In The Path Of Falling Objects Quotes

I pictured the first time we saw the girl, breezing past us in that Lincoln, blond hair whirling around her, her glasses tipped down, her smile, the stroke of her fingers. The teasing.
Simon tumbled the meteorite around in the sweat of his hand. I wondered what it would be like to look down at the earth, to fall, to burn brilliantly in the air like the image of the girl who passed by, kicking back dust like cosmic ash, and could she see that, now; was she up there above us?
I wondered.
We closed our eyes. ~ Andrew Smith

The thing is, I fell in love with Luke, not Cary. Fell for the sheen and the sweat, the adrenalin of the hunt. Faltered, reeled, collapsed. There was no falling with Cary. Loving him was gradual and logical, inevitable as the path of a glacier. But Luke was a thunderclap, appearing out of a clear blue sky, soaking me to my skin, then moving on leaving everything looking different. And post-Luke nothing was the same. ~ Kylie Ladd

I have not worked out my poems with a careful will, falling rather on haphazard and blind formulation of wordage, a more flowing concept, in a hope for a more new and lively path. I do personalize at times, but this only for the grace and elan of the dance. ~ Charles Bukowski

I'll find out who's inside. Wait here and keep alert!' Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building's eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside.
There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn't see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back.
Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled.
The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol's cold muzzle pressed against his forehead.
Hallam watched the man's eye ~ David Cook

Or one can visualize the process as follows: as the planet approaches the sun, its speed increases. It shoots past the sun, but as it does so, the clutching hand of gravity swings it round - as a running child grabbing at a maypole is swung around it - so that it now continues in the opposite direction. If its velocity on the approach-run had been exactly the amount required to prevent it from falling into the sun, it would continue in a circle. But as it was slightly greater, the receding run will carry it into an elongated path, which the planet pursues at slackening speed in the teeth of the sun's attraction, as it were, gradually curving inward; until, after passing the aphelion, the curve again approaches the sun and the whole cycle starts again. ~ Arthur Koestler

It is an inherent nature of life: Whenever success is in your reach, it tosses either an unexpected obstacle or an alluring offer, straight on your path. That unexpected manifestation, obstacle or offer, would either prompt you to press the panic button or distract your focus from your target. As you become busy dealing with the fresh situation, time, with its own flair, flies miles away from your reach, with the reward in offer. Those who endure, without getting disturbed by the obstacle or decoyed by the illusive offer, will reap the fruit. Others will flop, falling as victims to life's conspiracy. ~ Hari Parameshwar

Truly loving people are uncommon. They are as uncommon as awake people. Our success in learning about love will directly correlate to our level of happiness. It is certainly worth persevering with the learning process which involves a great deal of honesty, introspection, and forgiveness. Even if we are the only one in the relationship on that path, it doesn't matter. We will still be blessed with our own happiness and isn't that the bottom line of what we all want? Our first responsibility is to create a happy life for ourselves. If the other person in the relationship learns to also value love, honesty, and forgiveness then the relationship will transform, usually slowly, into a strong connection which is good for the couple and others alike. ~ Donna Goddard

Mr. Blatchford says that there was not a Fall but a gradual rise. But the very word "rise" implies that you know toward what you are rising. Unless there is a standard you cannot tell whether you are rising or falling. But the main point is that the Fall like every other large path of Christianity is embodied in the common language talked on the top of an omnibus. Anybody might say, "Very few men are really Manly." Nobody would say, "Very few whales are really whaley." ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

I head to the bathroom. I wash my face, brush my teeth, and try to put the evening behind me. Look, it's not hard to turn down a drunk girl, because that's just wrong. But it was hard, for some unknown fucking reason, to turn down her. Those things she was saying. Those wicked, dirty words falling from her red lips. They torched a path up my body. They stirred something inside me. Some wish. Some want.

That kiss on the street was one thing.

The session on her couch was entirely another.

But the cab was a whole new wrinkle. She just combusted, like a rocket of lust, firing off in every direction, jumping me, climbing me, grinding on me.

I wanted it all.

I wanted her.

