Cloaked Quotes

Saul of Tarsus. The young man's face was aflame with the same fiery vengeance that filled Ezra's heart. The elders dropped their cloaks of office by Saul's feet and moved forward as the crowd unfolded. That was how it seemed to Ezra. They were a human fist, cloaked not in their robes but in rage, and they flexed their fingers in preparation of doing away with the man who dared offend the Sanhedrin. ~ Janette Oke

When someone comes to a pastor or a close friend and says "I think I'm gay", rest assured 99% are. How we respond creates light or darkness.
Please be aware that when you've never heard anything positive about being gay and you've laboured secretly over this for ages, you don't make a declaration like that lightly. It takes an enormous amount of courage to eventually tell someone. This is not an empowering coming out though or finally finding a place of self-acceptance; the statement is cloaked in fear and shame. The statement "I think I'm gay" is not really about doubt or confusion it's more likely they are saying "I'm gay, but it scares the shit out of me and I don't want to be. Help!"
At that point the pastor or friend has the privileged opportunity to provide a place of safety and compassion that will lead them on into self-acceptance and an authentic life. Handled unwisely could lead them into years of internal torment. ~ Anthony Venn-Brown

globalization, a grossly misnamed metaphor that disingenuously cloaked government deregulation and the privatization of public goods and services in the wrap of a new global "interconnectivity. ~ Jeremy Rifkin

Unable to choose how I would die physically, I could only choose how I would die mentally. Whether my mortality caught me at twenty-eight or ninety-three, I made the choice to die content, slipped into the nothingness, my atoms becoming the very fog that cloaked the trees. The silence of death, of the cemetery, was no punishment, but a rewards for a life well lived. ~ Caitlin Doughty

As a child I thought that I would never grow up, that I could will it so. And then I realized, quite recently, that I had crossed some line, unconsciously cloaked in the truth of my chronology. How did we get so damn old? I say to my joints, my iron-colored hair. Now I am older than my love, my departed friends. Perhaps I will live so long that the New York Public Library will be obliged to hand over the walking stick of Virginia Woolf. I would cherish it for her, and the stones in her pocket. But I would also keep on living, refusing to surrender my pen. ~ Patti Smith

In the absence of the great majority of guests, all manner of rumors came into the Shalimar Bagh, hooded and cloaked to shield themselves against the elements, and filled the empty places around the dastarkhans: cheap rumors from the gutter as well as fancy rumors claiming aristocratic parentage - an entire social hierarchy of rumor lounged against the bolsters, created by the mystery that enveloped everything like the blizzard. The rumors were veiled, shadowy, unclear, argumentative, often malicious. They seemed like a new species of living thing, and evolved according to the laws laid down by Darwin, mutating randomly and being subjected to the amoral winnowing processes of natural selection. The ~ Salman Rushdie

The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked. ~ Umberto Eco

With industry's sales and marketing machines cloaked in mantles of charitable virtue, no wonder most Americans don't realize that the junk that passes for food is in fact the biggest contributor to our health crisis, and the junk that passes for medicine keeps us just well enough to continue to spend on both the food and the medicine. ~ T. Colin Campbell

I am a child of the everlasting King.
I am forgiven.
I am a warrior.
I am cloaked in righteous armor.
I was made for adventure.
I was built for battle.
I am part of a larger story.
My true and lasting affirmation comes only from my King.
I am unique above all creation--planned and perfect in design.
I have been created for a glorious destiny.
All my ways are established by you, my King, and I walk in them.
My life and actions are real, authentic, and without compromise.
I am quickened and made alive through the power of your Spirit.
My whole life is before me.
I am a shining gift from God to this lost world.
I know my name, I understand my calling, and I am worthy to walk in it.
I am strong, brave, and courageous in the face of my enemies.
Whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is true, dwell on these things.
My sins are scattered as far as the east is from the west.
I am a good husband to my wife.
I am a good father to my daughters.
The past is over, and the future glimmers with radiant light.
I will look to the new day, the dawning of hope.
I will step forward with the truth before me and will no longer look on the day that is gone.
The past is over; the future has begun. ~ James L. Rubart

It was fear, cloaked in rationalisations and self-deprecation. ~ Mhairi McFarlane

Oh I'll die I'll die I'll die
My skin is in blazing furore
I do not know what I'll do where I'll go oh I am sick
I'll kick all Arts in the butt and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can't resist anymore, a million glass panes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain's contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
other why didn't you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I'd have gone two billion light years and kissed God's ass
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I've forgotten women during copulation and returned to the Muse
In to the sun-coloured bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me
I'll destroy and shatter everything
draw and elevate Shubha in to my hunger
Shubha will have to be given
Oh Malay
Kolkata seems to be a procession of wet and slippery organs today
But i do not know what I'll do now with my own self
My power of recollection is withering away
Let me ascend alone toward death
I haven't had to learn copulation and dying
I haven't had to learn the responsibility of sheddi ~ Malay Roychoudhury

