Copious Quotes

There was a certain luxury to charity that she could not identify with and did not have. To take "charity" for granted, to revel in this charity towards people whom one did not know - perhaps it came from having had a yesterday and having today and expecting to have tomorrow. She envied them this ... Ifemelu wanted, suddenly and desperately, to be from the country of people who gave and not those who received, to be one of those who had and could therefore bask in the grace of having given. To be among those who could afford copious pity and empathy. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

September put her hand on the grip of the Rivet Gun. She'd only just gotten it, and she'd promised to take copious notes for Belinda Cabbage, which probably did not mean handing it over to the first person who asked and taking notes on what she got for it. But more than that, she wanted it with her. It had chosen her. She felt safer with it, even though she knew it was probably quite dangerous.
"No," she said finally. "I can't. What if I need it?"
"Good girl," said the Minotaur. "A warrior never gives up her weapon. ~ Catherynne M Valente

I announce the great individual, fluid as Nature, chaste, affectionate, compassionate, fully armed; I announce a life that shall be copious, vehement, spiritual, bold, And I announce an end that shall lightly and joyfully meet its translation. ~ Walt Whitman

Her room was warm and lightsome. A huge doll sat with her legs apart in the copious easy-chair beside the bed. He tried to bid his tongue speak that he might seem at ease, watching her as she undid her gown, noting the proud conscious movements of her perfumed head.

As he stood silent in the middle of the room she came over to him and embraced him gaily and gravely. Her round arms held him firmly to her and he, seeing her face lifted to him in serious calm and feeling the warm calm rise and fall of her breast, all but burst into hysterical weeping. Tears of joy and relief shone in his delighted eyes and his lips parted though they would not speak.

She passed her tinkling hand through his hair, calling him a little rascal.

- Give me a kiss, she said.

His lips would not bend to kiss her. He wanted to be held firmly in her arms, to be caressed slowly, slowly, slowly. In her arms he felt that he had suddenly become strong and fearless and sure of himself. But his lips would not bend to kiss her.

With a sudden movement she bowed his head and joined her lips to his and he read the meaning of her movements in her frank uplifted eyes. It was too much for him. He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her, body and mind, conscious of nothing in the world but the dark pressure of her softly parting lips. They pressed upon his brain as upon his lips as though they were the vehicle of a vague speech; and between them he felt an un ~ James Joyce

Do good works or commission an opera house or just take it out and gaze at it longingly when you think of the handsome prince you might have made your own. For the record, I favor the latter option, preferably paired with copious tears and the recitation of bad poetry. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Faeries are unaffected by alcohol, but much to her surprise - and the faeries' undoing - they get very, very drunk on carbonation. Using copious amounts of Coke, she was able to discover a single faerie's true name. ~ Kiersten White

Be it remembered that man subsists upon the air more than upon his meat and drink; but no one can exist for an hour without a copious supply of air. The atmosphere which some breathe is contaminated and adulterated, and with its vital principles so diminished that it cannot fully decarbonize the blood, nor fully excite the nervous system. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Dear Mama,
I hope this letter finds you well. It contains all my love and affection. (It also contains all my questions about how you could ever have loved a man like Professor Miller.)
You asked about where I live. I cannot believe I haven't mentioned it, but I suppose I'm so used to it now I don't think of it. The dorms are small and plain, but as a student I don't need much more. (I cannot afford the dorms. I do not live in them.) The food is dreadful, all heavy meat and sauce. I miss fruit! (I am always hungry; a supper with a strange man was the fullest my stomach has been since I got here.)
As I have mentioned in every letter, my professors are all interesting and I take copious notes during lectures. (If you do not bring up my father, I am certainly not going to offer you information on that louse of a man.) The course work is challenging but I am excelling. (I have to be perfect so they can find no excuse to dock my grades.)
I have delivered Aunt Nani's package to Jacabo. He was so happy to receive it, and I take tea with him once a week. It is a great comfort to speak Melenese with someone. (I live in the hotel where Jacabo works. He saved me when I realized I could not afford room and board at the school. I work long, hard hours in the evenings to earn a tiny hole of a servant's room and whatever scraps of food are left over.)
Please give everyone my love and tell them how much I am learning to bring back to the island as a teacher. (I will ~ Kiersten White

Apparently, when the arrogant King of Persia beheld the vastness of his troops spread out across boundless plains, he shed copious tears when he realized that not one man amongst his prodigious army would be alive in a hundred years' time. ~ Seneca.

