Groundskeepers Rake Quotes

Julian felt about Courtenay's looks the way radicals thought about money: that it was deeply unfair and problematic for one person to possess such a disproportionate share. ~ Cat Sebastian

Now I lay me down to sleep In mud that's many fathoms deep. If I'm not here when you awake Just hunt me up with an oyster rake ~ Shelby Foote

You were already in a prison. You've been in a prison all your life. Happiness is a prison, Evey. Happiness is the most insidious prison of all. Your lover lived in the penitentiary that we are all born into, and was forced to rake the dregs of that world for his living. He knew affection and tenderness but only briefly. Eventually, one of the other inmates stabbed him with a cutlass and he drowned upon his own blood. Is that it, Evey? Is that the happiness worth more than freedom? It's not an uncommon story, Evey. Many convicts meet with miserable ends. Your mother. Your father. Your lover. One by one, taken out behind the chemical sheds... and shot. All convicts, hunched and deformed by the smallness of their cells, the weight of their chains, the unfairness of their sentences. I didn't put you in a prison, Evey. I just showed you the bars.'
'You're wrong! It's just life, that's all! It's just how life is. It's what we've got to put up with. It's all we've got. What gives you the right to decide it's not good enough?'
'You're in a prison, Evey. You were born in a prison. You've been in a prison so long, you no longer believe there's a world outside. That's because you're afraid, Evey. You're afraid because you can feel freedom closing in upon you. You're afraid because freedom is terrifying. Don't back away from it, Evey. Part of you understands the truth even as part pretends not to. You were in a cell, Evey. They offered you a choice between the death of your pr ~ Alan Moore

Izzy was utterly convinced. Never mind Arabian horses, African cheetahs. No creature in the world could bolt so quickly as a rake confronted with the word "marriage". They ought to shout it out at footraces rather than using starting pistols.
Ready, steady ... matrimony! ~ Tessa Dare

Isn't it true that when some couple celebrates their tenth or fifteenth anniversary they seem far from triumphant? In fact they seem duped while dirty Uncle Harry, the rake, seems to wear the laurels. ~ John Cheever

This blood feud is a bit too Shakespearean, if ye want the truth. I'm no Montague, and ye're no Capulet. ~ Kerrigan Byrne

Did you ever tread on your partner's dress at a dance - I'm speaking now of the days when women wore dresses long enough to be trodden on - and hear it rip and see her smile at you like an angel and say, "Please don't apologise. It's nothing," and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you in the face? ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Some lessons you learn gradually and some you learn in a sudden moment, like a flash going off in a dark room. I sift and rake and dig around in my vivid recollections of young Sean on the floor in summer, and I try to see what makes him tick, but I know a secret about young Sean, I guess, that he kind of ends up telling the world: nothing makes him tick. It just happens all by itself, tick tick tick tick tick, without any proximal cause, with nothing underneath it. He is like a jellyfish adrift in the sea, throbbing quietly in the warm waves of the surf just off the highway where the dusty white vans with smoked windows and indistinct decals near their wheel hubs roll innocently past. ~ John Darnielle

I rake my hands across his biceps and down his pecs. Water and sand crumble to shimmery, granular trails along his chest hair in my wake. As I touch him, his breath catches and his long, dark eyelashes close in exquisite agony.
I splay my fingertips and open my palm to match his cigarette burns to my scars. His muscles answer with tiny twitches, every part of him strong where I'm soft.
"Jeb."
He opens his eyes and we lock gazes.
"This is why we fit. Because we're both damaged, in a way that can't be healed. ~ A.G. Howard

You can rake the muck this way, rake the muck that way
it will always be muck. Have I sinned or have I not sinned? In the time I am brooding over it, I could be stringing pearls for the delight of Heaven ~ Martin Buber

What is your objection to the clothes?" Sebastian asked, glancing at the gowns. "They're black, aren't they?"
"Well, yes, but they're not made of crepe."
"Do you want to wear crepe?"
"Of course not - no one does. But if people saw me wearing anything else, there would be terrible gossip."
One of Sebastian's brows arched. "Evie," he said dryly, "you eloped against your family's wishes, you married a notorious rake, and you're living in a gaming club. How much more damned gossip do you think you could cause? ~ Lisa Kleypas