Stavia saw herself as in a picture, from the outside, a darkly cloaked figure moving along a cobbled street, the stones sheened with a soft, early spring rain. ~ Sheri S. Tepper

After ripping through The Hobbit, I read The Lord of the Rings, and the darkness of that story enveloped me in a way that is impossible to explain. I was THERE, in a very real sense. The fear was palpable in the presence of the black-cloaked Ringwraiths, and I could taste the sulfurous fumes of Mt. Doom. I could smell the sweat of horses and hot leather and hear the clash of battle as I rode with the Rohan on the fields of the Pelennor. I bled and died with the sun-king, Theoden. I rose again with Eowyn's defiance of the Witch King. I soared with the Eagles as they swept the broken and bloody body of Frodo and his companion Samwise the Brave from the smoking crags of the fiery mountain. There has never been such a story, and I don't think there ever shall be again. ~ Steve Bivans

I know that the vitriol and hyperbole that exists online, and the anonymity, can be deadly because it's cloaked in negativity and it's brutal sometimes. ~ Adrian Pasdar

Cloaked by the erotic darkness she exhausted the future quickly, with all the eventualities that might lead up to a kiss, but with the kiss itself as blurred as a kiss in pictures. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

My mind swirled with memories of the life I had led. The constant struggle to keep up appearances, the pretenses, the smiles that had been met with tears. The long sleepless nights, the loneliness that cloaked my spirit and turned me into a true ghost. ~ Anchee Min

Was Briony the only person who could hear the venom dripping from the woman's tongue? What good was beauty - a mature beauty, but beauty nonetheless - if it cloaked such a viperous soul? ~ Tad Williams

Meg makes a face and lays her hand on my arm. "And why, exactly, would John want to see Eurotrash?"
"Hello?" Ryan says. "Because he's a seventeen-year old guy with normal male urges, and she's got-" He holds both hands out from his chest.
"Really pretty eyes," I complete his sentence. ~ Alex Flinn

She went by the name of Belisa Crepusculario, not because she'd been born with it or baptized it, but because she herself had searched until she found the poetry of 'beauty' and 'twilight' and cloaked herself in it. She made her living selling words. ~ Isabel Allende

They drank from a spring which filled an ancient stone trough behind the ruin. Beyond it lay overgrown beds and plants John had never set eyes on before: tall resinous fronds, prickly shrubs, long grey-green leaves hot to the tongue. Nestling among them he found the root whose scent drifted among the trees like a ghost, sweet and tarry. He knelt and pressed it to his nose.
'That was called silphium.' His mother stood behind him. 'It grew in Saturnus's first garden.'
She showed him the most ancient trees in the orchards, their gnarled trunks cloaked in grey lichen. Palm trees had grown there too once, she claimed. Now even their stumps had gone.
Each day, John left the hearth to forage in the wreckage of Belicca's gardens. His nose guided him through the woods. Beyond the chestnut avenue, the wild skirrets, alexanders and broom grew in drifts. John chased after rabbits or climbed trees in search of birds' eggs. He returned with mallow seeds or chestnuts that they pounded into meal then mixed with water and baked on sticks. The unseasonal orchards yielded tiny red and gold-streaked apples, hard green pears and sour yellow cherries. ~ Lawrence Norfolk

Suspicious of the lone bat, he glanced behind to check there wasn't a black cloaked figure standing behind him with two long sharp teeth. Much to his relief, there was not. His love of horror films was definitely waning. With ~ Ben Hammott

She'd hoped to close her eyes and dream of sparkly winged horses flying through a bright blue sky. Instead, black-cloaked figures haunted her mind, snatching her from the shadows
and dragging her away in a drugged haze. Sharp bonds sliced her wrists and ankles as someone shouted questions she didn't know the answers to. Then fiery hands seared her skin and ghostly whispers swirled through the blackness.

They would find her.

She would never escape them again
. ~ Shannon Messenger

Where are you taking me?" Andrew demanded, whirling on the Ferryman. His muscles tensed, hands curling in and out of fists.
"To my master." The voice was ghostly, whispers of black ash and death, words cold and detached.
He had an idea who that was but asked anyway: "And who is your master?"
No answer came.
Andrew's insatiable rage rose up and swallowed his grief like a yawning ocean mouth, the darkest depths surging to the surface to form a mighty tidal wave. He closed the distance and seized the Ferryman's gaunt wrist. There was no substance, no life beneath the cloak. The Ferryman slowly turned his hooded head, and Andrew found himself looking into the black hole of a self-contained night. The olfactory of decay was a punch in the face. Andrew released the Ferryman's wrist and hastily stepped back, rocking the boat as he put distance between him and the unnatural wind spilling from the gaping orifice. Andrew shivered, the tiny hairs on his neck saluting. The cloaked head faced forward again, and the wind died away. ~ Laura Kreitzer