In fact, if anybody on the Somme battlefield is overdue to be treated with a little pathos it is not the attackers, with their threefold artillery superiority, total control of the air and copious reserves of of manpower, but rather the German defenders opposite. ~ Alexander Watson

Detective Sergeant Lincoln Gibbs was a tall, thin African-American with mocha-colored skin, a profoundly receding hairline, and tortoiseshell spectacles. He looked like a college professor, which was a look he cultivated. He had twenty-eight years on the job, less than Tomsic, but more time in grade as a detective sergeant, so Linc Gibbs would be in charge. He arrived with Detective-three Pete Bishop, a twenty-two-year veteran with an M.A. in psychology and five divorces. Bishop rarely spoke, but was known to make copious notes, which he referred to often. He had a measured IQ of 178 and a drinking problem. He was currently in twelve-step. ~ Robert Crais

And we're going out.

Kill me.

'Got everything?' Mom asks, her voice all sing-songy. We're acting normal. A short-lived facade when I open my bag and Operation Check Contents begins.

1. Phone to call for help if we have a car crash/get mugged/drive into the path of a tornado

2. Headphones to drown out the sound of people if we get caught in a crowd

3. Bottle of water for if we break down and get stranded in the middle of nowhere

4. Another bottle of water in case that other bottle leaks or evaporates

5. Tissues for nosebleeds, sneezing, crying, and/or drooling

6. Sanitizer to kill the germs you can catch from touching anything

7. Paper bag to breathe into or throw up in

8. Band-Aids and alcohol wipes in case open wounds should occur

9. Inhaler (I grew out of asthma when I was twelve, but you can't be too careful when it comes to breathing)

10. A piece of string that serves no purpose but it's been here since for ever and I'm afraid the world will implode if I don't have it

11. A pair of nail scissors for any one of a trillion reasons, most of which conclude with me being kidnapped

12. And, finally, chewing gum to take away the sour taste I always get when the panic hits

Normal takes a nosedive into my bag, sinks beneath the copious amount of clutter, and dies a slow, painful death. ~ Louise Gornall

It's a long story that involves copious quantities of alcohol and Lolita. ~ Michelle Hodkin

Despite the depth and certainty of our faith that saturated fat is the nutritional bane of our lives and that obesity is caused by overeating and sedentary behavior, there has always been copious evidence to suggest that those assumptions are incorrect, and that evidence is continuing to mount. ~ Gary Taubes

Anecdote: Greatness Means Leading the Way. No stream is large and copious of itself, but becomes great by receiving and leading on so many tributary streams. It is so, also, with all intellectual greatness, It is only a question of someone indicating the direction to be followed by so many affluent; not whether he was richly or poorly gifted originally. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Everything is lit with glowing chandeliers and copious candles, so that the light is not bright but deep and warm and bubbling. ~ Erin Morgenstern

A great historian, as he insisted on calling himself, who had the happiness to be dead a hundred and twenty years ago, and so to take his place among the colossi whose huge legs our living pettiness is observed to walk under, glories in his copious remarks and digressions as the least imitable part of his work, and especially in those initial chapters to the successive books of his history, where he seems to bring his armchair to the proscenium and chat with us in all the lusty ease of his fine English. But Fielding lived when the days were longer (for time, like money, is measured by our needs), when summer afternoons were spacious, and the clock ticked slowly in the winter evenings. We belated historians must not linger after his example; and if we did so, it is probable that our chat would be thin and eager, as if delivered from a campstool in a parrot-house. I at least have so much to do in unravelling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe. ~ George Eliot

She woke to an ache so deep in her bones and such copious sorrow that she thought she would not be able to rise from bed. The world outside seemed muted and gray, which she thought fitting. Had it not been gray for her since birth? The burst of colors she had experienced during the past few days was the anomaly. ~ Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I like the copious, shapeless, warm, not so very clever, but extremely easy and rather coarse aspect of things; the talk of men in clubs and public-houses; of miners half naked in drawers the forthright, perfectly unassuming, and without end in view except dinner, love, money and getting along tolerably; that which is without great hopes, ideals, or anything of that kind; what is unassuming except to make a tolerably, good job of it. I like all that. ~ Virginia Woolf

The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family. ~ William Jones

I think drugs played a big role in the Taboo scene. People were taking copious amounts of ecstasy, which had filtered over from New York, and at a certain point you were more likely to spend most of the night in the toilets at the club. ~ Boy George

