Crest Quotes

Hope elevates, and joy
Brightens his crest. ~ John Milton

No matter what day it is, no matter what time, no matter where I am - I'm always at the star party, staring at the slhouette on the crest of the hill, whishing that one dark shape would split in two. But it never does. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Charles Sumner; A Smacking breeze has sprung up, and we shall part this company soon; and then for the Atlantic! Farewell then, my friends, my pursuits, my home, my country! Each bellying wave on its rough crest carries me away. The rocking vessel impedes my pen. And now, as my head begins slightly to reel, my imagination entertains the glorious prospects before me ... ~ David McCullough

For a wonderful life
Hope for the best,
Love without rest,
Believe without test,
Act without a crest. ~ Debasish Mridha

Some people have family crests, lions, tigers, unicorns, elephants - a whole menagerie - and if my family had a crest, you know what would be on it? A blintze. I mean it. All the good things in my life are measured in blintzes because by us it's not a party if there isn't a blintze ... ~ Gertrude Berg

A great tragedy passes from crest to hollow of passion, rises and sinks again, as rhythmically as sea-waves. ~ Austin O'Malley

In a moment I might be under the wave swallowing seawater and small jellyfish, but right now I am an ancient princess of Hawaii, I am a bikini model, I am a goddess before the crest of a monster billow. ~ Wilma Johnson

Why couldn't I get a stepbrother like the ones from Fallen Crest High? ~ Jenny Siegel

The Ilhalmiut do not fill canvases with their paintings, or inscribe figures on rocks, or carve figurines in clay or in stone, because in the lives of the People there is no room for the creation of objects of no practical value. What purpose is there in creating beautiful things if these must be abandoned when the family treks out over the Barrens? But the artistic sense is present and strongly developed. It is strongly alive in their stories and songs, and in the string-figures, but they also use it on the construction of things which assist in their living and in these cases it is no less an art. The pleasure of abstract creation is largely denied to them by the nature of the land, but still they know how to make beauty.
They know how to make beauty, and they also know how to enjoy it-- for it is no uncommon thing to see an Ilhalmio man squatting silently on a hill crest and watching, for hours at a time, the swift interplay of colors that sweep the sky at sunset and dawn. It is not unusual to see an Ilhalmio pause for long minutes to watch the sleek beauty of a weasel or to stare into the brilliant heart of some minuscule flower. And these things are done quite unconsciously, too. There is no word for 'beauty'--as such--in their language; it needs no words in their hearts. ~ Farley Mowat

Humans pull together in an odd way when they're in the wilderness. It's astonishing how few people litter and how much they help one another. Indeed, the smartphone app to navigate the Pacific Crest Trail, Halfmile, is a labor of love by hikers who make it available as a free download. ~ Nicholas Kristof

Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't sit still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Their's is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. ~ Robert W. Service

She had learnt to wait for the changes and the help that life brings. Life is like the sea, sometimes you are in the trough of the wave, sometimes on the crest. When you are in the trough, you wait for the crest, and always, trough or crest, a mysterious tide bears you forward to an unseen, but certain shore. In ~ Dorothy Whipple

It's my turn next, and I realize then that I never turned in the name of my escort--because I hadn't planned on being here. I glance around wildly for Ryder, but he's nowhere to be seen, swallowed up by the sea of people in cocktail dresses and suits.
Crap. I thought he realized that escorting me on court was part of the deal, once I'd agreed to go. I guess he'd figured it'd be easier on me, what with the whole Patrick thing, if I was alone onstage. But I don't want to be alone. I want Ryder with me. By my side, supporting me.
Always.
I finally spot him in the crowd--it's not too hard, since he's a head taller than pretty much everyone else--and our eyes meet. My stomach drops to my feet--you know, that feeling you get on a roller coaster right after you crest that first hill and start plummeting toward the ground.
Oh my God, this can't be happening. I've fallen in love with Ryder Marsden, the boy I'm supposed to hate. And it has nothing to do with his confession, his declaration that he loves me. Sure, it might have forced me to examine my feelings faster than I would have on my own, but it was there all along, taking root, growing, blossoming.
Heck, it's a full-blown garden at this point.
"Our senior maid is Miss Jemma Cafferty!" comes the principal's voice. "Jemma is a varsity cheerleader, a member of the Wheelettes social sorority, the French Honor Club, the National Honor Society, and the Peer Mentors. She's escorted tonight by…ahem, sorry. ~ Kristi Cook