We are all born with an innate understanding of interpersonal equity - the idea that if you lend me your rake today, I'll respond in kind when you come to borrow my shovel tomorrow. Or nearly all of us are born with that. Psychopaths aren't. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

I think I might be ready to go upstairs," she said. Suddenly it was too hard to be in his presence, too painful to know that he would belong to someone else.
His lips quirked into a boyish smile. "Are you saying I might finally crawl out from under this table?"
"Oh, goodness!" She clapped one of her hands to her cheek in a sheepish expression. "I'm so sorry. I stopped noticing where we were sitting ages ago, I'm afraid. What a ninny you must think me."
He shook his head, still smiling. "Never a ninny, Kate. Even when I thought you the most insufferable female creature on the planet, I had no doubts about your intelligence."
Kate, who had been in the process of scooting out from under the table, paused. "I just don't know if I should feel complimented or insulted by that statement."
"Probably both," he admitted, "but for friendship's sake, let's decide upon complimented."
She turned to look at him, aware that she presented an awkward picture on her hands and knees, but the moment seemed too important to delay. "Then we are friends?" she whispered.
He nodded as he stood. "Hard to believe, but I think we are."
Kate smiled as she took his helping hand and rose to her feet. "I'm glad. You're - you're really not the devil I'd originally thought you."
One of his brows lifted, and his face suddenly took on a very wicked expression.
"Well, maybe you are," she amended, thinking he probably was every bit the rake and rogue tha ~ Julia Quinn

So. Her husband-to-be was a philanderer. A smooth operator. A debaucher. A rake. A frisker. (Jane was something of a walking thesaurus when she was upset, a side effect of too much reading.) ~ Cynthia Hand

Perhaps..." Resuming his rake's persona, investing every movement with languid grace, he shifted forward, closer. Held her gaze. "You could teach me what it is you need." He let his gaze drift from her eyes to her lips. "I've always been considered a fast learner, and if I'm willing to learn, to devote myself to the study of what you truly want..."
Her lips parted slightly. He raised his gaze once more to her eyes, to the stormy blue. Read her interest, knew he had her undivided attention.
Inwardly smiled. "If I swear I'll do all I can to meet your requirements, shouldn't you accept the...challenge, if you like, to take me as I am and reshape me to your need?"
Holding her gaze, resisting the urge to lower his to her tempting lips, he raised a hand, touched the backs of his fingers to her cheek in a tantalizingly light caress. "You could, if you wished, take on the challenge of taming the ton's foremost rake, of making me your devoted slave...but you'd have to work at it, make the effort and take the time to educate me-arrogantly oblivious male that I am-all of which will be much easier, facilitated as it were, by us marrying. After all, nothing worthwhile is ever attained easily or quickly. If I'm willing to give you free rein to mold me to your liking, shouldn't you be willing to engage?"
She was thinking, considering he could see it in her eyes. She was following his arguments, her mind following the path he wanted it to take.
Shifting his fingers t ~ Stephanie Laurens

Don't waste a thought on any of the eligible suitors you've found for me, dear ma'am! There is more of mama in me than you have the least idea of, and the only eligible husband for me is a rake! ~ Georgette Heyer

Roza ... "
The voice caressed my skin, cold and deadly. Still scrutinizing his surroundings, Dimitri took one step forward. Then another. And then another.
I think it occurred to him to look up the instant I jumped. My body slammed into his, knocking him to the ground back first. He immediately tried to throw me off, just as I tried to drive the stake through his heart. Signs of fatigue and fighting were all over him. Defeating the other Strigoi had taken its toll, though I doubted I was in much better shape. We grappled, and once, I managed to rake the stake over his cheek. He snarled in pain but kept his chest well protected. Over it, I could see where I'd ripped his shirt the first time I'd staked him. The wound had already healed. "You. Are. Amazing," he said, his words full of both pride and battle fury. ~ Richelle Mead

Not many people can imagine a president of the Parlement of Aix - it is a species of beast of which people have often spoken without knowing it well: strict and unbending by profession, and pernickety, credulous, stubborn, vain, cowardly, garrulous and stupid by character; with a beaky little face, rolling his 'r's like a Punchinello, commonly as thin as a rake, lanky and skinny and stinking like a corpse... ~ Marquis De Sade