I still do. ~ Lauren Blakely

To have taken Maggie by the hand and said, "I will not believe unproved evil of you: my lips should not utter it; my ears shall be closed against it. I, too, am an erring mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest efforts. Your lot has been harder than mine, your temptation greater. Let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling –" to have done this would have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge, generous trust – would have demanded a mind that tasted no piquancy in evil-speaking, that felt no self-exaltation in condemning, that cheated itself with no large words into the belief that life can have any moral end, any high religion, which excludes the striving after perfect truth, justice, and love towards the individual men and women who come across our own path. ~ George Eliot

Later traded to Jacques Caboche, another settler, it was in 1850 lost in a game of chess or poker to a newcomer named Hans Zimmerman; being used by him as a beer-stein until one day, under the spell of its contents, he suffered it to roll from his front stoop to the prairie path before his home - where, falling into the burrow of a prairie-dog, it passed beyond his power of discovery or recovery upon his awaking. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Algebra applies to the clouds, the radiance of the star benefits the rose--no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who could ever calculate the path of a molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined by falling grains of sand? Who can understand the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely small, the echoing of causes in the abyss of being and the avalanches of creation? A mite has value; the small is great, the great is small. All is balanced in necessity; frightening vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations between beings and things, in this inexhaustible whole, from sun to grub, there is no scorn, each needs the other. Light does not carry terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths without knowing what it does with them; night distributes the stellar essence to the sleeping plants. Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor and the tap of a swallow's beak breaking the egg, and it guides the birth of the earthworm, and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two has a greater view? Choose. A bit of mold is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an anthill of stars. The same promiscuity, and still more wonderful, between the things of the intellect and material things. Elements and principles are mingled, combined, espoused, multiplied one by another, ~ Victor Hugo

I think falling in love should come with a warning label: CAUTION - side effects may include breaking up, accompanied by heartache, severe mood swings, withdrawal from people and life itself, wasted hours obsessing over bitter reflections, a need to destroy something (preferably something expensive that shatters), uncontrollable tear ducts, stress, a loss of appetite (Cheetos and Dr. Pepper exempt), a bleak and narrow outlook on the future, and an overall hatred of everyone and everything (especially all the happy couples you see strolling hand-in-hand, placed on your path only to exacerbate your isolation and misery). All above reactions will be intensified with the consumption of one or more alcoholic beverages. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

Every person, young and old, has had his own personal experience with falling. Falling is what we mortals do. But as long as we are willing to rise up again and continue on the path toward the spiritual goals God has given us, we can learn something from failure and become better and happier as a result. My dear friends, no matter how many times you have slipped or fallen, rise up! Your destiny is a glorious one! Stand tall and walk in the light of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ! You are stronger than you realize. You are more capable than you can imagine. You can do it now! ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

In this universe the night was falling; the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered; and along the path he once had followed, Man would one day go again. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

People who have a religion should be glad, for not everyone has the gift of believing in heavenly things. You don't necessarily even have to be afraid of punishment after death; purgatory, hell, and heaven are things that a lot of people can't accept, but still a religion, it doesn't matter which, keeps a person on the right path. It isn't the fear of God but the upholding of one's own honor and conscience. How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the while day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then, without realizing it you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that: A quiet conscience mades one strong! ~ Anne Frank

His fingers unhooked from hers, following that same path up her arm, and then back down it again. The feeling was so distracting, so good, so sweet against her clammy skin. She didn't choose a piece from her repertoire; Etta gave herself over to the notes that started streaming through her mind, rising from somewhere deep inside of her.

The melody of her heart had no name; it was quick, and light. It rolled with the waves, falling as the breath left his chest, rising as he inhaled. It was the rain sliding down the glass; the fog spreading its fingers over the water. The creaking of a ship's great body. The secrets whispered by the wind, and the unseen life that moved below.

It was the flame against the candle.

Nicholas's arm was a map of hard muscles and delicate sinews, heartbreakingly perfect. She wondered if he could hear her humming the piece against his skin over the droning roars overhead. Maybe. His free hand skimmed up her skin, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake.

With the world blacked out around them, she could catalog all over her senses, capture this moment in the warm darkness forever. He brushed back the loose hair across her forehead, cheek, the corner of her lips, her jaw, and she knew it had to be the same for him, that they'd never been so aware of another person in their entire lives.