On the road leading from his ranch to Samantha's, Wyat t drove his surrey up a small hill and caught his breath as the beauty of the large crescent moon dangling just out of reach over the crest A full moon would have been plump with luminescence, yet the pearly surface of the sickle still cast enough light to shadow his surroundings and seemed close enough that once he drove to the top of the hill, he'd be able to touch the bottom horn or at least toss a rope around it. He slackened the reins, slowing the horse, knowing that the higher he climbed, the sooner the illusion of closeness would disappear and he wanted to preserve for a moment the fantasy that the moon was within his grasp.
The stars, by contrast, were distant pricks of diamond light farther out than a man could dream. He sighed. Life as a rancher or as a rancher's wife was not moon and stars easy or romantic. What would put stars in Samantha's eyes? ~ Debra Holland

You think me cruel."
"No." Magiano hesitates for a long moment. "Maybe a little."
"I'm not branding them because I am cruel," I say calmly. "I'm doing it as a reminder of what they've done to us. To the marked. You're so quick to forget."
"I never forget," Magiano replies. This time, there is a slight sharpness to his tone. His hand hovers near his side, where his childhood wound continues to plague him. "But branding the unmarked with your crest will not make them any more loyal to you."
"It makes them fear me."
"Fear works best with some love," Magiano says. "Show them that you can be terrifying, yet generous." The gold bands in his braids clink. "Let the people love you a little, mi Adelinetta. ~ Marie Lu

Jamie felt as though her heart would literally take flight from her crest. Damn her and her mouth. "Nick, I was sort of exaggerating about how nasty I was going to act of the plane. Why can't we just leave Fleas with Max and get going?"
"She's lying, Nick," Max said. "You don't do things her way and she turns into Satan's daughter. ~ Janet Evanovich

The middle place. Not death. Not life. A limbo state of existence filled with the hours of turning the wheels. Eating to not feel hungry. Sleeping to not feel tired. Waking to not feel asleep. The middle place that exists between breaths, in that pause, that slight breathlessness before an exhale and an inhale. Between the crest and the valley. Where the path always meanders cliffside. ~ An Na

We lived always in the stretch or sag of nerves, either on the crest or in the trough of waves of feeling. ~ T.E. Lawrence

But just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its light I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were ~ Bram Stoker

The horse was a pure-bred Arab. She came, bright and dancing, flaunting into the ring, her tail held high over her quarters, her silken mane flowing over the crest of her neck. Her head was fine-boned and delicate, with the concave line of the true Arab horse. Her dark, lustrous eyes were fringed with long lashes and the nostrils wrinkling her velvet muzzle were huge black pits. She moved around the ring like a bright flame, her pricked ears delicate as flower petals. Her legs were clean and unblemished and her small hooves were polished ivory. After the dull ache of the rosinbacks, she was all light and fire.
Jinny sat entranced, hardly breathing, and then her breath burst out of her in a throbbing gasp. She loved the chestnut mare. As if all their long day's travelling had only been for this. As if she had come all the way from Stopton only for this, to see this sudden gift of perfection. ~ Patricia Leitch

My life before the flood was manageable; during the flood it was chaos. The National Weather Service only reported river levels, and at times, crest predictions. It didn't report or predict everything else that could go wrong. ~ David J. Kirk

The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning. ~ William Faulkner

Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore - Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the raven, "Nevermore. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Here I made this for you. 'Twas finished weeks ago. I should have known better than to expect your attentions when you had no further need of me." She thrust a scrap of cloth at him. "Here." He took it. It was a handkerchief, embroidered with the Montague crest. "Thanks." "You're welcome. Go choke on it. ~ Melinda Taub

No half measures, he muttered several times. It was his personal motto; he intended to have it latinised and put on a crest. ~ Larry McMurtry

A stream cut across the grass, and tree branches flowed low to the ground, like a curtain of green fluid. The sound of the water stressed the silence. The distant cut of open sky made the place seem more hidden. Far above, on the crest of a hill, one tree caught the first rays of sunlight. ~ Ayn Rand

Bob Marley songs are my songs. These are the songs that have been passed on to me. Let me say, I wear my family crest, and I represent my family to the fullest. ~ Stephen Marley