Gradually and mistily it became apparent that the Most Ancient One was holding something - some object clutched in the outflung folds of his robe as if for the sight, or what answered for sight, of the cloaked Companions. It was a large sphere or apparent sphere of some obscurely iridescent metal, and as the Guide put it forward a low, pervasive half-impression of sound began to rise and fall in intervals which seemed to be rhythmic even though they followed no rhythm of earth. There was a suggestion of chanting - or what human imagination might interpret as chanting. Presently the quasi-sphere began to grow luminous, and as it gleamed up into a cold, pulsating light of unassignable colour Carter saw that its flickerings conformed to the alien rhythm of the chant. Then all the mitred, sceptre-bearing Shapes on the pedestals commenced a slight, curious swaying in the same inexplicable rhythm, while nimbuses of unclassifiable light - resembling that of the quasi-sphere - played round their shrouded heads ~ H.P. Lovecraft

There's a very natural tendency (that we've certainly experienced) for adoptive parents to want to become the sole identified parent for their child right away, to the point where you want your child only to acknowledge you and your family as their own and not their birth family. Especially if the adoption process has been a difficult or contentious one, it may be that you as the adoptive parent feel a bit threatened by the continued presence of the birth parent in your child's life, even if it's as infrequent as a once-yearly visit. But as I'm sure you'll read the current thinking is very focused on the overall benefits to the child of having this process no longer cloaked in the shadows, but out in the open. ~ William Gregory

If I didn't believe, there would be nothing left. ~ Alex Flinn

There is no doubt that constitutional freedoms will never be abolished in one fell swoop, for the American people cherish their freedoms, and would not tolerate such a loss if they could perceive it. But the erosion of freedom rarely comes as an all-out frontal assault but rather as a gradual, noxious creeping, cloaked in secrecy, and glossed over by reassurances of greater security. ~ Robert Byrd

My pastor, Pete Wilson, gave a message on prayer, specifically citing this idea many of us have that prayer is a kind of transaction. beside him on the platform, an object the size of a refrigerator stood cloaked beneath a black cover. He said, 'most of us have reduced prayer down to a transaction. A way to manipulate what we want. A vending machine.' At that point, he yanked off the cover revealing a large vending machine, loaded with all kinds of snacks. He inserted some coins and pushed the button for peanut M&Ms (smart man, my pastor). Nothing happened. He hit the machine a couple of times, tried to rock it. Nothing.
He continued. 'Most of the time when we go to God, it's because we want something. If we get what we want, we turn and walk off, satisfied. If we don't get what we want, we get frustrated; we kick the machine and blame God for not answering our request.'
This 'transaction' view of prayer will always disappoint us because at the root of it, we think it's all about us. but prayer is so much more than giving God a list of our wants and needs or, in some cases, our demands. Prayer is communication. It's talking and listening. ~ Diane Moody

What we fear is what we do not know. When something is cloaked by the darkness of uncertainty, it's a mystery. Allowing light to penetrate that darkness makes everything clear. ~ Aleatha Romig

One accurate way to describe abortion is subtle infanticide. That is: child-killing done in a way that the people don't recognize it as child-killing. That reality is why the word abortion exists. Some words are created to cloak reality the same way procedures are created to cloak reality. "Abortion" is cloaked child-killing ~ John Piper

Tunstell was not what one could describe as call subtle. His flaming red hair bobbed up with each pointed and articulated footstep as though he were some cloaked Gothic villain creeping across a stage. ~ Gail Carriger

Passion is all too often a cover for overwork cloaked in the rhetoric of self-fulfillment. ~ Miya Tokumitsu

It was the unicorn all right, and it was dead. Harry had never seen anything so beautiful and sad. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves.
Harry had taken one step toward it when a slithering sound made him freeze where he stood. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered ... Then, out of the shadows, a hooded figure came crawling across the ground like some stalking beast. Harry, Malfoy, and Fang stood transfixed. The cloaked figure reached the unicorn, lowered its head over the wound in the animal's side, and began to drink its blood. ~ J.K. Rowling

About you

At noon
when the sun is highest in the sky
and the world is awash in light
I tell the world I'm over you.