She released his arm, and he drew it up around her, guiding both of them down so they were on their sides, their hea ~ Alexandra Bracken

We are learning that through striving for justice, tears and laughter, seem more dynamic and shared as each step is taken with communal courage together. Record a legacy, they truly lived, not once stepped back on the path that beckoned. I am proud of my partner, of my family, of our friends. We have learned to value the quiet patience of gentle support both, unspoken and felt, heard and embraced. And if we seem cryptic in message at times, we wish to lift to the world the cause as artists, using the language of our nature and craft, to address the twisted currents of current laws and corruption, where ears are dulled from light by agendas, that the beauty of Art may be expressed in the reclaiming of itself, from the wreckage of the court system mired with soiled attorney and tainted judge. Colors to where there is grey, to lift the hues cast in cast iron graves, stamped Summary Judgement, with no judgement applied. So together we formulate, and forge what is possible, while tear stains cheek, falling upon lighted smile, in thought of our loved ones, that keeps our current path clear. ~ Tom Althouse

The Fallen

It was the night
a comet with its silver tail
fell through darkness
to earth's eroded field,
the night I found
the wolf,
starved in metal trap,
teeth broken
from pain's hard bite,
its belly swollen with unborn young.

In our astronomy
the Great Wolf
lived in the sky.
It was the mother of all women
and howled her daughter's names
into the winds of night.

But the new people,
whatever stepped inside their shadow,
they would kill,
whatever crossed their path,
they came to fear.

In their science,
Wolf as not the mother.
Wolf was not wind.
They did not learn healing
from her song.

In their stories
Wolf was the devil, falling
down an empty,
shrinking universe,
God's Lucifer
with yellow eyes
that had seen their failings
and knew that they could kill the earth,
that they would kill each other.

That night
I threw the fallen stone back to sky
and falling stars
and watched it all come down
to ruined earth again.

Sky would not take back
what it had done.
That night, sky was a wilderness so close
the eerie light of heaven
and storming hands of sun
reached down the swollen belly
and dried up nipples of a hungry world.

That night,
I saw the trapper's shadow
and it had four legs. ~ Linda Hogan

When I was small, I never wanted to step in puddles. Not because of any fear of drowned worms or wet stockings; I was by and large a grubby child, with a blissful disregard for filth of any kind.
It was because I couldn't bring myself believe that that perfect smooth expanse was no more than I thin film of water over solid earth. I believed it was an opening into some fathomless space. Sometimes, seeing the tiny ripples caused by my approach, I thought the puddle impossibly deep, a bottomless sea in which the lazy coil of a tentacle and gleam of scale lay hidden, with the threat of huge bodies and sharp teeth adrift and silent in the far-down depths.
And then, looking down into reflection, I would see my own round face and frizzled hair against a featureless blue sweep, and think instead that the puddle was the entrance to another sky. If I stepped in there, I would drop at once, and keep on falling, on and on, into blue space.
The only time I would dare walk though a puddle was at twilight, when the evening stars came out. If I looked in the water and saw one lighted pinprick there, I could slash through unafraid--for if I should fall into the puddle and on into space, I could grab hold of the star as I passed, and be safe.
Even now, when I see a puddle in my path, my mind half-halts--though my feet do not--then hurries on, with only the echo of the though left behind.
What if, this time, you fall? ~ Diana Gabaldon

Up ahead about two blocks, a massive figure stepped out into her path.
She halted. Took a deep breath. Felt a prickling in her eyes.
On the breeze drifting down to her, John's unmistakable bonding scent was a dark spice that wiped out the stink of the city and the wretched sting of her unhappiness.
She started walking toward him. Fast. Faster ...
Now she was running.
He met her halfway, falling into a jog as soon as he saw her pick up the pace, and they slammed into each other.
Hard to know whose mouth found whose, or whose arms were cinched tighter, or who was the desperate one.
But then, in this they were equals. ~ J.R. Ward