I've been riding on the crest of a slump lately. ~ Tom Waits

At the crest of the hill outside Agor, Henry pulled the car to the side of the road and we got out to take in the view. In the falling shadows, the little Arab village at the foot of the Jewish settlement looked nothing like so grim and barren as it had a few minutes before when we'd driven down its deserted main street. A desert sunset lent a little picturesqueness even to that cluster of faceless hovels. As for the larger landscape, you could see, particularly in this light, how someone might get the impression that it had been created in only seven days, unlike England, say, whose countryside appeared to be the creation of a God who'd had four or five chances to come back to perfect it and smooth it out, to tame and retame it until it was utterly habitable by every last man and beast. Judea was something that had been left just as it had been made; this could have passed for a piece of the moon to which the Jews had been sadistically exiled by their worst enemies rather than the place they passionately maintained was theirs and no one else's from time immemorial. What he finds in this landscape, I thought, is a correlative for the sense of himself he would now prefer to effect, the harsh and rugged pioneer with that pistol in his pocket. ~ Philip Roth

Life is messy for the rest of us. You have it really good here, you know? Promise me you won't forget that. ~ Jessica Brody

I walk in her valleys,
Exploring her intimately,
But it's not until I crest her horizons,
When her world is revealed to me, the one she keeps concealed,
And It leaves me in awe,
Content to wander,
I could lose myself forever in her ~ Morris R. Gates

I had once been splintered into a million beings and objects. Today I am one, tomorrow I shall splinter again. And thus everything in the world decants and modulates. That day I was on the crest of a wave. I knew that all my surroundings were notes of one and the same harmony, knew - secretly - the source and the inevitable resolution of the sounds assembled for an instant, and the new chord that would be engendered by each of the dispersing notes. My soul's musical ear knew and comprehended everything. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The Fence or The Ambulance

'Twas a dangerous cliff, as they freely confessed,
Though to walk near its crest was so pleasant:
But over its terrible edge there had slipped
A duke and many a peasant;
So the people said something would have to be done.
But their projects did not at all tally:
Some said, "Put a fence around the edge of the cliff"
Some, "An ambulance down in the valley."
But the cry for the ambulance carried the day.
For it spread to the neighboring city:
A fence may be useful or not, it is true,
But each heart became brimful of pity
For those who had slipped o'er that dangerous cliff,
And the dwellers in highway and alley
Gave pounds or gave pence, not to put up a fence,
But an ambulance down in the valley.
"For the cliff is alright if your careful," they said,
"and if folks even slip or are dropping,
it isn't the slipping that hurts them so much
as the shock down below-when they're stopping,"
So day after day when these mishaps occurred,
Quick forth would the rescuers sally
To pick up the victims who fell off the cliff,
With their ambulance down in the valley.
Then an old man remarked, "it's a marvel to me
that people give far more attention
to repairing results than to stopping the cause,
when they'd much better aim at prevention.
Let us stop at its source all this mischief, cried he.
"Come neighbors and frei ~ Joseph Malines

The tyrant is a child of Pride Who drinks from his sickening cup Recklessness and vanity, Until from his high crest headlong He plummets to the dust of hope. ~ Sophocles

Is America a weakling, to shrink from the work of the great world powers? No! The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a race. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Sure enough, at the bottom of the box lay a note, crisply folded and sealed with blue wax. The insignia, though, was not Lord John's customary smiling half-moon-and-stars, but an unfamiliar crest, showing a fish with a ring in its mouth. Jamie glanced at this, frowning, then broke the seal and opened the note. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Each new epoch in life seems an encounter. There is a tussle and a cloud of dust, and we come out of it triumphant or crest-fallen, according as we have borne ourselves. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

No, that is not my life without power. My life without power will be one of walking through a crowd without darkness tugging at my heart. It will be seeing Violetta in the living world, smiling again. It will be riding on the back of a horse with Magiano as we crest another mountain, searching for adventure. It will be a life without these whispers in my head. It will be life without my father's ghost.