Forget the garden rake. Remember that time you dived over the desk at that guy in moot court? Had him by the throat in two seconds flat, that's what I heard."
"You heard wrong."
"And they suspended you for how long?" Antonia innocently asked.
"A day. And I apologized. Actually I crawled like a slug and ate dirt," Bree said ruefully. "But that was years ago, and have I pulled a stunt like that again? No, I have not. ~ Mary Stanton

If you didn't have me to rake you over the coals now and then, there wouldn't be any fire in your life at all. ~ Joe Hill

One may feel a sudden wave of sadness and rake his brain for an explanation when he might have noticed that it was caused by a cloud cutting off the rays of the sun. ~ Nikola Tesla

Prusis told me that the fluke's raging in Moscow, and there's nothing to bury people in. All the material's been used up. So I decided to come out and set things straight.'
Ostap, who had been listening curiously to the entire conversation, stepped in. 'Listen, pops. It's Paris where the flu is raging.'
'In Paris?'
'Well, yes. So go to Paris. You'll rake it in there! It's true that you'll have a few difficulties with the visa, but don't get down about it, pops. If Briand takes a shine to you, your life won't be half-bad: you'll be set up as personal coffin-maker to the municipality of Paris. ~ Ilya Ilf

Prosperity's Curse {Couplet}
Prosperity's a gilded curse,
misdirecting our poor souls
from the higher purpose of life's fire,
to mindlessly rake over old coals. ~ Beryl Dov

They say kids are like sponges because they observe everything. I guess that makes teens and adults like mops because they're just as copycatish as kids are. Personally, I am more like a rake, I leave behind more than I pick up! ~ David A. Santos

I'm supposed to stay away from you." He grinned at that. "Says who?" She ignored the question. "And while I'm certain that at least half the rumors about you couldn't possibly be true - " "They are," Gideon said without a trace of shame. "You're a rake, then." "The worst kind. ~ Lisa Kleypas

He was, and is yet, most likely, the wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself, and fling the curses on his neighbours. ~ Emily Bronte

I am a more disinterested Ginsberg admirer than Eddie is. Eddie, so to speak, comes to the table with a croupier's rake. He works for the house. He skims from poetry. ~ Saul Bellow

You sank our toy ship /
sank it deep in the cake.
You shook up our house /
and you bent our new rake!"
~ Fish, to Cat ~ Dr. Seuss

Does a rake deserve to possess anything of worth, since he chases everything in skirts and then imagines he can successfully hide his shame by slandering [women in general]? ~ Christine De Pizan

A bad composition carries its own punishment - contempt and ridicule; a good one excites envy and entails upon its author a thousand mortifications; he finds himself assailed by partial and ill-humored criticism; one man finds fault with the plan, another with the style, a third with the precept which strives to inculcate; and they who cannot succeed in finding fault with the book, employ themselves in stigmatizing its author: they maliciously rake out from obscurity every little circumstance which may throw ridicule upon his private character or conduct and aim at wounding the man since they cannot hurt the writer. ~ Matthew Gregory Lewis

Air buffeted him and he heard the heavy flap of wings. Rake smiled. "Silanah," he said softly, knowing she would hear him. The red dragon slipped between two towers and banked, returning to his position. "I know you sense the Demon Lord's presence, Silanah. You would help me in this. I know, I know." He shook his head. "Return to Moon's Spawn, dear friend. This battle is mine. Yours is done. But know this: if I fail, you may seek to avenge my death." Silanah swept overhead and loosed a thin wail. "Go home," Rake whispered. The red dragon cried again, then swung westward and rose through the night air. ~ Steven Erikson

In the hazy afternoon light through the windows he looked beautiful and dissolute, shirt open at the collar and streaks of golden hair falling into his eyes, like some Regency buck after a long night's dancing. ~ Tana French