I'm drinking a glass of water in the empty hotel bar at the Principe di Savoia and staring at the mural behind the bar and in the mural there is a giant mountain, a vast field spread out below it where villagers are celebrating in a field of long grass that blankets the mountain dotted with tall white flowers, and in the sky above the mountain it's morning and the sun is spreading itself across the mural's frame, burning over the small cliffs and the low-hanging clouds that encircle the mountain's peak, and a bridge strung across a path through the mountain will take you to any point beyond that you need to arrive at, because behind that mountain is a highway and along that highway are billboards with answers on them – who, what, where, when, why – and I'm falling forward but also moving up toward the mountain, my shadow looming against its jagged peaks, and I'm surging forward, ascending, sailing through dark clouds, rising up, a fiery wind propelling me, and soon it's night and stars hang in the sky above the mountain revolving as they burn.The stars are real.The future is that mountain. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the first time in her life. An intense love, a veritable tornado sweeping across the plains - flattening everything in its path, tossing things up in the air, ripping them to shreds, crushing them to bits. The tornado's intensity doesn't abate for a second as it blasts across the ocean, laying waste to Angkor Wat, incinerating an Indian jungle, tigers and everything, transforming itself into a Persian desert sandstorm, burying an exotic fortress city under a sea of sand. In short, a love of truly monumental proportions. The person she fell in love with happened to be 17 years older than Sumire. And was married. And, I should add, was a woman. This is where it all began, and where it all ended. Almost. ~ Haruki Murakami

Tomino's Hell

Elder sister vomits blood,
younger sister's breathing fire
while sweet little Tomino
just spits up the jewels.

All alone does Tomino
go falling into that hell,
a hell of utter darkness,
without even flowers.

Is Tomino's big sister
the one who whips him?
The purpose of the scourging
hangs dark in his mind.

Lashing and thrashing him, ah!
But never quite shattering.
One sure path to Avici,
the eternal hell.

Into that blackest of hells
guide him now, I pray -
to the golden sheep,
to the nightingale.

How much did he put
in that leather pouch
to prepare for his trek to
the eternal hell?

Spring is coming
to the valley, to the wood,
to the spiraling chasms
of the blackest hell.

The nightingale in her cage,
the sheep aboard the wagon,
and tears well up in the eyes
of sweet little Tomino.

Sing, o nightingale,
in the vast, misty forest -
he screams he only misses
his little sister.

His wailing desperation
echoes throughout hell -
a fox peony
opens its golden petals.

Down past the seven mountains
and seven rivers of hell -
the solitary journey
of sweet little Tomino.

If in this hell they be found,
may they then come to me, please,
those sharp spikes of punishment
~ Saijo Yaso

What first stuns the young writer emerging from college is that there is no clear-cut road for him to travel on. He must chop a path in the wilderness of his own soul, a disheartening process, lifelong and lonesome and therefore, of what use graduate work? ~ Brad Gooch

It seems to me that whatever path you choose to take, in the end its up to each of us to try, test and live what we find out, to apply it and see what actually works, and that's the exciting and challenging part of this very real adventure. ~ Linus Roache

In truth, Serenus, I have for a long time been silently asking myself to what I should liken such a condition of mind, and I can find nothing that so closely approaches it as the state of those who, after being released from a long and serious illness, are sometimes touched with fits of fever and slight disorders, and, freed from the last traces of them, are nevertheless disquieted with mistrust, and, though now quite well, stretch out their wrist to a physician and complain unjustly of any trace of heat in their body. It is not, Serenus, that these are not quite well in body, but that they are not quite used to being well; just as even a tranquil sea will show some ripple, particularly when it has just subsided after a storm. What you need, therefore, is not any of those harsher measures which we have already left behind, the necessity of opposing yourself at this point, of being angry with yourself at that, of sternly urging yourself on at another, but that which comes last -confidence in yourself and the belief that you are on the right path, and have not been led astray by the many cross- tracks of those who are roaming in every direction, some of whom are wandering very near the path itself. But what you desire is something great and supreme and very near to being a god - to be unshaken. ~ Seneca

Mariana went off for a walk in the direction of the small church she could see in the distance. She climbed a path that led to the top of a green hill. Below her she could see a solitary ploughman driving his furrow along a green slope. It was after seven o'clock, but this man still went to and fro behind his brown horse, bent over the handles of his plough. She wondered who he was, ploughing so late alone; what he thought of as he turned and re-turned in the air that was beginning to darken. She stood and watched his solitary form moving back and forth. Perhaps he watched her too as she climbed the slope. Their figures contained in this dark bowl of evening, unique in all years, may have remained for ever clear in their distinct far-separated minds - one creature watching another across the dark hill in the coming night and each wondering what life the other led, and what face a clearer sight would show. ~ Gamel Woolsey

But down from the end of the path it looked so charming that she wished she could paint it in watercolours - the great trees, the tempered sunlight, the glimpse of the old church at one end, the glimpse of the embosomed lake at the other, and in the middle, set out so neatly, with such a grace of spotlessness, the table of her first tea-party. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

