Hester Quotes

Hester, meanwhile, says we should live all of life back to front. We should be born old and age younger. Our baptism should be a ritual of our funeral. We should die as infants, content in our mothers' arms, having lost all our learning and all sense of disappointment. If only we could die, she says, not knowing we'd ever grieved. ~ Timothy Schaffert

I'm not that nice," I said. People were always telling me how nice I was. You'd think it would be a compliment, but it was amazing how sometimes it just felt like a kinder way of saying "blah." "I just keep my horrible side well hidden. ~ Hester Browne

Education is all paint - it does not alter the nature of the wood that lies under it, it only improves its appearance a little. Why I dislike education so much is, that it makes all people alike, until you have examined into them; and it sometimes is so long before you get to see under the varnish! ~ Lady Hester Stanhope

Hester, in the dark conclusion of Hawthorne's brooding novel, reassumes the Puritan mantle….Hawthorne thus captures the catch-22 of feminism: the very woman who is able to envision a new order of living is, by the same token, unable, since the passion that enables her also adulterates her in the eyes of the Puritans. Released from goodness, she is imprisoned in badness, within the framework of the puritanical order. But her mind is free to question the order. ~ Carol Gilligan

I am quite reactionary about Aussies travelling. Why, we've only been here a hundred years. What can be added by going before we are here? - that is not right but for we are here, but only just here. If we don't hold what we have we may never find it again, so delicate a thing it is, yet it gives the appearance of being overpowerful on close examination ... I don't think a change of location can answer our questions. ~ Joy Hester

The way he looks at me, all serious and attentive, was more flattering than any compliment I'd ever had ~ Hester Browne

Tonight
Since I'd forgotten for a moment where you are,
I search for you with hope in my bones. ~ Hester Knibbe

I've been foolish." (Hester)
"I hope you at least had a grand time being foolish." (Ariadne) ~ Grace Burrowes

My mind seemed to think in terms of very bad song lyrics these days. ~ Hester Browne

... don't expect Nicky to provide some kind of happily ever after for you. Because it's not up to him, it's up to you. ~ Hester Browne

Tis never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest, or for their wit that one loves the wittiest; 'tis for benevolence and virtue and honest fondness one loves people. ~ Hester Lynch Piozzi

With wealth, I can do pretty much what I want. But you've got to provide a good example because you have a lot of people that look up to you now. ~ Devin Hester

He received in essence the same answer from every other shop he tried. No one recognized his description of Hester, and none of them had sold digitalis to any member of the Farraline household, or indeed to anyone not known to them personally. He pursued the other sources of information, the public house, the street peddlers and crossing sweepers, the errand and delivery boys and the news vendors, but all he learned was very general gossip that seemed to serve no purpose. ~ Anne Perry

Sometimes we look around and realize we need new friends. That's the sign that they are just around the bend :) ~ Liz Hester

To demand promises is to invite disappointment -Hester ~ Jonathan Auxier

This IS exactly how things look just before your dreams ignite! ~ Liz Hester

As with most situations in my life, Emery's dress was much harder to get out of than it had been to get into. ~ Hester Browne

Lee saw the fireball and head through the roar in his ears Hester saying, "That's the last of 'em Lee."
He said, or thought, "Those poor men didn't have to come to this, nor did we."
She said, "We held 'em off. We held out. We're a-helping Lyra."
Then she was pressing her little proud broken self against his face, as close as she could get, and then they died. ~ Philip Pullman

The world is your mirror...love what you see and you love YOU! ~ Liz Hester

Besides,' she said, "it was not a hero I was thinking of. If anybody, it was Catherine Vernon." "Whom you don't like. These women, who step out of their sphere, they may do much to be respected, they may be of great use; but " "You mean that men don't like them," said Hester, with a smile; " but then women do; and, after all, we are the half of creation - or more. ~ Mrs. Oliphant

We have all the time in the world. We once complained about being over-scheduled; now we're thrilled to bits if there's something to jot down other than a doctor's appointment. ~ Hester Velmans

Evil Hall had been transformed into a magnificent ballroom, glittering with green tinsel, black balloons, thousands of green-flamed candles, and a spinning chandelier streaking wall murals with emerald bursts of light. Around a towering ice sculpture of two entwined snakes, Hort and Dot stumbled through a waltz, Anadil wrapped her arms around Vex, Brone tried not to step on Mona's green feet, and Hester and Ravan swayed and whispered as more villainous couples waltzed around them. Ravan's bunk mates picked up the music on reed violins as more pairs flooded onto the floor, clumsy, bashful, but aglow with happiness, dancing beneath a spangled banner:
THE 1ST ANNUAL VILLAINS NO BALL ~ Soman Chainani