At midnight
when the moon is highest in the sky
and the world is cloaked in darkness
my heart tells me all about you. ~ Pyrokardia

Millions of pages cloaked in dust and inspiration and wisdom. ~ Sarah Noffke

So it became,
the law of universe,
to have the,
profoundest,
of the words,
cloaked in the,
darkest of the masks. ~ Jasleen Kaur Gumber

I had not liked him. I had struggled against him and for him, I had cursed him and thanked him, despised him and admired him. I hated his religion and its cold disapproving gaze, its malevolence that cloaked itself in pretended kindness, and its allegiance to a god who would drain the joy from the world by naming it sin, but Alfred's religion had made him a good man and a good king. And Alfred's joyless soul had proved a rock against which the Danes had broken themselves. Time and again they had attacked, and time and again Alfred had out-thought them, and Wessex grew ever stronger and richer and all that was because of Alfred. We think of kings as privileged men who rule over us and have the freedom to make, break and flaunt the law, but Alfred was never above the law he loved to make. He saw his life as a duty to his god and to the people of Wessex and I have never seen a better king, and I doubt my sons, grandsons and their children's children will ever see a better one. I never liked him, but I have never stopped admiring him. He was my king and all that I now have I owe to him. The food that I eat, the hall where I live and the swords of my men, all started with Alfred, who hated me at times, loved me at times, and was generous with me. He was a gold-giver. ~ Bernard Cornwell

As I stand cloaked in some seemingly perpetual darkness desperately hoping for a scant ray of light, I ask, "Why has the sun never risen?" And I realize that it rose a long, long time ago. I just refused to open my eyes sufficiently to see it. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I've been actively engaged with mythic imagery ever since I picked up that Rackham book, but it really came into focus for me when I moved from London to the country. As I walked the extraordinary landscape of Dartmoor, I looked at the trees and the rocks and the hills and I could see the personality in those forms ... then they metamorphosed under my pencil into faeries, goblins and trolls. After Alan and I published "Faeries", he moved on from the subject of faery folklore to illustrate Tolkien and other literary works ... while I discovered that my own exploration of Faerieland had only just begun. In the countryside, the old stories seemed to come alive around me; the faeries were a tangible aspect of the landscape, pulses of spirit, emotion, and light. They "insisted" on taking form under my pencil, emerging on the page before me cloaked in archetypal shapes drawn from nature and myth. I'd attracted their attention, you see, and they hadn't finished with me yet. ~ Brian Froud

We drove a couple of miles to a pasture near his parents' house and met up with the other early risers. I rode along with one of the older cowboys in the feed truck while the rest of the crew followed the herd on horseback, all the while enjoying the perfect view of Marlboro Man out the passenger-side window. I watched as he darted and weaved in the herd, shifting his body weight and posture to nonverbally communicate to his loyal horse, Blue, how far to move from the left or to the right. I breathed in slowly, feeling a sudden burst of inexplicable pride. There was something about watching my husband--the man I was crazy in love with--riding his horse across the tallgrass prairie. It was more than the physical appeal, more than the sexiness of his chaps-cloaked body in the saddle. It was seeing him do something he loved, something he was so good at doing.
I took a hundred photos in my mind. I never wanted to forget it as long as I lived. ~ Ree Drummond

Activision was promoting an adventure game called Pitfall Harry and had built a little jungle scene in which passersby could swing on a makeshift vine. In another room, a company called Zombie had a metal sphere that shot blue electric bolts through the air. But the id installation had a bit more in store: an eight-foot-tall vagina. Gwar, the scatological rock band that id had hired to produce the display, had pushed their renowned prurient theatrics to the edge. The vagina was lined with dozens of dildos to look like teeth. A bust of O. J. Simpson's decapitated head hung from the top. As the visitors walked through the vaginal mouth, two members of Gwar cloaked in fur and raw steak came leaping out of the shadows and pretended to attack them with rubber penises. The Microsoft executives were frozen. Then, to everyone's relief, they burst out laughing. ~ David Kushner

War is fear cloaked in courage. ~ William Westmoreland

What does it help me now to think back on the reeling despair that seized me and declare it a mistake! Should I have set out in high spirits with a spring in my step? I did not. Should I have had more faith in the earth's friendly forces and felt certain and invulnerable at the wounding sight of flame-hued horizons? I could not do it, I was terribly vulnerable. Should I have justified myself, raising my eyes to the mountains? Oh, I tried, and always in vain...
And so one day I wanted to break away, not knowing exactly from which fate, seeming to grasp only that I had been struck by calamity, as anyone can be, and now must stand apart, silent. How do the others live, I asked myself, how do they bear this land and the day to come, how do they bear it? But should the dusk of rapture fall once more, this shadowless day ebb, the deer stand on the sloping winter meadow already cloaked in fog; should I be granted one more such innocent hour, I will lower my eyes and repent, and never again lead myself into temptation, but admit: we are at home in but a narrow precinct, can cover but a tiny distance - and beyond, at an immeasurable distance, the ships land on the death's shores. ~ Annemarie Schwarzenbach

Hell has been cloaked in folklore and disguised in fiction for so long, many people deny the reality of such a place. ~ Billy Graham

Femininity cloaked power and strength, made it more palatable, less threatening. ~ Anne Helen Petersen

