Last Sentences Quotes

I am going to get a beer with some friends and stop working on this damn conclusion. Too few of you, Big Data tells me, are still reading. ~ Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

Our absence is what remains of us. ~ Catherine O'Flynn

Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one. ~ Herbert Bayard Swope

I began to notice that when I was tired or anxious, there were certain sentences I would say in my head that lead me to a very familiar place. The journey to this place would often start with me walking around disturbed, feeling as if there was something deep inside that I needed to put into words but couldn't quite capture. I felt the "something" as an anxiety, a loneliness, and a need for connection with someone. If no connection came, I would start to say things like, "Life really stinks. Why is it always so hard? It's never going to change." If no one noticed that I was struggling and asked me what was wrong, I found my sentences shifting again to a more cynical level, "Who cares? Life really is a joke." Surprisingly, I noticed by the time I was saying these last sentences, I was feeling better. The anxiety had greatly diminished.
My "comforter", my abiding place, was cynicism and rebellion. From this abiding place, I would feel free to use some soul - cocaine - a violence video with maybe a little sexual titillation thrown in, perhaps having a little more alcohol with a meal than I might normally drink - things that would allow me to feel better for just a little while. I had always thought of these things as just bad habits. I began to see that they were much more; they were spiritual abiding places that were my comforters and friends in a very spiritual way; literally, other lovers. ~ John Eldredge

If you will count, count the stars, dear one. How many stars in the sky, looking down on us as we lie in each other's arms and taste joy? How many gleaming fish in the lake where I splash our son in the water and hear his streaks of glee ring out in the clear air? A fine little salmon you made, that night in the rain. How many times does the heart beat, how fast does the blood run when at last we touch, and touch again, and breathe the same desperate, longing breath? Count those things, for they are the stuff of life and hope. ~ Juliet Marillier

Ever since Hugo Waverly had returned to London, he had been keeping on eye on Cedric's sisters, particularly Horatia. Waverly had a way of creating collateral damage and Lucien would do anything to keep these innocent ladies safe. But she mustn't know he was watching over her. He'd spent the last six years being outwardly cold to her, praying she'd stop gazing at him in that sweet, loving way of hers.
It was cruel of him, yes, but if he did not create some distance, he'd have had her on her back beneath him. She was too good a woman for that, and he was far too wicked to be worthy of her. Rather like a demon falling for an angel.

-Lucien's thoughts. His Wicked Seduction (The League of Rogue's book 2) ~ Lauren Smith

I was a vegan when I was in college, but it didn't last long."
"What made you change your mind?"
"Bacon."
"Ah. ~ David P. Wagner

Do you think my husband and his soldiers will be overly upset with me?"
The priest broke into a wide grin. "I'll stand by your side when we find out," he said. "I would be honored to escort you to your husband."
The priest took hold of Johanna's arm. She didn't notice. "I expect them to be a little upset at first," she explained. "But only just a little."
"Yes," he agreed. "Tell me, lass. When was your last confession?"
"Why do you ask?"
"It's preferred to receive absolution before you meet your Maker. ~ Julie Garwood

Because Harvard is such a fine sound forty acres is no high price for a fine sound. A fine dead sound we will swap Benjy's pasture for a fine dead sound. It will last him a long time because he cannot hear it unless he can smell it ~ William Faulkner

Certain strains of music affect me so strangely - I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms. ~ George Eliot

The rapid pulse in her wrist vibrated against his lips. His own rhythm matching the jumps in her heartbeat. He closed his eyes, breathed in her sweet scent one last time, and looked down into her eyes. She stared back at him, boldly assessing. God help him. He could not seduce her. He could not live with himself if he did. Expecting her to remove her hand, he closed his eyes again and sighed softly, willing his body to relax. Her hand slowly left his face. This is for the best. His heart and body ached at the loss and the unfulfillment of his desires. The next instant, her gentle hand stroked his chin and bottom lip and his whole body jerked. He kept his eyes closed, afraid to break the spell. Warm fingers slid down his neck. Shivers coursed up and down his spine. Sweet was the torment and fragile was his control as he felt it slip away. ~ Angela Quarles

The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied. ~ Samuel Johnson

There are as many Africas as there are books about Africa
and as many books about it as you could read in a leisurely lifetime. Whoever writes a new one can afford a certain complacency in the knowledge that his is a new picture agreeing with no one else's, but likely to be haugthily disagreed with by all those who believed in some other Africa ... Being thus all things to all authors, it follows, I suppose, that Africa must be all things to all readers.
Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home. ~ Beryl Markham