‪She hasn't lost anything she loved enough to hate the idea of God‬. ~ Hester Young

Drink then," he replied, still with the same cold composure.
"Does thou know mw so little Hester Pyrnne? Are my purposes wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could i do better for my object than to let thee live-than to give the medicines against all harm and peril of life-so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom? ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

When your heart feels strangely warm, you've found your love ~ Liz Hester

Want a partner who can make you feel secure and loved, so you can reach your full potential. Someone who can inspire you and encourage you to try again if things don't work out. Someone who loves you for who you are, not who you might turn into, or who you once were. ~ Hester Browne

Every one in this world has as much as they can do in caring for themselves, and few have leisure really to think of their neighbours distresses, however they may delight their tongues with talking of them. ~ Hester Lynch Piozzi

I can do what I dream of doing, one breath and one step at a time. ~ Liz Hester

Nature forms us in a certain manner, both inwardly and outwardly, and it is in vain to attempt to alter it. ~ Lady Hester Stanhope

My roses are my jewels; the sun, moon, and stars my clocks; fruit and water my fare. ~ Lady Hester Stanhope

No companion however wise, no friend however useful, can be to me what my mother has been: her image will long pursue my fancy; her voice for ever hang in my ears: may her precepts but sink into my heart! ~ Hester Lynch Piozzi

Just because some man pays you some attention doesn't mean you're somehow obliged to devote your life to him. You're worth MORE than that. ~ Hester Browne

One should know the value of Life better than to pout any part of it away. ~ Hester Lynch Piozzi

Lillian was determined that her next role would be Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter and assumed she only needed to find the right actor to play opposite her as Reverend Dimmesdale. Mayer informed her there was a much larger issue at stake; The Scarlet Letter was on the Hays office "blacklist" of books that could not be filmed. The very idea of a blacklist was ridiculous to Lillian and she took up the matter directly with Will Hays. While he would occasionally publicly chastise the studios, Hays never forgot that the full name of his office was the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America and worked to smooth the path any and every way he could. He told Lillian that the major source of objection was "the Protestant Church, especially the Methodists," and directed her to the heads of several church and women's organizations where she forcefully presented her case. Even with Hays's assistance, no other actress had the personal and professional reputation pure enough to garner the response she received: the ban would be lifted if she was "personally responsible" for the film.

Lillian turned her attention to finding the consummate Dimmesdale and Mayer suggested she watch Lars Hanson in The Saga of Gosta Berling. The studio boss had seen Mauritz Stiller's film in Berlin the previous December and he immediately put the director and the film's three stars, Hanson, Mona Martenson, and Greta Gustafsson, all under contract. Lillian agreed ~ Cari Beauchamp

Sometimes all it takes is one Deep Breath and everything falls into place. ~ Liz Hester

Love is brave and generous and above all it springs from honor. In order to love someone else, you must first be true to yourself.
Love is not two people wanting or needing what the other can give.
Hester Latterly ~ Anne Perry

In New York, he would live for them, but in San Francisco, he could live for himself. And though he does not like to think about it, though he in fact avoids the subject pathologically, he allows himself to think it now: What if the woman on Hester Street is right? The mere thought turns his life a different color; it makes everything feel urgent, glittering, precious. ~ Chloe Benjamin

I don't know when and I don't know how, but you'll get through this. And you'll kick life in the balls just as hard as it's kicked you. ~ Hester Young

It would be best to stride in with a cheer "hello!", but she wasn't the cheery sort; she was the "lurking in dark corners" sort. She found a dark corner, behind the Stalker-cases, and lurked. ~ Philip Reeve

HESTER. It is right that they should be punished, but don't let them be the only ones to suffer. If a man and woman have sinned, let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other there. Let them both be branded. Set a mark, if you wish, on each, but don't punish the one and let the other go free. Don't have one law for men and another for women. You are unjust to women in England. And till you count what is a shame in a woman to be an infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded LADY ~ Oscar Wilde