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity is of wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either. ~ William Jones

We produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationary. ~ Charles Dickens

I found our speech copious without order, and energetic without rules ~ Samuel Johnson

Cookie dough," I explained. "My booty is carefully crafted from copious intake of cookie dough." "Whatever ~ Kristen Ashley

Their little party was completed by Katharine and Laura, the friendly, easygoing lesbians from Tennessee. They came with copious amounts of alcohol (one can always depend on the lapsed Christians to bring the bar): pale ale for the butches, and drinkable red wine. ~ Chana Porter

QUEEN ELIZABETH. O thou well skill'd in curses, stay awhile
And teach me how to curse mine enemies!
QUEEN MARGARET. Forbear to sleep the nights, and fast the days;
Compare dead happiness with living woe;
Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were,
And he that slew them fouler than he is.
Bett'ring thy loss makes the bad-causer worse;
Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.
QUEEN ELIZABETH. My words are dull; O, quicken them with thine!
QUEEN MARGARET. Thy woes will make them sharp and pierce like mine.
DUCHESS. Why should calamity be fun of words?
QUEEN ELIZABETH. Windy attorneys to their client woes,
Airy succeeders of intestate joys,
Poor breathing orators of miseries,
Let them have scope; though what they will impart
Help nothing else, yet do they case the heart.
DUCHESS. If so, then be not tongue-tied. Go with me,
And in the breath of bitter words let's smother
My damned son that thy two sweet sons smother'd.
The trumpet sounds; be copious in exclaims. ~ William Shakespeare

It's hard to tell our bad luck from our good luck sometimes. And most of us have wept copious tears over someone or something when if we'd understood the situation better we might have celebrated our good fortune instead. ~ Sarah Ban Breathnach

In modern times, nationalism is the most copious and durable source of mass enthusiasm, and that nationalist fervor must be tapped if the drastic changes projected and initiated by revolutionary enthusiasm are to be consummated. ~ Eric Hoffer

The young, thought Sharma, have this ability to suffer much in the time of grief, unlike the old who have seen enough sorrow and know it shall not stay forever. The young hardly know grief is like a thunderstorm. It comes whispering softly at first, a distant hum, a halo of vehemence in the sky, and then there is a sudden, violent, and copious outpouring; that drenches everything that comes in its way. It darkens the sky and turns every inch of green terrain dusky grey. But they don't realize its ferocity will become less with the lapse of time, and the sun will shine bright and warm, and wash the land golden, and no one would be able to tell there had been a storm. They scarcely understand this essential unfolding of grief isn't meant to last forever, and eventually, it shall come to pass. ~ Neena H. Brar

I could croak with no warning, and the only tragedy anyone would experience would be showing up on the last day of my estate sale simply to discover that all remaining items had copious amounts of dog hair on them. ~ Laurie Notaro

My travels inevitably begin with copious research and planning. I began this kind of planning long ago when I was very young and anxious to hit the road. Hours were spent pouring over junior encyclopedias memorizing the names of exotic-sounding cities
Addis, Ababa, Samarkand, Damascus. Lengthy lists were written detailing the most minute necessities: three pairs of socks, two pencils. spare batteries, rope. ~ Barbara Hodgson

Hamilton's critics seriously underrated his superhuman stamina. He enjoyed beating his enemies at their own game, and the resolutions roused his fighting spirit. By February 19, in a staggering display of diligence, he delivered to the House several copious reports, garlanded with tables, lists, and statistics that gave a comprehensive overview of his work as treasury secretary. In the finale of one twenty-thousand-word report, Hamilton intimated that he had risked a physical breakdown to complete this heroic labor: It is certain that I have made every exertion in my power, at the hazard of my health, to comply with the requisitions of the House as early as possible. ~ Ron Chernow

Successful selling begins with listening. Your job when you are in front of the prospect is to ask questions and then listen to the answers. Take copious notes about what they tell you; what they say and what they don't say. ~ Diane Helbig

A copious manner of expression gives strength and weight to our ideas, which frequently make impression upon the mind, as iron does upon solid bodies, rather by repeated strokes than a single blow. ~ William Melmoth

Before redeye flights, I drink copious amounts of herbal brews to help me relax and fall asleep after takeoff. ~ Ruzwana Bashir

