Hormetic Curve Quotes

Often times of crisis are times of discovery, periods when we cannot maintain our old ways of doing things and enter into a steep learning curve. Sometimes it takes a crisis to initiate growth. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Caitlin." Hawkins touched her cheek. "That wasn't quite what I had in mind." "Oh, for heaven's sake," she burst out, "do you not see how silly you're being?" "It's only silly if you continue to shy from me like a maiden. You're the MacBride. You've done worse than kiss an Englishman." His hands held her fast at the arms, and he bent to whisper in her ear. "I won the forfeit." His breath caressed the curve of her ear. "I want to feel the fullness of your lips with my own. I want to slide them open with my tongue and taste the sweetness of your mouth. I want to feel your body pressed to - " Summoning the last of her composure, she said, "You've made your point." His hands lifted to her shoulders. "Well? I'm waiting. ~ Susan Wiggs

Have you…"
"Have I what?" Gray prompted, promptly kicking himself for doing so. God only knew what she'd ask now. Or what damn fool thing he'd say in response.
"Have you ever seen a Botticelli? Painting, I mean. A real one, in person?"
The breath he'd been holding whooshed out of him. "Yes."
"Oh." She bit her lip. "What was it like?"
"I…" His hand gestured uselessly. "I haven't words to describe it."
"Try."
Her eyes were too clear, too piercing. He swallowed and shifted his gaze to a damp lock of hair curling at her temple "Perfect. Luminous. So beautiful, your chest aches. And so smooth, like glass. Your fingers itch to touch it."
"But you can't."
"No," he said quietly, his gaze sliding back to meet hers. "It isn't allowed."
"And you care what others will allow?" She took a step toward him, her fingers trailing along the grooved tabletop. "What if you were alone, and there was no one to see? Would you touch it then?"
Gray shook his head and dropped his gaze to his hands. "It's not…" He paused, picking over his words like fruits in an island market. Testing and discarding twice as many as he chose. "There's a varnish, you see. Some sort of gloss. If I touched it with these rough hands, I'd mar it somehow. Make it a bit less beautiful. Couldn't live with myself then."
"So-" She leaned one hip against the table's edge, making her whole body one sinuous, sweeping curve. Gray sucked in a lungful of heat. "It isn't the ru ~ Tessa Dare

Abby," he murmured, lifting a hand to curve around her neck. "I love you." A sob slipped free and she wrapped her arms around his waist. One of his hands cupped the back of her neck and cuddled her in close. As he bent around her, he whispered, "I've loved you so long, I can't remember what it's like to not love you. And I'll go to my grave loving you. You're my everything. ~ Shiloh Walker

Convention speeches are powerful tools to bend the curve of public opinion. George H. W. Bush's 1988 convention speech is a great example. His son's speech was also quite powerful. ~ Mark McKinnon

What? (Nick)
You one of them humans can't follow Simi speak. That's okay. This is why the Simi don't bother talking to most humans 'cause, no offense, you all weird. Some of you even stupid. Real stupid. Like stump stupid. It's the lack of hornays, I say. See, only really smart creatures have hornays…except for them moo moo cows – they not bright. But akri says there's always an exception to every rule. So they would be the exception to the hornay one. But they taste really good so the Simi will forgive them for bringing down her bell curve of superior intellect over all the other nonhorned subspecies. (Simi ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

She pushed him away from her. The rain swept over her face as she lifted her emerald eyes filled with laughter to his. "That's it? That's your big apology? I can see you're not going to be a candy-and-flowers man." She set off quickly. "Don't talk to me, you uncivilized maniac. I don't even want to hear the sound of your voice."
Jacques forced back the smile that seemed so ready to curve his hard mouth. Shea had a way of making even dangerous situations seem a game where laughter was always close at hand. She managed to find ways to make his madness, the terrible, unforgivable way he had treated her at their first meeting, seem casual. "Can I put my arm around you?" Even while his eyes scanned, they held a gleam of merriment.
"You're talking. I said don't talk to me." Shea tried sticking her nose in the air, but it felt ridiculous, and she dissolved into undignified giggles.
His arm curved around her slender waist and locked her under his shoulder. "I am sorry. I did not mean to speak when you asked me not to. Turn here. I'm going to have to carry you up."
"Don't talk. You always get your way when you talk." She walked with him a few more yards and stopped, staring up a sheer cliff face that seemed to go up forever. There had been no division between the forest and the rock face to warn her. "Up what? Not that." The dark, malevolent feeling had faded away. Whoever it was no longer was watching them. She could tell.
"I feel another argument coming on." ~ Christine Feehan