It will be a life. ~ Marie Lu

The last year of her college career was wheeling slowly round. She could see ahead her examination and her departure. She had the ash of disillusion gritting under her teeth. Would the next move turn out the same? Always the shining doorway ahead; and then, upon approach, always the shining doorway was a gate into another ugly yard, dirty and active and dead. Always the crest of the hill gleaming ahead under heaven: and then, from the top of the hill only another sordid valley full of amorphous, squalid activity. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Unfortunately, religion often works to shrink and tame the very wild and mysterious forces that first drew our wonder. In the process of making the inexplicable safe for the masses, the possibilities for real illusion-piercing insight becomes reduced. One might say that they are only available to those who dare to ride the breaking crest of direct life-altering experience. ~ Stephen K. Hayes

She bent her finger and straightened it. The mystery was in the instant before it moved, the dividing moment between not moving and moving, when her intention took effect. It was like a wave breaking. If she could only find herself at the crest, she thought, she might find the secret of herself, that part of her that was really in charge. ~ Ian McEwan

Looking up and out, how can we not respect this ever-vigilant cognizance that distinguishes us: the capability to envision, to dream, and to invent? the ability to ponder ourselves? and be aware of our existence on the outer arm of a spiral galaxy in an immeasurable ocean of stars? Cognizance is our crest. ~ Vanna Bonta

Her hands felt their way blindly along the ridges and canyons and defiles of the spine, the firm root-spread hillocks of the withers. She rolled her bony knuckles all along the fallen tree of scar tissue at the crest of the back, prying up its branches, loosening its teeth. And it must be having some effect: when she walked Pelter these days he wasn't the sour fellow he used to be, he was sportive, even funny. She had walked him this morning until the rising sun snagged in the hackberry thicket. As they swung around the barn, she took a carrot from her pocket and gave him the butt and noisily toothed the good half herself. He curvetted like a colt, squealed, and cow-kicked alarmingly near her groin. Okay, okay, she said, and handed it over. She was glad there was no man around just then to tell her to show that horse who was boss. When they were back in the stall and she turned to leave, she found he had taken he whole raincoat in his mouth and was chewing it--the one she was wearing. She twisted around with difficulty and pried it out of his mouth. He eyed her ironically. Just between us, is this the sort of horse act I really ought to discipline? she asked him, smoothing out her coat. I simply incline to your company, he replied. ~ Jaimy Gordon

Lead then, said EVE. Hee leading swiftly rowld In tangles, and make intricate seem strait, To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy Bright'ns his Crest, as when a wandring Fire Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night Condenses, and the cold invirons round, Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame, Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends, Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way To Boggs and Mires, & oft through Pond or Poole, There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr. ~ John Milton

look at her. She froze, staring at the slitted silver eyes. Jagged ridges lined the top of the dragon's eyes, sweeping back into a crest on its head. The crest grew into a bony mane down the back of its neck. They ended in front of the wings and picked up again behind the wing joint to the tip of the dragon's tail. ~ Carol M. Vaughn

Why Europe grew so powerful. Was it something about the geography of Europe? Was it that Europeans are somehow racially superior? Was it their religion? The answer (or at least the proximate cause) may be that the Europeans rode on the crest of a powerful new idea: allowing those who made a lot of money to keep it. ~ Paul Graham

She jogs until she reaches Billy, and falls in step beside him. He glances at her, then back at the ground.

"Is this how it is, then?" she asks after several moments. "One visit to my sister and we are no longer friends?"

He stops at the crest of a hill and squints out at the sun sparkling off the ripples in Sealhead Cove.

"I wish we weren't. When my father sent me to Rolanth, I swore that I would hate you. That I wouldn't be a fool like Joseph and get myself stuck in between." He smiles at her sadly. "Why couldn't you be wretched? Don't you have any manners? You should've had the courtesy to be terrible. So I could despise you."

"I am sorry. Shall I start now? Spit in your eye and kick you?"

"That sounds like something Arsinoe would do, actually. So I would find it endearing ~ Kendare Blake

There are moments in our lives - eras in our lives - when self-care demands more. When you're actually suffering an enormous loss or reeling, the best thing you can do is step outside of the pressure cookers of your life. One of the things I did in my own life when I found myself at that kind of bottom moment is I said, "I have got to do something that's going to remind me of my strength. I've got to do something that's going to bring me back to clarity, simplicity, humility, and strength." And so I went and hiked the Pacific Crest Trail. Remember that the only thing that's important is your well-being, your sense of "okay-ness" in the world. So go and get that. ~ Cheryl Strayed

For most celebrities, the biggest meal of the day is toothpaste (they use reduced-fat Crest). ~ Dave Barry

