Limb Quotes

It stayed with him, like a part of him, like a birthmark, like a limb, it was on him, in him, him, his hymn: I had to do it for myself. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Walking away from my desert companions feels like cutting off a limb. How does one say good-bye to an arm? One doesn't, I suppose. One pretends it isn't happening. ~ Rae Carson

I would lay down my life to defend any one of the States from aggression, which endangered peace or threatened its institutions. I could do more for the union, but I wish to do more; for the destruction of the union would be the destruction of all the States. A stab in the heart is worse then a cut in a limb, for this may be healed. ~ Sam Houston

Amity was the cold, steady gaze of a double-barreled shotgun, bearing down. She was the glint of pinprick pupils gleaming through a night-lit window, the rythmic blast of a door left banging in a gale wind. The slither of a flesh-flayed limb beneath a bed skirt, a welcome note etched in blood. Amity's forever was reflected in the glimmering edge of an ax, in the rushing footprints, the twitching tail, the brushing fingertips of a zephyr, a cipher, a wordless, formless shape. ~ Micol Ostow

The night draws to an end, the dream dims in the pale silver of awakening. Kruppe ceases, weary beyond reason. Sweat drips down the length of his ratty beard, his latest affectation.
A bard sits, head bowed, and in a short time he will say thank you. But for now he must remain silent, and as for the other things he would say, they are between him and Kruppe and none other. Fisher sits, head bowed. While an Elder God weeps.
The tale is spun. Spun out.
Dance by limb, dance by word. Witness! ~ Steven Erikson

Fred just shrugged enigmatically. 'What? Just a load of girls going to the toilet? Personally I prefer wildlife videos. ~ Sue Limb

We owe our troops the opportunity to serve in the best-planned, best-equipped, and best-led military force in the world, and we owe them the peace of mind that comes from knowing that they and their families will be taken care of if they sacrifice life, limb or the ability to sleep without war's nightmares. We owe them not just thanks and best wishes, but action, and action in our nation's capital. ~ John F. Kerry

They call me a monster and if it were untrue the weight of my crimes would pin me to the ground. I have maimed and I have murdered and if this mountain stood but a little higher I would cut the angels from their heaven. I care less for accusations than for the rain that soaks me, that runs down every limb. I spit both from my lips. Judgment has always left a sour taste. ~ Mark Lawrence

At other times, at the edge of a wood, especially at dusk, the trees themselves would assume strange shapes: sometimes they were arms rising heavenwards, , or else the trunk would twist and turn like a body being bent by the wind. At night, when I woke up and the moon and the stars were out, I would see in the sky things that filled me simultaneously with dread and longing. I remember that once, one Christmas Eve, I saw a great naked women, standing erect, with rolling eyes; she must have been a hundred feet high, but along she drifted, growing ever longer and ever thinner, and finally fell apart, each limb remaining separate, with the head floating away first as the rest of her body continued to waver ~ Gustave Flaubert

Do you remember the time we tied a lasso to a tree limb and decided to swing across the creek like Tarzan?" Wyatt tipped up his frosty bottle and took a long pull.
"Yeah." Zane was already laughing. "As usual,you two decided that I'd be the one to try it out first.That way,if it broke,I'd be the one tossed into the creek."
"It stands to reason." Jesse chuckled. "You were the youngest. That's just the price you had to pay to hang out with us."
"And," Wyatt added, "you were always willing to go along with whatever we decided."
Zane shook his head. "Not when I used it to fly across the creek."
"And not when I followed him," Wyatt said with a laugh. "But Jesse, assured that it was safe,grabbed hold and was flying through the air when the branch snapped."
Amy looked over at her husband. "You landed in the creek?"
"Yeah? On the day after one of our biggest storms,with the water spilling over its banks and rushing so fast it carried me downstream half a mile or more."
She put a hand to her mouth to cover her shock and saw Cora do the same.
Wyatt laughed. "He was lucky Zane and I had our horses tethered nearby.We chased along the banks of the creek until we could get far enough ahead to toss him a tree branch to catch. By the time we hauled him out,he looked like a drowned rat and was spitting mad."
"I had a right to be.I swallowed half the creek."
Zane laughed. "But think how lucky we were that it happened to you instead of me. ~ R.C. Ryan

If you never go out on that limb, you're missing a hell of a view. ~ Jodi Picoult

I sent a silent prayer up to the Phoenix to keep her safe a little longer, because I would tear the shifters limb for limb until I got my baby sister back. ~ Katherine McIntyre

Local grandmas came in and out of our clinic bringing homemade cookies and fudge, because nothing soothes phantom limb pain better than a homemade brownie. ~ Adele Levine

Let me tell you about this leg, Miss Oldridge," he said. "This used to be a modest, well-behaved leg, quietly going about its business, troubling nobody. But ever since it was hurt, it has become tyrannical."

