Exultation Quotes

One of the surest evidences of an elevated taste is the power of enjoying works of impassioned terrorism, in poetry, and painting. The man who can look at impassioned subjects of terror with a feeling of exultation may be certain he has an elevated taste. ~ Benjamin Haydon

The chief characteristics of the tall building is that it is lofty. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation so that from bottom to top it should be a unit without a single dissenting line. ~ Louis Sullivan

Desolate
Life is so dreary and desolate
Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle,
Yet with itself every soul standeth single,
Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan
Holding and having its brief exultation
Making its lonesome and low lamentation
Fighting its terrible conflicts alone. ~ Alice Cary

And there was somewhere inside me the thought: By Jove! this is the deuce of an adventure - something you read about; and it is my first voyage as second mate - and I am only twenty - and here I am lasting it out as well as any of these men, and keeping my chaps up to the mark. I was pleased. I would not have given up the experience for worlds. I had moments of exultation. Whenever the old dismantled craft pitched heavily with her counter high in the air, she seemed to me to throw up, like an appeal, like a defiance, like a cry to the clouds without mercy, the words written on her stern: Judea, London. Do or Die. O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! To me she was not an old rattle-trap carting around the world a lot of coal for a freight - to me she was the endeavor, the test, the trial of life. I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret - as you would think of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her. ~ Joseph Conrad

The job has its grandeurs, yes. There is the exultation of arriving safely after a storm, the joy of gliding down out of the darkness of night or tempest toward a sun-drenched Alicante or Santiago; there is the swelling sense of returning to repossess one's place in life, in the miraculous garden of earth, where are trees and women and, down by the harbor, friendly little bars. When he has throttled his engine and is banking into the airport, leaving the somber cloud masses behind, what pilot does not break into song? ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Play is the exultation of the possible. ~ Martin Buber

(President) Lyndon Johnson still snapped between exultation and insecurity. ~ Rick Perlstein

In the morning when he opened his eyes and when his glance fell upon the yellow linen of the curtain by the window, it seemed to him that its yellowness was suffused with the crimson of dark desire and that there was some strange and eerie tenseness in it. It seemed that the sun was insistently and fervently concentrating its burning and bitter rays towards this linen pierced by a golden color and summoning and demanding, and disturbing. And in reply to this fascinating external tension of gold and crimson the veins of the Youth were filled with a fiery agitation. His muscles were suffused with a resilient strength and his heart became like a spring of ardent fires. Sweetly pierced by millions of exciting, burning and arousing needles he leapt up from the bed and with a childlike gleeful laugh he began to leap and dance around the room without dressing.
("The Poison Garden") ~ Valery Bryusov

I knew it was insane to be happy, to feel this desperate exultation at his words. But I felt like I had been waiting all my life to hear them. I had been waiting, all my life, for someone undeceived to love me. And now he did, and it felt like walking into the dazzling sunlight of the Heart of Earth. Except that the sunlight was false, and his love was real. ~ Rosamund Hodge

My legs are still trembling as I climb the steps to Corly station. I've been shaking like this for hours, it must be the adrenaline, my heart just won't slow down. The train is packed - no chance of a seat here, it's not like getting on at Euston, so I have to stand, midway through a carriage. It's like a sweatbox. I'm trying to breathe slowly, my eyes cast down to my feet. I'm just trying to get a handle on what I'm feeling. Exultation, fear, confusion and guilt. Mostly guilt. ~ Paula Hawkins

His hands tightened around mine. "I love you," he said. "I love you more than any other creature, because you are cruel, and kind, and alive. Nyx Triskelion, will you be my wife?"
I knew it was insane to be happy, to feel this desperate exultation at his words. But I felt like I had been waiting all my life to hear them. I had been waiting, all my life, for someone undeceived to love me. And now he did, and it felt like walking into the dazzling sunlight of the Heart of Earth.
Except that the sunlight was false, and his love was real.
It was real.
Very deliberately, I pulled my hands out of his. "You're a demon," I said, staring at the ground.
"Most likely."
"I know what you've done."
"The exciting parts, anyway."
"And I still don't know your name." My hands trembled as I undid my belt, then started to unclasp the brooches. It seemed forever since that first day when I had ripped my bodice open so
easily. "But I know you're my husband."
The dress slid down to land on the ground about my feet. Ignifex touched my cheek very gently, as if I was a bird that might be startled into flight. Finally I met his eyes.
"And," I said. "I suppose I do love you."
Then he pulled me into his arms. ~ Rosamund Hodge