Now we see again, under the blue heavens where the larks are singing in the hot April sky, why the Romans called the Etruscans vicious. Even in their palmy days the Romans were not exactly saints. But they thought they ought to be. They hated the phallus and the ark, because they wanted empire and dominion and, above all, riches: social gain. You cannot dance gaily to the double flute and at the same time conquer nations or rake in large sums of money. Delenda est Carthago. To the greedy man, everybody that is in the way of its greed is vice incarnate. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Daphne turned to Simon with an amused expression. "I can't quite decide if she is being terribly polite or exquisitely rude."
"Exquisitely polite, perhaps?" Simon asked mildly.
She shook her head. "Oh, definitely not that."
"The alternative, of course, is - "
"Terribly rude?" Daphne grinned and watched as her mother looped her arm through Lord Railmont's, pointed him toward Daphne so that he could nod his good-bye, and led him from the room.
And then, as if by magic, the remaining beaux murmured their hasty farewells and followed suit.
"Remarkably efficient, isn't she?" Daphne murmured.
"Your mother? She's a marvel."
"She'll be back, of course."
"Pity. And here I thought I had you well and truly in my clutches."
Daphne laughed. "I don't know how anyone considered you a rake. Your sense of humor is far too superb."
"And here we rakes thought we were so wickedly droll."
"A rake's humor," Daphne stated, "is essentially cruel."
Her comment surprised him. He stared at her intently, searching her brown eyes, and yet not really knowing what it was he was looking for.
There was a narrow ring of green just outside her pupils, the color as deep and rich as moss. He'd never seen her in the daylight before, he realized.
"Your grace?" Daphne's quiet voice snapped him out of his daze.
Simon blinked. "I beg your pardon."
"You looked a thousand miles away," she said, her brow wrinkling.
Julia Quinn

Just when I think you've hit bottom you continue to amaze me," Kyle said. "Or, does this get worse? Nothing would surprise me after this. Are you sleeping with a married man whose wife is dying of cancer?"
Elroy didn't think he'd done anything wrong. "I know nothing about his wife, or his husband for that matter. I don't ask and I'm not out to break up his home. Lighten up, man. Everybody does it. It's not like I'm going to freaking marry this dude. I'm only having a little fun with him. You wanna come with me? We'll have a three-way. You should see the way this guy moves. It will blow your mind."
With that remark Kyle shoved his hands into his pockets and walked faster. "No, thank you. That's not something I'm interested in doing. Meeting nice, decent people is the only thing that blows my mind. I just hope you're using condoms, you goddman asshole. ~ Ryan Field

Samantha imagined that in another life, she and Alison could have, indeed, been friends.
Had she not been about to rob the train. ~ Kerrigan Byrne

Wish that they could walk forever
On the earth alone and fettered
Until they pray for consolation
Until they beg for sweet damnation
Then I'll come and bring them water
Bring them hope, bring them laughter
Raise their hopes both sad and sunken
Slash them up as they lie there drunken
Push them down into the foul mud
Until they choke up on their own blood
Drag them out before their last breath
To take away the mercy of death
Mother's eyes are sparking diamonds
Still the moon shows no light
This rose is withered
May God deliver
The rake at the gates of hell tonight ~ Shane MacGowan

If trees had love, instead of leaves, I'd gladly rake you into a pile on my lawn and fall into you. ~ Jarod Kintz

In the next poem, Hamilton has suddenly metamorphosed into a jaded rake, who begins with a shocking, Swiftian opening line: 'Celia's an artful little slut. ~ Ron Chernow

The rake himself lived up to Amy's expectations, however, when he came out to greet his guests. Tall, dark, handsome, and dressed with devastating informality in an open-necked shirt, sleeves rolled up to expose his arms like a laborer. No one could fair to be aware of a lithe body beneath the slight amount of clothing, and there was a wicked gleam in his eye even if he was supposed to have been tamed by matrimony.
Amy found it difficult to believe that the very ordinary woman by his side had achieved such a miracle. Lady Templemore was short and her gown was a simple green muslin. Her face was close to plain and her brown hair was gathered into a simple knot at the back.
But then she smiled at her guests and was beautiful. When she turned to her husband with a comment, she was dazzling, and the look in his eye showed he was tamed indeed, if devotion so heated could be called tame at all. ~ Jo Beverley

