Invalid Quotes

The first truth about mortals is that none of us wants to die, but all of us are going to. It's in the name – mortals – the dying ones. If you don't understand that bit, you won't understand the rest of it. Here you are, some 5-hundred years old and you haven't yet figured out something that a 3 year old human is starting to understand. You see, as soon as we can even think, our brains are wrapping themselves around that One Truth, that one offensive, undeniable, irrevocable Truth. The rest of our existence grows up in the shadow of a dead leaning tree, which will at one point in the not unimaginable future fall and crush all that has grown up beneath it…



…Rescue them for what? Why from dying! Does that mean they won't die? No, it just means they won't die today. At best, we're talking about delaying the inevitable death sentence laid on our friends. Now how does this particular truth strike you, Mister Immortal…?



…And why? Why not merely stand now and fall sooner rather than later? Because there is something precious and sacred about rearguard action. It's an active retreat that's been repeated valiantly and ceaselessly from the beginning of mortal time. It just seems wrong to give up. It seems invalid and invalorous. More importantly, it's indecent to simply lie down and be overrun…



…Instead we rage against it and sing our defiance through bloodied teeth. Somehow, in our pointless battle, we find moment ~ J. Robert King

What do you think? This ought to be the right kind of place for tough guy like you. Garbage cans. Rats galore. Plenty of cat-bums to gang around with. So scram,' she said, dropping him…
'...I told you. We just met by the river one day: that's all. Independents, both of us. We never made each other any promises. We never -' she said, and her voice collapsed, a tic, an invalid whiteness seized her face. The car had paused for a traffic light. Then she had the door open, she was running down the street; and I ran after her.
...she shuddered, she had to grip my arm to stand up: 'Oh, Jesus God. We did belong to each other. He was mine.' Then I made her a promise, I said I'd come back and find her cat. 'I'll take care of him, too. I promise.'
She smiled: that cheerless new pinch of a smile. 'But what about me?' she said, whispered, and shivered again. 'I'm very scared, Buster. Yes, at last. Because it could go on forever. Not knowing what's yours until you're thrown it away. The mean reds, they're nothing... ~ Truman Capote

Individuals need life structure. A life lacking in comprehensible structure is an aimless wreck. The absence of structure breeds breakdown.
Structure provides the relatively fixed points of reference we need. That is why, for many people, a job is crucial psychologically, over and above the paycheck. By making clear demands on their time and energy, it provides an element of structure around which the rest of their lives can be organized. The absolute demands imposed on a parent by an infant, the responsibility to care for an invalid, the tight discipline demanded by membership in a church or, in some countries, a political party - all these may also impose a simple structure on life. ~ Alvin Toffler

I can tell you're admiring my febrility. I know it's appealing, I practice at it; every woman loves an invalid. But be careful. You might do something destructive: hunger is more basic than love. Florence Nightingale was a cannibal you know. ~ Margaret Atwood

The ideal state is meekness, or humility, or the semi-invalid state of the old. Year after year I am becoming nobler and nobler. If I can live to be decrepit enough, I shall be a saint. ~ Charles Fort

The next dish given him was spinach with hard-boiled eggs, while Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, as an invalid, had jelly and milk. When with a preoccupied face she touched the jelly with a spoon and then began languidly eating it, sipping milk, and he heard her swallowing, he was possessed by such an overwhelming aversion that it made his head tingle. He recognised that such a feeling would be an insult even to a dog, but he was angry, not with himself but with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, for arousing such a feeling, and he understood why lovers sometimes murder their mistresses. He would not murder her, of course, but if he had been on a jury now, he would have acquitted the murderer. ~ Anton Chekhov

She was practically an invalid ever after I could remember her, but used what strength she had in lavish care upon me and my sister, who was three years younger. There was a touch of mysticism and poetry in her nature which made her love to gaze at the purple sunsets and watch the evening stars. Whatever was grand and beautiful in form and color attracted her. It seemed as though the rich green tints of the foliage and the blossoms of the flowers came for her in the springtime, and in the autumn it was for her that the mountain sides were struck with crimson and with gold. ~ Calvin Coolidge

When your actions towards acquiring leadership in any country portrays blatant mischief orchestrated towards disregarding the concepts of the constitution, you do not only become guilty of hijacking power which rightfully belong to the people, but also, you are guilty of violation of the rights of freedom of the same people that you purport to want to lead. Like any match, elections is competition towards democracy, and all competitions have rules that set guidelines in that particular competition. Any violation of such rules renders that competition invalid. True democracy does not condone compromises. True democracy upholds and adheres to the rule of law, for it is the rule of law that can explicitly define democracy. ~ Akuku Mach Pep