I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content. ~ Robert E. Howard

When a man falls in love, he sees the beloved in an idealized vision which to the rest of the world seems unjustified by the facts of the woman's character and appearance. The lover feels towards his beloved, thus idealized, a rapture of devotion, which seems to blend humility with exultation, self-giving with grateful receiving, in a joyful interchange of laughter and courtesy. What is the real significance of this vision and the mutual relationship which can emerge from it? [Charles] Williams tells us that the lover sees his beloved as all men would see one another, and all things, had not man fallen from his state of original innocence. He sees his beloved as all men ought to see their fellow-men 'in God'. The relationship between lover and beloved which emerges is (at its best) the relationship of joyful giving and receiving which ought to join all men together. Already such relationships exist among the perfected in Heaven. And the archetype of such perfected relationships is the coherence of the Three Persons of the Trinity. ~ Harry Blamires

Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brain through the spinal cord.

Entirely unprepared for such a development, I was completely taken by surprise; but regaining my self control instantaneously, I remained sitting in the same posture, keeping my mind on the point of concentration. The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light. It is impossible to describe the experience accurately. I felt the point of consciousness that was myself growing wider surrounded by waves of light. It grew wider and wider, spreading outward while the body, normally the immediate object of its perception, appeared to have receded into the distance until I became entirely unconscious of it. I was now all consciousness without any outline, without any idea of corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware at every point, spread out, as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction. I was no longer myself, or to be more accurate, no longer as I knew myself to be, a small point of awareness confined to a body, but instead was a vast circle of consciousness in which the body was but a point, bathed in light and in a state of exultation and happiness impossible to describe. ~ Gopi Krishna

Thou art my glory and the exultation of y heart: thou art my hope and refuge in the day of my trouble. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Every day that we allow ourselves to take things for granted, every day that we allow some little physical infirmity or worldly worry to come between us and our obstinate, indignant, defiant exultation, we are weakening our genius for life. ~ John Cowper Powys

I confess that I love him, I rejoice that I love him, I thank the maker of Heaven and Earth that gave him to me. The exultation floods me. ~ Emily Dickinson

Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat & stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame crimson, and I am content ... Conan the Cimmerian. ~ Robert E. Howard

What remains to be done must be done by you; since in order not to deprive us of our free will and such share of glory as belongs to us, God will not do everything himself. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

A song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice. ~ Thomas Aquinas

The origin of the political relations between the United States and France is coeval with the first years of our independence. The memory of it is interwoven with that of our arduous struggle for national existence. Weakened as it has occasionally been since that time, it can by us never be forgotten, and we should hail with exultation the moment which should indicate a recollection equally friendly in spirit on the part of France. ~ John Quincy Adams

The exultation of poverty as a spiritual virtue is of the ego, not the spirit. A person acting from a motivation of contribution and service rises to such a level of moral authority that worldly success is a natural result. ~ Marianne Williamson

Many new things came to his mind; traits of his own nature that he had never thought of and that seemed unrelated one to the other, fitted themselves together wonderfully and were fused into a rational whole. It was a fascinating time of discovery. Little by little, in fear and uncertain exultation, in incredulous joy, he found himself. He began to realize that he was not like others, and a new spiritual modesty made him shy, awkward, and taciturn. He grew suspicious of questions, and imagined he found hints of his own most hidden thoughts in everything that was said. Having learned to read in his own heart, he supposed everybody else could read what was written there, and he shunned his elders, preferring to roam about alone. ~ Jens Peter Jacobsen

Perhaps the best reason for regarding mathematics as an art is not so much that it affords an outlet for creative activity as that it provides spiritual values. It puts man in touch with the highest aspirations and lofiest goals. It offers intellectual delight and the exultation of resolving the mysteries of the universe. ~ Morris Kline

And what else is erotic craving but a craving to be violated? In voluptuous turmoil, we are left not simply wounded, but shattered. The violent emotions that are aroused, that sense the obscenity in anguish, that push on in a momentum that can no longer derail or control itself, sense also the exultation of risking oneself, of plunging into the danger zone, of expending our forces at a loss. ~ Alphonso Lingis

he was evidently in a state of suppressed exultation ~ Anonymous

Survival requires a dose of madness - what cynics call "hoping against hope" - just like art does; you conjure your future from white space, locate the hidden person, yourself, against this unfamiliar background, peering through grief and loss at something greater. "Survivors are more urgently rooted in life than most of us," observed one Holocaust expert. "Their will to survive is one with the thrust of life itself, as stubborn as the upsurge of spring. A strange exultation fills [their] soul, a sense of being equal to the worst. ~ Mark Matousek