Look for me in the crest of a wave, in the shape of a cloud, or in the elegance of an equation. Science is some of my best work. Seek knowledge and you shall find me. ~ Karen Azinger

The embassy's front door was of bulletproof steel lined with a veneer of English oak. You attained it by touching a button in a silent lift. The royal crest, in this air-conditioned stillness, suggested silicone and funeral parlours. The windows, like the doors, had been toughened to frustrate the Irish and tinted to frustrate the sun. Not a whisper of the real world penetrated. The silent traffic, cranes, shipping, old town and new town, the brigade of women in orange tunics gathering leaves along the central reservation of the Avenida Balboa, were mere specimens in Her Majesty's inspection chamber. From the moment you set foot in British extraterritorial airspace, you were looking in, not out. - ~ John Le Carre

Now the evening's at its noon, its meridian. The outgoing tide has simmered down, and there's a lull-like the calm in the eye of a hurricane - before the reverse tide starts to set in.

The last acts of the three-act plays are now on, and the after-theater eating places are beginning to fill up with early comers; Danny's and Lindy's - yes, and Horn & Hardart too. Everybody has got where they wanted to go - and that was out somewhere. Now everybody will want to get back where they came from - and that's home somewhere. Or as the coffee-grinder radio, always on the beam, put it at about this point: 'New York, New York, it's a helluva town, The Bronx is up, the Battery's down, And the people ride around in a hole in the ground.

Now the incoming tide rolls in; the hours abruptly switch back to single digits again, and it's a little like the time you put your watch back on entering a different time zone. Now the buses knock off and the subway expresses turn into locals and the locals space themselves far apart; and as Johnny Carson's face hits millions of screens all at one and the same time, the incoming tide reaches its crest and pounds against the shore. There's a sudden splurge, a slew of taxis arriving at the hotel entrance one by one as regularly as though they were on a conveyor belt, emptying out and then going away again.

Then this too dies down, and a deep still sets in. It's an around-the-clock town, but this is the stretch; from now ~ Cornell Woolrich

They were the men and the women of the sand, of the wind, of the light, of the night. They appeared as in a dream, at the crest of a dune, as if they were born of the cloudless sky. ~ Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

That is the way Connecticut goes, in a series of Marcelle waves; and Lock Willow Farm is just on the crest of one wave. The barns used to be across the road where they obstructed the view, but a kind flash of lightning came from heaven and burnt them down. ~ Jean Webster

If we just stay at the crest of the mycelial wave, it will take us into heretofore unknown territories that will be just magnificent in their implications. ~ Paul Stamets

My walking powers were evidently miraculous, I was presently left alone for the first time. With a strange sense of freedom and adventure I pushed on up to the crest. ~ H.G.Wells

That is the earth, he thought. Not a globe thousands of kilometers around, but a forest with a shining lake, a house hidden at the crest of a hill, high in the trees, a grassy slope leading upwards from the water, fish leaping and birds strafing to take the bugs that lived at the border between water and sky. Earth was the constant noise of crickets, and winds, and birds ~ Orson Scott Card

Someone once said that the challenge of living is to develop a long obedience in the same direction. When it's demanded, we can rise on occasion and be patient . . . as long as there are limits. But we balk when patience is required over a long haul. We don't much like endurance. It's painful to persevere through a marriage that's forever struggling. A church that never crest 100 members. Housekeeping routines that never vary from week-to-week. Even caring for an elderly parent or a handicapped child can feel like a long obedience in the same direction.

If only we could open our spiritual eyes to see the fields of grain we're planting, growing, and reaping along the way. That's what happens when we endure...

Right now you may be in the middle of a long stretch of the same old routine.... You don't hear any cheers or applause. The days run together―and so do the weeks. Your commitment to keep putting one foot in front of the other is starting to falter.

Take a moment and look at the fruit. Perseverance. Determination. Fortitude. Patience.

Your life is not a boring stretch of highway. It's a straight line to heaven. And just look at the fields ripening along the way. Look at the tenacity and endurance. Look at the grains of righteousness. You'll have quite a crop at harvest . . . so don't give up! ~ Joni Eareckson Tada

Death Vision

I think it's a multiplication of sight,
Like after a low hovering autumn rain
When the invisible web of funnel weaves
And sheetweb weavers all at once are seen
Where they always were, spread and looping
The grasses, every strand, waft and leaf-
Crest elucidated with water-light and frost,
completing the fullest aspect of field.