Her expression eased another degree, and amusement glinted in her eyes, like faint, distant stars in a midsummer night's sky.

Encouraged, he went on, "This limb is selfish, surly, and ungrateful. When English medical expertise declared the case hopeless, we took the leg to a Turkish healer. He plied it with exotic unguents and cleaned and dressed it several times a day. By this means he staved off the fatal and malodorous infection it should have suffered otherwise. Was the leg grateful? Did it go back to work like a proper leg? No, it did not."

Lips twitching, she made a sympathetic murmur.

"This limb, madam," he said, "demanded months of boring exercises before it would condescend to perform the simplest movements. Even now, after nearly three years of devoted care and maintenance, it will fly into a fit over damp weather. And this, may I remind you, is an English leg, not one of your delicate foreign varieties. ~ Loretta Chase

First I shake the whole Apple tree, that the ripest might fall. Then I climb the tree and shake each limb, and then each branch and then each twig, and then I look under each leaf. ~ Martin Luther

To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb. Oh vast gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the living banished thither companionless, conscious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is your God? ~ Thomas Carlyle

It's as though you had lost an arm or leg but still instinctively reach out to feel your missing limb or try to walk again, placing your entire weight on something that no longer is there. ~ Zeina Kassem

In form and feature, face and limb, I grew so like my brother That folks got taking me for him And each for one another. For one of us was born a twin And not a soul knew which ... ~ Henry Sambrooke Leigh

It's difficult to put your own bare ass out on the limb every time you sit down to write a poem. But that's really sort of the ideal. Because if we don't discover something about ourselves and our world in the making of a poem, chances are it's not going to be a very good poem. So what I'm saying is that a lot of our best poets could be better poets if they wrote less and risked more in what they do. ~ Sam Hamill

Then we'll be Tarzan and Jane, mating like wildebeests and frolicking from tree limb to tree limb." "The Disney movie never showed them mating." "Jane was a hottie. Tarzan would have tapped that ass the second the credits came up. Now that's a fact. ~ R.J. Lewis

A cautious man would've backed off. Not me. Yielding would basically have told him he'd won. I was tougher and I'd prove it. If it cost me a limb, screw it. ~ Veronica Rossi

Miss Vesper Holly has the digestive talents of a goat and the mind of a chess master. She is familiar with half a dozen languages and can swear fluently in all of them. She understands the use of a slide rule but prefers doing calculations in her head. She does not hesitate to risk life and limb- mine as well as her own. No doubt she has other qualities as yet undiscovered. I hope not. ~ Lloyd Alexander

I ask to be made beautiful like the trees are beautiful, each growing according to a unique plan. Lop off a limb and and the tree will accommodate it's loss, still growing and still beautiful. It is my hope to be able to flourish in a similar fashion, taking on the shape and dimensions that is intended for me. ~ Julia Cameron

When the third soldier, the leader and one she'd struck with the limb, joined the others, Lia gasped. The three men stood talking in low voices for several minutes, and then they drew closer, heads down, slowly following her muddy footprint trail. Lia breathed ~ Lindsay McKenna

A dozen men are shut up together in a little bark upon the wide, wide sea, and for months and months see no forms and hear no voices but their own, and one is taken suddenly from among them, and they miss him at every turn. It is like losing a limb. There are no new faces or new scenes to fill up the gap. There is always an empty berth in the forecastle, and one man wanting when the small night-watch is mustered. There is one less to take the wheel, and one less to lay out with you upon the yard. You miss his form, and the sound of his voice, for habit had made them almost necessary to you, and each of your senses feels the loss. ~ Richard Henry Dana Jr.

