Jewel Of The Thames Quotes

I shook hands with the attorney, advising him to forgive the cat he had banished from his offices since a child had been the downfall of the bird, not a feline at all. The scratches on the birdcage were months old, while the small, sticky chocolate fingerprints on the cage door were less than a week old. He looked shocked and glanced wordlessly over at his birdcage, so I walked over to the nearest window to point to the matching chocolate fingerprints where a child had released the budgie into the skies of Toronto. ~ Angela Misri

The corners of her mouth turned up in a wry smile. Better and better. Your grandmother's looks and your grandfather's brains. A deadly combination, I must say. ~ Angela Misri

But the law of God came from heaven indeed. God wrote it with his finger, it is the fountain of all wisdom, and therefore shall it continue for ever, and never have an end. ~ John Jewel

Pirate and Osbie Feel are leaning on their roof-ledge, a magnificent sunset across and up the winding river, the imperial serpant, crowds of factories, flats, parks, smoky spires and gables, incandescent sky casting downward across the miles of deep streets and roofs cluttering and sinuous river Thames a drastic strain of burnt orange, to remind a visitor of his mortal transience here, to seal or empty all the doors and windows in sight to his eyes that look only for a bit of company, a word or two in the street before he goes up to the soap-heavy smell of the rented room and the squares of coral sunset on the floor-boards - an antique light, self-absorbed, fuel consumed in the metered winter holocaust, the more distant shapes among the threads or sheets of smoke now perfect ash ruins of themselves, nearer windows, struck a moment by the sun, not reflecting at all but containing the same destroying light, this intense fading in which there is no promise of return, light that rusts the government cars at the curbsides, varnishes the last faces hurrying past the shops in the cold as if a vast siren had finally sounded, light that makes chilled untraveled canals of many streets, and that fills with the starlings of London, converging by millions to hazy stone pedestals, to emptying squares and a great collective sleep. They flow in rings, concentric rings on the radar screens. The operators call them 'angels. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Fine Knacks for Ladies

Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new!
Good pennyworths! but money cannot move.
I keep a fair but for the fair to view.
A beggar may be liberal of love,
Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true.

Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again;
My trifles come as treasures from the mind.
It is a precious jewel to be plain;
Sometimes in shell the Orient's pearls we find.
Of others take a sheaf, of me a grain.

Within this pack pins points laces and gloves,
And diverse toys fitting a country fair.
But in my heart, where duty serves and loves,
Turtles and twins, court's brood, a heavenly pair.
Happy the heart that thinks of no removes! ~ John Dowland

I am most alive when I let myself be touched by the fingers of life. ~ Jewel

He's not here. The Black Earl."

"I know."

"So, for the moment, we are safe from that madness."

"I am always safe with you. No matter what happens, no matter what, I am safe with you and not with anyone else."

He inhaled. "How long have you been seeing the Black Earl?"

"A few days now." She bit her lower lip. "You?"

"Since I came to Pennhyll." He walked to the fireplace. She turned sideways on her chair, but all he did was stare at the fire, hands clasped and pressed against the small of his back. The fingers of one hand clenched and unclenched. He turned. "What of me? How long have I been in your head?"

"Before the Black Earl, I think. Only I didn't know they weren't just dreams."

"More and more intimate." His mouth thinned. "I confess to once or twice in my life imagining making love to a woman I admire. God knows you're a pretty woman, but I don't just imagine being with you. When I make love to you, you're not thoughts and images in my head, you're in my arms, real and warm. I can taste you and breathe in the scent of you, feel your skin against mine. We've never made love, but I've been inside you. Jesus, Olivia, you know I have."

She nodded.

"Hell, for all we know it's possible I've made a child in you." His eyes pinned her. "Did anything like that happen between you and Andrew?"

"No."

"You sound certain."

"I am."

"You ~ Carolyn Jewel

One problem with the work of the New Critics was that their close readings, no matter how brilliant, could not deliver all they seemed to promise. ~ Jewel Spears Brooker

He'd seen that absent look from her dozens of times in London. She thought herself invisible, and was not. Not to him. This was the second time he'd mentioned marriage to her. The second time she heard nothing but his words. ~ Carolyn Jewel

We should remember people in their most beautiful moments, but we don't. It's the etching of ugly and pain that leaves a lasting impression. ~ Jewel E. Ann

'The Moonstone' was all I could have hoped for. A mysterious, cursed jewel, wrested from India, only to be stolen later from a great British mansion. Enigmatic, dangerous priests who follow it across the ocean in hopes of wresting it back. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous flower;
When these have gone by with their glories,
What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
O mystic and somber Delores,
Our Lady of Pain? ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