Or maybe the grace of death is split-second
Transformation of knowledge, an intricate,
Turning realization, as when a single
Sperm-embracing deep ovum transforms,
In an instant, from stasis to replicating,
Star-shifting shimmer, rolls, reaches,
Alters its plane of intentions, becomes
A hoofing, thumping host of purpose.


I can imagine not merely
The falling away of blank walls
And blinds in that moment, not merely
A shutter flung open for the first time
Above a valley of interlocking forests
And constellations but a sweeping,
Penetrating circumference of vision
Encompassing both knotweed bud
And its seed simultaneously, seeing
Blood bone and its ash as one,
The repeated light and fall and flight
Of hawk-owl and tundra vole
As a union of origin and finality.

A mathematics of flesh and space might
Take hold if we ask for it in that last
Moment, might appear as if it had always
Existed within the eyes, translucent,
Jewel-like in stained gla ~ Pattiann Rogers

Human beings and their actions constitute the advancing front, the surging crest of an ongoing movement that never stops. ~ Corliss Lamont

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.

Of course, such an overweening purpose did not develop all at once. The mere stories were the thing. They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially since, even apart from the necessities of life, the mind would wing to the other pole and spen ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

You're not going to see any former suitors in Forest Crest, are you?"
An impish twinkle appeared in her eyes. "No, Mr. Morgan, I was never courted by any of the village lads."
"Why not? What in God's name is the matter with all of them?"
"I was never receptive to their advances," Victoria said, settling herself more comfortably on his lap. "I was absorbed in taking care of Father, and reading books, and..." Tenderly she laid her head on his shoulder. "I suppose I was waiting for you," she said, and felt his arms tighten until he nearly crushed her. ~ Lisa Kleypas

He swam the seas before the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the Tuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah's flood he despised Noah's Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like the Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will still survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial flood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies. ~ Herman Melville

I turn off my cell and drive to the most anonymous place I could think of: Walmart. You'd be surprised at how much time you can spend wandering through the aisles looking at Corelle dinnerware with lemon and lime patterns and comparing the prices of generic vitamins to brand names. I fill up a car with things I do not need; dishtowel, a camping lantern and a bedazzler. Three Jim Carey DVDs packaged together for ten dollars, crest white strips. Then I abandon the cart somewhere in the fishing and hunting section and unfold a lawn chair. I sit down and try to read the latest People. ~ Jodi Picoult

There is a flower, a little flower With silver crest and golden eye, That welcomes every changing hour, And weathers every sky. ~ James Montgomery

Most brilliant star upon the crest of Time
Is England. England! ~ Alexander Smith

This thought, this truth, it highlighted the distance between us. We lived in different timeframes. A reminder that, even right now, we didn't share the same moments. We could never truly be together. ~ P.I. Alltraine

Wake up, sleeping beauty," he whispered in her ear. "The sun is just about to crest the mountains."
"Tell it to wait," she mumbled. ~ Donna Grant

The gay bunting erects his white crest, and gives utterance to the joy he feels in the presence of his brooding mate; the willow grouse on the rock crows his challenge aloud; each floweret, chilled by the night air, expands its pure petals; the gentle breeze shakes from the blades of grass the heavy dewdrops. ~ John James Audubon

Last night, walking on the heath, she and I, alive, condescended toward the stars.
For then we knew quite surely that all the pother of the universe was but a prelude to that summer night and our uniting, and all the ages to come but a cadence after our loving.
Nestled down into the heather, we laughed, and took joy of one another, justifying the cosmic enterprise for ever by the moments of our caressing, while the simple stars watched unseeing.
Thus lovers, nations, worlds, nay galaxies, conceive themselves the crest of all that is. ~ Olaf Stapledon

Nature is flexible and resilient. Nature likes redundancy and dispersion. It is approximate and deals in gradients. All boundaries are permeable. Nature nests small systems like molecules within larger systems like cells, which in turn are nested in systems called organs, organisms, ecosystems. We grew from ancient one-celled ancestors. Nature likes mergers: we contain multitudes of other life forms within us. We stand at the crest of four billion years, bacteria molded into wondrous form, burning with a slow fire and about to take the next step. ~ Robert Frenay