He lifted a hand and turned and went on. He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him. Walking down the little street for the last time he felt everything fall away from him. Until there was nothing left of him to shed. It was all gone. No trail, no track. The spoor petered out down there on Front Street where things he'd been lay like paper shadows, a few here, they thin out. After that nothing. A few rumors. Idle word on the wind. Old news years in traveling that you could not put stock in. ~ Cormac McCarthy

He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him. ~ Cormac McCarthy

He went to the light switch by the door and flicked it off. When he turned, she glowed in the golden light from the space heater, and the shadow over her shoulders on the wall seemed a looming, black-cloaked figure. An ancient, mythical harbinger of doom and destruction.
He blinked. It turned into a pattern of blocked light again.
Jesus, what the hell was that about?
He was rattled, jittery, scared half to death. But he could no more say no to this girl than he could stop breathing. ~ Shannon McKenna

Casey meant it when she said, 'Forgive us for our debts as we forgive our debtors,' because they were for her the hardest words to live by, and by saying them, she hoped they'd become possible. Like Ted, Casey would never discuss her ambivalent views on religion. She was honest enough to admit that her privacy cloaked a fear: the fear of being found out as a hypocrite" (Free Food For Millionaires, p.100-101.) ~ Min Jin Lee

By placing all our focus on receiving God's blessings and gifts, we behave just like the arrogant young man in the story [Parable of the Prodigal Son] - we value what God can do for us but not God himself. We seek a relationship with God as a utilitarian means to an end. And although we may praise him with our words, our hearts are set on what we hope to get from him. We become jerks cloaked in religiosity. ~ Skye Jethani

Outside, again?" She teased him.
"You know I love it best when you're wearing nothing but the stars."
Blake wrapped her in his arms and reclined on the grass. She pat his chest gently, loving the tap back from his heart and his white smile. He looked amazing cloaked in stars, too. ~ Debra Anastasia

The melodious song mesmerized me and cloaked my soul in a most liberating embrace I had never known. The emotion enveloped me, and smothered the emptiness. ~ J.D. Stroube

Book burning is a charming old custom, hallowed by antiquity. It has been practiced for centuries by fascists, communists, atheists, school children, rival authors, and tired librarians. Like everything of importance since the invention of the cloak and the shroud, its origins are cloaked in mystery and shrouded in secrecy. Some scholars believe that the first instance of book burning occurred in the Middle Ages, when a monk was trying to illuminate a manuscript. All agree that book burning was almost non-existent during the period when books were made of stone. ~ Richard Armour

What you seem so unwilling to accept, even now, is this: that the ideals which supported the old Republic had no correspondence to the fact of the old Republic; that the glorious word concealed the deed of horror; that the appearance of tradition and order cloaked the reality of corruption and chaos; that the call to liberty and freedom closed the minds, even of those who called, to the facts of privation, suppression, and sanctioned murder. ~ John Edward Williams

During my first few months of Facebooking, I discovered that my page had fostered a collective nostalgia for specific cultural icons. These started, unsurprisingly, within the realm of science fiction and fantasy. They commonly included a pointy-eared Vulcan from a certain groundbreaking 1960s television show.

Just as often, though, I found myself sharing images of a diminutive, ancient, green and disarmingly wise Jedi Master who speaks in flip-side down English. Or, if feeling more sinister, I'd post pictures of his black-cloaked, dark-sided, heavy-breathing nemesis. As an aside, I initially received from Star Trek fans considerable "push-back," or at least many raised Spock brows, when I began sharing images of Yoda and Darth Vader. To the purists, this bordered on sacrilege.. But as I like to remind fans, I was the only actor to work within both franchises, having also voiced the part of Lok Durd from the animated show Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

It was the virality of these early posts, shared by thousands of fans without any prodding from me, that got me thinking. Why do we love Spock, Yoda and Darth Vader so much? And what is it about characters like these that causes fans to click "like" and "share" so readily?

One thing was clear: Cultural icons help people define who they are today because they shaped who they were as children. We all "like" Yoda because we all loved The Empire Strikes Back, probably watched it many times, and can reci ~ George Takei

I'd forgotten how enlivening it could feel, seeing clearly and far. Aridity frees light. It also unleashes grandeur. The earth here wasn't cloaked in forest, nor draped in green. Green was pastoral, peaceful, mild. Desert beauty was "sublime" in the way that the romantic poets had used the word- not peaceful dales but rugged mountain faces, not reassuring but daunting nature, the earth's skin and haunches, its spines and angles arching prehistorically in sunlight. ~ Julene Bair

I believe in miracles, I believe in the Law of Attraction, but even I don't think I'm big enough to manifest five Asian elephants cloaked in gold ... ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity - the political allocation of wealth and opportunity - is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption. ~ George Will