Arin heard the door to the barracks creak. The sound brought him immediately to his feet, for only one person would come to his cell this late at night. Then he heard the first heavy footfall, and his hands slackened around the metal bars. The footsteps coming were not hers. They belonged to someone big. Solid, slow. Probably a man.
Torchlight pulsed toward Arin's cell. When he saw who carried it, he pulled away from the bars. He saw a child's nightmare come to life.
The general set the torch in a sconce. He stared, taking in Arin's fresh bruises, his height, his features. The general's frown deepened.
This man didn't look like Kestrel. He was all mass and muscle. But Arin found her in the way her father lifted his chin, and his eyes held the same dangerous intelligence.
"Is she all right?" Arin said. When he received no response, he asked again in Valorian. And because he had already damned himself with a question he couldn't bear not to ask, Arin said something he had sworn he would never say. "Sir."
"She's fine."
A feeling flowed into Arin, something like sleep or the sudden absence of pain.
"If I had my choice, I would kill you," said the general, "but that would cause more talk. You'll be sold. Not right away, because I don't want to be seen reacting to a scandal. But soon.
"I'll be spending some time at home, and I will be watching you. If you come near my daughter, I will forget my better judgment. I will have you torn limb from ~ Marie Rutkoski

I woke up this morning exhausted from hiding the me of me. So I stand here confiding there's more to Devon than jump shot and rim. I'm more than tall and lengthy of limb. I dare you to peep behind these eyes, discover the poet in tough-guy disguise. Don't call me Jump Shot. My name is surprise. ~ Nikki Grimes

I realized the shells were talking in a voice I recognized. I should have; it was my own. Had I always known that? I suppose I had. On some level, unless we're mad, I think most of us know the various voices of our own imaginations.
And of our memories, of course. They have voices, too. Ask anyone who has ever lost a limb or a child or a long-cherished dream. Ask anyone who blames himself for a bad decision, usually made in a raw instant (an instant that is most commonly red). Our memories have voices, too. Often sad ones that clamor like raised arms in the dark. ~ Stephen King

Without excuse and self-consideration of health or limb or life, true soldiers fight, live to fight, love the thickest of the fight, and die in the midst of it. ~ William Booth

While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. ~ Herman Melville

Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done ... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A 'modern' man has nothing to add to modernism, if only because he has nothing to oppose it with. The well-adapted drop off the dead limb of time like lice. ~ Elias Canetti

I'll check on you when I get home. I love you, baby. (Kiefer)
I love you too, Daddy. (Kiara)
What the hell was that action? (Syn)
I think it's something called 'paternal concern.' (Nykyrian)
What…? You sure? I thought that crap was a myth. (Syn)
No, really. I watched it once in a documentary. It was fascinating. Believe it or not, there are people out there who actually have feelings for their progeny. (Nykyrian)
Get the fuck out. No way. You're screwing with my head again, aren't you? (Syn)
No, I swear. You just saw it with your own eyes. I did not make that shit up. (Nykyrian)
Yeah but it's really messing with my concept of the natural order of the universe. Paternal love? What's next? Limb regrowth? Genetic splicing reversals? (Syn) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The qualities of an exceptional cook are akin to those of a successful tightrope walker: an abiding passion for the task, courage to go out on a limb and an impeccable sense of balance. ~ Bryan Q. Miller

Mirth, and even cheerfulness, when employed as remedies in low spirits, are like hot water to a frozen limb. ~ Benjamin Rush

If the worst thing that can happen is that nobody laughs, then I can deal with that, because the worst thing that can happen at the factory is that I could lose a limb or be crushed by a huge machine. ~ George Lopez

The painter who is familiar with the nature of the sinews, muscles, and tendons, will know very well, in giving movement to a limb, how many and which sinews cause it; and which muscle, by swelling, causes the contraction of that sinew; and which sinews, expanded into the thinnest cartilage, surround and support the said muscle. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

At the zoo, I stood in front of the primate cage listening to a woman marvel at how "presidential" the four-hundred-pound gorilla looked sitting astride a shorn oaken limb, keeping a watchful eye over his caged brood. When her boyfriend, his finger tapping the informational placard, pointed out the "presidential" silverback's name coincidentally was Baraka, the woman laughed aloud, until she saw me, the other four-hundred-pound gorilla in the room, stuffing something that might have been the last of a Big Stick Popsicle or a Chiquita banana in my mouth. ~ Paul Beatty

Every day is an opportunity to learn something or discover something or someplace. Be curious, play, go out on a limb, walk a different way to work, try a new food at dinner and keep learning and growing. ~ Sandra Magsamen