The Elephant of Depression wasn't just parked on my chest, it was relaxing there with the Walrus of Gloom and the Hippo of Bleak Friday Nights in Alone. They had beers. They were settling in. ~ Hester Browne

They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The conventional explanation for Jewish success, of course, is that Jews come from a literate, intellectual culture. They are famously "the people of the book." There is surely something to that. But it wasn't just the children of rabbis who went to law school. It was the children of garment workers. And their critical advantage in climbing the professional ladder wasn't the intellectual rigor you get from studying the Talmud. It was the practical intelligence and savvy you get from watching your father sell aprons on Hester Street. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Hester kept her company by bringing her meals and tea, fussing over Rosebud, washing Morrow's clothes, and doing her hair as if she was the colonel's lady. "Colonel Clark is sure taken wi' you," she said. "Neither man nor beast ever talks back to that man, but you shore put him in his place over that bad business at Fort Randolph. And lo and behold, I think he liked it. But for one little thing." Morrow looked up from nursing Rosebud. "He just can't figure out why a beautiful woman like yo'self would settle for a savage. ~ Laura Frantz

She looked out across the water and allowed the feeling of longing to wash over her, spill into the crevices of her soul, and fill her completely. ~ Elizabeth Fama

We look on those approaching the banks of a river all must cross, with ten times the interest they excited when dancing in the meadow. ~ Hester Lynch Piozzi

The best friendships are like mobile phones, I think--you can't explain exactly how they work, but you're just relieved they do. ~ Hester Browne

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say, it seared Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hail Ostara, white-clad maiden. Snow and ice melt at your gaze, flowers bloom with each soft step. We who late have longed for spring-time, we welcome you at winter's end. I praise you now, O bright Ostara: Earth's cold cover send from here! ~ Hester Butler-Ehle

He thought she might understand that you couldn't cure the throbbing of loss with reunion--you might only make it beat harder and hotter. ~ Hester Kaplan

My golden rule has always been to look on the bright side, no matter what. With all the complications in my life, I had to. Because if you can find three good things in any given situation, no matter how dire, I guarantee you'll forget the rotten stuff. ~ Hester Browne

Cub had puffed up like a rooster when the article came out, taking it in to show the guys at the gravel company. He was impressed with all the celebrity in equal measure, the type of kid who had cut out pictures of football players, Jesus, and America's Most Wanted to tape on his bedroom wall. He'd confessed to having cried in sixth grade when he learned that superheroes weren't real. Dellarobia was his Wonder Woman. But Hester seemed incensed by the article, which referred to Dellarobia as Our Lady of the Butterflies. Among other complaints, Hester said it made them sound Catholic. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Hester, recently married herself, and knowing the depth and the sweep of love, ached for Callandra that she sacrificed so much. And yet loving her husband as she did, for all his faults and vulnerabilities, Hester, too, would rather have been alone than accept anyone else. ~ Anne Perry

MRS ALLONBY I adore them. The clever people never listen, and the stupid people never talk.
HESTER I think the stupid people talk a great deal.
MRS ALLONBY Ah, I never listen! ~ Oscar Wilde

Don't pretend, Bianca," he said. "You're smarter than that, and so am I. I finally figured out what you meant when you left. You said you were like Hester. I get it now. The first time you came to my house, when we wrote that paper, you said Hester was trying to escape. But everything caught up with Hester in the end, didn't it? Well, something finally caught up with you, but you're just running away again. Only, he"-Wesley pointed to my bedroom door-"is your escape this time." He took a step toward me, forcing me to crane my neck even more to see his face. "Admit it, Duffy."
"Admit what?"
"That you're running away from me," he said. "You realized you're in love with me and you bailed because it scared the shit out of you. ~ Kody Keplinger

Stories come in all different kinds." Hester scooted closer, clearly enjoying the subject at hand. "There's tales, which are light and fluffy. Good for a smile on a sad day. Then you got yarns, which are showy-yarns reveal more about the teller than the story. After that there's myths, which are stories made up by whole groups of people. And last of all, there's legends." She raised a mysterious eyebrow. "Legends are different from the rest on account no one knows where they start. Folks don't tell legends; they repeat them. Over and over again through history. ~ Jonathan Auxier

My earliest recollections are of the teeming East Side where I was born. This Hester Street and its surrounding streets were the most densely populated of any city on Earth; and looking back at it, I realize what I owe to its unique and crowded humanity. ~ Jacob Epstein

