Cauldron Quotes

It is as though horror has frozen the blood in my veins, paralyzed my arms, and torn all thought from my brain with the swipe of a paw. I sit there, flying on, and continue to stare, as though mesmerised, at the Cauldron on my left. ~ Ernst Udet

as though the soul's abundance does not sometimes spill over in the most decrepit metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of their needs, their ideas, their afflictions, and since human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we knock out tunes for dancing-bears, when we wish to conjure pity from the stars. ~ Gustave Flaubert

Sometimes I fear those noisy words boiling in an unsettling cauldron. ~ Pavitraa Parthasarathy

Our movement took a grip on cowardly Marxism and from it extracted the meaning of socialism. It also took from the cowardly middle-class parties their nationalism. Throwing both into the cauldron of our way of life there emerged, as clear as a crystal, the synthesis
German National Socialism. ~ Hermann Goring

She thought of the boy thrown into the cauldron of war, the girl beset by various bigotries, her life in danger, and saw how unjust it all was, her fury limitless for a few moments. And she felt a sense of shame, something akin to accusation from them towards her and her generation, for not having constructed a better world to welcome and contain their beauty, to house their spirit. - ~ Nadeem Aslam

Socially, Philadelphia was still a fairly provincial city, its business community governed by the mores of the Main Line. Politically, it was a cauldron of ethnic rivalries, dominated by competing Irish and Italian constituencies. ~ Andrea Mitchell

Lucien kept rubbing at his temples as he ate, unusually silent, and I hid my smile as I asked him, "And where were you last night?"
Lucien's metal eye narrowed on me. "I'll have you know that while you two were dancing with the spirits, I was stuck on border patrol." Tamlin gave a pointed cough, and Lucien added, "With some company." He gave me a sly grin. "Rumor has it you two didn't come back until after dawn."
I glanced at Tamlin, biting my lip. I'd practically floated into my bedroom that morning. But Tamlin's gaze now roved my face as if searching for any tinge of regret, of fear. Ridiculous.
"You bit my neck on Fire Night," I said under my breath. "If I can face you after that, a few kisses are nothing."
He braced his forearms on the table as he leaned closer to me. "Nothing?" His eyes flicked to my lips. Lucien shifted in his seat, muttering to the Cauldron to spare him, but I ignored him.
"Nothing," I repeated a bit distantly, watching Tamlin's mouth move, so keenly aware of every movement he made, resenting the table between us. I could almost feel the warmth of his breath.
"Are you sure?" he murmured, intent and hungry enough that I was glad I was sitting. He could have had me right there, on top of that table. I wanted his broad hands running over my bare skin, wanted his teeth scraping against my neck, wanted his mouth all over me.
"I'm trying to eat," Lucien said. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Children being children, however, the grotesque Hopping Pot had taken hold of their imaginations. The solution was to jettison the pro-Muggle moral but keep the warty cauldron, so by the middle of the sixteenth century a different version of the tale was in wide circulation among wizarding families. In the revised story, the Hopping Pot protects an innocent wizard from his torch-bearing, pitchfork-toting neighbours by chasing them away from the wizard's cottage, catching them and swallowing them whole. ~ J.K. Rowling

The horror of profound depression, and the hopelessness that usually accompanies it, are hard to imagine for those who have not experienced them. Because the despair is private, it is resistant to clear and compelling description. Novelist William Styron, however, in recounting his struggle with suicidal depression, captures vividly the heavy, inescapable pain that can lead to suicide:

What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from this smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion. (105) ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Stories are my art and my solace. They could also be my weapons. Stories give more than facts. Stories touch the conscience and stimulate action. That is my motive and my goal, to put research and study and feeling into that cauldron called the novel. ~ Sonia Levitin

Fabre stood up. He placed his fingertips on d'Anton's temples. "Put your fingers here," he said. "Feel the resonance. Put them here, and here." He jabbed at d'Anton's face: below the cheekbones, at the side of his jaw. "I'll teach you like an actor," he said. "This city is our stage."
Camille said: "Book of Ezekiel. 'This city is the cauldron, and we the flesh' ..."
Fabre turned. "This stutter," he said. "You don't have to do it." Camille put his hands over his eyes. "Leave me alone," he said. "Even you." Fabre's face was incandescent. "Even you, I am going to teach." He leapt forward, wrenched Camille upright in his chair. He took him by the shoulders and shook him. "You're going to talk properly," Fabre said. "Even if it kills one of us." Camille put his hands protectively over his head. Fabre continued to perpetrate violence; d'Anton was too tired to intervene. ~ Hilary Mantel

In the beginning, in the time that was no time, nothing existed but the Womb. And the Womb was a limitless dark cauldron of all things in potential: a chaotic blood-soup of matter and energy, fluid as water yet mud-solid with salts of the earth; red-hot as fire yet restlessly churning and bubbling with all the winds. And the Womb was the Mother, before She took form and gave form to Existence. She was the Deep ... ~ Barbara G. Walker

There is not one state truly alive if it is not as if a cauldron burns and boils in its representative body, and if there is no clash of convictions in it. ~ Sukarno