Jaenelle tried to smile. "They won't find their way through the maze. Not this maze, anyway." Then she looked sadly at Daemon's gaunt, bruised body and gently brushed the long, dirty, tangled black hair off his forehead. "Ah, Daemon. I had gotten used to thinking of my body as a weapon that was used against me. I'd forgotten that it's also a gift. If it's not too late, I'll do better. I promise." Jaenelle placed her transparent hands on either side of Daemon's head. She closed her eyes. The Black Jewel glowed. Listening to the Hayllian guards thrashing around somewhere in the maze, Surreal sank to the ground and settled down to wait. *Daemon.* The island slowly sank into the sea of blood. He curled up in the center of the pulpy ground while the word sharks circled, waiting for him. *Daemon. ~ Anne Bishop

Yeah, about last night … it's been brought to my attention that I may have been a little out of line with somethings I did and said so - "

"Really? Such as …"

I can't believe he's going to make me say it. He's so frustrating. One minute he's cleaning puke off the drunk girl, showing his kind side, and the next he's trying to humiliate me. Granted, I do a pretty good job of setting myself up for it.

"Such as drinking too much to begin with, then maybe giving the impression that I was … jealous of Claire, or Dr. Brown."

"You mean Dr. Skank?"

Shit!

"Yes - I mean - no, not Dr. Skank. I don't remember calling her that, but if I did then I'm sorry. I didn't mean it." I may have meant it.

"Don't sweat it, Syd. I think you're adorable when you get all jealous."

"I was not jealous!" I yell in a high-pitched voice.

"Uh … your striptease was entitled 'Where Lautner's hands will never be again if he doesn't keep them off Dr. Skank.'"

Kill me now and never let another drop of alcohol pass my lips.

"So how was golf?"

Lautner laughs. "I take it we're done talking about last night?"

"It's pointless because it's your word against mine, unless Swarley goes all Bush Beans Duke on me."

"God, you're something else. So what did you call about?"

"Oh … just to …"

"I'm just flipping ya shit. I know why you called."

H ~ Jewel E. Ann

At the beginning of a remodel, money is everything, but as you go along, it becomes secondary to the vision. You can't have the house looking like a glorious jewel and leave the cracked linoleum or the icky light fixture, so you spend and spend and spend. Then one day it suddenly occurs to you that all that play money you've been throwing around is real - and it's in someone else's bank account. ~ Margo Kaufman

One man came up to me at a taco stand and said, "I have no idea who you are, but I can see everyone is staring at you, so you must be somebody. I just wanted to tell you that you are not that special. You're no more special than me." I looked at him with a mouth full of food and managed to say, "Thanks. I agree," and promptly asked the waitress for a to go box. ~ Jewel

Being part of the natural world reminds me that innocence isn't ever lost completely; we just need to maintain our goodness to regain it. ~ Jewel

Were you good at hide-and-seek? I sucked at it. Jude would talk stupid gibberish while looking for me. Stuff that would make me giggle and give away my hiding spot.

He'd say things like, 'I ran out of dental floss so I cut the strings off your tampons. Is that going to be a problem?' or, 'I masturbate in the shower. Don't you think it's odd that you never run out of conditioner? ~ Jewel E. Ann

Our dia continued. 'When I was twenty-one years old, my niang told me that I was to marry a nice girl aged eighteen. I told her, "I don't want to marry anyone, I don't know how to be a husband." She replied, "All you have to do is love her. She will teach you the rest about life." Little did I know then, but by fate I had married a rare jewel, the most precious jewel I could ever wish for. I treasured and loved her from the time I lifted her veil. I still love her today and will love her for the remainder of my humble life. ~ Li Cunxin

He was not poor - he could afford ten candles & two baths a week. He wasn't going to throw himself in the Thames for the misery of it all and God knew most of London was worse off. All the same, he had a feeling life should not have been about ten candles and two baths a week. ~ Natasha Pulley

She bent her head over the flowers. He knew she was not beautiful. He knew she did not see herself as the object of a man's lust. He knew if he told her he found her desirable, she'd not understand his meaning. She'd think he meant something other than marriage. In that, she would be right, but a man could want both things from the same woman. ~ Carolyn Jewel

How life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow. ~ Robert Penn Warren

Veronica: "Perhaps. If Sa'aw had but a male aspect, but recall the old, true worship of Sa'aw, male and female, bird, beast, and plant, earth, fire, air, and water are all honored in Sa'aw and Sa'aw manifests in all of them. If the Divine is also female and the female also divine, then she understands that woman is more than mother, more than daughter, more than wife. Those are the facets of a full life, but no single facet defines the jewel. ~ Robin Hobb

This is all I have to give you - me." He lifts his shoulders and his vulnerability rips away a little piece of my heart. "A book with blank pages, weathered edges, and eraser marks, that's what I am. I need you to paint my future, write my story in permanent marker, just like the mark you left on my heart the day we met. ~ Jewel E. Ann