Marriage is like grafting a limb onto a tree trunk. You have the limb, freshly sliced, dripping sap, and smelling of springtime, and then you have the mother tree stripped of her protective bark, gouged and ready to receive this new addition. Some years ago, my father performed this surgery on a dogwood tree in the side yard. He tried a pink-blooming limb stolen from the woods to my mother's white-blooming tree from a nursery lot. It took yards of burlap and twine and two years for the plants to join. Even now, all these years later, there's something not quite natural about the tree, even in its amazing two-tone glory. ~ Tayari Jones

I would rend anyone limb from limb who tried to come between Regan and me. From now on, the only one who will hear her scream when she comes is me. The only man who will get to taste the nectar between her legs is me. The only cock that will ever pleasure her, from this moment until I never draw another breath, is mine. ~ Jessica Clare

I wish we could be trees deep in the mountains,
touching, twining limb around limb. ~ Bai Juyi

To someone who has not had a parent stolen from them, I can only attempt to explain how it feels. It's like having part of yourself hacked off without warning. Afterwards, they become like a phantom limb: you're sure they're still present because you can feel them, you communicate with them, but you just can't see them. ~ Rusty Young

Sometimes you want to say, "I love you, but…"
Yet the "but" takes away the 'I love you'. In love their are no 'buts' or 'if's' or 'when'. It's just there, and always. No beginning, no end. It's the condition-less state of the heart. Not a feeling that comes and goes at the whim of the emotions. It is there in our heart, a part of our heart…eventually grafting itself into each limb and cell of our bodies. Love changes our brain, the way we move and talk. Love lives in our spirit and graces us with its presence each day, until death.

To say "I love you, but…." is to say, "I did not love you at all". ~ Coco J. Ginger

The horror of profound depression, and the hopelessness that usually accompanies it, are hard to imagine for those who have not experienced them. Because the despair is private, it is resistant to clear and compelling description. Novelist William Styron, however, in recounting his struggle with suicidal depression, captures vividly the heavy, inescapable pain that can lead to suicide:

What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from this smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion. (105) ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

The undiscriminating vulture is not our real danger: open scandal would simply drive him into profitless exile again, and would be no possible advantage to us. Neither should we fear our sturdy patriots who, like your father, are busy with their loyalties in queer and crooked ways. Our danger lies with the men who want to take this country by trunk and limb and wreak it into such a shape that it will fit them and their children for hose and jerkin in their old age."

"Some of them are sincere," said Lymond.

"I know: and such men will wreck us yet. Preserve us above all from the honest clod and the ambitious fanatic. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Jeff [the werewolf] cocked his head and stared at me like I had just turned into a were-rabbit. Admittedly, this was a tremendous improvement over wanting to tear me limb from limb. Well, shave my ass and call me a poodle. How the hell did you manage that? ~ Jim C. Hines

It was the kind of talk that made me want to break off a limb and take to whacking her and that bunch of hypocrites across the back of the head. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

I asked you to come because I need your help." ...
"Those last may be the most difficult four words I've ever uttered in my life," he said. "I thought I would choke saying them."
"I thought I'd faint, hearing them," she said. "In my experience, men would rather have a limb amputated than admit they need help. And to seek it from a woman is completely unheard of."
He smiled. "The pain is nearly unbearable. ~ Loretta Chase

Fred, Fred, Fred, I'm sick of hearing about him!' snapped Jess's mum. 'He rang the other day, and straight away you were off out to meet him. Haven't you got any dignity? Any pride? Or will you just run off out at the beck and call of any Tom, Dick, or Harry?'

'Well, I wouldn't cross the road to see Tom or Dick, but if it was Prince Harry, well, now you're talking!' she said. Granny laughed. Mum looked cross and ran her fingers through her hair in a tragic and fatigued way. ~ Sue Limb

Naval Special Warfare is no place for the weak of heart, limb, or liver. ~ Chuck Pfarrer

Gran! Gran?' yelled Jess, racing upstairs. She looked everywhere. Nothing. No aged person. Only Rasputin, looking startled and disapproving. 'Where's Gran, Rasputin? For goodness' sake! Have you eaten her?' cried Jess. Rasputin looked shocked and innocent. ~ Sue Limb

Lately my thing is inventing new yoga poses. The Onion is one. You make yourself very round, then peel yourself, limb by limb. ~ Rachel Khong

