Clouds Short Quotes

She was too compelling to look at directly. Bright like the sun, bright and terrible. Only one other being could look upon her, and that was Death. And so…they became lovers."
He said the word like a caress, like velvet again, and my face began to heat.
"Together they forged great and hellish things," Jesse murmured. "Lightning and waterfalls that churned into clouds off the tip of the world. Chasms so winding deep that daylight never traced their endings. They dreamed through golden days and silvered nights. All the other creatures envied or adored them, because Death and the Elemental were destruction and creation joined as One. In the natural order of things, they should not have been stronger joined. And yet they were."
He shifted, coming closer to me. A hand settled lightly atop my chest, directly over my heart. At our feet the seawater splashed a little, as if disturbed by something rolling over in the dark, distant deep.
"Centuries passed, and mankind began to devour the earth, even the wildest places. They had tools to invent and wars to fight and grubby, short lives. Nothing about them dwelled in the magic of the ancient spirits. So although Death, the Great Hunter, prospered as he sieved through their villages, the Elemental, strong as she once was, thinned into a web of gossamer. Human lives simply tore her apart."
His hand was so warm. Warmer than I, warmer than the air, and still just barely touching me. The light behind my lids never lif ~ Shana Abe

For aspiring actors out there, I would say stay focused and don't let anyone pull you away from your goals. Shoot for the stars so that if you ever fall short you can land on the clouds. ~ Ryan Guzman

The Real World'

The real word doesn't take flight
the way dreams do.
No muffled voice, no doorbell
can dispel it,
no shriek, no crash
can cut it short.

Images in dreams
are hazy and ambiguous,
and can generally be explained
in many different ways.
Reality means reality:
that's tougher nut to crack.

Dreams have keys.
The real world opens on its own
and can't be shut.
Report canrds and stars
pour from it,
butterflies and flatiron warmers
shower down,
headless caps
and shards of clouds.
Together they form a rebus
that can't be solved.

Without us dreams couldn't exist.
The one on whom the real world depends
is still unknown,
and the products of his insomnia
are avaialble to anyone
who wakes up.

Dreams aren't crazy-
it's the real world that's insane,
if only in the stubbornness
with which it sticks
to the current of events.

In dreams our recently deceased
are still alive,
in perfect health, no less,
and restored to the full bloom of youth.
The real world lays the corpse
in front of us.
The real world doesn't blink an eye.

Dreams are featherweights,
and memory can shake them off with ease.
The real world doesn't have to fear forgetfulness.
It's a tough customer.
It sits on our shoulders,
weights on our hearts, ~ Wisława Szymborska

Clouds carried me forward from there. Others were in the church--I knew that logically--but I saw no one. No one but Marlboro Man and his black tuxedo and his white formal tie, and the new black cowboy boots he'd bought especially for the occasion. His short hair, which was the color of pewter. His gentle smile. He was a vision--strong, solid, perfect. But it was the smile that propelled me forward, the reassuring look on his face. It wasn't a smug, overconfident smile. It was a smile loaded with emotion--thoughts of our history, perhaps. Of the story that brought us to that moment. Relief that we'd finally reached our destined end, which was actually a beautiful beginning. Gratefulness that we'd met by chance and had wound up finding love.
And suddenly, I was beside him. My arm in his. My heart entirely in his hands. ~ Ree Drummond

The birds do not sing, clouds remain of rubber, glass, steel. A stone has lodged in the engine block, the process of rusting has begun. And then darkness, a cold wind, a shred of clothing fluttering where it is snagged on one of the doors which, quite unscathed, lies flat in the grass. And then daylight, changing temperature, a night of cold rain, the short-lived presence of a scavenging rodent. And despite all this chemistry of time, nothing has disturbed the essential integrity of our tableau of chaos, the point being that if design inevitably surrenders to debris, debris inevitably reveals its innate design. ~ John Hawkes

The touch of her hand underneath the head of Mrs. Copperfield was very light - in fact, so light that Mrs. Copperfield feared that she would be left alone from one minute to the next. She looked up. The sky was packed with gray clouds. She wanted to say something to Pacifica, but she did not dare to turn her head.
Pacifica swam a little farther inland. Suddenly she stood up and placed both her hand firmly in the small of Mrs. Copperfield's back. Mrs. Copperfield felt happy and sick at once. She turned her face and in so doing she brushed Pacifica's heavy stomach with her cheek. She held on hard to Pacifica's thigh with the strength of years of sorrow and frustration in her hand.
'Don't leave me,' she called out.
At this moment Mrs. Copperfield was strongly reminded of a dream that had recurred often during her life. She was being chased up a short hill by a dog. At the top of the hill here stood a few pine trees and a mannequin about eight feet high. She approached the mannequin and discovered her to be fashioned out of flesh, but without life. Her dress was of black velvet, and tapered to a very narrow width at the hem. Mrs. Copperfield wrapped one of the mannequin's arms tightly around her own waist. She was startled by the thickness of the arm and very pleased. The mannequin's other arm she ben upward from the elbow with her free hand. Then the mannequin began to sway backwards and forwards. Mrs. Copperfield clung all the more tightly to the mannequin and t ~ Jane Bowles