Race is a social construct. This does not mean that it is invalid or unimportant. ~ Adam Rutherford

My sister ... was an interested and zealous invalid during sixty-five years, tried all the new diseases as fast as they came out, and always enjoyed the newest one more than any that went before; my brother had accumulated forty-two brands of Christianity before he was called away. ~ Mark Twain

The user might have grounds for complaint if the program fails to recognise that he has given a stupid value, in fact a number of cases are currently being fought in the United States courts where a program has failed to recognise invalid data, produced garbage and caused a lot of damage. ~ Rob Miles

Then Chameroy spoke. 'You always put the blame on opium, but as I see it the case of Freneuse is much more complicated. Him, an invalid? No - a character from the tales of Hoffmann! Have you never taken the trouble to look at him carefully? That pallor of decay; the twitching of his bony hands, more Japanese than chrysanthemums; the arabesque profile; that vampiric emaciation - has all of that never given you cause to reflect? In spite of his supple body and his callow face Freneuse is a hundred thousand years old. That man has lived before, in ancient times under the reigns of Heliogabalus, Alexander IV and the last of the Valois. What am I saying? That man is Henri III himself. I have in my library an edition of Ronsard - a rare edition, bound in pigskin with metal trimmings - which contains a portrait of Henri engraved on vellum. One of these nights I will bring the volume here to show you, and you may judge for yourselves. Apart from the ruff, the doublet and the earrings, you would believe that you were looking at the Due de Freneuse. As far as I'm concerned, his presence here inevitably makes me ill - and so long as he is present, there is such an oppression, such a heaviness... ~ Jean Lorrain

I had all these desperate feelings. I kept thinking, How will I ever play football again if I can't even get out of this bed? I was an invalid. Football had given me everything: identity, money, confidence, friendships. I wondered what kind of man I would be without it. ~ Keith Millard

The worst thing you can do to a kid is tell them that their dreams are invalid. ~ Juliette Lewis

Anyone who manages to experience the history of humanity as a whole as his own history will feel in an enormously generalized way all the grief of an invalid who thinks of health, of an old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of a lover deprived of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is perishing, of the hero on the evening after a battle that has decided nothing but brought him wounds and the loss of his friend. But if one endured, if one could endure this immense sum of grief of all kinds while yet being the hero who, as the second day of battle breaks, welcomes the dawn and his fortune, being a person whose horizon encompasses thousands of years, past and future, being the heir of all the nobility of all past spirit - an heir with a sense of obligation, the most aristocratic of old nobles and at the same time the first of a new nobility - the like of which no age has yet seen or dreamed of; if one could burden one's soul with all of this - the oldest, the newest, losses, hopes, conquests, and the victories of humanity; if one could finally contain all this in one soul and crowd it into a single feeling - this would surely have to result in a happiness that humanity has not known so far: the happiness of a god full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness that, like the sun in the evening, continually bestows its inexhaustible riches, pouring them into the sea, feeling richest, as the sun does, only when even the poorest fishermen is still rowing ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Since she had had to lead this shut-in invalid life she had found illness involved suffering almost as much from the tyranny of painful thoughts as from physical pain ~ Elizabeth Goudge

Our musicians in residence carry this belief into the classroom. They don't think of children's self-esteem as so fragile that it will be shattered by the suggestion that the child guessed wrong or jumped to an invalid conclusion. They make corrections matter-of-factly, with no feeling that a chid is a failure because she has made an error, but with ocnfidence that the feedback will help the child learn and be accurate the next time. ~ Peter Perret

I have nine children ... and one of them is an invalid. Her mother is obliged to take her away in the winter, and when one bird is off the nest, the other has to go on. ~ Melville Fuller

So, in conclusion, that is the moral of Heidi. 'Always push invalid chairs off the top of mountains when you get the opportunity.' The end. Excellent advice. ~ Louise Rennison

Here is Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of science, describing the way scientists react when their pet theories are unraveling: "What scientists never do when confronted by even severe and prolonged anomalies," Kuhn wrote, " ... . [is] renounce the paradigm that led them into crisis." Instead, he concluded, "A scientific theory is declared invalid only if an alternate candidate is available to take its place." That is, scientific theories very seldom collapse under the weight of their own inadequacy. They topple only when a new and seemingly better belief turns up to replace it. ~ Kathryn Schulz

Perhaps most important, judges will have goals. And because this is so, judges will often try to mold and steer the law in order to promote certain ethical values and achieve certain social ends. Such activity is not necessarily wrong or invalid. ~ Elena Kagan