Clearly we're in historic times here. We have - one of the tributaries of the Mississippi River is a river called the Merrimack. And the crest areas there - they're going to be a number of feet, 2, 3, 4, over what they were in '93 or '82. And on the Mississippi River itself, down below St. Louis, we're still projecting a couple of feet over that historic number. So the bottom line is there's a significant amount of water that's causing evacuations and challenges throughout that whole area. ~ Jay Nixon

The thing about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, the thing that was so profound to me that summer - and yet also, like most things, so very simple - was how few choices I had and how often I had to do the thing I least wanted to do. How there was no escape or denial. No numbing it down with a martini or covering it up with a roll in the hay. As I clung to the chaparral that day, attempting to patch up my bleeding finger, terrified by every sound that the bull was coming back, I considered my options. There were only two and they were essentially the same. I could go back in the direction I had come from, or I could go forward in the direction I intended to go. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I go to the gym, do some martial arts, and I love poetry. I have a tattoo of my family crest, and another on my back that says 'The Road Not Taken,' which is a poem by Robert Frost. ~ Steven R. McQueen

Taking a rosy crest into his mouth, he sucked lightly, ran his tongue over it, until she relaxed beneath him and began to moan.
Cam couldn't stop from moving then, forgetting everything but the need to push deeper into the gently gripping flesh, the warm limbs curving around him, the sweet panting mouth beneath his. He whispered compulsively against her lips... one word, over and over, the ecstasy crowning higher every time. "Mandis... mandis..."
Mine. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I run to run." ~ Sam"
― Tijan, Fallen Crest High ~ Tijan

VW Valley is one of the final mountains one climbs on Selection--but it's among the worst.
VW stands for Voluntary Withdrawal, and when you see the mountain you can understand why people have often quit here.
Steep, windswept, and boggy--and at mile thirty it is the point where many recruits quit and remove themselves from the course--broken by the sheer distance, weight, and speed.
But not me. Not now.
On my backside, I slid down the first steep reentrant leading into the bowl of the valley. I was using the butt of my weapon to steer me as I glissaded down the snow, and I finally slowed at the bottom, near an iced-over stream.
I crossed it and started straight up the face with Trucker behind me.
On and on and on--until finally at the crest I collapsed and waited for him.
Trux's feet were both badly swollen. Later on he discovered that he'd broken both of his big toes somewhere around this point. It was purely from the incessant pounding his feet were taking. He was in agony.
I heard him muttering under his breath. He was mumbling Bible verses to himself.
We had often both quietly prayed together before the big marches. Now we needed that help more than ever.
"I am holding you by your right hand…Do not be afraid. I am here to help you." Isaiah, 41:13.
If ever I needed to hear such words it was now.
It is easy to be cynical and to think you do not need help when all is going your way; but if Selection taught me anyth ~ Bear Grylls

My cheek stings with Demi's anger. On my lips, the taste of her skin lingers. The two sensations mix, intoxicating me. It's all too much. And yet, it's all so much more real than anything I've experienced before. I want to drink it up, let the rush crest over me. I feel alive. Powerful.
And I want more. ~ Christine Fonseca

Inside, my spirit is sparkling like foam on the crest of a wave at high tide under a full moon. ~ Laurie Nadel

The crest and crowning of all good, Life's final star, is brotherhood. ~ Edwin Markham

FALL, SIERRA NEVADA

This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast,
His place was taken by a family of chickadees;
At noon a flock of humming birds passed south,
Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between
Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane
Of the Sierra crest southward to Guatemala.
All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain,
The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them
Over the face of the glacier.
At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpion,
The Great Bear kneels on the mountain.
Ten degrees below the moon
Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley.
Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow
Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling
Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall.
Now there is distant thunder on the east wind.
The east face of the mountain above me
Is lit with far off lightnings and the sky
Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora.
It is storming in the White Mountains,
On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot peaks;
Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges
And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada.
Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud,
Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal,
Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope.
Frost, the color and quality of ~ Kenneth Rexroth

The stallion's crest was arched, his nose was perpendicular to the floor, and his hind legs were gathered underneath him, showing off the powerfully developed muscles in his massive hindquarters. His ears cocked back toward his rider - he was concentrating. ~ Elizabeth Letts

Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium--
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.--
'[kisses her]'
Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!--
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
And all is dross that is not Helena.
I will be Paris, and for love of thee,
Instead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sack'd;
And I will combat with weak Menelaus,
And wear thy colours on my plumed crest;
Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel,
And then return to Helen for a kiss.
O, thou art fairer than the evening air
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars;
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter
When he appear'd to hapless Semele;
More lovely than the monarch of the sky
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms;
And none but thou shalt be my paramour! ~ Christopher Marlowe

Light, my light, the world-filling light, the eye-kissing light, heart-sweetening light!
Ah, the light dances, my darling, at the centre of my life; the light strikes, my darling, the chords of my love; the sky opens, the wind runs wild, laughter passes over the earth.
The butterflies spread their sails on the sea of light. Lilies and jasmines surge up on the crest of the waves of light.
The light is shattered into gold on every cloud, my darling, and it scatters gems in profusion.
Mirth spreads from leaf to leaf, my darling, and gladness without measure. The heaven's river has drowned its banks and the flood of joy is abroad. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

A Pleasant Theology One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen? - from Mere Christianity ~ C.S. Lewis

My timing in life has been extraordinary. I've ridden the crest of the wave of the women's movement. ~ Susan Sullivan

You know what else I've learnt? That it's all right not to ride the crest of the wave. Every time a wave comes along I retreat, and I haven't come to any harm yet. ~ Jennifer Ehle

And at the word alone, Will felt a great wave of rage and despair moving outwards from a place deep within him, as if his mind were an ocean that some profound convulsion had disturbed. All his life he'd been alone, and now he must be alone again, and this infinitely precious blessing that had come to him must be taken away almost at once.He felt the wave build higher and steeper to darken the sky, he felt the crest tremble and begin to spill, he felt the great mass crashing down with the whole weight of the ocean behind it against the iron-bound coast of what had to be. And he felt himself crying aloud with more anger and pain than he had ever felt in his life, and he found Lyra just as helpless in his arms. But as the wave expended its force and the waters withdrew, the bleak rocks remained; there was no arguing with fate; neither his despair nor Lyra's had moved them a single inch. ~ Philip Pullman

Did you think they did it alone?
Built whole armies,
and conquered thrones?

Constructed promised lands
that would outlive the sun
resurrected prosperity from ash and bone?

A crest is not just a manmade thing
it is also created by generations of women
who wield swords through guile and letters.

Show me your kings,
and I will show you the queens that willed them,
that bred them, and taught them to do better. ~ Nikita Gill

It is best to be born in April or August when the life-giving Sun is in its exaltation sign Aries or Leo, its home, for then we enter the sea of life on the crest-wave and are backed in the battle of existence by an abundant fund of vim and energy. ~ Max Heindel

Why does life carry some people on the crest of the wave while others drown beneath the water? ~ Michelle Moran

To be 23 and riding the crest of a song sweeping the world country by country is to live an altered and wholly rarefied existence. ~ Dan Hill

But for a moment I stay there, suspended above the green swell of the land as though thrown up onto the crest of a wave, seeing for the first time a break in the at horizon. For this the boats crossed the ocean, the wagons climbed the mountain pass. For this the songs were sung with desert all around. This is what is given: the promise there is still a way, if we can find it, the promise we can always be renewed. ~ Kermit Roosevelt III

The family crest of none other than Professor James Moriarty." The very name filled me with fear, and my trousers with something that was certainly not fear. ~ Robert Thomas

Hey, Murph! What gives, man?"

I jump and drop the letter. Melonhead, my "supervisor," is standing at the crest of the hill, wiping a sweat-soaked handkerchief across his brow.

His last name isn't really Melonhead, any more than mine is Murph. But if he's going to take liberties with Murphy, I'm going to do the same with Melendez.

Only difference is that I don't say it to his face. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

Within forty minutes, the voice inside my head was screaming, WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO? I tried to ignore it, to hum as I hiked, though humming proved too difficult to do while also panting and moaning in agony and trying to remain hunched in that remotely upright position while also propelling myself forward when I felt like a building with legs. ~ Cheryl Strayed

But adrenaline, like any other drug, wears off. Panic, like any other flood, must crest. ~ Karen Thompson Walker

His mane was like a crest, mounting, then falling low. His neck was long and slender, and arched to the small, savagely beautiful head. The head was that of the wildest of all wild creatures- a stallion born wild- and it was beautiful, savage, splendid. A stallion with a wonderful physical perfection that matched his savage, ruthless spirit. ~ Walter Farley

You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. ~ Benjamin Disraeli