Exultation that does not flow from education, affections that do not flow from knowing, savoring that does not flow from seeing, feeling that does not flow from thinking - are hollow and rootless - noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. And God is not glorified by artificial and empty passions. True delight is rooted in true doctrine. God-centered exultation is rooted in God-centered education. ~ John Piper

The small eyes, buried in epicanthic folds, shifted. A low, reverberating voice rumbled from the flesh and blood warrior. 'Trull Sengar. Is this… is this mortality?'
The Tiste Edur drew a step closer. 'You don't remember? How it feels to be alive?'
'I-I… yes.' A sudden look of wonder in that heavy, broadly featured face. 'Yes.' Another deep breath, then a gust that was nearly savage in its exultation. The strange gaze fixed on Quick Ben once more. 'Wizard, is this illusion? Dream? A journey of my spirit?'
'I don't think so. I mean, I think it's real enough.'
'Then… this realm. It is Tellann.'
'Maybe. I'm not sure.'
Trull Sengar was suddenly on his knees, and Quick Ben saw tears streaming down the Tiste Edur's lean, dusky face.
The burly, muscled warrior before them, still wearing the rotted remnants of fur, slowly looked round at the withered landscape of open tundra. 'Tellann,' he whispered. 'Tellann. ~ Steven Erikson

I ask of writing what I ask of desire: that it have no relation to the logic which puts desire on the side of possession, of acquisition, or even of that consumption-consummation which, when pushed to its limits with such exultation, links (false) consciousness with death ~ Helene Cixous

While they danced they came over them the weariness with the world, the melancholy, the pity one for the other, which is the exultation of love. ~ William Butler Yeats

Close your eyes and turn your face into the wind. Feel it sweep along your skin in an invisible ocean of exultation. Suddenly, you know you are alive. ~ Vera Nazarian

Overall, the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers. ~ Diana Gabaldon

As he left, I peered at Sarah Mapps and her mother, the way they grabbed hands and squeezed in relief, and then at Nina, at the small exultation on her face. She was braver than I, she always had been. I cared too much for the opinions of others, she cared not a whit. I was cautious, she was brash. I was a thinker, she was a doer. I kindled fires, she spread them. And right then and ever after, I saw how cunning the Fates had been. Nina was one wing, I was the other. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Everyone has a purpose in life and a unique talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstasy and exultation of own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals. ~ Kallam Anji Reddy

God, my God, omnipotent King, I humbly adore thee. Thou art King of kings, Lord of lords. Thou art the Judge of every age. Thou art the Redeemer of souls. Thou art the Liberator of those who believe. Thou art the Hope of those who toil. Thou art the Comforter of those in sorrow. Thou art the Way to those who wander. Thou art Master to the nations. Thou art the Creator of all creatures. Thou art the Lover of all good. Thou art the Prince of all virtues. Thou art the joy of all Thy saints. Thou art life perpetual. Thou art joy in truth. Thou art the exultation in the eternal fatherland. Thou art the Light of light. Thou art the Fountain of holiness. Thou art the glory of God the Father in the height. Thou art Savior of the world. Thou art the plenitude of the Holy Spirit. Thou sittest at the right hand of God the Father on the throne, reigning for ever. ~ St Patrick

Is that Eduardo Lucas of Godolphin Street?" "Yes." "You will not see him." "Why not?" "He was murdered in his house last night." My friend has so often astonished me in the course of our adventures that it was with a sense of exultation that I realized how completely I had astonished him. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

All I wanted was what I'd already had. That exultation, that love. It was my one real home; I was a visitor everywhere else. ~ Scott Spencer

There is nothing quite like the drama and suspense of a penalty shootout. The player tasked with taking the penalty can thunder the ball home or smash it against the crossbar, or even sky it completely over the bar. Nothing will bring housewives out of the kitchen or shush the pub into complete silence quite like the theatre of the penalty shootout, no matter who's playing. No one can be apathetic about the penalty shootout
It's as if for just those few seconds a player's soul is laid bare for the entire world to see. The camera pans in and we can clearly see the hesitancy and heroics, the expectation and exultation, the self-doubt or self-glorification, the uncertainty and relief ….. or disappointment.
Nothing matches the thrill! ~ Karl Wiggins