Work cure is the best of all psychotherapy, in my opinion ... As well might we expect a patient to recover without food as to recover without work ... The sound man needs work to keep him sound, but the nervous invalid has an even greater need of work to draw him out of his isolation, and to stop the miseries of doubt and self-scrutiny, to win back self-respect and the support of fellowship. ~ Richard Clarke Cabot

The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established. ~ Martin Heidegger

Most reasons to delay are invalid if you get right to the core: no time, no money, no audience. These are all future concerns, which make it hard to start anything. Worry about those things later or not at all. Make small decisions at first, and start moving in a direction that feels right. ~ Paul Jarvis

Allowing unelected judges to declare laws enacted by popularly elected legislatures unconstitutional and invalid seemed flagrantly inconsistent with free popular government. Such judicial usurpation, said Richard Dobbs Spaight, delegate to the Constitutional Convention from North Carolina, was "absurd" and "operated as an absolute negative on the proceedings of the Legislature, which no judiciary ought ever to possess." Instead of being governed by their representatives in the assembly, the people would be subject to the will of a few individuals in the court, "who united in their own persons the legislative and judiciary powers," making the courts more despotic than the Roman decemvirate or of any monarchy in Europe. ~ Gordon S. Wood

It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing. What is most beautiful is least acknowledged. What is worth dying for is barely noticed. ~ Laura McBride

Beautiful, fragile, fleeting, the sunrise shell; but not, for all that, illusory. Because it is not lasting, let us not fall into the cynic's trap and call it an illusion. Duration is not a test of true or false. The day of the dragon-fly or the night of the Saturnid moth is not invalid simply because that phase in its life cycle is brief. Validity need have no relation to time, to duration, to continuity. It is on another plane, judged by other standards. "And what is actual is actual only for one time and only for one place." The sunrise shell has the eternal validity of all beautiful and fleeting things. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

He looked like a young Crusader on a tomb. That was Phyllis's first impression of Allan Harrington. ~ Margaret Widdemer

But no one can predict of a certainty what will happen. And none of it will change how I intend to spend the rest of my life. I will live it on my terms. And you ... you can have all of me or nothing. I won't be an invalid any longer. Not even if it means losing you. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Whenever I got out of bed I had to wear a big metal brace that was strapped around me.
I felt like an invalid. I was an invalid. This was crazy.
I'm screwed.
You stupid, stupid idiot, Bear. You could have landed that canopy if you hadn't panicked, or you should have cut it away and pulled that reserve early.
As it was, I had done the worst of both worlds: I had neither gone for the reserve straight away nor had I managed to land the canopy with any degree of skill.
I felt I could have avoided this accident if I had been smarter, faster, clearer-headed. I had messed up, and I knew it.
I vowed that I would never fall short in those areas again.
I would learn from this, and go on to become the fastest, clearest-thinking dude on the planet.
But for now, the tears kept coming. ~ Bear Grylls

Nobody could be an observer without being involved. ~ Toba Beta

If a man's house is full of medicine bottles, we infer the man is an invalid. But if his house is full of books, we conclude he is intelligent. ~ Vinoba Bhave

Talk of the imperial decay of your invalid port. Its gracious withdrawal from perfection, keeping a hint of former majesty withal, as it hovers between oblivion and the divine Untergang of infinite recession. ~ Stephen Potter

Why should you want to exclude from your life all unsettling, all pain, all depression of spirit, when you don't know what work it is these states are performing within you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where it all comes from and where it is leading? You well know you are in a period of transition and want nothing more than to be transformed. If there is something ailing in the way you go about things, then remember that sickness is the means by which an organism rids itself of something foreign to it. All one has to do is help it to be ill, to have its whole illness and let it break out, for that is how it mends itself. There is so much, my dear Mr Kappus, going on in you now. You must be patient as an invalid and trusting as a convalescent, for you are perhaps both. And more than that: you are also the doctor responsible for looking after himself. But with all illnesses there are many days when the doctor can do nothing but wait. And inasfar as you are your own doctor, "this above all is what you must do now. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

If the characters [in a movie] aren't real, if their lives aren't realistic, if you call bullshit at any point in their journey, then the rest of it is invalid. ~ Justin Simien

to speak to her. He was interested in his roses (which, she heard afterward, were to be sent to town to an invalid friend), ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