In this world of ours,
We eat only to cast out,
Sleep only to wake,
And what comes after all that
Is simply to die at last. ~ Matsuo Basho

He recounted how, after the last of Charlemagne's forty-seven victorious campaigns, when he was returning from Saxony, a comet flashed across the sky and the Emperor's horse shied and threw him to the ground. The great Frankish Emperor had fallen so violently that his sword belt had been torn off him and the Spear, which he was clasping in his left hand, had been hurled some twenty feet away from him. At the same time there were earth tremors in the Royal Palace at Aachen, and the word "Princeps" had mysteriously faded from the red ochre inscription high up on a central beam in the Cathedral, which had formerly read 'Karolus Princeps.' Charlemagne himself had taken little notice of these portents, which his courtiers had taken to be a prophecy of his imminent death. In Einhard's own words: 'He refused to admit that any of these events could have any connection ith his own personal affairs.' Yet the 70-year-old Emperor drew up his last will and testament just in case these portents were correct. And they were! ~ Trevor Ravenscroft

You may lose a partner, a friend,
But you must never lose yourself.
You may miss the next train, or trend,
And yet it won't put you on the shelf.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
Without carrying a heavy load.
You may not find a wizard at last,
Stilll you may learn from the past. ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

The last time I saw Paris.
Her heart was warm and gay. ~ Oscar Hammerstein II

From the twilight of day till the twilight of evening, a leopard, in the last years of the thirteenth century, would see some wooden planks, some vertical iron bars, men and women who changed, a wall and perhaps a stone gutter filled with dry leaves. He did not know, could not know, that he longed for love and cruelty and the hot pleasure of tearing things to pieces and the wind carrying the scent of a deer, but something suffocated and rebelled within him and God spoke to him in a dream: "You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem." God, in the dream, illumined the animal's brutishness and the animal understood these reasons and accepted his destiny, but, when he awoke, there was in him only an obscure resignation, a valorous ignorance, for the machinery of the world is much too complex for the simplicity of a beast. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

So say it loud and let it ring We are all a part of everything The future, present and the past Fly on proud bird You're free at last ~ Charlie Daniels

Actions over words always, otherwise silence. ~ Rodrigo Garcia

The Booker triumph of Graham Swift's moving, effortlessly profound Last Orders is a vindication of the quiet, much-misunderstood path this fine writer chose to take after the brilliance of Waterland more than ten years ago. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro

He's tried to explain this a couple of times to a few of his buddies after about five beers. Like listen, listen. Imagine you live in this country, right? And there's a brutal war, and you witness and maybe participate in a horrific amount of violence, and you lose absolutely everyone you care about. Then you end up in this other country, where the culture and ways of doing things are completely foreign to you, and random assholes make fun of you for how you dress and act and talk while you're still coming to grips with the fact that everyone you love is gone and you can never go home again. Meanwhile, everyone around you is like "smile, motherfucker, you're in the Land of Plenty now, where there's a Starbucks on every corner and 500 channels on TV. You should be grateful! Why aren't you acting more grateful?" So you have to pretend to be grateful while you're dying inside. Sound like an traumatized, orphaned refugee? Also sounds like Steve fucking Rogers, Captain Goddamn America. Except that most refugees were part of a community of other people who were going through the same thing. Steve is all alone, the last damn unicorn, if the last unicorn had horrible screaming nightmares about the time when it helped to liberate Buchenwald. ~ Spitandvinegar

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind! ~ William James

Do you want to know why I use a knife? Guns are too quick. You can't savor all the... little emotions. In... you see, in their last moments, people show you who they really are. So in a way, I know your friends better than you ever did. Would you like to know which of them were cowards? ~ Christopher J. Nolan

Contemporary poetry is a kind of Reykjavik, a place where accessibility and intelligence have been fighting a Cold War by proxy for the last half-century. ~ Nick Hornby

And they say, if ever a traveler plucks the wild parsley, and takes the bark of the hazel tree, and the secret toadstools, and mixes them with crocus from the patch of forest where the hero's last bones lie, a powerful spell will come to life. The hero will be reborn, not as he was before his destruction, but many times stronger in body and spirit; for he will be filled with the strength of earth, sea, and air. I think of the seven of us as the parts of one body. We may be torn asunder, and it may seem as if there is no tomorrow for us. We may each travel our own path, and we may fall and be broken and mend again. But in the end, as surely as the sun and moon make their way across the arch of the heavens, the strength of one is the strength of seven. ~ Juliet Marillier