They bear down upon Westminster, the ghost-consecrated Abbey, and the history-crammed Hall, through the arches of the bridge with a rush as the tide swelters round them; the city is buried in a dusky gloom save where the lights begin to gleam and trail with lurid reflections past black velvety- looking hulls - a dusky city of golden gleams. St. Paul's looms up like an immense bowl reversed, squat, un-English, and undignified in spite of its great size; they dart within the sombre shadows of the Bridge of Sighs, and pass the Tower of London, with the rising moon making the sky behind it luminous, and the crowd of shipping in front appear like a dense forest of withered pines, and then mooring their boat at the steps beyond, with a shuddering farewell look at the eel-like shadows and the glittering lights of that writhing river, with its burthen seen and invisible, they plunge into the purlieus of Wapping.
("The Phantom Model") ~ Hume Nisbet

Because, good God, Lily Wellstone had the face of an angel, the body of a goddess, and the spirit of the devil glinting from her eyes. She was a woman worth losing his soul for. ~ Carolyn Jewel

London
I wander through each chartered street,
Near where the chartered Thames does flow;
A mark in every face I meet,
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every man,
In every infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forged manacles I hear:
How the chimney-sweeper's cry
Every blackening church appals,
And the hapless soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down palace-walls.
But most, through midnight streets I hear
How the youthful harlot's curse
Blasts the new-born infant's tear,
And blights with plagues the marriage-hearse. ~ William Blake

Do you feel it?"
"Feel what?" He sat on the edge of my bed.
"My heart beating in your hands. ~ Jewel E. Ann

The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it's a constitution that's the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it's the most generous nation in the world. ~ Gary Oldman

She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the market-place to sell. Been set for still bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

I'm uncontrollably in love with Vivian. In such a short amount of time she's infiltrated my thoughts, cast a spell over my body, and wormed her way into the deepest part of my heart. A day without her would feel like a lifetime without breath, an eternity without light. ~ Jewel E. Ann

His skin like grey bark, his eyes pale as a winter pool, time and age had worn my father to the bone. In our youth, he'd been a strict master lording over my lessons while tender with the flower of his heart, my sister Anabine. Ana, the lovely, blooming jewel. Zyndel, she of clever wit. ~ Jamie Wyman

Because of the Thames I have always loved inland waterways - water in general, water sounds - there's music in water. Brooks babbling, fountains splashing. Weirs, waterfalls; tumbling, gushing. ~ Julie Andrews

Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment. ~ Wendell Phillips

And where the deepest current crawls/ Like thistledown the dainty fly falls./ Then from the depths a silver gleam/ Quick flashes, like a jewel bright./ Up through the waters of the stream/ An instant visible to sight/ As lightning cleaves to sombre sky/ A rainbow rises to the fly. ~ John Buchan

A fisherman in the month of May stood angling on the bank of the Thames with an artificial fly. He threw his bait with so much art, that a young trout was rushing toward it, when she was prevented by her mother. "Never," said she, "my child, be too precipitate, where there is a possibility of danger. Take due time to consider, before you risk an action that may be fatal. How know you whether yon appearance be indeed a fly, or the snare of an enemy? Let someone else make the experiment before you. If it be a fly, he will very probably elude the first attack: and the second may be made, if not with success, at least with safety." She had no sooner spoken, than a gudgeon seized the pretended fly, and became an example to the giddy daughter of the importance of her mother's counsel. FABLES, ROBERT DODSLEY, 1703-1764 ~ Robert Greene

The Thames was cold and it was the colour of the dishwater at the end of the washing up. I remember looking up through it and seeing the light pale brown and far above and wondering if I would sink farther or float up to it. I stayed down for the longest time Osama. I wouldn't mind drowning but I did float up in the end. Somehow I always seem to. ~ Chris Cleave

The Bible became a jewel in the hands of the Reformers not because it was a "handbook for happy living" or a "primer of metaphysics about God," but because in it the Christian possessed the "the swaddling clothes in which Christ lies."85 ~ Matthew Barrett

The great city seemed to weigh upon me, as though it were crushing me under its heap of brick and stone. Gray, drizzly skies, congested streets, the soot-belching boats and barges chugging up and down the Thames, the teeming mass of four millions hastening about the countless activities of daily life in a metropolis, things adventurous, meaningful, spiritual, quotidian, futile, criminal, meaningless and absurd. Amidst this seething stew of humanity, I painted. ~ Gary Inbinder

There is a pretty girl on the face of the magazine and all I see is my dirty hands turning the page. ~ Jewel

Yes ... I love how the Irish are so comfortable with paradox that they revel in it. In fact, if you took it away from them, I suspect they would start gasping like fish out of water. No wonder their land's name, now removed from its Gaelic notions of abundance in 'eire,' evokes anger, or 'ire,' and yet also the rich, cooling green of a sea-colored jewel. A 'terrible beauty' indeed. They understand oppression and repression and explosion, but they remain a culture of faith-faith that creaks and groans and pulls, but is alive and never dull. And which urges them to art, to poetry, to song-these, too, are forms of action. Of passion. Of conviction. Yes, of love. ~ Carolyn Weber

When you finish a poem, it clicks shut like the top of a jewel box, but prose is endless. I haven't experienced an awful lot of clicking shut! ~ Kenneth Koch