Curran was looking at her. Not in the same way he looked at me, but he was looking. An odd feeling flared in me, hot and angry, prickling my throat from the inside with hot sharp needles, and I realized it was jealousy. I guess there was a first time for everything. "Have you seen my father?" Lorelei asked. "How is he?" "I saw him last year," Curran said. "He's the same as always: tough and ornery." I came to stand next to him. Lorelei raised her eyebrows. Her eyes widened, and a sheen of pale green rolled over her irises. "You must be the human Consort." Yes, that's me, the human invalid. "My name is Kate." "Kate," she repeated, as if tasting the word. "It is an honor to meet you." Curran was smiling at her, that handsome hot smile that usually made my day better. Pushing Lorelei into the ocean wouldn't be diplomatic, even if I really wanted to do it. "Likewise. ~ Ilona Andrews

We've always done it this way" is invalid when that way hasn't led to more life, greater growth, or maximum efficiency. Take that how you will...business, personally, church, or family. Complacency is too easy to breed, and already has one foot in the grave. ~ Aaron W. Matthews

The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. ~ Anthony Kennedy

The Bible was written two thousand years ago. The world is a different place now. Stories that had meaning then are meaningless now. Beliefs that might have been valid then are invalid now. Those books should be looked at in the same way we look at anything of that age with interest with an acknowledgement of the historical importance but they should not be thought of as anything that has any value. ~ James Frey

What I am sure of, though, is that accepting people outside the gender binary has less to do with the idea of specific non-binary genders, and a lot more to do with working away from the binary thinking in general. That we get better at seeing beyond us and them, valid and invalid, natural and unnatural, good and bad, and instead communicate the fullness of who we are to each other, respectfully, with compassion. ~ C.N. Lester

Its head, she tied on a neat little cap, and as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. If anyone had known the care lavished on that dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed. She brought it bits of bouquets, she read to it, took it out to breathe fresh air, hidden under her coat, she sang it lullabies and never went to bed without kissing its dirty face and ~ Louisa May Alcott

LADY BRACKNELL. May I ask if it is in this house that your invalid friend Mr. Bunbury resides?

ALGERNON. [Stammering.] Oh! No! Bunbury doesn't live here. Bunbury is somewhere else at present. In fact, Bunbury is dead,

LADY BRACKNELL. Dead! When did Mr. Bunbury die? His death must have been extremely sudden.

ALGERNON. [Airily.] Oh! I killed Bunbury this afternoon. I mean poor Bunbury died this afternoon.

LADY BRACKNELL. What did he die of?

ALGERNON. Bunbury? Oh, he was quite exploded.

LADY BRACKNELL. Exploded! Was he the victim of a revolutionary outrage? I was not aware that Mr. Bunbury was interested in social legislation. If so, he is well punished for his morbidity.

ALGERNON. My dear Aunt Augusta, I mean he was found out! The doctors found out that Bunbury could not live, that is what I mean - so Bunbury died.

LADY BRACKNELL. He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians. I am glad, however, that he made up his mind at the last to some definite course of action, and acted under proper medical advice. And now that we have finally got rid of this Mr. Bunbury, may I ask, Mr. Worthing, who is that young person whose hand my nephew Algernon is now holding in what seems to me a peculiarly unnecessary manner? ~ Oscar Wilde

Marvin wasn't a beat-box gangsta-rapper-bitch, but a stressed invalid in a town not equipped with ramps. ~ Jonathan Dunne

Come, and however feeble you feel, just wait in His presence. As a feeble, sickly invalid is brought out into the sunshine to let its warmth go through him, come with all that is dark and cold in you into the sunshine of God's holy, omnipotent love, and sit and wait there, with the one thought: Here I am, in the sunshine of His love. As the sun does its work in the weak one who seeks its rays, God will do His work in you. Oh, do trust Him fully. "Wait on the Lord! Be strong, and let your heart take courage! Yea, wait thou on the Lord! ~ Andrew Murray

Logic, it is often said, is the study of valid arguments. It is a systematic attempt to distinguish valid arguments from invalid arguments. ~ W.H. Newton-Smith

I have been waiting on her all my life. I was the waitress. Waiting on her and waiting for her. What was I waiting for? Waiting for her to step into her self or step out of her invalid self. Waiting for her to take the voyage out of her gloom, to buy a ticket to a vital life. ~ Deborah Levy

03:11
And in the past few years, we've been able to propagate this lie even further via social media. You may have seen images like this one: "The only disability in life is a bad attitude." Or this one: "Your excuse is invalid." Indeed. Or this one: "Before you quit, try!" These are just a couple of examples, but there are a lot of these images out there. You know, you might have seen the one, the little girl with no hands drawing a picture with a pencil held in her mouth. You might have seen a child running on carbon fiber prosthetic legs. And these images, there are lots of them out there, they are what we call inspiration porn. (Laughter) And I use the term porn deliberately, because they objectify one group of people for the benefit of another group of people. So in this case, we're objectifying disabled people for the benefit of nondisabled people. The purpose of these images is to inspire you, to motivate you, so that we can look at them and think, "Well, however bad my life is, it could be worse. I could be that person."