Up to then, the joy of fulfilling, perhaps over-fulfilling, their duty had kept them in a state of exultation. Such a state is close to enthusiasm and that makes one insensible to the things of this earth. But their enthusiasm died down, and they had had gradually to return from the land of dreams to the world of reality. ~ Alexandre Dumas

They damaged his nervous system with a wartime Russian mycotoxin. Strapped to a bed in a Memphis hotel, his talent burning out micron by micron, he hallucinated for thirty hours. The damage was minute, subtle, and utterly effective. For Case, who'd lived for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. ~ William Gibson

A wise man can do no better than to turn from the churches and look up through the airy majesty of the wayside trees with exultation, with resignation, at the unconquerable uncomplicated sun. ~ Llewelyn Powys

He laughed in exultation as he came upon the house, the rush of his full power better than any human drug, the joy of its unfettered release expanding his heart with every beat, gorging his lungs with every breath. ~ D.B. Reynolds

When the soul is just liberated from the wretched giant's bed of dogmas on which it has been racked and stretched ever since it began to think, there is a feeling of exultation and strong hope. ~ George Eliot

Deronda ... gave himself up to that strongest effect of chanted liturgies which is independent of detailed verbal meaning ... The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and an invocation of all Good to enter and abide with us; or else a self-oblivious lifting up of gladness, a Gloria in excelsis that such Good exists; both the yearning and the exultation gathering their utmost force from the sense of communion in a form which has expressed them both, for long generations of struggling fellow-men. ~ George Eliot

Tantra is for the desperate. Unless you've really experienced pain and suffering, tantra won't work. Unless you've really experienced exultation and ecstasy, tantra won't work. ~ Frederick Lenz

As you embrace the present and become one with it, and merge with it, you will experience a fire, a glow, a sparkle of ecstasy throbbing in every sentient being. As you begin to experience this exultation of spirit in everything that is alive, as you become intimate with it, joy will be born within you, and you will drop the terrible burdens of defensiveness, resentment, and hurtfulness ... then you will become lighthearted, carefree, joyous, and free. ~ Deepak Chopra

He [Columbus] enjoyed long stretches of pure delight such as only a seaman may know, and moments of high, proud exultation that only a discoverer can experience. ~ Samuel Eliot Morison

Man is a part of God, or else he is a beast; and beasts know love and fear and hate and hunger
but not exultation ~ Howard Fast

Forward now. Forward to battle slaughter. Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear. I was such a one, and that day, beside the river where the blood flowed into the rising tide, and beside the burning boats, I let Serpent-Breath sing her song of death. I remember little except a rage, an exultation, a massacre. This was the moment the skalds celebrate, the heart of the battle that leads to victory, and the courage had gone from those Danes in a heartbeat. ~ Bernard Cornwell

The best results in the operation of a government wherein every citizen has a share largely depend upon a proper limitation of the purely partisan zeal and effort and a correct appreciation of the time when the heat of the partisan should be merged in the patriotism of the citizen ... At this hour the animosities of political strife, the bitterness of partisan defeat, and the exultation of partisan triumph should be supplanted by an ungrudging acquiescence in the popular will and a sober, conscientious concern for the general weal ... Public extravagance begets extravagance among the people. ~ Grover Cleveland

Motionless now, Mersault felt how close happiness is to tears, caught up in that silent exultation which weaves together the hopes and despairs of human life. Conscious yet alienated, devoured by passion yet disinterest, Mersault realized that his life and his fate were completed here and that henceforth all his efforts would be to submit to this happiness and to confront its terrible truth. ~ Albert Camus

Promethea has awakened in me dreams extinguished for thousands of years; sometimes one catches on fire even through so many icy layers. Promethea has rekindled dreams of fire in me, dreams of abysses, they are terribly dangerous dreams: as long as they are dreams alone, as long as one dreams alone, one can fool around with dreaming, because afterward one forgets. But now, ever since I learned how Promethea brings the fire of all dreams up into reality, how she climbs back up through the shaft of the Red Cows, bearing the first fire, how she crosses the Chamber of the Mares, how she goes through every epoch of existence reawakening along the walls memories of times so fragile and so inflammable, and comes out in 1982 still carrying in her hands the primitive spark, I feel myself wavering between exultation and terror. Formerly, I too sucked satiny coals. Once I burned my tongue. (That only happens if someone makes you lose faith.) Ever since I have no longer dared suck real fire; for a long time I lived on electricity. But I have never forgotten the fiery taste of eternity. I just was sure that I could live with my tongue extinguished until the end of my days. I was not even tempted. I was calm. I had firm definitions. I called happiness the absence of unhappiness. I wrote in ink and I dedicated my dreams to the Moons. ~ Helene Cixous