Hester shook her head. 'Don't confuse what you do with who you are, dearie. Besides, there's no shame in humble work. Why, Aesop himself, the king of storytellers, was a slave his whole life. Never drew a free breath, yet he shaped the world with just three small words: there once was. And where are his great masters now, hmm? Rotting in tombs, if they're lucky. But Aesop - he still lives to this day, dancin' on the tip of every tongue what's ever told a tale.' She winked at Molly. 'Think on that, next time you're scrubbing floors. ~ Jonathan Auxier

I think the most difficult thing in teaching, as well as the most interesting, is to get the children to tell you their real thoughts about things. One stormy day last week I gathered them around me at dinner hour and tried to get them to talk to me just as if I were one of themselves. I asked them to tell me the things they most wanted. Some of the answers were commonplace enough... dolls, ponies, and skates. Others were decidedly original. Hester Boulter wanted 'to wear her Sunday dress every day and eat in the sitting room.' Hannah Bell wanted 'to be good without having to take any trouble about it.' Marjorie White, aged ten, wanted to be a 'widow'. Questioned why, she gravely said that if you weren't married people called you an old maid, and if you were your husband bossed you; but if you were a widow there'd be no danger of either. The most remarkable wish was Sally Bell's. She wanted a 'honeymoon.' I asked her if she knew what it was and she said she thought it was an extra nice kind of bicycle because her cousin in Montreal went on a honeymoon when he was married and he had always had the very latest in bicycles! ~ L.M. Montgomery

The language of Doctor Johnson and Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale, and that of their adult contemporaries, was the stately language of the time, polished, stylish, unordinary, even in the intimate pages of their diaries, and the regime of instruction was severe and practical. ~ Robert Burchfield

I want to share all of my New York with you, Melissa. My house, my friends, my life. It's not just about where you live, what you have. It's about who you are with. I know you get that, and I can't tell what it means to me. ~ Hester Browne

That's one problem I've always had: when I'm anywhere near shit creek, I have to know how far up that creek actually goes." --Hester Day ~ Mercedes Helnwein

But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness [ ... ] ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

I am perpetually bringing or losing babies, both very dreadful operations to me, and which tear mind and body both in pieces very cruelly. ~ Hester Lynch Piozzi

Living at once inside and outside the framework, Hester is able to see the frame. ~ Carol Gilligan

Instead, Hester had been presented at court, ~ Sylvia Day

Methought the germ of it was dead in me! Oh, Hester, thou art my better angel! I seem to have flung myself - sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened - down upon these forest leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that hath been merciful! This is already the better life! Why did we not find it sooner? ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Appearances can be deceptive. Just because someone has a generous chest and a romantic nature doesn't mean they're EASY. ~ Hester Browne

Friendship is far more delicate than love. ~ Hester Lynch Piozzi

Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or, ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sobel was Jewish, urban, with a commission from the National Guard. Hester had started as a private, then earned his commission from Officer Candidate's School (OCS). Most ~ Stephen E. Ambrose

Struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne

What an ephemeral thing human will is, to be manipulated by a couple of drops of hormones! ~ Elizabeth Fama

He told me yesterday that weddings should be individual celebrations of a couple's relationship, ideally with just the bride and groom and a humanist minister. Everything else is merely social pressure to eat tiny cakes. ~ Hester Browne

But there is nothing a man might not do, with you to encourage him. You make me wish to be a hero." He laughed, but Hester did not laugh. She gave him a keen look, in which there was a touch of disdain. " Do you really think," she said, " that the charm of inspiring, as you call it, is what any reasonable creature would prefer to doing? To make somebody else a hero rather than be a hero yourself? Women would need to be disinterested indeed if they like that best. I don't see it. Besides, we are not in the days of chivalry. What could you be inspired to do - make better bargains on your Stock Exchange? ~ Mrs. Oliphant

Aria: I went to Hollis. Because I was looking for ... you know. Her. She was teaching an art class, so I ran inside, grabbed a paintbrush, and painted a scarlet A across her chest. You know, like that woman in The Scarlet Letter? It was awesome. She didn't know what hit her. And then I said, 'Now everyone will know what you've done'.
Ella: Do you realize that Hester Prynne is supposed to be a sympathetic character? ~ Sara Shepard

I wonder if the boy is a witness, perp, or victim. It bothers me that I can't tell, that a predator can look no different from its prey. ~ Hester Young