You see, the future is a kind of stew, a soup, a vichyssoise of the present and the past. That's how you get the future: You mix up everything you did today with everything you did yesterday and all the days before and everything everyone you ever met did and anyone they ever met, too. And salt and lizard and pearl and umbrellas and typewriters and a lot of other things I'm not at liberty to tell you, because I took vows, and a witch's vows have teeth. Magic is funny like that. It's not a linear thinker. The point is if you mash it all up together and you have a big enough pot and you're very good at witchcraft, you can wind up with a cauldron full of tomorrow. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Now is the time when we reenter the womb of the world, dreaming the dreams of snow and silence. Waking to the shock of frozen lakes under waning moonlight and the cold sun burning low and blue in the branches of the ice-cased trees, returning from our brief and necessary labors to food and story, to the warmth of firelight in the dark. Around a fire, in the dark, all truths can be told, and heard, in safety. I pulled on my woolen stockings, thick petticoats, my warmest shawl, and went down to poke up the kitchen fire. I stood watching wisps of steam rise from the fragrant cauldron, and felt myself turn inward. The world could go away, and we would heal. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Pouring arms into the spreading cauldron of war risks exacerbating the crisis in Iraq. A fully inclusive international diplomatic process should be attempted and is urgently needed now, before the fires of war and militancy spread further in the region. ~ David Cortright

I'm a seething cauldron of disconnected rage on the inside, Lieutenant." "Ah, repression," Keyes said. "Excellent. Try to avoid taking a potshot at me when you finally blow, please." "I can't promise anything, sir," Alan said. ~ John Scalzi

The style was strange. The writing was clear and sometimes even transparent, but the way the stories followed one after another didn't lead anywhere: all that was left were the children, their parents, the animals, some neighbors, and in the end, all that was really left was nature, a nature that dissolved little by little in a boiling cauldron until it vanished completely. ~ Roberto Bolano

Mother?" I rested one hand on the doorpost, with its carved pattern of palm branches. "Mother, will you teach me how to hunt?"
She gave me a strange look. "Gladly. But why?"
"Because if I do choose to go back to the training ground and Father finds out and wants me to stop, I want to bring him a whole cauldron of stewed rabbit so he'll change his mind."
When Mother stopped laughing, she took me outside, off into the olive grove, and gave me my first archery lesson. I didn't hit anything, but as Mother told me (with a perfectly straight face), I did manage to scare the olives off a couple of trees. ~ Esther M. Friesner

We're not in Khlong Prem Prison yet. So let's assume we're winning.
But inwardly, Anderson wonders. There are too many variables in play, and it makes him nervous. He remembers a time in Missouri when the Grahamites rioted. There had been tension, some small speeches, and then it had simply erupted in field burning. No one had seen the violence coming. Not a single intelligence officer had anticipated the cauldron boiling beneath the surface.
Anderson had ended up perched atop a grain silo, choking on the smoke of HiGro fields going up in sheets of flame, firing steadily at rioters on the ground with a spring rifle he'd salvaged from a slow-moving security guard, and all the while he had wondered how everyone had missed the signs. They lost the facility because of that blindness. And now it is the same. A sudden eruption, and the surprise of realizing that the world he understands is not the one he actually inhabits. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Why do progress and beauty have to be so opposed? ; 75
Also, as in war, the case, like a great bubbling cauldron of life itself, threw up both good and evil. Greed, madness, cruelty and indifference were countered by goodness, devotion, self-sacrifice, and courage. p 178 ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Cauldron save you.
Mother hold you.
Pass through the gates, and smell that immortal land of milk and honey.
Fear no evil.
Feel no pain.
Go, and enter eternity. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life. ~ Virginia Woolf

Can he keep from throwing his hissy fit until he gets to the cauldron?"
"I don't know. You're not impressed by his warp spasm, huh?"
He grimaced. "It's abhorrent. Total loss of control. No beauty to it, no symmetry. His eye was hanging out on his cheek like some piece of snot. No, I'm not impressed."
"I can try to keep a lid on him until we get to the cauldron." I made a pun, but he wasn't in the mood to notice.
"No."
"What do you mean no?"
"No, you're not going with him."
I crossed my arms. "Who decided that?"
He put on his "I'm alpha and I'm putting my foot down" expression. "I decided."
"You don't get to decide. I'm not under your authority."
"Yes, you are. Without you the fight will happen, but without me and the Pack, it won't. I command the superior force, therefore I'm in charge. You and your army of one can put yourself under my authority or you can take a walk."
"You don't think I can do it, is that it?"
"No, I want you where I can see you."
"Why?"
His lip quivered with the beginning of a snarl. His face relaxed, as he brought himself under control. "Because that's how I want it," he said, using a slow, patience voice reserved for rowdy children and disagreeable mental patients. It drove me to the edge of reason. I really wanted to punch him. ~ Ilona Andrews

When Carl asked the Brices to bring their whole family to therapy, everyone in the family knew intuitively what that meant. Their whole world would be exposed: all its caring, its history, its anger, its anxiety. All in one place at once time, subject to the scrutiny and invasion of a stranger. And that was too much vulnerability. With its own unconscious wisdom, the family elected Don to stay home and test the therapists. Did we really mean everybody? Would we weaken and capitulate if they didn't bring Don?