If God did not reveal himself with word-by-word
precision, then He has placed the revelation of
truth into the incompetent hands of fallen man.
That would prove hopelessly imbecilic. He who
revealed Himself with exactness in "natural" creation
chose the precise words, sentences and paragraphs to compile one Book in which we have His perfect Word. ~ Ron Susek

Witches married outside their species all the time, especially before the Turn. There were perfectly acceptable options: adoption, artificial insemination, borrowing your best friend's boyfriend for a night. Issues of what was morally right and wrong tended not to matter when you found yourself in love with a man you couldn't tell you weren't human. It sort of went with the whole hiding-among-humans-for-the-last-five-thousand-years thing. ~ Kim Harrison

Erroneous plurals of nouns, as vallies or echos.
Barbarous compound nouns, as viewpoint or upkeep.
Want of correspondence in number between noun and verb where the two are widely separated or the construction involved.
Ambiguous use of pronouns.
Erroneous case of pronouns, as whom for who, and vice versa, or phrases like "between you and I," or "Let we who are loyal, act promptly."
Erroneous use of shall and will, and of other auxiliary verbs.
Use of intransitive for transitive verbs, as "he was graduated from college," or vice versa, as "he ingratiated with the tyrant."
Use of nouns for verbs, as "he motored to Boston," or "he voiced a protest."
Errors in moods and tenses of verbs, as "If I was he, I should do otherwise," or "He said the earth was round."
The split infinitive, as "to calmly glide."
The erroneous perfect infinitive, as "Last week I expected to have met you."
False verb-forms, as "I pled with him."
Use of like for as, as "I strive to write like Pope wrote."
Misuse of prepositions, as "The gift was bestowed to an unworthy object," or "The gold was divided between the five men."
The superfluous conjunction, as "I wish for you to do this."
Use of words in wrong senses, as "The book greatly intrigued me," "Leave me take this," "He was obsessed with the idea," or "He is a meticulous writer."
Erroneous use of non-Anglicised foreign forms, as "a strange phenomena," or "two ~ H.P. Lovecraft

But then in all his words if not deeds Jefferson was so beautifully human, so eminently vague, so entirely dishonest but not in any meretricious way. Rather it was a passionate form of self-delusion that rendered Jefferson as president and as man (not to mention as writer of tangled sentences and lunatic metaphors) confusing even to his admirers. Proclaiming the unalienable rights of man for everyone (excepting slaves, Indians, women and those entirely without property), Jefferson tried to seize the Floridas by force, dreamed of a conquest of Cuba, and after his illegal purchase of Louisiana sent a military governor to rule New Orleans against the will of its inhabitants. ~ Gore Vidal

I wake up with you as the last thought in my dreams. I dream about your lips, the smell of your skin and hair, and the freaking fire that burms inside of me to be inside you. I want to bury myself inside you and never climb out, my sweet death. Grace, I'm fucking in love with you. - Shane ~ Christine Zolendz

Tonight, I say to the American people, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land: enough! This moment, this election is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look like the last eight. On Nov. 4, we must stand up and say: Eight is enough. ~ Barack Obama

The casualty lists went on appearing for a long time after the Armistice - last spasms of Europe's severed arteries. ~ Richard Aldington

And when [Bëor] lay dead, of no wound or grief, but stricken by age, the Eldar saw for the first time the swift waning of the life of Men, and the death of weariness which they knew not in themselves; and they grieved greatly for the loss of their friends. But Bëor at the last had relinquished his life willingly and passed in peace; and the Eldar wondered much at the strange fate of Men, for in all their lore there was no account of it, and its end was hidden from them. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Juliana was momentarily at a loss for words, a strange condition for her. It didn't last long. ~ Cindy Anstey

Priscilla is having Libby followed. That means when I follow Libby, I have to be discreet. The last thing I need is Priscilla knowing that I know what she's doing. It would ruin everything. ~ Ella James

Dare to write your life story in such a way that, if perchance, someone happens to read even a single sentence of it they will be compelled to take far greater care in the writing of their own sentences. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The last fight for the white metal is to be made here in this country and in this House, my friends. ~ Richard Parks Bland

Brother, these last two months I've found in myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn't been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that- it's something else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Designs of purely arbitrary nature cannot be expected to last long. ~ Kenzo Tange

I have heard Ori Kam on several occasions over the last few years and have always been deeply impressed with his playing. He possesses a rare combination of musical talent, technical facility, intelligence, and charisma, and he is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary young artists I have heard in recent years. ~ Daniel Barenboim