Throughout the twentieth century and into the beginning of the twenty-first, the United States repeatedly used its military power, and that of its clandestine services, to overthrow governments that refused to protect American interests. Each time, it cloaked its intervention in the rhetoric of national security and liberation. In most cases, however, it acted mainly for economic reasons-specifically to establish, promote and defend the right of Americans to do business around the world without interference. ~ Stephen Kinzer

...age-old evil, tireless and vigilant, cloaked from the masses by modern skepticism, yet still a potent force stalking the dark ways of the night. ~ Dennis Wheatley

The figures of the past go cloaked.
They walk in mist and rain and snow
And go, go slowly, but they go. ~ Wallace Stevens

Me?" he said in some surprise. "I won't be dancing! It's the bridal dance. The bride and groom dance alone!"
For one circuit of the room," she told him. "After which they are joined by the best man and first bridesmaid, then by the groomsman and the second bridesmaid."
Will reacted as he had been stung. He leaned over to speak across Jenny on his left, to Gilan.
Gil! Did you know we have to dance?" he asked. Gilan nodded enthusiastically.
Oh yes indeed. Jenny and I have been practicing for the past three days, haven't we, Jen?"
Jenny looked up at him adoringly and nodded. Jenny was in love. Gilan was tall, dashing, good-looking, charming and very ammusing. Plus he was cloaked in the mystery and romance tat came with being a Ranger. Jenny had only ever known one ranger and that had been grim-faced, gray-bearded Halt. ~ John Flanagan

I hated his religion and its cold disapproving gaze, its malevolence that cloaked itself in pretended kindness, and its allegiance to a god who would drain the joy from the world by naming it sin, ~ Bernard Cornwell

Amie blinked through the haze of her thoughts and the constant drum of the rains. A golden light swung back and forth in the distance like a pendulum and every second drew closer. Finally, Amie could tell it wasn't a faerie light but a lantern, carried by a small green-cloaked person. ~ Jennifer Silverwood

Philip revealed his carefully cloaked emotions when he wrote to his mother-in-law, "Cherish Lilibet? I wonder if that word is enough to express what is in me." He declared that his new wife was "the only 'thing' in this world which is absolutely real to me, and my ambition is to weld the two of us into a new combined existence that will not only be able to withstand the shocks directed at us but will also have a positive existence for the good ~ Sally Bedell Smith

The pain of losing a loved one by the horrible act of murder is not lessened by the horrible murder of another, not even when it is cloaked as 'justice' and state-sanctioned. It is only a delusion to believe that one's pain is ended by making someone else feel pain. ~ Antoinette Bosco

Gaslighting is implanted narratives cloaked in secrecy. ~ Tracy Malone

We call it a Society; and go about professing openly the totalest separation, isolation. Our life is not a mutual helpfulness; but rather, cloaked under due laws-of-war, named fair competition and so forth, it is a mutual hostility. ~ Thomas Carlyle

There are things that defy logic. Things that speak to the instinctual fear cloaked by our conscious minds. ~ Mary Lindsey

Vida Winter's appearance was not calculated for concealment. She was an ancient queen, sorceress or goddess. Her stiff figure rose regally out of a profusion of fat purple and red cushions. Draped around her shoulders, the folds of the turquoise-and-green cloth that had cloaked her body did not soften the rigidity of her frame. Her bright copper hair had been arranged into an elaborate confection of twists, curls and coils. Her face, as intricately lined as a map, was powdered white and finished with bold scarlet lipstick. In her lap, her hands were a cluster of rubies, emeralds and white, bony knuckles; only her nails, unvarnished, cut short and square like my own, struck an incongruous tone. ~ Diane Setterfield

Then as now, evil begins its courtship cloaked in light. And the heart embraces what is should flee. Forgetting it once had a true lover. Love will prove greater than lust. Sacrifice will overcome seduction. And blood will flow. ~ Ted Dekker

Harassment and the ever-present suggestions of violence at this scale constantly reminds women and girls of their place. For the most part, girls' and women's experiences with harassment are still cloaked in silence, and we continue, as a global society, to peddle dangerous advice to girls about "staying safe." This isn't about safety. If it were, we'd teach boys, who are also subject to childhood molestation and risk, the same lessons, but we don't. It's about social control. ~ Soraya Chemaly

People who have recently lost someone have a certain look, recognizable maybe only to those who have seen that look on their own faces. I have noticed it on my face and I notice it now on others. The look is one of extreme vulnerability, nakedness, openness. It is the look of someone who walks from the ophthalmologist's office into the bright daylight with dilated eyes, or of someone who wears glasses and is suddenly made to take them off. These people who have lost someone look naked because they think themselves invisible. I myself felt invisible for a period of time, incorporeal. I seemed to have crossed one of those legendary rivers that divide the living from the dead, entered a place in which I could be seen only by those who were themselves recently bereaved. I understood for the first time the power in the image of the rivers, the Styx, the Lethe, the cloaked ferryman with his pole. I understood for the first time the meaning in the practice of suttee. Widows did not throw themselves on the burning raft out of grief. The burning raft was instead an accurate representation of the place to which their grief (not their families, not the community, not custom, their grief) had taken them. ~ Joan Didion