Seek me not in your richness, O dear, search not amidst the words talkative. Find me in the moments of loneliness, in the silence of your mighty soul. Within the void of intimate being this is me, the majestic blue - the cessation of all; and here your are in the celestial path. ~ Preeth Nambiar

One of my teachers once said that the way you know you're on the right path is that it works. Now, that doesn't mean you don't run into blocks and brick walls, but it does mean that you can find a way around them or find a way to change yourself or your project in order to find the flow again and have it work. ~ James Redfield

The biggest hack a motivation hacker can perform is to build her confidence to the size of a volcano. An oversized eruption of Expectancy can incinerate all obstacles in the path to any goal when you combine it with good planning. Value ~ Nick Winter

I turned my back to her. I felt a slight burning on the back of my neck.

"Listen to me," I went on. "I never was much for fucking around, I never got much out of it. I know that everybody else does it; but it's no fun if you just do like everybody else. To tell you the truth, it bores me, It does you good to live according to your ideas, to not betray yourself, not cop out at the last minute just because some girl has a nice ass, or someone offers you a huge check, or because the path of least resistance runs by your front door. It does you good to hang tough. It's good for the soul."

I turned around to tell her the Big Secret; "Over Dispersal, I choose Concentration. I have one life - the only thing I'm interested in is making it shine. ~ Philippe Djian

For four years I have been wearing blinders. I thought all this time I walked a path of cobblestones, and it turns out to have been an avenue of stars! For four years, my head has been caught in a box. Its sides were painted with pleasant enough scenes, but that I should have thought this was the world! ~ Franny Billingsley

Imagine you are walking down a leafy path ... The sun is receding, and you are walking alone, caressed by the breezy light of the late afternoon. Then suddenly, you feel a large drop on your right arm. Is it raining? You look up. The sky is still deceptively sunny ... seconds later another drop. Then, with the sun still perched in the sky, you are drenched in a shower of rain. This is how memories invade me, abruptly and unexpectedly ... ~ Azar Nafisi

My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary;
Long is the way, and the mountains are wild;
Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary
Over the path of the poor orphan child.

Why did they send me so far and so lonely,
Up where the moors spread and gray rocks are piled?
Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only
Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child.

Ye, distant and soft, the night-breeze is blowing,
Clouds there are none, and clear starts beam mild;
God, in His mercy, protection is showing,
Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.

Ev'n should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing,
Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled,
Still will my Father, with promise and blessing,
Take to his bosom the poor orphan child.

There is a thought that for strength should avail me;
Thought both of shelter and kindred despoiled;
Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me;
God is a friend to the poor orphan child. ~ Charlotte Bronte

The trick is staying found, I think. It's easy to get lost when your life is constantly in a state of disarray. The right path gets obscured as quickly as you make it."
He put a hand on my shoulder and told me solemnly, "That's why you find something or someone that guides you, someone that won't lose you, and someone that you don't mind getting lost with when that inevitably happens. ~ Jay Crownover

What does it mean to be truly educated?

I think I can do no better about answering the question of what it means to be truly educated than to go back to some of the classic views on the subject. For example the views expressed by the founder of the modern higher education system, Wilhelm von Humboldt, leading humanist, a figure of the enlightenment who wrote extensively on education and human development and argued, I think, kind of very plausibly, that the core principle and requirement of a fulfilled human being is the ability to inquire and create constructively independently without external controls.

To move to a modern counterpart, a leading physicist who talked right here [at MIT], used to tell his classes it's not important what we cover in the class, it's important what you discover.

To be truly educated from this point of view means to be in a position to inquire and to create on the basis of the resources available to you which you've come to appreciate and comprehend. To know where to look, to know how to formulate serious questions, to question a standard doctrine if that's appropriate, to find your own way, to shape the questions that are worth pursuing, and to develop the path to pursue them. That means knowing, understanding many things but also, much more important than what you have stored in your mind, to know where to look, how to look, how to question, how to challenge, how to proceed independently, to deal with the chal ~ Noam Chomsky

Surrendering to change is always a leap of faith. For something new to enter your life, you have to let go of the past and join your immediate experience right now. The key is less in what you do than how connected you are in yourself as you do it. In life there is no predetermined path you should or have to walk; you lay down the path by how you take each step. This is one of life's greatest truths. ~ Richard Moss