But what if you are that person? ~ Stella Young

In the spiritual reality of the church, neither Marcel Lefebvre, nor his bishops and priests, nor the people who frequent the SSPX chapels suffered or suffer excommunication. I believe history will record that the intent to impose such an excommunication was invalid and illicit. ~ Malachi Martin

Mr. Bruff, I'm ordered to take exercise and I don't like it. That, added Aunt Ablewhite, pointing out of window to an invalid going by in a chair on wheels, drawn by a man, is my idea of exercise. If it's air you want, you get it in your chair. And if it's fatique you want, I am sure it's fatiquing enough to look at the man. ~ Wilkie Collins

If the experiments which I urge be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid, then by proving the theory, they must render all objections invalid. ~ Isaac Newton

Imagine looking back from a vantage point of one thousand years in the future, retrospectively evaluating our current, "sophisticated" medical and scientific procedures. One might see today's physician waving laser beams over a patient's body as a primitive, archaic, and incomprehensible healing technique, just as from some perspectives a medicine woman waving eagle feathers, or a curandera holding a crucifix over a patient, is viewed by some as archaic. The similarities are striking and compelling. Future generations may lose touch with the major assumptions underpinning contemporary western medicine, just as many of us have now lost touch with the assumptions integral to older cultures that continue to practice the ancient healing ways. Forgetting the assumptions on which a procedure is based may make the procedure incomprehensible, but it does not make it invalid. ~ H. Henrietta Stockel

... the war about the genocide was truly a postmodern war: a battle between those who believed that because the realities we inhabit are constructs of our imaginations, they are all equally true or false, valid or invalid, just or unjust, and those who believed that constructs of reality can - in fact, must - be judged as right or wrong, good or bad.
While academic debates about the possibility of objective truth and falsehood are often rarified to the point of absurdity, Rwanda demonstrated that the question is a matter of life and death. ~ Philip Gourevitch

I fell and broke my pelvic bone in three places. So, I'm still sort of an invalid now. ~ Billy Graham

A poet makes himself a visionary through a long, boundless, and systematized disorganization of all the senses. All forms of love, of suffering, of madness; he searches himself, he exhausts within himself all poisons, and preserves their quintessences. Unspeakable torment, where he will need the greatest faith, a superhuman strength, where he becomes all men the great invalid, the great criminal, the great accursed
and the Supreme Scientist! For he attains the unknown! Because he has cultivated his soul, already rich, more than anyone! He attains the unknown, and if, demented, he finally loses the understanding of his visions, he will at least have seen them! So what if he is destroyed in his ecstatic flight through things unheard of, unnameable: other horrible workers will come; they will begin at the horizons where the first one has fallen! ~ Arthur Rimbaud

By March, the worst of the winter would be over. The snow would thaw, the rivers begin to run and the world would wake into itself again.
Not that year.
Winter hung in there, like an invalid refusing to die. Day after grey day the ice stayed hard; the world remained unfriendly and cold. ~ Neil Gaiman

Mama, Mama, put me to bed
I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead
I met an Invalid, and fell for his art
He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart. ~ Lauren Oliver

Juliana?" the words were low and far - too calm for her husband, who had found that he rather enjoyed the full spectrum of emotion now that he had experienced it.
"Yes?"
"What are you doing twenty feet in the air?"
"Looking for a book."
"Would you mind very much returning to the earth?"
"What are you thinking, climbing to the rafters in your condition?"
"I am not an invalid, Simon, I still have use of all my extremes."
"You do indeed - particularly your extreme ability to try my patience - I believe, however, that you mean extremities. ~ Sarah MacLean

Just because you are struggling on a farm or in a factory, doing something against which your whole nature rebels, because there is no one to help you support your aged parents or an invalid brother or sister, do not conclude that your vision must perish. Keep pushing on as best you can, and affirming your divine power to attain your desire. Hundreds and thousands of poor boys and girls with poorer opportunities than yours have done immortal deeds because they had faith in their ideal and in their power to attain it. ~ Orison Swett Marden

He said, "Your witness is invalid; your eye is wet-skirted." I
said, "By the splendour of your justice, they are just and without
fault."
He said, "Who was your companion?" I said, "Your fantasy,
O King." He said, "Who summoned you hither?" I said, "The
scent of your cup. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

Yes, I thought, and therein was the paradox: like a runner crossing the finish line only to collapse, without that duty to care for the ill pushing me forward, I became an invalid ~ Paul Kalanithi