Yes, I'm a man and everyone knows men are great hairy beasts scarcely tamed by civilization
-Jermyn, Duke of Northcliff to Amy, Princess Beaumontaigne ~ Christina Dodd

I'm unaccustomed to being cooped up all day-I really must insist that you permit me to enjoy a short walk."
"Not on your life," Fletcher growled.
From the sound, Breckenridge realized the group had moved closer to the tap.
"You don't need to think you're going to give us the slip so easily," Fletcher said again.
"My dear good man"-Heather with her nose in the air; Breckenridge could tell by her tone-"just where in this landscape of empty fields do you imagine I'm going to slip to?"
Cobbins opined that she might try to steal a horse and ride off.
"Oh,yes-in a round gown and evening slippers," Heather jeered. "But I wasn't suggesting you let me ramble on my own-Martha can come with me."
That was Martha's cue to enter the fray, but Heather stuck to her guns, refusing to back down through the ensuing, increasingly heated verbal stoush.
Until Fletcher intervened, aggravated frustration resonating in his voice. "Look you-we're under strict orders to keep you safe, not to let you wander off to fall prey to the first shiftless rake who rides past and takes a fancy to you."
Silence reigned for half a minute, then Heather audibly sniffed. "I'll have you know that shiftless rakes know better than to take a fancy to me."
Not true, Breckenridge thought, but that wasn't the startling information contained in Fletcher's outburst. "Come on, Heather-follow up."
As if she'd heard his muttered exhortation, she blithely swept on. "But if ra ~ Stephanie Laurens

How circumstantial reality is! Facts are like individual letters, with their spikes and loops and thorns, that make up words: eventually they hurt our eyes, and we long to take a bath, to rake the lawn, to look at the sea. ~ John Updike

Dontel Benjamin on 'Eastbound' is a loud-mouth, braggadocios, crazy man, while Roy on 'Rake' is a very deliberate, thoughtful man, and he doesn't scream a lot. ~ Omar Dorsey

Sometimes, lying out on Aunt Ivy and Uncle Holt's back lawn, it'd felt as if I could stretch out my arms and my fingertips and rake them across the underside of the heavens and end up with a fistful of stars. ~ Kirby Larson

And now, dear Emma, I'll show you just what you have to be wary of," he said, and his head moved down, blotting out the light.
This was no slow, sensuous caress of mouth and lip. This was no chaste salute, nor was it the wet awkwardness of an untried boy or a randy old man. He opened his mouth over hers and kissed her, using his tongue, his teeth, and all the clever weapons he had in his arsenal.
She told herself she was being kissed by a practiced rake. She told herself it meant nothing, it was a trick, an act, a small skill that anyone could acquire. She told herself that as her body trembled and melted beneath him, as her mouth opened to his skillful insistence. She told herself it meant absolutely nothing as his tongue pushed into her mouth, and the moan that came from deep inside her had to be one of displeasure, didn't it?
It wasn't one kiss, it was twenty, it was a long series of unending kisses, leading one into another, so that she barely had time to begin to regain her sanity when he stripped it away once more. He kissed her eyelids, the side of her mouth, the beating pulse at the base of her neck. He kissed her nose and her chin, he bit her earlobe, and then he covered her mouth once more, kissing her with a devastating thoroughness that had her damp and trembling in his arms.
His hands were on her petticoats, slowly drawing them up her long legs, and her hips cradled him. He was hard against her, she belatedly recognized that fact, and the kno ~ Anne Stuart

Is that it?" he demanded, in sudden rage. "Is that all that matters? Not that I am in love and tumbled like a fool into sin. Not that I can never be happy, married to a snake and in love with a heartbreaker, but only, only, that Mistress Anne Boleyn's reputation must be without blemish." At once she flew at him, her hands spread like claws, and he caught her wrists before she could rake his face. "Look at me!" she hissed. "Didn't I give up my only love, didn't I break my heart? Didn't you tell me then that it was worth the price?" He held her away but she was unstoppable. "Look at Mary! Didn't we take her from her husband and me from mine? And now you have to give up someone too. You have to lose the great love of your life, as I have lost mine, as Mary lost hers. Don't whimper to me about heartbreak, you murdered my love and we buried it together and now it is gone." George ~ Philippa Gregory