The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue. ~ Karen Blixen

I still can't quite grasp what you are telling me. I find it impossible to believe that there would be such unreasoning feeling against harmless people."
Amaryl said bitterly, "That's because you've never had any occasion to interest yourself in such things. It can all pass right under your nose and you wouldn't smell a thing because it doesn't affect you."
Dors said, "Mr. Amaryl, Dr. Seldon is a mathematician like you and his head can sometimes be in the clouds. You must understand that. I am a historian, however. I know that it isn't unusual to have one group of people look down upon another group. There are peculiar and almost ritualistic hatreds that have no rational justification and that can have their serious historical influence. It's too bad."
Saying something is 'too bad' is easy. You say you disapprove, which makes you a nice person, and then you can go about your own business and not be interested anymore. It's a lot worse than 'too bad.' It's against everything decent and natural. We're all of us the same, yellow-hairs and black-hairs, tall and short, Easterners, Westerners, Southerners, and Outworlders. We're all of us, you and I and even the Emperor, descended from the people of Earth, aren't we? ~ Isaac Asimov

Miriam gave her hair a preliminary drying, gathered her dressing-gown together and went upstairs. From the schoolroom came unmistakable sounds. They were evidently at dinner. She hurried to her attic. What was she to do with her hair? She rubbed it desperately - fancy being landed with hair like that, in the middle of the day! She could not possibly go down.... She must. Fraulein Pfaff would expect her to - and would be disgusted if she were not quick - she towelled frantically at the short strands round her forehead, despairingly screwed them into Hinde's and towelled at the rest. What had the other girls done? If only she could look into the schoolroom before going down - it was awful - what should she do?... She caught sight of a sodden-looking brush on Mademoiselle's bed. Mademoiselle had put hers up - she had seen her... of course... easy enough for her little fluffy clouds - she could do nothing with her straight, wet lumps - she began to brush it out - it separated into thin tails which flipped tiny drops of moisture against her hands as she brushed. Her arms ached; her face flared with her exertions. She was ravenous - she must manage somehow and go down. She braided the long strands and fastened their cold mass with extra hairpins. Then she unfastened the Hinde's - two tendrils flopped limply against her forehead. She combed them out. They fell in a curtain of streaks to her nose. Feverishly she divided them, draped them somehow back into the rest of her hair and fas ~ Dorothy M. Richardson

Life is short if you don't notice it'll pass you by,
That's why my head is in the clouds trying to pass the sky. ~ Ludacris

Sorrow (A Song)

To me this world's a dreary blank,
All hopes in life are gone and fled,
My high strung energies are sank,
And all my blissful hopes lie dead.--

The world once smiling to my view,
Showed scenes of endless bliss and joy;
The world I then but little knew,
Ah! little knew how pleasures cloy;

All then was jocund, all was gay,
No thought beyond the present hour,
I danced in pleasure's fading ray,
Fading alas! as drooping flower.

Nor do the heedless in the throng,
One thought beyond the morrow give,
They court the feast, the dance, the song,
Nor think how short their time to live.

The heart that bears deep sorrow's trace,
What earthly comfort can console,
It drags a dull and lengthened pace,
'Till friendly death its woes enroll.--

The sunken cheek, the humid eyes,
E'en better than the tongue can tell;
In whose sad breast deep sorrow lies,
Where memory's rankling traces dwell.--

The rising tear, the stifled sigh,
A mind but ill at ease display,
Like blackening clouds in stormy sky,
Where fiercely vivid lightnings play.