I often remember in this false, distorted way, and the memories are often cloaked in the colour of the sun. Sometimes I feel nostalgia for things I knew I hated when they were happening, for days spent at the beach or the swimming pool with my sisters.
When I pick my memories apart, I realise my mind has merely played back the objective ingredients, the clichéd apparatus of happiness, the sun, the sound of splashing water, ice-cream on parched lips and cold fizzy drink on a hot tongue, and laugher too. My memory often peddles on the falsehood of past happiness. I should know this. ~ M.J. Hyland

I am a book.

Sheaves pressed from the pulp of oaks and pines
a natural sawdust made dingy from purses, dusty
from shelves.
Steamy and anxious, abused and misused,
kissed and cried over,
smeared, yellowed, and torn,
loved, hated, scorned.

I am a book.

I am a book that remembers,
days when I stood proud in good company
When the children came, I leapt into their arms,
when the women came, they cradled me against their soft breasts,
when the men came, they held me like a lover,
and I smelled the sweet smell of cigars and brandy as we sat together in leather chairs,
next to pool tables, on porch swings, in rocking chairs,
my words hanging in the air like bright gems, dangling,
then forgotten, I crumbled,
dust to dust.

I am a tale of woe and secrets,
a book brand-new, sprung from the loins of ancient fathers clothed in tweed,
born of mothers in lands of heather and coal soot.
A family too close to see the blood on its hands,
too dear to suffering, to poison, to cold steel and revenge,
deaf to the screams of mortal wounding,
amused at decay and torment,
a family bred in the dankest swamp of human desires.

I am a tale of woe and secrets,
I am a mystery.

I am intrigue, anxiety, fear,
I tangle in the night with madmen, spend my days cloaked in black,
hiding from myself, from dark angels,
Lise McClendon

Tell mea tale from the days when shadow cloaked the land, when the Dark Crystal and its missing shard had not yet been reunited. ~ Barbara Randall Kesel

To bring the worst of the worst terrorists inside the United States would be cause for great danger ... It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe ... The terrorists see just what they were hoping for: our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity. ~ Dick Cheney

I'd barely unplugged the vacuum and turned around to put everything back when I sucked in a breath and let out the girliest, most pathetic squeak in the universe. It wasn't "ahh" or "eep. It just sounded, well, I'm not sure what it sounded like, but I would never take credit for it.

Aiden stood there, not even two feet away, literally cloaked in the darkness of the hallway like a damn serial killer.

"You scared the hell out of me!" My heart… I was going to have a heart attack. I had to slap my hand over my chest like that would help it stay in place. "Oh my God. ~ Mariana Zapata

We have a knowledge of harmony, anchored deep within. It is this knowledge that enables us, at every instant, to apprehend quality in our lives and, on the rare occasions when everything is in perfect harmony, to appreciate it with the apposite intensity. And I am not referring to the sort of beauty that is the exclusive preserve of Art. Those who feel inspired, as I do, by the greatness of small things will pursue them to the very heart of the inessential where, cloaked in everyday attire, this greatness will emerge from within a certain ordering of ordinary things and from the certainty that all is as it should be, the conviction that it is fine this way.
~ Muriel Barbery

This world was made to be cloaked in gray.
It wouldn't feel natural if the sun shone brightly all the time. ~ Darren Shan

So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger. ~ Patti Smith

In the mid–path of my life, I woke to find myself in a dark wood,' writes Dante, in The Divine Comedy, beginning a quest that will lead to transformation and redemption. A journey through the dark of the woods is a motif common to fairy tales: young heroes set off through the perilous forest in order to reach their destiny, or they find themselves abandoned there, cast off and left for dead. The road is long and treacherous, prowled by wolves, ghosts, and wizards - but helpers also appear along the way, good fairies and animal guides, often cloaked in unlikely disguises. The hero's task is to tell friend from foe, and to keep walking steadily onward. ~ Terri Windling

He listened to the hooting of many metal horns, squealing of brakes, the calls of vendors selling red-purple bananas and jungle oranges in their stalls. Colonel Freeleigh's feet began to move, hanging from the edge of his wheel chair, making the motions of a man walking. His eyes squeezed tight. He gave a series of immense sniffs, as if to gain the odors of meats hung on iron hooks in sunshine, cloaked with flies like a mantle of raisins; the smell of stone alleys wet with morning rain. He could feel the sun bum his spiny-bearded cheek, and he was twenty-five years old again, walking, walking, looking, smiling, happy to be alive, very much alert, drinking in colors and smells. ~ Ray Bradbury