Say "Hi" first. If there's anything I've learned, it's that if you want to talk to someone, talk to them. go out on a limb. Do not wait for them to talk to you first because, odds are, they're waiting for the same thing. ~ Daniela Karpenos

IMPAIRMENT: Lacking part or all of…or having a defective limb, organism or mechanism of the body

DISABILITY: The disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes no or little account of people who have physical [and/or cognitive/developmental/mental] impairments and thus excludes them from the mainstream of society.
~ ~ Mike Oliver

The world is too little aware of the waste of life, limb and land which anti-personnel landmines are causing among some of the poorest people on earth. ~ Princess Diana

Letting go of rational thought, he surrendered himself to instinct, to the odd quirk within that made him one with machines. The same quirk that had melded him almost effortlessly with his prosthetic limb and perhaps was the reason he'd lost none of his connection with the Force, even though his arm and hand were made of metal. ~ Karen Miller

The feeling of being a digression not the link in the argument,
a new direction, an offshoot, the limb going on elsewhere,
and liking that error, a feeling of being capable because an error,
of being wrong perhaps altogether wrong a piece from another set
stripped of position stripped of true function
and loving that error, loving that filial form, that break from perfection
where the complex mechanism fails, where the stranger appears in the clearing,
out of nowhere and uncalled for, out of nowhere to share the day. ~ Jorie Graham

Wearing my scarlet dress and high heels, I walk down the street a proud woman. A woman flawed, but still, a woman who takes chances, a woman who has loved and been loved. To go out on a limb (or twenty -or forty or sixty, for that matter) is what life is about. It's about trying until you get it right. I'm okay with where I'm at right now. I still don't have a job, a loft, a husband, or kids - but I have me. My grandpa is right. I can maybe maybe myself to death or make peace with the past, with any mistakes I might have made, remember the good times and move forward. ~ Karyn Bosnak

[A] republic ... [is] a government, in which the property of the public, or people, and of every one of them was secure and protected by law ... implies liberty; because property cannot be secured unless the man be at liberty to acquire, use or part with it, at his discretion, and unless he have his personal liberty of life and limb, motion and rest, for that purpose. ~ John Adams

O men, grown sick with toil and care, Leave for awhile the crowded mart; O women, sinking with despair, Weary of limb and faint of heart, Forget your years to-day and come As children back to childhood's house. ~ Phoebe Cary

Next, the stalled cars had their windows opaqued with a cheap commercial compound used for etching glass, and slogans were painted on their doors. Some were long: THIS VEHICLE IS A DANGER TO LIFE AND LIMB. Many were short: IT STINKS! But the commonest of all was the universally known catchphrase: STOP, YOU'RE KILLING ME! ~ John Brunner

A woman needed half her leg amputated after she slipped and broke the leg as she was cleaning her bath while she was still asleep. Not even the pain of a broken bone woke her and the angle at which she fell cut off circulation to the leg, killing the limb. When she finally awoke, she was close to multi-organ collapse. ~ Michael McGirr

We have all grown up, one might say, thinking of nature as an
adorable, helpless bunny that some people want to protect and
others, motivated by the will to power that is the unmentionable
force behind so much of contemporary culture, want to stomp into
a bloody pulp just to show that they can. Both sides are mistaken,
for what they have misidentified as a bunny is one paw of a sleep-
ing grizzly bear who, if roused, is quite capable of tearing both sides
limb from limb and feasting on their carcasses. The bear, it must be
remembered, is bigger than we are, and stronger. We forget this at
our desperate peril. ~ John Michael Greer

I love women like Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton, who kind of go out on a limb and do their own thing. I find it very inspiring and it allows you to do what you want to do. ~ Malin Akerman

Dave was a confirmed serotonin junkie. Any day of the year, he chose a good book, a hot cupper, and air-conditioning over jeopardy to life and limb. ~ Dan Sofer

I think pain is a very - it's an extremely hard thing to empathize moment to moment. And you often don't remember your own pain, you know, that moment that you broke a limb or you burned yourself or, I think, this is a common thing that women talk about with childbirth, that the memory of the pain is hard to summon up and relive, thankfully. ~ Hugh Laurie

How could I explain to this man how much I wanted to work? Did he have the slightest idea how much I missed my old job? ... I had never considered that you might miss a job like you missed a limb
a constant, reflexive thing. ~ Jojo Moyes

The space center's proximity to my backyard came to signify an intersection between heaven and hell. Florida was somewhere between the two; it was America's phantom limb, a place where spaceships were catapulted out into the cosmos. Alligators emerged from brackish water. Vultures and hawks circled above. Mosquitoes patrolled the atmosphere at eye level. We shared an ocean with sharks and dolphins. There were no seasons, only variations of humidity. Time slithered, festering in a damp wake of recollections.