I know that to you everything has changed for the worse over the last weeks. But for me ... " Elias pauses. rests his forehead into the curve of my neck. "Before you my life was nothing but wandering and solitude and death. Now with you there's possibility." He pulls back until we're looking into each other's eyes. "I'm falling inn love with you, Gabrielle. Not with the person you used to be, but you. ~ Carrie Ryan

You don't think progress goes in a straight line, do you? Do you recognize that it is an ascending, accelerating, maybe even exponential curve? It takes hell's own time to get started, but when it goes it goes like a bomb. ~ Frederik Pohl

By rights, this should have been his spoonful if they were now going to share the sweet, so Terri was surprised when, instead of consuming the mouthful, Bastien started to move it toward her. She was even more surprised when he paused halfway and deliberately tipped it over her chest. Terri gasped and sat up straighter in surprise, merely sending the sticky mixture faster on its travels down the curve of her left breast. "You did that on purpose!" Bastien grinned. "It tastes better on you," he said simply, then leaned forward to kiss her. ~ Lynsay Sands

All rising curves that show unwelcome trends in human affairs will approach infinity if extended far enough, but it is we who dictate the curve and not vice versa. ~ Niels Bohr

Once, before I had you, I saw you. I know it sounds crazy, but it's true. I was pregnant and standing alone outside a party, and when you kicked, I shut my eyes and saw you on a beach we would arrive at almost five years later. You were facing the water and wearing your blue swimsuit and I knew, from the curve in your spine and the nut brown of your skin, that you were mine to protect like nothing else ever will be.
So when you first started asking me hard questions, the ones about America and your place here, I wanted to find you the right answers - the kind that would make you feel good, welcome, and loved. I thought if I could just remember the country I'd been raised to believe in, the one I was sure I would eventually get to, I'd be able to get us back there.
Here is the thing, though, the real, true thing I still have trouble admitting: I can't protect you from everything. I can't protect you from becoming a brown man in America. I can't protect you from spending a lifetime caught between the beautiful dream of a diverse nation and the complicated reality of one. I can't even protect you from the simple fact that sometimes, the people who love us will choose a world that doesn't.
Even now, just writing that down, I want to say something that will make it okay, or even make it make sense, but I can't. Will they ever really understand it themselves? Will they ever change? I have no idea. Our burden is how much we might love them anyway.

And this ~ Mira Jacob

I love the Beatles. Now I know I'm a good few decades late on this one, but I've always been behind the curve. ~ Alfred Enoch

I like my women soft and round. His blue gaze burned into hers. I don't lie, Becca. I love your body, every single curve, every dimple, every scar. ~ Cherise Sinclair

Ara. Ara, stop." He propped my body against the wall and unfastened my hands from his neck.
"Why? What's wrong?" I wiped my mouth dry with the back of my wrist. "Did I hurt you?"
"Yes, you little leech." He cupped his hand over the bite mark and pulled it away to look at it. "I may not have a heartbeat, but I still feel pain."
"You're bruising." I squinted through the dull light to see his neck.
"I know. I can feel that."
"I'm sorry."
"Are you kidding me?" He looked up at me. "Ara, that felt amazing. It hurt, but damn it was hard for me to control myself."
"Control yourself?"
"Yeah. I wanted to..." He looked down and shook his head.
"You wanted to what?" I lifted his face.
"I wanted to do...things to you."
"What kinds of...things." Excitement and fear made my heart thump. "Bad things?"
"Yes. Bad things." He reached up slowly and slipped the shoestring strap of my dress down my shoulder, then ran a delicate line of kisses along the curve of my neck, making the skin on my lower back tingle.
"That doesn't feel like bad things."
"This is not what I had in mind," he said into my shoulder. ~ Angela M. Hudson