So she was what Hester called a 911 Christian: in the event of an emergency, call the Lord. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Stress can make people say things they don't mean, though. That's why you have to relax. ~ Hester Browne

The darkness does not flow from my being to them, but out of their hearts and into my skin. I don't inspire your evil. I never did. You offer it to me, from the gravest crime to the smallest indifference. ~ Phil Hester

She wonders if it could really have been as simple for him, this changing of worlds, as the purchase of a ticket. Hester tries to imagine going back, reversing the flow of so much water. She feels like a thread that has been pulled to the ends of the earth, unraveling everything behind it. What is one to make of it now? Ahead or behind, there is no clear pattern. ~ Tanya Moir

You're not a dork, you're adorkable. ~ Elizabeth Fama

Cancer is tangible. People feel compassion for you if you get cancer. Not so much if you're an alcoholic. And a mother who drinks? Forget it. Straight to hell. Big fat scarlet letter branded on our foreheads for life. Me and Hester Prynne? Same letter, different sins. ~ Amy Hatvany

A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus. ~ Peter De Vries

I test my smile the way she always does in the mirror, but the result is strained, and instead of looking pretty and lighthearted, I look like a bee just flew up my skirt. ~ Hester Fox

Living at Venice is like a Journey to the Moon somehow....And a sweet Planet it is! ~ Hester Lynch Piozzi

Back in the kitchen, Mummy was trying to make her [knitted] hippo stand up on the table. I had to swallow a gasp of horror -- its head was the same size as its body, none of its limbs were equal in length, and it appeared to have a fin. She didn't seem perturbed and carried on trying to make it stand with a childlike patience.
Because of its grotesquely misshapen head, it looked as if it was trying to do some kind of yoga headstand.
"That hippo's got five legs," observed Allegra from the window seat. "Unless you've made it very anatomically correct? In which case it's positively disturbing. ~ Hester Browne

Dot hurled her pizza at her, smacking Hester in the cheek. Do you know how unfair that is, you contemptuous git! You made me gain weight in order to stay in the coven and now you're making fun of me for it? Are you that insecure that you needed me to be fat to feel okay about yourself? Well, you picked the wrong piggy tail to pull, honey. I love myself no matter what I look like, so nothing you say to me will ever make me feel ugly again. Because unlike you, Hester, I'll never be ugly inside. ~ Soman Chainani

Our house has its back to the sea,' writes Hester in her journal. 'Below us, the ocean spreads to the sky, twitching wide and blue and hungry. One would think it to be infinite. But we, of course, know better. ~ Tanya Moir

There are too many people who consider themselves far too important. And yet not one of us is anything but a grain of sand in the desert, a speck of dust in the universe. ~ Hester Velmans

Making love. I've cringed every time Hester used those words. So off and awkward and unrelated to what actually goes on between two bodies. You make breakfast, you make time, you make the team. Love? Not so much. But I get it now. Like making fire. Not rubbing two sticks together to pull something out of thin air. More like finally being able, knowing enough, to warm your hands at something you built, stick by stick. ~ Huntley Fitzpatrick

When you die, there is nothing. [...] to describe it in any way is to give it form. ~ Phil Hester

Things happen in NFL games. I don't try to dwell on it. I try to say, It happened. Let's move onto the next one. ~ Devin Hester

A poor gentlewoman, doctor, is the worst thing in the world ~ Lady Hester Lucy Stanhope

We made our way to the very edge of the cliff and looked down. We could hear the water dashing, splashing and roaring as if angry at the small space through which it was forced to pass. ~ Sallie Hester

He believes in bad choices; he believes in bad luck. And yet the memory of the woman on Hester Street is like a miniscule needle in his stomach, something he swallowed long ago and which floats, undetectable, except for moments when he moves a certain way and feels a prick. ~ Chloe Benjamin

My favorite football team is the Bears because my favorite player is on there, Devin Hester. I love the whole team, though. But that's just my favorite player. ~ Jacob Latimore

Somehow, one never really runs away, or I never have, and I find that the faster I go the more catches up with me ... all the while time stands, to me, still - straight up and down like a great white sheet. ~ Joy Hester

It is only the vulgar who are always fancying themselves insulted. If a man treads on another's toe in good society, do you think it is taken as an insult? ~ Lady Hester Stanhope