They had something to gain by the strategy. If we were hesitant and unconfident in our approach to their defiance, they would know that they could not trust us with the boiling cauldron of feeling which their family contained. If we were decisive and firm, they would guess that maybe we could handle the stresses which they intuitively knew had to be brought out into the open. One way or another, they had to find out how much power we had. In the meantime, they postponed facing that mysterious electricity, that critical mass, the whole family. Perhaps they thought they could be spared what Zorba called the full catastrophe. ~ Augustus Y. Napier

I am not a terribly physical person. Helen wasn't either. We'd never hugged or even shaken hands, so it was odd to find myself rubbing her bare shoulder and then her back. It was, I though, like stroking some sort of sea creature, the flesh slick and fatty beneath my palms. In my memory, there was something on the stove, a cauldron of tomato gravy, and the smell of it mixed with the camphor of the Tiger Balm. The windows were steamed, Tony Bennett was on the radio, and saying, 'Please,' her voice catching on the newness of the word, Helen asked me to turn it up. ~ David Sedaris

Over on our left the other three tanks of our Troop are misshapen black beetles swimming in a cauldron of fire...great spouts of flame illuminate a long vista of forest...in a hurricane of blast the tops of the trees dance against a sky of incandescent orange. The explosions, starting as vermilion pinpricks, bulge into leaping rainbows of light. A huge square object rises lazily above the trees, turns slowly over and over, then drops into the writhing forest. ~ Ken Tout

Look who's calling the cauldron black."
"Kettle. It's a kettle. Get your metaphors right."
"That wasn't a metaphor. It was a, you know ... " He stared off into space, blinking. "One of those things that's symbolic of another thing. But isn't the same thing. Just like it."
"You mean a metaphor?"
"No! It's like a story ... like ... a proverb! That's it."
"I'm pretty sure that wasn't a proverb. Maybe it was an analogy."
"I don't think so. ~ Richelle Mead

Gregori stepped away from the huddled mass of tourists, putting distance between himself and the guide. He walked completely erect,his head high, his long hair flowing around him. His hands were loose at his sides, and his body was relaxed, rippling with power.
"Hear me now, ancient one." His voice was soft and musical, filling the silence with beauty and purity. "You have lived long in this world, and you weary of the emptiness. I have come in anwer to your call."
"Gregori.The Dark One." The evil voice hissed and growled the words in answer. The ugliness tore at sensitive nerve endings like nails on a chalkboard. Some of the tourists actually covered their ears. "How dare you enter my city and interfere where you have no right?"
"I am justice,evil one. I have come to set your free from the bounaries holding you to this place." Gregori's voice was so soft and hypnotic that those listening edged out from their sanctuaries.It beckoned and pulled, so that none could resist his every desire.
The black shape above their head roiled like a witch's cauldron. A jagged bolt of lightning slammed to earth straight toward the huddled group. Gregori raised a hand and redirected the force of energy away from the tourists and Savannah. A smile edged the cruel set of his mouth. "You think to mock me with display,ancient one? Do not attempt to anger what you do not understand.You came to me.I did not hunt you.You seek to threaten my lifemate and those I count as my friends ~ Christine Feehan

Writing is hard. Writing that is good, writing that is powerful enough to evoke a change or an authentic emotion or even just an idea in another human being is about as mysterious as an alchemical recipe, but there are a few known ingredients. Craft? Yes, absolutely. Devotion? A load - yes! Humility? Not vital, I suppose, but all my favorites include at least a dash. Before those can be added to the cauldron though, you must have a base of Honesty. Honesty is difficult to find in public spaces these days (and getting harder every goddamn day) but if you're quiet, and patient, you can usually find some hidden in your room somewhere. (It helps to turn off the lights, for some reason.) Problem is, Honesty is invariably bound to Vulnerability and the only thing that cuts the bitterness of Vulnerability is Courage. And Courage?
Well. Courage is the hardest thing of all. ~ Kelly Sue DeConnick

The governments of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semi-occult power which ... pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I. ~ J. F. C. Fuller

Liver of blaspheming Jew, Gall of goat and slips of yew Slivered in the moon's eclipse, Nose of Turk and Tartar's lips, (30) Finger of birth-strangled babe Ditch-delivered by a drab, Make the gruel thick and slab. Add thereto a tiger's chaudron, For the ingredients of our cauldron. ~ William Shakespeare