The most pleasant and alluring curve on a woman is the smile ~ Treasure Stitches

I do so much with these lips, I think.
I taste and touch and kiss and I've pressed them to the tender parts of his skin and I've made promises and told lies and touched lives all with these two lips and the words they form, the shapes and sounds they curve around. But right now my lips wish he would just read my mind because the truth is I've been hoping I'd never have to say any of it, these thoughts, out loud ~ Tahereh Mafi

We live on the edge of the abstract all the time. Look at something solid in the known world: an automobile. Separate the fender, the hood, the roof, lie them on the garage floor, walk around them. Let go of the urge to reassemble the care or to pronounce fender, hood, roof. Look at them as curve, line, form. Relax the mind. Don't immediately try to make meaning or be practical. Truthfully, how practical is life anyway? All our work, and death is the final result? So let's enjoy the unfolding shape, the elemental, organic delight and agony of it all. ~ Natalie Goldberg

The most beautiful curve on a woman's body is her smile. ~ Bob Marley

I lit a Camel, blew smoke through my nose and looked at a piece of black shiny metal on a stand. It showed a full, smooth curve with a shallow fold in it and two protuberances on the curve. I stared at it. Marriott saw me staring at it. "An interesting bit," he said negligently. "I picked it up just the other day. Asta Dial's Spirit of Dawn." "I thought it was Klopstein's Two Warts on a Fanny," I said. Mr. Lindsay Marriott's face looked as if he had swallowed a bee. He smoothed it out with an effort. ~ Raymond Chandler

Gilbert took from his desk a little pink candy heart with a gold motto on it, "You are sweet," and slipped it under the curve of Anne's arm. Whereupon Anne arose, took the pink heart gingerly between the tips of her fingers, dropped it on the floor, ground it to powder beneath her heel, and resumed her position without deigning to bestow a glance on Gilbert. ~ L.M. Montgomery

If spirituality means seeking ['Self'-Realization], why do I need a Guru?' Let's say, all that you're seeking is to go to Kedarnath right now. Somebody is driving; the roads are laid out. If you came alone and there were no proper directions, definitely you would have wished, "I wish there was a map to tell me how to get there." On one level, a Guru is just a map. He's a live map. If you can read the map, you know the way, you can go. A Guru can also be your bus driver. You sit here and doze and he will take you to Kedarnath; but to sit in this bus and doze off, or to sit in this bus joyfully, you need to trust the bus driver. If every moment, with every curve in this road, you go on thinking, "Will this man kill me? Will this man go off the road? What intention does he have for my life?" then you will only go mad sitting here. We're talking about trust, not because a Guru needs your trust, it's just that if there's no trust you will drive yourself mad.

This is not just for sitting on a bus or going on a spiritual journey. To live on this planet, you need trust. Right now, you trust unconsciously. You're sitting on this bus, which is just a bundle of nuts and bolts and pieces of metal. Look at the way you're going through the mountains. Unknowingly, you trust this vehicle so much. Isn't it so? You have placed your life in the hands of this mechanical mess, which is just nuts and bolts, rubbers and wires, this and that. You have placed your life in it, but you trust ~ Sadhguru

He felt warm and familiar. He felt solid and safe. I wanted to cling to his shirt, bury my face into the warm curve of his neck, and never let go. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Not only is there no longer a mass market, but most of the successful companies, game-changing innovations, and products and services we care about were designed to cater to people at the edges of that curve, not to the average Joe in the middle of it. ~ Bernadette Jiwa

By playing games you can artificially speed up your learning curve to develop the right kind of thought processes. ~ Nate Silver

Here, I meant to put you at your ease but instead I've got you closed up against me again like a pretty little clam."
He stroked a finger over her cheek and watched the color rise once more beneath her skin.
"Or are you an oyster, hiding your pearls?" He slid his finger across her other cheek, then along her throat. She swallowed convulsively as he moved lower, his fingertip moving in a leisurely downward slide.
"Perhaps I can make it up to you." Bending, he dusted a kiss against her cheek, one side and the other. Then he continued on, planting a line of unhurried kisses against the skin he'd just stroked with his finger.
He heard her breathing quicken and smiled as he pressed his mouth into the curve of her throat. He licked her there in a tiny circle, savoring the fragrant taste of her skin and enjoying the hard beat of her pulse where it throbbed erratically nearby.
He suckled there, sure he would leave his mark. ~ Tracy Anne Warren