When an attacker fails with one person, they often go to another person. The key is to report the attack to other departments. Workers should know to act like they are going along with what the hacker wants and take copious notes so the company will know what the hacker is trying to find. ~ Kevin Mitnick

Are you really going back there with me?" I ask.
"Hell yes I am. Your wish is finally coming true. I will see your vagina. Plus, I really want to see the look on that woman's face when she gets a peek at your plethora of pubes. Your copious curls, your abundant bush, the wild mane that if it sees a spark will start a forest fire," she states.
"Are you finished?" I ask irritably.
"I think so. But give me five minutes and I might be able to get one more in. ~ Tara Sivec

I only work out because I have high anxiety, and if I don't I tend to ... I say I'm like a border collie. If I don't have something to expend my energy, I chew the furniture. So it just helps me level out so I don't do copious amounts of drugs. ~ Jake Abel

Touch a university with hostile hands and the blood you draw is prompt, copious, and real. ~ Diana Trilling

She had never heard the word 'intellectual' used as a noun before she went to Barnard, and she took it to heart. It was a brave noun, a proud noun, a noun suggesting lifelong dedication to lofty things and a cool disdain for the commonplace. An intellectual might lose her virginity to a soldier in the park, but she could learn to look back on it with wry, amused detachment. An intellectual might have a mother who showed her underpants when drunk, but she wouldn't let it bother her. And Emily Grimes might not be an intellectual yet, but if she took copious notes in even the dullest of her classes, and if she read every night until her eyes ached, it was only a question of time. ~ Richard Yates

Your body talks to you in sensations; feelings of tension, fear, hunger, pleasure, aliveness, and pain are just some of the ways it attempts to communicate with you. This is why staying connected to your physical self - with as little conflict as possible - is fundamental to health and wellbeing. If you spend copious amounts of energy attempting to diminish your body, or if your imagination is limited such that you cannot see beauty in yourself, then you become disconnected from the world around you. You lose perspective and purpose. ~ Connie Sobczak

The Illusionist is the storyteller in so many ways. Symbols become his obsession. It's not simply about creating plot - one must also grapple with theme. Nowadays we have a lot of characters and a lot of action but it's hard to sit still and really meditate on meaning, worldviews, concepts, ideologies even. I make my Illusionist do what I've had to do, often with copious amounts of stumbling and frustration. His real humanity comes from being an artist, I think - his creativity is what makes him a man. ~ Porochista Khakpour

How can it ever be right to wreck
A man because he's time by the clock
As an elderly man grizzled and gray,
Who long ago struggled at your side
Mopping the copious
Manly sweat from his brow
When he bravely fought at Marathon
In defense of our city. ~ Aristophanes

To ward off these disasters, they spent a whole lot of time trying to keep their gods happy via a number of complex rituals, many involving copious amounts of sex ("the gods wish us to have sex" is the oldest pickup line in the world). ~ Gene Doucette

Um, I don't know."
"That's not the answer I was hoping for. I was looking for something more along the lines of: 'Why yes, Brody, I'd love to spend the weekend at your house having copious amounts of crazy, sweaty monkey sex.'"
Silence ~ Beth Ehemann

The most daring flights of genius do not always soar assured when they seek a throne in the fire & find a grave in copious tears.
For knowledge is also a vice: if it is not constantly curbed, & if this is not acknowledged, the greater the havoc it wreaks;
& if the flight is not brought down, fed & fattened on subtleties it will forget the essential for the sake of the rare & strange.
If a skilled hand does not prevent the growth of a thickly leafed tree, its proliferating branches will steal the fruit. ~ Juana Ines De La Cruz

With copious evidence ranging from Plato's haughtiness to Beethoven's tirades, we may conclude that the most brilliant people of history tend to be a prickly lot. ~ Stephen Jay Gould

In less than a quarter of an hour's time, these hopeful youths had shed about them on the clean boards, a copious shower of yellow rain; clearing, by that means, a kind of magic circle, within whose limits no intruders dared to come, and which they never failed to refresh and re-refresh before a spot was dry. This being before breakfast, rather disposed me, I confess, to nausea; ~ Charles Dickens

One of the great triumphs of the nineteenth century was to limit the connotation of the word "immoral" in such a way that, for practical purposes, only those were immoral who drank too much or made too copious love. Those who indulged in any or all of the other deadly sins could look down in righteous indignation on the lascivious and the gluttonous ... In the name of all lechers and boozers I most solemnly protest against the invidious distinction made to our prejudice. ~ Aldous Huxley