you lost her?"
Again, Dash shook his head. "Nay, I didn't. Not at all."
"'Cause you loved her?"
Dash looked away. "Aye. Without her, I lost my course and sailed about the seas rather like the Dutchman. ~ Elizabeth Boyle

If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it? ~ Steven Wright

With the stick in my right hand, the throttle in my left, and the rudder beneath my feet, I can savor that essence from which life is made. ~ Stephen Coonts

I dance with people I despise; amuse myself with men whose only talent lies in their feet, gain the disapprobation of people I honor and respect; return home at day break with my brain in a state which was never intended for it; and arise in the middle of the next day feeling infinitely more, in spirit and flesh like a Liliputian, than a woman with body and soul. Entry (when she was eighteen) in her Commonplace Book, 1868-1869. ~ Kate Chopin

It offends me when you doubt my love.
These jealousies are unwarranted.
If only you lived in my head for a day,
you'd see that you live eternally in my heart.
Try it for yourself. Take this knife to my chest
and you will find that I bleed
you.
Cast your suspicions to the wind
for there will never come a time
when I will not love you.
Does the sea get bored of kissing
the shore's feet?
Cast your suspicions to the wind
and let us get drunk off each other.
"Don't fall in love with a poet," they warn you.
But they don't know that galaxies
circumambulate you.
They don't see that the waves of your hair
are where stars go to die.
They don't hear how your voice
is the sound of flowers blooming.
Cast your suspicions to the wind
and come spend your life with me.
There will never come a time
when I will not be in love with you. ~ Kamand Kojouri

He was studying me. ¨You know, you look an awful lot like Sodapop, the way you've got your hair and everything. I mean, except your eyes are green.¨
¨They ain't green, they're gray,¨ I said, reddening. ¨And I look about as much like Soda as you do.¨ I got to my feet. ¨He's good-looking.¨
¨Shoot,¨ Johnny said with a grin, ¨you are, too.¨ ~ S.E. Hinton

I lifted my right foot to step up into the bus and collided head on with an invisible force that entered my awareness like a silently exploding stick of dynamite blowing the door of my usual consciousness open and off its hinges, splitting me in two. In the gaping space that appeared, what I had previously called "me" was forcefully pushed out of its usual location inside me into a new location that was approximately a foot behind and to the left of my head. "I" was now behind my body, looking out at the world without using the body's eyes. ~ Suzanne Segal

Beckett, where's Eve?"
When he had her pressed to his chest, she tried again. "Are you going to tell me or what?"
Beckett sighed and looked into her face. "I left her, babycakes. She needs wings, not handcuffs."
He held Livia tighter, like she was a teddy bear.
She stopped moving her feet and hugged him around the neck. "You're not handcuffs. Don't you know that? She loves you. She does, I've seen it."
Beckett resumed dancing, dipping her again. "Look around, Whitebread. She's not here. She didn't try to stop me from coming. Her heart belongs to a dead man and a dream. I'm neither of those things." Beckett released her and clapped for the end of the song. He reached in his pocket and produced a crumpled envelope. "Here's my gift to you guys. I'm sure Blake won't want to accept it, but I'm hoping you'll convince him. For me. ~ Debra Anastasia

I think being a mother helps keep your feet on the ground. There's very little dignity in parenthood. It's a great leveller. ~ Frances O'Grady

We can make each other happy, Farah," Cooper said, lying between my legs and swinging his feet like a kid. His expression was tender as he teased my nipples. "I know you're mine. If you let me start over, we can be so fucking happy that all the shit that came before will be no more than a bad dream."
"I'm afraid to love you too much."
"It's normal to be scared when you grew up in a shitty way. I bet you spent most of your life worrying that anything nice might get stolen away. With me, with what we have, it's probably scary. For me though, losing you is the only thing that scares the shit out of me. I need to make you happy so you'll stay and I can be happy. ~ Bijou Hunter

I fall asleep
Call it deep while all is well be-
Cause my life seems like a freestyle mean-
While asleep on the couch I dream it's a written piece and now
The symphony's sounding
Shouting out to these feet whose leaps feel foul but quite loud
But how
I'm allowed to live my dreams
My Chimeran team brings the Siberian breed
Riding reality free 'til these tires they freeze
In mires in dire need of wires, fire and heat but
I love a dark, hard cold heart in the wintery breeze ~ Criss Jami

For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you
ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn
the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you! ~ Charles Dickens

A light like the glint of water on dewy grass flashed from under her feet as she danced. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

I have found a shaft, going 29 meters [95 feet, approximately] vertically down into the ground, exactly halfway between the Chefren Pyramid and the Sphinx. At the bottom, which was filled with water, we have found a burial chamber with four pillars. In the middle is a large granite sarcophagus which I expect to be the grave of Osiris, the god, ~ Zahi Hawass

As the body rolled to the ground Tarzan of the Apes placed his foot upon the neck of his lifelong enemy and, raising his eyes to the full moon, threw back his fierce young head and voiced the wild and terrible cry of his people. ~ Edgar Rice Burroughs

I'm sorry, Mankind can't get to the phone right now, cause he's got The Rock's foot in his mouth! ~ Dwayne Johnson

There were early mornings–"zero dark thirty," as they were called–when a special operations helicopter would appear, 300 feet from his quarters. These were UH-60 Blackhawks, which staged on the taxiway far from the rest of the camp. The crews waited in the middle of the night, engines and rotors engaged, until they were called in for a raid as part of a task force so secretive that even its designation was classified. ~ Cate Folsom

I remember when we found the first population of living Cerion agassizi in central Eleuthera. Our hypothesis of Cerion's general pattern required that two predictions be affirmed (or else we were in trouble): this population must disappear by hybridization with mottled shells toward bank-interior coasts and with ribby snails toward the bank-edge. We hiked west toward the bank-interior and easily found hybrids right on the verge of the airport road. We then moved east toward the bank-edge along a disused road with vegetation rising to five feet in the center between the tire paths. We should have found our hybrids but we did not. The Cerion agassizi simply stopped about two hundred yards north of our first ribby Cerion. Then we realized that a pond lay just to our east and that ribby forms, with their coastal preferences, might not favor the western side of the pond. We forded the pond and found a classic hybrid zone between Cerion agassizi and ribby Cerions. (Ribby Cerion had just managed to round the south end of the pond, but had not moved sufficiently north along the west side to establish contact with C. agassizi populations.) I wanted to shout for joy. Then I thought, "But who can I tell; who cares?" And I answered myself, "I don't have to tell anyone. We have just seen and understood something that no one has ever seen and understood before. What more does a man need? ~ Stephen Jay Gould

Life is a dance toward God, I began to think. And the dance is not so graceful as we might want. While we glide and swing out practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes, and scuffs our shoes. So we learn to dance with the One who made us. And it is a difficult dance to learn, because its steps are foreign. ~ Donald Miller

Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth. ~ Francesca Lia Block