Out of the brown mouth into a slanted easterly rain they head south along the shore, pushed toward it on a light chop, all but the pilot huddling under plastic sheeting that covers lumber, nails, window casings and plantains - the women sharing a seat, Reese behind them and the boatman behind him in a narrow-running balance. The land retreats as the dory crosses a wide bight toward the next point, rising and dropping on larger waves while a seaside village of thatch and palm passes thin and blurry in the drizzled distance. Two miles later another village appears, much the same but longer along the curve and then, past the point, the coast is tangled in mangrove, grass and sea grape. The passengers peer out of the plastic at a rain-erased horizon as the dory slices and slows in equal measure and the boatman bails with a cut jug the rolling puddle at his feet. ~ Michael Jarvis

As she passed the door to Gray's study, a familiar, muscled arm shot out into the corridor, catching her by the waist.
Laughing, she stumbled into the room, quickly finding herself caught between cool walnut paneling at her back and the hot, solid wall of man before her. Ever since their wedding-or since the Kestrel storeroom, more likely-Gray seemed to find it an irresistible challenge, to catch her unawares in an unlikely location and pull her into a feverish embrace.
Sophia had no wish to discourage the habit, but this wasn't the ideal time for a tryst. "Gray," she chided between kisses, "what are you about? The housekeeper said there was an urgent matter requiring my attention."
"And so there is. I require your attention. Most urgently." His hand slid to her bottom, and he lifted her easily, pinning her to the wall with his hips. The beaded ridges of the wainscoting dug into her spine. "Don't think we've used this room yet," he murmured, nibbling at the curve of her neck.
"I'm entertaining," she protested.
"Yes, you are," he said, grinding against her. "Highly entertaining."
Sophia sighed with pleasurable frustration. "I mean, I have a guest. Lady Kendall's in the salon, with Bel." She levered her arm against his chest, carving out some space between them. "And I thought you were at your shipping office."
"Yes, well…" Mischief gleamed sharp in his eyes. "I decided to go riding instead. ~ Tessa Dare

Oh, all right," she said balefully, beginning to shake all over. "I'll admit it - I want you. There, are you satisfied? I want you."

"In what capacity? Lover, or husband?"

Annabelle stared at him in shock. "What?" His arms slid around her, holding her quivering frame securely against his. He said nothing, only watched her intently as she tried to grasp the implications of the question.

"But you're not the marrying kind," she managed to say weakly. He touched her ear, his fingertip tracing the fragile outer curve. "I've discovered that I am when it comes to you." The subtle caress set fire to her blood, making it difficult to think.

"We would probably kill each other within the first month." "Probably," Hunt conceded, his smiling mouth brushing over her temple. The warmth of his lips sent a rush of dizzying pleasure through her.

"But marry me anyway, Annabelle. As I see things, it would solve most of your problems …and more than a few of mine." His big hand slid gently down her spine, calming her tremors.

"Let me spoil you," he whispered. "Let me take care of you. You've never had anyone to lean on, have you? I've got strong shoulders, Annabelle." A deep laugh rumbled in his chest. "And I may possibly be the only man of your acquaintance who'll be able to afford you. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Homer's Hymn to the Moon

Published by Mrs. Shelley, "Poetical Works", 1839, 2nd edition; dated 1818.
Daughters of Jove, whose voice is melody,
Muses, who know and rule all minstrelsy
Sing the wide-winged Moon! Around the earth,
From her immortal head in Heaven shot forth,
Far light is scattered - boundless glory springs;
Where'er she spreads her many-beaming wings
The lampless air glows round her golden crown.

But when the Moon divine from Heaven is gone
Under the sea, her beams within abide,
Till, bathing her bright limbs in Ocean's tide,
Clothing her form in garments glittering far,
And having yoked to her immortal car
The beam-invested steeds whose necks on high
Curve back, she drives to a remoter sky
A western Crescent, borne impetuously.
Then is made full the circle of her light,
And as she grows, her beams more bright and bright
Are poured from Heaven, where she is hovering then,
A wonder and a sign to mortal men.

The Son of Saturn with this glorious Power
Mingled in love and sleep - to whom she bore
Pandeia, a bright maid of beauty rare
Among the Gods, whose lives eternal are.