But never in all her human days had her blood bubbled with such a golden exultation and such blissful freedom as now when she ran, a werewolf, across the marsh. ~ Aino Kallas

To have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation - this to to have succeeded. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is not sufficiently considered in the hour of exultation, that all human excellence is comparative; that no man performs much but in proportion to what other accomplish, or to the time and opportunities which have been allowed him. ~ Samuel Butler

she allowed herself to dwell on the cause of this strange, apprehensive exultation that she sensed flickering at the edge of her mind: it was the rarest thing of all - a man whom she knew at once, and without any qualification, to be her equal. ~ Philip Pullman

Other feelings too can be philosophical - pain, grief, tedium, delight, exultation - if they are experienced on behalf of humankind. "I looked around me, and my soul became wounded by the suffering of mankind" is the opening of Alexander Radishchev's "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" (1790), which laid the foundation of all subsequent Russian philosophy. It is a philosophy shaped by feelings of suffering and compassion, by the Karamazovian question of how to justify a child's tears. The range of philosophical feelings is wide. ~ Mikhail Epstein

Cool wind soothed her. She could breathe sweet air. The only heat she felt was the warm, familiar heat from the mage's body. Opening her eyes, she saw that she stood close to him. Raising her head, she gazed up into his face ... and felt a swift, sharp ache in her heart.
Raistlin's thin face glistened with sweat, his eyes reflected the pure, white flame of the burning bodies, his breath came fast and shallow. He seemed lost, unaware of his surroundings. And there was a look of ecstasy on his face, a look of exultation, of triumph.
"I understand," Crysania said to herself, holding onto his hands. "I understand. This is why he cannot love me. He has only one love in this life and that is his magic. To this love he will give everything, for this love he will risk everything! ~ Margaret Weis

People are part of my music. A lot of my songs are the result of emotional experiences, sadness, pain, joy, and exultation in nature and sunshine and so on ... like 'California Girls' which was a hymn to youth. ~ Brian Wilson

To check centralization and usurping of power ... we require a new laissez-faire. The old laissez-faire was founded upon a misapprehension of human nature, an exultation of individuality (in private character often a virtue) to the condition of a political dogma, which destroyed the spirit of community and reduced men to so many equipollent atoms of humanity, without sense of brotherhood or purpose. ~ Russell Kirk

And if I had loved him less I should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but, sitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting- called to the paradise of union- I thought only of the bliss given to me to drink in so abundant a flow.
Again and again he said, "Are you happy, Jane?" And again and again I answered, "Yes. ~ Charlotte Bronte

You cannot explain, with the limitations of language and inexperience, why your body can cause such a sudden, fumbling response in someone else, nor can you put into exact words what you feel about your body, explain the thrum it feels in proximity to another warm-skinned form. What you feel is a tangle of contradictions: power, pleasure, fear, shame, exultation, some strange wish to make noise. You cannot say how those things knit themselves together somewhere in the lower abdomen and pulse. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Thus far then have we travelled along the terrible road we chose at the call of duty. The mood of Britain is wisely and rightly averse from every form of shallow or premature exultation. This is no time for boasts or glowing prophecies, but there is this: A year ago our position looked forlorn, and well nigh desperate to all eyes but our own. To-day we may say aloud before an awe-struck world: 'We are still masters of our fate. We are still captain of our souls. ~ Winston S. Churchill

Yet I have a clever touch and pander to your vices. While looking on in exultation. And so I play my game, with the exuberance of experience, the strange and terribly subtle final aims of my Asiatic Blood that remain a mystery to you. ~ Paul Meyer

Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes- and most fools do- but it raises one above the herd and gives one a feeling of nobility and exultation to admit one's mistakes. ~ Dale Carnegie

Behold the onset of my flinty tone. Along with so much else, a soft-tissue sarcoma can apparently drain the exultation from one's prose. ~ Jonathan Lethem

There are two sins of men that are bred in the bone and that continually come out in the flesh. One is self-dependence and the other is self-exultation. ~ Charles Spurgeon