A label is a mask life wears. We put labels on life all the time. "Right," "wrong," "success," "failure," "lucky," "unlucky," may be as limiting a way of seeing things as "diabetic," "epileptic," "manic-depressive," or even "invalid." Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is often so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are. This expectation often gives us a false sense of familiarity toward something that is really new and unprecedented. We are in relationship with our expectations and not with life itself. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Sharia ... is, of course, invalid because it's God's Law, and God doesn't exist. ~ Pat Condell

My problems aren't invalid. Not to me. Just because they aren't life altering, life-threatening, doesn't mean they don't make me feel bad. I wake up with them every morning, carry them around all day like a lead backpack, and I fall asleep with them at night. They're real, and they're mine. I know I'm lucky. I know that. But it doesn't change how I feel. ~ Rachel Harrison

I no longer require your services." With her head held high, she strode for the door.
Hell and blazes, he wouldn't let her do this! Now when he knew what was at stake.
"You don't want to hear my report?" he called out after her.
She paused near the door. "I don't believe you even have a report."
"I certainly do, a very thorough one. I've only been waiting for my aunt to transcribe my scrawl into something decipherable. Give me a day, and I can offer you names and addresses and dates, whatever you require."
"A day? Just another excuse to put me off so you can wreak more havoc." She stepped into the doorway, and he hurried to catch her by the arm and drag her around to face him.
He ignored the withering glance she cast him. "The viscount is twenty-two years your senior," he said baldly.
Her eyes went wide. "You're making that up."
"He's aged very well, I'll grant you, but he's still almost twice your age. Like many vain Continental gentlemen, he dyes his hair and beard-which is why he appears younger than you think."
That seemed to shake her momentarily. Then she stiffened. "All right, so he's an older man. That doesn't mean he wouldn't make a good husband."
"He's an aging roué, with an invalid sister. The advantages in a match are all his. You'd surely end up taking care of them both. That's probably why he wants to marry you."
"You can't be sure of that."
"No? He's already choosing not to stay here for the house part ~ Sabrina Jeffries

You should have let me visit earlier," Jess said, her cheeks radiant from the brisk air outside. "It's been a week since the duel."
Kestrel sank back against the pillows. She had known the sight of Jess would hurt, would remind her that there was a life outside this bedroom. "Ronan isn't allowed."
"I should say not! I'm not letting him see you until you're better. You look awful. No one wants to kiss an invalid."
"Thank you, Jess. I'm so happy you've come. ~ Marie Rutkoski

A woman who has lost her husband is invalid, thus an invalid. In ~ Joyce Carol Oates

The practical utility of Formal Logic to-day lies not so much in the establishment of positive conclusions as in the prompt detection and exposure of invalid inference. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

EXECUTIVE, n. An officer of the Government, whose duty it is to enforce the wishes of the legislative power until such time as the judicial department shall be pleased to pronounce them invalid and of no effect. ~ Ambrose Bierce

The idea that water has a memory can be refuted by any one of several easily understood, invalid, arguments. ~ Brian Josephson

I'm not some total invalid ~ Nic Sheff

This is a problem because as we've established, not everyone meet society's requirements for being "male" or "female". Being repeatedly forced to misidentify their sex and/or rarely being acknowledged, can cause intersex people to feel isolated, invalid, and erased. ~ Ashley Mardell

Your friend is most original,' Dan Needham said, with the greatest respect. 'Don't you see, Johnny? If he could, he would cut off his hands for you - that's how it makes him feel, to have touched that baseball bat, to have swung that bat with those results. It's how we all feel - you and me and Owen. We've lost a part of ourselves.' And Dan picked up the wrecked armadillo and began to experiment with it on my night table, trying - as I had tried - to find a position that allowed the beast to stand, or even to lie down, with any semblance of comfort or dignity; it was quite impossible. The thing had been crippled; it was rendered an invalid. And how had Owen arranged the claws? I wondered. What sort of terrible altarpiece had he constructed? Were the claws gripping the murderous baseball?
And so Dan and I became quite emotional, while we struggled to find a way to make the armadillo's appearance acceptable - but that was the point, Dan concluded: there was no way that any or all of this was acceptable. What had happened was unacceptable! Yet we still had to live with it. ~ John Irving

A crippled child
Said, "How shall I dance?"
Let your heart dance
We said.
Then the invalid said:
"How shall I sing?"
Let your heart sing
We said
Then spoke the poor dead thistle,
"But I, how shall I dance?"
Let your heart fly to the wind
We said.
Then God spoke from above
"How shall I descend from the blue?"
Come dance for us here in the light
We said.
All the valley is dancing
Together under the sun,
And the heart of him who joins us not
Is turned to dust, to dust. ~ Gabriela Mistral