Some people will tell you that Toronto, in the summer, is the nothing more than a cesspool of pollution, garbage, and the smells of a hundred ethnicities competing for top spot in a race won historically by curry, garlic, and the occasional cauldron of boiled cabbage. Take a walk down College Street West, Gerrard Street East, or the Danforth, and you'll see; then, they add - these people, complaining - that the stench is so pervasive, so incorrigible, nor merely for lack of wind, but for the ninety-nine percent humidity, which, after a rainstorm, adds an eradicable bottom-note of sweaty Birkenstocks and the organic tang of decaying plant life. This much is true; there is, however, more to the story. Take a walk down the same streets and you'll find racks of the most stunning saris - red with navy brocade, silver, canary, vermillion and chocolate; marts with lahsun and adrak, pyaz and pudina; windows of gelato, zeppole, tiramisu; dusty smoke shops with patio-bistros; you'll find dove-white statuary of Olympian goddesses, mobs in blue jerseys, primed for the World Cup - and more, still, the compulsory banter of couples who even after forty years can turn foul words into the bawdiest, more unforgettable laughter (and those are just the details). Beyond them is the container, the big canvas brushed with parks and valleys and the interminable shore; a backdrop of ferries and islands, gulls and clouds - sparkles of a million wave-tips as the sun decides which colours to leave on it ~ Cory Ingram

The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing.
But there comes a time when the kiss of acceptance is delayed until the mud is washed from our knees, the chocolate from our faces. Putting down our wooden spoon with a new uncertainty, setting aside our magical wand, we learn another system of values based on familiarity, on avoiding threat and rejection. We are told it is all in the nature of growing up. But it isn't so.
Walking forward and facing the shadows, stumbling on fears like litter in the alleyways of our minds, we can find the confidence again. We can let go of the clutter of our creative stagnation, abandoning the chaos of misplaced and outdated assumptions that have been our protection. Then beyond the half light and shadows, we can slip into the dark and find ourselves in a world where horizons stretch forever. Once more we can acknowledge a reality that is unlimited finding our true self, a wild spirit, free and eager to explore the extent of our potential, free to dance like fireflies, free to be the drum, free to love absolutely with ev ~ Emma Restall Orr

Despite all the evils they wished to crush me with/
I remain as steady as the three-legged cauldron. ~ Monique Wittig

The nations slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war without any trace of apprehension or dismay ... The nations backed their machines over the precipice not one of them wanted war, certainly not on this scale ~ David Lloyd George

First, you must light a middling fire under the cauldron."

"What's a middling fire?"

"Medium."

I searched the pot. "Where's the ignition switch?"

Bridget leaned in and whispered, "You use magic to start the fire. ~ Lowvee Cole

And now about the cauldron sing
Like elves and fairies in a ring,
Enchanting all that you put in. ~ William Shakespeare

We're all flawed human beings and we all have a cauldron of psychosis which we have to unravel as we grow older and find the way we fit in to live our lives as best as possible. ~ Tom Hardy

Poor Crookshanks, that witch said he'd been in there for ages; no one wanted him." "I wonder why," said Ron sarcastically as they set off toward the Leaky Cauldron. ~ J.K. Rowling

The transformation which occurs in the cauldron is quintessential and wondrous, subtle and delicate. The mouth cannot express it in words. ~ Michael Pollan

I'm struck again by the irony that spaceflight-conceived in the cauldron of nationalist rivalries and hatreds-brings with it a stunning transnational vision. You spend even a little time contemplating the Earth from orbit and the most deeply engrained nationalisms begin to erode. They seem the squabbles of mites on a plum. ~ Carl Sagan

Grace Poole shrugged. "If you're sure. I can whip something up in the cauldron."

"Do not eat anything she whips up in a cauldron," Helen whispered. ~ Cynthia Hand

I see a direct connection between the Fuenta Magna Bowl and Ogma, I believe the former is an authentic yet misplaced artifact that has its origins in the Middle East as the Irish/Celtic mythology as well. Ogma -being the god/originator of speech and language- carries the syllable of 'Og' in his name (according to a renowned authority on Irish Mythology, James Swagger) which signals some process of initiation through which other members could join into this culture. His family connections were confused (according to, The Dictionary Of Mythology) but it is said that he was the brother of Dagda and Lugh; and Dagda owned a magical cauldron known as Undry, which was always full and used to satisfy his enormous appetite. The [Tales depict Dagda as a figure of immense power, armed with a magic club to kill nine men with one blow]. This symbolism shows another remarkable link, however, to ancient Egypt with the Nine Bows representing its enemies. With Richard Cassaro's work, we now know the significance of the Godself icon which we see on the Fuenta Magna Bowl; and yet my observation and surprise here lies in the fact that the Godself icon could simply refer to Dagda being a figure of immense power, but what is more astounding is when I found that the Latin word caldaria (whence 'cauldron' was taken) means a 'cooking pot'. This is indeed amazing, but that's not all! This Latin word has its etymological roots in the Semitic languages, where the Old Babylonian word 'kid' meaning 'to cu ~ Ibrahim Ibrahim

So there were two worlds: the perceived world, a dimension of adjectives, equations and brush strokes, a surface dazzling with our efforts to render it, but ultimately bearing only our own reflections; and the impenetrable world, the plumbless dark full of latent particles, the primordial cauldron which, like a mother, gives us our being but is a lifelong riddle. ~ Bia Lowe