Thus when souls' energy is dead,
When sorrow dims each earthly view,
When every fairy hope is fled,
We bid ungrateful world adieu. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

I look through the spaces between the iron steps at the colorless flow of the river down below, transporting chunks of ice like white clouds. In a distress that lasts an instant, I seem to be feeling what she feels: that every void continues in the void, every gap, even a short one opens another gap, every chasm empties into the infinite abyss. ~ Italo Calvino

Narrow road, wide road, all of us on it, unhappy,
Unsettled, seven yards short of immortality
And a yard short of not long to live.
Better to sit down in the tall grass
and watch the clouds,
To lift our faces up to the sky,
Considering - for most of us - our lives have been a constant mistake. ~ Charles Wright

The next night was New Year's Eve, and I made a secret plan with Shara to meet her outside the back door on the stroke of midnight.
"Let's take a walk," I suggested.
"Sure. It's midnight, minus five degrees, and pitch black, but hey, let's walk." She paused. "But not up Loyal," she added, smiling.
And so we walked together along a moonlit track.
Twenty yards and then I will make the move to kiss her, I told myself.
But plucking up the courage with a girl this special was harder than I had thought.
Twenty yards became two hundred yards. Then two thousand.
Forty-five minutes later, she suggested that maybe we should turn around and head back to the house.
"Yes. Good idea." I replied.
Do it, Bear, you old woman. Do it now!
And so I did.
A quick kiss on the lips, then a longer lingering one, and then I had to stop. It was sensory overload.
Wow. That was worth the walk, I thought, smiling from ear to ear.
"Let's head back," I confirmed, still smiling.
I am not sure Shara was quite as impressed by the effort-to-reward ratio--long cold walk to short, hot kiss--but as far as I was concerned the sky and clouds had parted, and nothing would ever be the same again. ~ Bear Grylls

When chemists have brought their knowledge out of their special laboratories into the laboratory of the world, where chemical combinations are and have been through all time going on in such vast proportions,-when physicists study the laws of moisture, of clouds and storms, in past periods as well as in the present,-when, in short, geologists and zoologists are chemists and physicists, and vice versa,-then we shall learn more of the changes the world has undergone than is possible now that they are separately studied. ~ Louis Agassiz

So often this summer I keep thinking: I know I'm holding back. I know I'm waiting. I know I'm afraid to go forward. But I don't know how to get there from here."
He was quiet, so she kept going. "Sometimes I see it as a tricky mountain pass between two valleys. Other times, it's like perilous straits connecting two lands. Partly it's the fear of the trip itself, I think, but partly it's the fear that I won't be able to get back. I'll turn around and the clouds will have settled over the mountaintop. Or the waters will have risen and shifted, and there will be no way home."
Paul nodded. He took her hand again, which she discovered she appreciated.
But that's not even the real fear."
He gave her an odd smile. Short on mirth but affectionate. "What's the real fear?"
The real fear is that I won't want to go home. ~ Ann Brashares

Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty. ~ John Muir

They drove together under the stars to the lake, where they sat with fishing poles in a metal rowboat and waited for something to bite. Zack ate the toast, Uncle Orson gave some pointers, and then they cast their lines, again and again, into the pale fog. Dawn broke. The sunrise cracked. Clouds settled across the sky. The fog scattered as the air heated. And they still weren't catching anything. And that whole time, the exact same gull was circling overhead. "Nothing's happening," Zack complained. But Uncle Orson smiled at the clouds and smiled at the rowboat and smiled at the gull and smiled at the poles. "Nothing has to happen," Uncle Orson had said. ~ Matthew Baker

Nothing in the air but
clouds. nothing in the air but
rain. each man's life too short to
find meaning and
all the books almost a
waste.
I sit and listen to them
singing
I sit and listen to
them. ~ Charles Bukowski

The mind is at every stage a theater of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness consists in the comparison of these with each other, the selection of some, and the suppression of the rest by the reinforcing and inhibiting agency of attention. The highest and most elaborated mental products are filtered from the data chosen by the faculty next beneath, out of the mass offered by the faculty below that, which mass in turn was sifted from a still larger amount of yet simpler material, and so on. The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest. Just so the world of each of us, how so ever different our several views of it may be, all lay embedded in the primordial chaos of sensations, which gave the mere matter to the thought of all of us indifferently. We may, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that black and jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms which science calls the only real world. But all the while the world we feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like sculptors, by simply removing portions of the given stuff. Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other worlds from the same monoto ~ William James

Here is just a short glimpse into the elaborate construction of this ANE author: 1 Enoch 18:1-5 And I saw the storerooms of all the winds and saw how with them he has embroidered all creation as well as the foundations of the earth. I saw the cornerstone of the earth; I saw the four winds which bear the earth as well as the firmament of heaven. I saw how the winds ride the heights of heaven and stand between heaven and earth: These are the very pillars of heaven. I saw the winds which turn the heaven and cause the star to set - the sun as well as all the stars. I saw the souls carried by the clouds. I saw the path of the angels in the ultimate end of the earth, and the firmament of the heaven above.[82] ~ Brian Godawa