For we conceive it as the aim of a philosopher, as such, to do somewhat more than define and formulate the common normal opinions of mankind. His function is to tell men what they ought to think, rather than what they do think: he is expected to transcend Common Sense in his premises, and is allowed a certain divergence from Common Sense in his conclusions. It is true that the limits of this deviation are firmly, though indefinitely, fixed: the truth of a philosopher's premises will always be tested by the acceptability of his conclusions: if in any important point he be found in flagrant conflict with common opinion, his method is likely to be declared invalid. Still, though he is expected to establish and concatenate at least the main part of the commonly accepted moral rules, he is not necessarily bound to take them as the basis on which his own system is constructed. Rather, we should expect that the history of Moral Philosophy--so far at least as those whom we may call orthodox thinkers are concerned--would be a history of attempts to enunciate, in full breadth and clearness, those primary intuitions of Reason, by the scientific application of which the common moral thought of mankind may be at once systematized and corrected. ~ Henry Sidgwick

He must have been delightful," she said, "when he was alive! ~ Margaret Widdemer

Long-protracted suffering is apt to exhaust not only the invalid, but the compassion of others; violent emotions cannot be prolonged endlessly. ~ Stefan Zweig

Miracles have no claim whatever to the character of historical facts and are wholly invalid as evidence of any revelation. ~ John Stuart Mill

He would like to burrow under the earth like a bulb, like a root, to where it is still warm. To hibernate with his thoughts and feelings. To remain silent with a shrivelling mouth. He wishes that all the statements, insults, promises he has uttered would become invalid, forgotten by everyone and he himself forgotten too.
But no sooner is he secured in the silence, no sooner does he fancy that he has wrapped himself up like a chrysalis, than he is no longer right. A wet, cold wind blows his absence of expectations around the corner, over a flower-stall filled with evergreens and flowers for the dead. And suddenly he is holding in his hands the snowdrops that he didn't want to buy
he who wanted to go empty-handed! The bells of the snowdrops begin to ring wildly and soundlessly, and he goes to where his ruin awaits him. Filled with expectation as never before, with the expectation and the desire for salvation accumulated through all the years. ~ Ingeborg Bachmann

Those who knew Benjamin Franklin will recollect that his mind was forever young, his temper ever serene; science, that never grows gray, was always his mistress. He was never without an object, for when we cease to have an object, we become like an invalid in a hospital waiting for death. ~ Thomas Paine

There are normal hours, and then there are invalid hours, where time stalls and slips, where life
real life
seems to exist at one remove. ~ Jojo Moyes

Further, Dr. Gold said with a straight face, the pill at optimum dosage could have the side effect of impotence. Until that moment, although I'd had some trouble with his personality, I had not thought him totally lacking in perspicacity; now I was not all sure. Putting myself in Dr. Gold's shoes, I wondered if he seriously thought that this juiceless and ravaged semi-invalid with the shuffle and the ancient wheeze woke up each morning from his Halcion sleep eager for carnal fun. ~ William Styron

To me there's no real difference between a fortune teller or a fortune cookie and any of the organized religions. They're all equally valid or invalid, really. And equally helpful. ~ Woody Allen

Money that may never be spent is nothing but a miser's toy. Saving as an exercise in self-denial is an invalid goal, a sick use of money. ~ Catherine Crook De Camp

Vices are simply overworked virtues, anyway. Economy and frugality are to be commended but follow them on in an increasing ratio and what do we find at the other end? A miser! If we overdo the using of spare moments we may find an invalid at the end, while perhaps if we allowed ourselves more idle time we would conserve our nervous strength and health to more than the value the work we could accomplish by emulating at all times the little busy bee.
I once knew a woman, not very strong, who to the wonder of her friends went through a time of extraordinary hard work without any ill effects.
I asked her for her secret and she told me that she was able to keep her health, under the strain, because she took 20 minutes, of each day in which to absolutely relax both mind and body. She did not even "set and think." She lay at full length, every muscle and nerve relaxed and her mind as quiet as her body. This always relieved the strain and renewed her strength. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

no disease suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel, complicated disease, unknown to medicine -- not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure, and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their lives on that business. But above all that thought was kept out of their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful [...] Their usefulness did not depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible because they were given in small doses) but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and those who loved her -- and that is why there are, and always will be, pseudo-healers, wise women, homoeopaths, and allopaths. They satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy, and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are suffering. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The details were fed to me like bread soaked in milk given to a Victorian invalid. A little at a time. Gentle, soft. Like that made a difference. ~ Stephanie Butland