I am genuinely sorry for scientists of the younger generation who never knew Fisher personally. So long as you avoided a handful of subjects like inverse probability that would turn Fisher in the briefest possible moment from extreme urbanity into a boiling cauldron of wrath, you got by with little worse than a thick head from the port which he, like the Cambridge mathematician J. E. Littlewood, loved to drink in the evening. And on the credit side you gained a cherished memory of English spoken in a Shakespearean style and delivered in the manner of a Spanish grandee. ~ Fred Hoyle

Round about the cauldron go; In the poison'd entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i' the charmed pot. ~ William Shakespeare

The sky, an inverted blue ceramic cauldron, poured out a hot dry brew. ~ Dean Koontz

Injustice boils in men's hearts as does steel in its cauldron, ready to pour forth, white hot, in the fullness of time. ~ Mother Jones

I glanced at Tamlin, biting my lip. I'd practically floated into my bedroom that morning. But Tamlin's gaze now roved my face as if searching for any tinge of regret, of fear. Ridiculous.
"You bit my neck on Fire Night," I said under my breath. "If I can face you after that, a few kisses are nothing."
He braced his forearms on the table as he leaned closed to me. "Nothing?" His eyes flicked to my lips. Lucien shifted in his seat, muttering to the Cauldron to spare him, but I ignored him. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Dorothy looked at everything as though it might vanish. The bright daily pottery, the spice-jars, the sweep of the staircase, the pigeons in the stable yard. What had been real was now like a thick film, a coloured oilcloth, spread over a cauldron of vapours which shaped and reshaped themselves into shadowy forms, embracing, threatening, glaring. ~ A.S. Byatt

Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn, and cauldron bubble! ~ William Shakespeare

The Archbishop [Thomas Becket] was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on the evening of the twenty-ninth of December. The body lay in the Cathedral all night, and was prepared for burial on the following day. The Archbishop was dressed in an extraordinary collection of clothes. He had on a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb's-wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, cowled robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body, a curious haircloth, covered with linen. As the body grew cold, the vermin that were living in this multiple covering started to crawl out, and as MacArthur quotes the chronicler: 'The vermin boiled over like water in a simmering cauldron, and the onlookers burst into alternate weeping and laughter. ~ Hans Zinsser

He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back.
He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body.
GOOD MORNING.
Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
'Are you Death?'
IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.
'I'm going to die?'
POSSIBLY.
'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?'
OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
'What's that?'
I'M NOT SURE.
'That's very helpful. ~ Terry Pratchett

Fillet of a Fenny Snake,
In the Cauldron boyle and bake:
Eye of Newt, and Toe of Frogge,
Wooll of Bat, and Tongue of Dogge:
Adders Forke, and Blinde-wormes Sting,
Lizards legge, and Howlets wing:
For a Charme of powrefull trouble,
Like a Hell-broth, boyle and bubble ~ William Shakespeare

The child's cry
Melts in the wall.
And I
Am the arrow,
The dew that flies
Suicidal, at one with the drive
Into the red
Eye, the cauldron of morning. ~ Sylvia Plath

The Internet is a cauldron of anger every day, every year, election year or not, with unemployment at 10 percent or at two percent. It isn't exactly a good index of what's happening. ~ Charles Krauthammer

What thought engendered the spirit of Circe, or gave to a Helen the lust of tragedy? What lit the walls of Troy? Or prepared the woes of an Andromache? By what demon counsel was the fate of Hamlet prepared? And why did the weird sisters plan ruin to the murderous Scot?
Double, double toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
In a mulch of darkness are bedded the roots of endless sorrows - and of endless joys. Canst thou fix thine eye on the morning? Be glad. And if in the ultimate it blind thee, be glad also! Thou hast lived. ~ Theodore Dreiser

I wish I could look back and say that I have learned to love as much as I loved to learn. But if I like, there could be a cauldron boiling for me in hell tomorrow, and who can assure me tomorrow is not already on my doorstep, now that I am as old as an oak tree, and still not consigned to the grave? ~ Elif Shafak

As the cauldron bubbled she mused at how she missed prayer. It had been cathartic, and helped her to understand her own thoughts and feelings. She'd thought there was a god answering back too. Now she couldn't conceive that there existed any great spirits or gods beyond the veil of reality the world resided in. Even so, she longed to pray. Could she pray with nothing to pray to? Prayer meant hope, it was hope carefully crafted into specifics."

~Vexis Zaelwarsh - Low Priestess to Avanti
-Deathsworn Arc 4: Rise of the Archmage"
― Martyn Stanley ~ Martyn Stanley

We had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond. ~ Miranda July

He always had some experiment or another on the go, usually involving boiling liquids and unpleasant smells. Always something bubbling in the cauldron or cooking in the small stone oven. One wall was hidden behind rows of metal cages, set one upon the other; containing animals and birds and reptiles and a few other things not so easily identified. Because you never knew when you'd need a subject to try something out on. And of course there were shelves and shelves of glass jars, holding herbs and insect parts, mandrake root and other disturbing things. Some of the things in the jars were still moving. Because alchemy's like that. ~ Simon R. Green