Hail Queen, great Moon, white-armed Divinity,
Fair-haired and favourable! thus with thee
My song beginning, by its music sweet
Shall make immortal many a glorious feat
Of demigods, with lovely lips, so well
Which minstre ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

She touched his cheek. "I wondered what love felt like," she said. "Now I know." He crushed her to his chest again. There was no pretense with her. He kissed her again, not caring to hold back the depth of his love. His breathing was ragged when he raised his head. "Oh Addie, Addie, what did I do before you came into my life?" Tears shone on her lashes. "I don't think I lived before tonight." "We must be married. Quite soon, darling girl. I can't wait for long." "I'd marry you tonight," she said. "Right now." He traced the curve of her cheek with his finger. "I'll ask your father for your hand tonight." A shadow darkened the joy in her eyes. "What about Lord Carrington?" "What about him?" "Father seems quite set on a match with him." She wet her lips. "I've been thinking about what you said. That God might be disciplining him. You might be right. ~ Colleen Coble

One component of the leading economic indicators is the yield curve. Bond investors keep a close eye on this, as it illustrates the spread or difference between long-term interest rates and short-term ones. ~ Kenneth Fisher

Life is always going to throw us curve balls. It is always going to rock the boat just when we are getting particularly settled. It is not an excuse to become a miserable wretch. Yes, I say this knowing that I have most certainly used it as an excuse to be a miserable wretch. ~ Stephanee Killen

Love is a cliff,
A clear, cold curve of stone, mottled by stars,
Smirched by the morning, carved by the dark sea
Till stars and dawn and waves can slash no more,
Till the rock's heart is found and shaped again. ~ James Wright

The train swung around the curve, the engine puffing with short, heavy blasts, and they passed smoothly from sight that way, with that quality about them of shabby and timeless patience, of static serenity: that blending of childlike and ready incompetence and paradoxical reliability that tends and protects them it loves out of all reason and robs them steadily and evades responsibility and obligations by means too barefaced to be called subterfuge even and is taken in theft or evasion with only that frank and spontaneous admiration for the victor which a gentleman feels for anyone who beats him in a fair contest, and withal a fond and unflagging tolerance for whitefolk's vagaries like that of a grandparent for unpredictable and troublesome children, which I had forgotten. ~ William Faulkner

When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated ... The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value. ~ Ezekiel Emanuel

For people who have ... had curve balls thrown at them, it is easier to digest change and digest change in other people. Change only scares the small-minded. The small-minded and me. ~ Casey Affleck

Through the uneven morning mist, she could make out the ruin of the monastery on the northern verge. The broken, roofless walls of outbuildings stretched south of the main ruins in a broken curve. Birches and a few young oaks had grown up where monks had likely once raised vegetables. The rest of the clearing was filled with grass and brambles cut through with newly blazed paths. Four lean-tos had been erected just beyond the stone fence of an overgrown graveyard. ~ Neal Stephenson

Through her tears Clary could see them clinging to each other; there was a tenderness even in the curve of Magnus's fingers around Alec's shoulder as he bent to kiss him. It was a kiss of desperation and clutching more than passion; Magnus held on tightly enough for his fingers to bite into Alec's arms, but in the end he stepped away, and turned towards his father. ~ Cassandra Clare

I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face postoperative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve. Her young husband is in the room. He stand on the opposite side of the bed and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks, "Will my mouth always be like this?" she asks. "Yes," I say, "it will. It is because the nerve was cut." She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles. "I like it," he says, "It is kind of cute." "All at once I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth and I am so close I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate to hers, to show her that their kiss still works. ~ Richard Selzer

It makes you ache," he whispered, and she watched the curve of his lips in the darkness. "You'll make any promise, swear any oath. For one ... perfect ... unsoiled taste. ~ Sarah MacLean

Beyond the curve of his days he glimpsed neither superhuman happiness nor eternity
happiness was human, eternity ordinary. ~ Albert Camus

I would like to read your handwriting and I would like to notice the way your eyes curve, and your wide white smile, and your simple yet personal style, and I would like to ask you the same damn questions again and again so that you wonder aloud if I do not listen but, no, I assure you without reassuring you: I have always been forgetful and it does not mean that I do not care. ~ Waylon H. Lewis