Any history of the political events of our time which does not also include a discussion of the Bible, the impact of Christianity, and the role of faith in changing the hearts and minds of people all over the world is an incomplete and invalid study. For what is taking place in the world today is not just a protest, but a revolution in the sphere of the human heart. ~ Billy Graham

Properly a theory about knowledge, not about religion. A theist and a Christian may be an agnostic; an atheist may not be an agnostic. An atheist may deny that there is God, and in this case his atheism is dogmatic and not agnostic. Or he may refuse to acknowledge that there is a God simply on the ground that he perceives no evidence for his existence and finds the arguments which have been advanced in proof of it invalid. In this case his atheism is critical, not agnostic. The atheist may be, and not infrequently is, an agnostic. ~ Robert Flint

I think fiction isn't so good at being for or against things in general - the rhetorical argument a short story can make is only actualized by the accretion of particular details, and the specificity of these details renders whatever conclusions the story reaches invalid for wider application. ~ George Saunders

Live life without being afraid of judgment from others because judgment from other sinners is invalid. ~ Karrine Steffans

I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose. ~ Oscar Wilde

I shall never be there but once more,' said the invalid; 'and then you'll leave me, and I shall remain for ever. Next spring you'll long again to have me under this roof, and you'll look back and think you were happy to-day. ~ Emily Bronte

Hi, Commander. On the anniversary of what you did, I just wanted to say thank you. This is my daughter, Dalycia. I don't know if you remember me or not, but I'm the woman you saved from that psycho, and this is the daughter I had six weeks later. Say hi, Dalycia. (Woman)
Hi, Commander. Thank you for saving my mommy and me. I drew this for you to say thank you. See, it's you saving us, and we're all happy 'cause we're alive and the bad man isn't. (Dalycia)
(All of a sudden, he snarled in outrage and threw the frame against the wall, shattering it into a thousand pieces.)
Adron! (Livia)
What? Did you think showing me that shit would make all of this okay? Did you think I'd look at them, then cry and say how grateful I am they live while I'm trapped like this? What about the children I wanted to have, Livia? I can't even have sex without spending a month in the hospital, or dying from it. All I want is five fucking seconds where I'm not trying to breathe through absolute agony. Five seconds where I can move and not ache to the marrow of my bones. I'm only thirty-five years old, and all I have to look forward to is a future where I'll slowly, painfully disintegrate into an invalid who can't even wipe his own ass. Do you really think I'm okay with being dependent on you or anyone else? I was an assassin, and now I have less mobility than a withered-up hundred-year-old man. I'm nothing but a worthless piece of shit who should have died that night. And them telli ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Being sick is itself a kind of ressentiment. - Against this the invalid has only one great means of cure - I call it Russian fatalism, that fatalism without rebellion with which a Russian soldier for whom the campaign has become too much at last lies down in the snow. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It's valid that the Strokes and the Pleased have been influenced by some of the same bands. But it's invalid in the sense that we listen to the Strokes and try to sounds like them. I think that they are a good band. ~ Joanna Newsom

In languages with a garbage collector (GC), the GC keeps track and cleans up memory that isn't being used anymore, and we don't need to think about it. Without a GC, it's our responsibility to identify when memory is no longer being used and call code to explicitly return it, just as we did to request it. Doing this correctly has historically been a difficult programming problem. If we forget, we'll waste memory. If we do it too early, we'll have an invalid variable. If we do it twice, that's a bug too. We need to pair exactly one allocate with exactly one free.

Rust takes a different path: the memory is automatically returned once the variable that owns it goes out of scope. ~ Steve Klabnik

The operative idea here is that there is a right and wrong theology
a right God and a wrong God. But this is an invalid premise. All versions of God are the same thing: A HUMAN INTERPRETATION OF THE UNIVERSAL CONSCIOUSNESS. ~ Carlton D. Pearson

Mama, Mama, help me get home
I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
I found me a werewolf, a nasty old mutt
It showed me its teeth and went straight for my gut.
Mama, Mama, help me get home
I'm out in the woods, I am out on my own.
I was stopped by a vampire, a rotting old wreck
It showed me its teeth and went straight for my neck.
Mama, Mama, put me to bed
I won't make it home, I'm already half-dead.
I met an Invalid, and fell for his art
He showed me his smile, and went straight for my heart.
-From "A Child's Walk Home," Nursery Rhymes and Folk Tales ~ Lauren Oliver

Cardinal Campeggio has implored Katherine to bow to the king's will, accept that her marriage is invalid and retire to a convent. Certainly, she says sweetly, she will become a nun: if the king will become a monk. ~ Hilary Mantel