You expect me to believe you're a witch? A broom riding, cauldron stirring, poison apple witch? Witches are Fae, Angelina," Dasan mocked.
"No, you creeper, witches are not Fae. Maybe some are, but there are mortals who practice witchcraft, and I'm one of them!" Angelina almost spit the words at him. "And we don't ride brooms, get real! How Hans Christian Anderson are you, anyway? As for poison apples, you'll be lucky to not get served one in your lifetime! I mean, you and your buddy here turn into giant ... what are you ... dogs ... but you can't believe in a little earth magic? Grow up!"
"See, this is the kind of conversation that would crop up on like a third or fourth date," I chimed in, unable to help myself.
-told by Finley in The Sacred Oath ~ D.C. Grace

My wings," the faerie whispered.
"You'll get them back."
The Faerie struggled to open his eyes. "You swear?"
"Yes," I breathed. The faerie managed a slight smile and closed his eyes again. My mouth trembled. I wished for something else to say, something more to offer him than my empty promises. The first false vow I'd ever sworn. But Tamlin began speaking, and I glanced up to see him take the faerie's other hand.
"Cauldron save you," he said, reciting the words of a prayer that was probably older than the moral realm. "Mother hold you. Pass through the gates, and smell that immortal land of milk and honey. Fear no evil. Feel no pain." Tamlin's voice wavered, but he finished. "Go, and enter eternity. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Do you condemn the kids for not having been blessed with I.Q.s of 120? Can you condemn the kids? Can you condemn anyone? Can you condemn the colleges that give all you need to pass a board of education examination? Do you condemn the board of education for not making the exams stiffer, for not boosting the requirements, for not raising salaries, for not trying to attract better teachers, for not making sure their teachers are better equipped to teach?
Or do you condemn the meatheads all over the world who drift into the teaching profession drift into it because it offers a certain amount of paycheck every month security ,vacation-every summer luxury, or a certain amount of power , or a certain easy road when the other more difficult roads are full of ruts?
Oh he'd seen the meatheads, all right; he'd seen them in every education class he'd ever attended. The simpering female idiots who smiled and agreed with the instructor, who imparted vast knowledge gleaned from profound observations made while sitting at the back of the classroom in some ideal high school in some ideal neighborhood while an ideal teacher taught ideal students.
Or the men who were perhaps the worst, the men who sometimes seemed a little embarrassed, over having chosen the easy road, the road the security, the men who sometimes made a joke about the women not realizing they themselves were poured from the same streaming cauldron of horse manure. Had Rick been one of these men? He did not belie ~ Evan Hunter

She was witchy, yes, and in charge of a cauldron roiling with ideas and stories, but she always gave the impression that the stories, the ones she wrote and wrote so very well and so wisely, had simply happened, and that all she had done was to hold the pen. (On Diana Wynne Jones) ~ Neil Gaiman

There will be a cauldron of spiced hot cider, and pumpkin shortbread fingers with caramel and fudge dipping sauces as our freebies, and I've done plenty of special spooky treats. Ladies' fingers, butter cookies the shape of gnarled fingers with almond fingernails and red food coloring on the stump end. I've got meringue ghosts and cups of "graveyard pudding," a dark chocolate pudding layered with dark Oreo cookie crumbs, strewn with gummy worms, and topped with a cookie tombstone. There are chocolate tarantulas, with mini cupcake bodies and legs made out of licorice whips, sitting on spun cotton candy nests. The Pop-Tart flavors of the day are chocolate peanut butter, and pumpkin spice. The chocolate ones are in the shape of bats, and the pumpkin ones in the shape of giant candy corn with orange, yellow, and white icing. And yesterday, after finding a stash of tiny walnut-sized lady apples at the market, I made a huge batch of mini caramel apples. ~ Stacey Ballis

Go." Granmare pointed at the door. "Let me work in peace."
Balthazar didn't look back when he left.
"Now, my dear," the witch turned to her, "let me give you what that foolish boy paid for."
"He's not foolish," Arianne said. For giving a drop of his blood, the least she could do was defend the annoying oaf. "He's going out of his way to help me, so if there's anyone foolish here it's me."
"My, my, my." Granmare Baba gasped, spreading her hand at the center of her chest. "You have a mouth on you. I will so enjoy watching what happens to you when the time comes."
A chill went down Arianne's back. She'd almost been afraid to ask, "What do you mean?"
Granmare Baba only smiled her yellow toothy smile before she went about putting things together in a large cauldron that seemed to have magically appeared in the center of the round room. ~ Kate Evangelista

We thought we were special, opening our perceptions, honing our empathy, spilling that cauldron of shared pain onto the dance floor of language and then trying to make a minuet out of all that chaotic hurt. It doesn't matter a damn bit. We're no avatars, no sons of god or man. We're only us, scribbling our conceits alone, reading alone, and dying alone. ~ Dan Simmons

I believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is decided by the Mother, or the Cauldron, or some sort of tapestry of Fate, I don't know. I don't really care. But I am grateful for it, whatever it is. Grateful that it brought you all into my life. If it hadn't... I might have become as awful as that prick we're going to face today. If I had not met an Illyrian warrior-in-training," he said to Cassian, "I would not have known the true depths of strength, of resilience, of honor and loyalty." Cassian's eyes gleamed bright. Rhys said to Azriel, "If I had not met a shadowsinger, I would not have known that it is the family you make, not the one you are born into, that matters. I would not have known what it is to truly hope, even when the world tells you to despair." Azriel bowed his head in thanks.
Mor was already crying when Rhys spoke to her. "If I had not met my cousin, I would neer have learned that light can be found in even the darkest of hells. That kidness can thrive even amongst cruelty." She wiped away her teas as she nodded.
I waited for Amren to offer a retort. But she was only waiting.
Rhys bowed his head to her. "If I had not met a tiny monster who hoards jewels more fiercely than a firedrake..." A quite laugh from all of us at that. Rhys smiled softly. "My own power would have consumed me long ago."
Rhys squeezed my hand as he looked to me at last. "And if I had not met my mate..." His words failed him as silver lined his eyes.
~ Sarah J. Maas

I looked at Judith. "This sounds strange, but I don't suppose you saw three mad women with a cauldron of boiling tea pass by this way?"
"No," she replied. The polite voice of reasonable people scared of exciting the madman.
"Flash of light? Puff of smoke? Erm ... " I tried to find a polite way of describing the symptoms of spontaneous teleportation without using the dreaded "teleportation" word. I failed. I slumped back into the sand. What kind of mystic kept a spatial vortex at the bottom of their cauldrons of tea anyway? ~ Kate Griffin

Off, for days and days.' 'But what am I to do?' said Alice. 'Anything you like,' said the Footman, and began whistling. 'Oh, there's no use in talking to him,' said Alice desperately: 'he's perfectly idiotic!' And she opened the door and went in. The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup. 'There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!' Alice said to herself, as well as she ~ Lewis Carroll

They chose the one nearest a gold-coloured cauldron that was emitting one of the most seductive scents Harry had ever inhaled: somehow it reminded him simultaneously of treacle tart, the woody smell of a broomstick handle and something flowery he thought he might have smelled at The Burrow. ~ J.K. Rowling

What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the grey drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from the smothering confinement, it is natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion ~ William Styron

I could burn a forest down with these feelings--feelings desperate to erupt. Volcanic. A cauldron expanding with the fullness of longings, ready to scorch this backward little village. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

We three just stared. I thought of Macbeth's witches huddled around their cauldron. How now, you secret, black, and midnight hags. What is't you do?
A deed without a name.
We were as quiet as the gravestones around us. ~ Tessa Gratton

I see two lovers looking over the edge of the cauldron of hell. Are they contemplating a double suicide? This means their love will end in hell.' I couldn't stop laughing. ~ Banana Yoshimoto

Tam would gut me if he caught you drinking that."
"Always looking after your best interests," I said, and pointedly chugged the contents of the glass.
It was like a million fireworks exploding inside me, filling my veins with starlight. I laughed aloud, and Lucien groaned.
"Human fool," he hissed. But his glamour had been ripped away. His auburn hair burned like hot metal, and his russet eye smoldered like a bottomless forge. That was what I would capture next.
"I'm going to paint you," I said, and giggled - actually giggled - as the words popped out.
"Cauldron boil and fry me," he muttered, and I laughed again. ~ Sarah J. Maas

With the Cauldron, you could do other things than raise the dead. You could destroy the wall. ~ Sarah J. Maas

I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses ... ~ J.K. Rowling

You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making. As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses ... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death - if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach. ~ J.K. Rowling

The invasion of Iraq turned the region into a cauldron. And when the new American president decided the time had come to withdraw, the cauldron boiled over. And then there was this folly we called the Arab Spring. Mubarak must go! Gaddafi must go! Assad must go!" He shook his head slowly. "It was madness, absolute madness. And now we are left with this. ISIS controls a swath of territory the size of the United Kingdom, right on the doorstep of Europe. Even Bin Laden would have never dared to dream of such a thing. And what does the American president tell us? ISIS is not Islamic. ISIS is the jayvee team. ~ Daniel Silva

You don't hear TV cops griping because they have to enforce some Draconian law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, or lamenting vindictive excesses in sentencing. Hollywood, supposedly a frothing cauldron of liberalism, has always been conservative on crime. ~ Tom Shales

No one, ever, can give the exact measure of his needs, his apprehensions, or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity. ~ Gustave Flaubert

The old women in black at early Mass in winter
are a problem for him. He could tell by their eyes
they have seen Christ. They make the kernel
of his being and the clarity around it
seem meager, as though he needs girders
to hold up his unusable soul. But he chooses
against the Lord. He will not abandon his life.
Not his childhood, not the ninety-two bridges
across the two rivers of his youth. Nor the mills
along the banks where he became a young man
as he worked. The mills are eaten away, and eaten
again by the sun and its rusting. He needs them
even though they are gone, to measure against.
The silver is worn down to the brass underneath
and is the better for it. He will gauge
by the smell of concrete sidewalks after night rain.
He is like an old ferry dragged on to the shore,
a home in its smashed grandeur, with the giant beams
and joists. Like a wooden ocean out of control.
A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt. ~ Jack Gilbert

She unscrews the cap, sniffs it, and then shrugs, dumping the entire contents into the bubbling brew. "It could be marjoram, but it might be mushrooms. I had a bottle of poisonous, green ones I dried out last winter on the solstice. Oh well."