I believed in the Bermuda Triangle. I thought it would move in over Florida one night. By dusk an unknown force would vaporize us through a tear in the atmosphere. We'd be stuck, wandering in a parallel version of the same place, unaware that we were dead but dreaming.

People came here to vanish. ~ Paul Kwiatkowski

Sometimes I hear Mark laugh, and some days in the car the right song will come on the satellite radio and I'll feel him there tingling like a phantom limb. Like he's sitting there next to me in the dark. But I know that's not so. And I know that when you die there's not even darkness, and I know Mark and me won't meet on some cloud or in some pit of fire. And I guess that's a good thing. I couldn't take those eyes seeing what's become of me, those eyes looking down at my hands and my chewed-up ragged nails. ~ Jordan Harper

Relaxation is a physical and moral necessity. Animals, even to the simplest and dullest, have their games, their sports, their diversions. The toil-worn artisan, stooping and straining over his daily task, which taxes eye and brain and limb, ought to have opportunity and means for an hour or two of relaxation after that task is concluded. ~ Horace Greeley

I was thinking, The last thing I want to do is get in a wreck and lose another limb. I completely lost it and blew up at my father.
"Why did you do that? I can't get injured again! Pull over. I'll drive!" I screamed.
Dad is not the kind of person who would have ever taken that kind of behavior from me in the past, but I think he understood the paranoia. I'd asked him while I was in the hospital, "Did you ever think one of your kids would ever lose a limb?"
And he said, "No, it never crossed my mind. I was always more afraid I would lost another limb."
It wasn't until later that I realized how great it was of him that he kept his cool and understood where I was coming from. He just let me freak out and let me drive. I think in some ways it was the same kind of lesson he taught me as a child without ever saying a word. I watched him just get on with things with one arm. He never made a fuss about it. It was an example that growing up I didn't know I'd need eventually.
So I got in the driver's seat and we continued on our way. After a while we stopped at a gas station to stretch our legs and get some snacks. I grabbed a lemon-line Gatorade and Dad grabbed something to drink and we got back in the car. I turned the car on, so the air and the radio were going as I tried and tried to get my Gatorade bottle open, but the top was too big and I couldn't quite get my fingers to grab it, hold it, and twist it open. My finger strength just wasn't there yet. So I ~ Noah Galloway

You never know when people's dreams are connected to you before you're gone and then there's nothing to do, but watch them die in a different way, slow, limb by limb, system by system. ~ Marlon James

His eyes so dim, so wasted each limb, that, heedless of grammar, they all cried, that's him! ~ Richard Harris Barham

I'm not 20 years old any more. I'm not gonna go out on quite the limb I did. ~ Dan Fogelberg

He is a blond man with pale, swollen face. He is lying on his back, with his left arm thrown out, in a position which is expressive of cruel suffering. His parched, open mouth with difficulty emits his stertorous breathing ; his blue, leaden eyes are rolled up, and from beneath the wadded coverlet the remains of his right arm, enveloped in bandages, protrude. The oppressive odor of a corpse strikes you forcibly, and the consuming, internal fire which has penetrated every limb of the sufferer seems to penetrate you also. ~ Leo Tolstoy

For these are the bolt-holes of cornered Man - not to burrow or cower, not to spit or howl or chew off the limb snared, but to mend his broken bow with his own heartstrings, and ere his spark is snuffed out to fit to it and hurl forth everything at his back, be it his home and the very world he leaves. ~ Harley J. Sims

all of my bases covered. You assume responsibility for violations of local, regional, global, intrasystem, interstellar, intergalactic and interdimensional law, civil, religious, or military. I'm also not responsible for loss of life and limb, property damage, domestic disputes, engineered biological human dieback, nuclear fallout, violations of causality, cascading sub-quantum misalignment, hastening of cosmic heat death, rampant AI, accelerated climate change, geomagnetic reversal, vacuum metastability events, total existence failure, gray goo scenario, red goo scenario--that's a nasty one--tectonic inversion-- ~ Joseph R. Lallo

Ye living soldiers of the mighty war,
Once more from roaring cannon and the drums
And bugles blown at morn, the summons comes;
Forget the halting limb, each wound and scar:
Once more your Captain calls to you;
Come to his last review! ~ Richard Watson Gilder

May with its light behaving
Stirs vessel, eye and limb,
The singular and sad
Are willing to recover,
And to each swan-delighting river
The careless picnics come
In living white and red.