Night's darkness cloaked Elske, covering her as the winter snows cover mountains, from peak to foot. Elske moved with the weight of darkness on her shoulders, on her head; and she tasted it in her mouth like the flavorless rills that ran so fast in spring melts. ~ Cynthia Voigt

Politics was an illusion of service that cloaked the corruption of power. ~ Dean Koontz

The particular way he had of structuring his paragraphs, beginning and ending each with a joke that wasn't really a joke, but an insult cloaked in a silken cape. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

She leans against me, head against my shoulders, and in that second, I know, against the lights and the bright and the heat and the gray, I really want to kiss her. ~ Alex Flinn

I love the healing parable of Jesus and the blind man. As he went along he saw a man blind from birth, his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?" "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." We have been trained to think in terms of sin and punishment. These ideas disempower us by stressing that we are weak and wrong. The empowering way is to view trials as lessons and opportunities to choose differently. We can transcend the odious notion of being sinners cloaked in guilt, awaiting punishment. To access a spiritual solution to a problem involves focusing on the idea of a solution. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again. ~ Gary Shteyngart

The shower turned out to be glorious once I adjusted the water to a cool enough temperature so as not to produce any steam. I washed my hair, noticing that my favorite shampoo suddenly smelled like Hades--as did my trusty facial scrub, which had so loyally saved my face from looking like the back of a lizard on the day of my wedding. Just as I was rinsing the last of the suds from my hair, Marlboro Man suddenly burst through the door of the bathroom and yelled, "Hey!"
I screamed bloody murder from the startle, then screamed again because I was naked and feeling queasy and unattractive. Then I felt sick from the excitement. "Hi," I managed, grabbing a towel from the rack and wrapping it around myself as quickly as I could.
"Gotcha," he said, smiling the sexiest smile I'd ever seen while in such a sick state. Then he stopped and looked at me. "Are you okay?" He must have noticed the verdant glow of my skin.
"I'll be honest," I said, making my way back to our bedroom. "It's pretty bad. I'm going to try to get in to the doctor today and see if there's anything he can do about it." I fell backward onto the bed. "My ears must have been permanently damaged or something."
Marlboro Man moved toward me, looking like the cat that had just eaten the canary. "Scared you, didn't I?" he chuckled as he wrapped his arms around my towel-cloaked body. I breathed him in, wrapping my arms around him, too.
Then I shot up and raced back to the bathroom so I could throw up a ~ Ree Drummond

The War on Drugs, cloaked in race-neutral language, offered whites opposed to racial reform a unique opportunity to express their hostility toward blacks and black progress, without being exposed to the charge of racism. ~ Michelle Alexander

I once loved so hard I almost lost everything, including his life, including my own. Only then did I realize: perhaps love's physicality is death itself. I think I was taught that love, in its ideal form, is like a newborn baby: full of possibility, still warm from the heated privacy of the womb. But I think, at the end of my life, I won't see a figure cloaked in black velvet or a swirling void waiting to take me - I will see the face of love. It will be a recognizable light, the one that lived behind all those other faces I knew up close, the light I suspected but could never prove. When I see the face of love, I won't be afraid. I will see what I've been searching for all my life. ~ Chelsea Hodson

He belonged to a walled city of the fifteenth century, a city of narrow, cobbled streets, and thin spires, where the inhabitants wore pointed shoes and worsted hose. His face was arresting, sensitive, medieval in some strange inexplicable way, and I was reminded of a portrait seen in a gallery I had forgotten where, of a certain Gentleman Unknown. Could one but rob him of his English tweeds, and put him in black, with lace at his throat and wrists, he would stare down at us in our new world from a long distant past - a past where men walked cloaked at night, and stood in the shadow of old doorways, a past of narrow stairways and dim dungeons, a past of whispers in the dark, of shimmering rapier blades, of silent, exquisite courtesy. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

black-cloaked monsters chased after me. I shoved helplessly through the brittle pine trees, leafless branches clawing at my flesh. Snow flooded my sneakers, soaking higher and higher on my jeans with every step I took. ~ Jessica Sorensen

My grandmother's unkindness, for instance, was the result of repressed grief over three deaths: her parents, before she was twelve, and her firstborn child. I don't recall ever seeing her smile. She was critical of everything and everyone. Table manners, posture, diction, wardrobe. My aunt, her mother's staunchest defender, often reminded us that my grandmother suffered from accumulated sorrow, bottled up since childhood and cloaked in intellect and intolerance as she grew older. She was never able to grieve fully or mourn the amassed losses, my aunt had said. If we repress our grief, over time, it's bound to harden the heart. ~ Nancy Cobb