Leaning out over the cauldron, she stirs thrice counterclockwise, using the wooden spoon with a handle about as tall as she is. Then she scoops a bit and brings it to her mouth for a taste.

"No!" Jason and I scream at the same time.

She blinks at us. "What?"

"You just put something that may be poisonous in there," I say. ~ Rita J. Webb

The Body As Braille"

He tells me "your back
is so beautiful." He traces
my spine with his hand.

I'm burning like the white ring
around the moon. "A witch's moon,"
dijo mi abuela. The schools call it

"a reflection of ice crystals."
It's a storm brewing in the cauldron
of the sky. I'm in love

but won't tell him
if it's omens
or ice. ~ Lorna Dee Cervantes

Anyone who says things like "Happy Ever After" as though that end to a love story is a given, is cooking up a right stinking cauldron of shite and trying to serve it as soup. ~ Amy Lane

With blood and tears we spill our fears." She waved a hand over the cauldron, and the liquid within began to stir. "A pinch of salt times four to close and bolt the door. Weeds to bind, berries to blind. My children he will not see, and they will live safe and free. Pretty petals tinged with hate, scented sweet and so to bait. Boil it all in fire and smoke, and on this potion Cabhan chokes. When I call he comes to me, as I will, so mote it be. ~ Nora Roberts

What would normal people think if they knew what went on in a writer's mind below the surface? They'd think him even more around the bend than they had previously supposed if they could see the witches' cauldron of images and memories boiling up from the subconscious, impressions whirling in from without, ideas and insights bursting up like bubbles and gone again before they can be seized. And the hopelessness of the business, the whole infuriating, exhausting, fascinating business of grabbing something out of the turmoil and imposing upon it some faint shadow or rumor of the order, pattern and rhythm of the world. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

Saturday was the fifth day of Flush's imprisonment. Almost exhausted, almost hopeless, he lay panting in his dark corner of the teeming floor. Doors slammed and banged. Rough voices cried. Women screamed. Parrots chattered as they had never chattered to widows in Maida Vale, but now evil old women merely cursed at them. Insects crawled in his fur, but he was too weak, too indifferent to shake his coat. All Flush's past life and its many scenes – Reading, the greenhouse, Miss Mitford, Mr Kenyon, the bookcases, the busts, the peasants on the blind – had faded like snowflakes dissolved in a cauldron. If he still held to hope, it was to something nameless and formless; the featureless face of someone he still called 'Miss Barrett'. She still existed; all the rest of the world was gone, but she still existed, though such gulfs lay between them that it was impossible, almost, that she should reach him still. Darkness began to fall again, such darkness as seemed almost able to crush out his last hope – Miss Barrett. ~ Virginia Woolf

Freedom found me the day I realized I was not bound to witchcraft. The FATHER was waiting, He was scanning the horizon for the day I would realize I could come home. And He ran to welcome me into His loving arms. ~ Kristine McGuire

cheese cauldron. ~ J.K. Rowling

Add to that cauldron an ever increasing measure of cheap vodka--a form of self-medication that quelled the inner scream but amplified the outer crazy--and you get a picture of the mother I left behind. ~ Allen Eskens

From here on in, Harry, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron. ~ J.K. Rowling

The sorcerer Virgil had himself chopped in pieces and placed in a cauldron to be cooked for eight days, thus to become rejuvenated.10 He had someone watch out that no intruder peeped into the cauldron. The watchman was unable, however, to resist the temptation. It was too soon. Virgil disappeared with a cry, like a little child. I, too, have probably looked too early into the cauldron, into the cauldron of life and its historical development, and no doubt will never manage to be more than a child. [ ... ] ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Oh, come and stir my cauldron,
And if you do it right,
I'll boil you up some hot strong love
To keep you warm tonight. ~ J.K. Rowling

Creep we did, until we were just outside the halo of firelight. Three bent-backed hags were walking a slow circle around a large cauldron, dropping in twisted bits of this and that as they chanted. "Double, double, toil and trouble: Fire burn, and cauldron bubble." "Witches," whispered Kent, paying tribute to the god of all things bloody fucking obvious. ~ Christopher Moore

In these centuries when God, ... was forging a Christian church so that it might fulfill the longing of a hungry world, He was at the same time perfecting His first religion, Judaism, so that it might stand as the permanent norm against which to judge all others. Whenever, in the future some new religion strayed too far from the basic precepts of Judaism, God could be assured that it was in error; so in the Galilee, His ancient cauldron of faith, he spent as much time upon the old Jews as He did upon the new Christians. ~ James A. Michener

She stood watching a ritual she had seen many times before, yet which now seemed odd and extremely archaic; as if everything - the hill, the ox, the Mage, the cauldron, the king, the people looking on - everything belonged to a time so far away, so obscurely ancient that it could no longer be comprehended, only felt in the pulse of blood that flowed through her veins. ~ Stephen R. Lawhead