Our dead, remote and hooded,
In hollows rest, but we
From their vague woods have broken,
Forests where children meet
And the white angel-vampires flit,
Stand now with shaded eye,
The dangerous apple taken.

The real world lies before us,
Brave motions of the young,
Abundant wish for death,
The pleasing, pleasured, haunted:
A dying Master sinks tormented
In his admirers' ring,
The unjust walk the earth.

And love that makes impatient
Tortoise and roe, that lays
The blonde beside the dark,
Urges upon our blood,
Before the evil and the good
How insufficient is
Touch, endearment, look. ~ W. H. Auden

I would think that the last person you'd want to sass ould be the one who might react by tearing you limb from limb. ~ Lia Habel

Care I for the limb, the thews, the stature, bulk, and big assemblance of a man! Give me the spirit. ~ William Shakespeare

Want to go to West Virginia and risk life and limb with me?"
Zane smirked and gave a single nod. "Sounds like fun. ~ Abigail Roux

The thing I admire most
about you
is no matter how hard,
or how much the world
has tried to
beat you,
break you,
destroy you,
and throw you to the wolves
you are still here,
turning all your pain
all your suffering
into armor,
into determination,
into weapons
and earning the respect
of that same pack of wolves
that were meant to rip you
limb from limb. ~ Nikita Gill

Back you fly to your perch, ashamed as well as frustrated. Life is almost all perch. There is no nest; and no one is with you, on exactly the same rock or out on the same limb. The circumstances of passion are all too petty to be companionable. ~ Glenway Wescott

Its, the gum tree, main appeal to me has been its combination of mightiness and delicacy - mighty in its strength of limb and delicate in the colouring of its covering. Then it has distinctive qualities; in fact I know of no other tree which is more decorative, both as regards the flow of its limbs and the patterns the bark makes on its main trunk. In all its stages the gum tree is extremely beautiful. ~ Hans Heysen

The great empire will be torn from limb, the all-powerful one for more than four-hundred years: Great power given to the dark one from slaves come. ~ Nostradamus

Nature has always something rare to show us ... and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof. ~ John Muir

Let me go out on a limb and suggest that those who see hints of a new class ideology developing around information technology are not necessarily wild-eyed. "Bit-twiddlers" are neither exactly proletariat nor bourgeoisie. They may not own the means of production in the sense that Marx argued, but they certainly do have significantly control over those means, in a more profound way than the term "symbols analysts" or "knowledge workers" captures. As a rough generalization, they value science and technological problem-solving elegance equally at least with profit. ~ Steven Weber

the most important thing about mental health - It hurts just as much as any broken limb or open wound; the only difference is that you cannot physically see it in it's entirety. ~ Hannah Todd

The Pre-Raphaelites, while very bothered by what the establishment thought of them, also utterly rebelled against it. In everything - social, sexual, emotional - they were out on a limb, pushing the boundaries. ~ Samuel Barnett

People sometimes say that sorrow is mental but longing is physical. One is a wound, the other an amputated limb, a withered petal compared to a snapped stem. ~ Fredrik Backman

Where has God promised to fulfill our every whim according to the minutia of our earthly desires? Where has He promised to keep us from suffering or disappointment? Things He did not spare His own Son? You were raised in one of the finest manors in the borough, by a man and woman who could not have loved you better. You have been given the best education, the best of everything. You are of sound mind and limb, and yet you dare to rail at God? I for one grow weary of it. Now leave off simpering like an ungrateful brat and make something of this new life you've been given. ~ Julie Klassen

The tree is a mediator between the living and dead. Where a limb is malformed, where her branches twist and wave into one another, or where a wound on bark remains unhealed, all these imperfections are sacred pathways between the realms. ~ Brunonia Barry

He had known several men who had lost limbs in battle; the men all claimed that they still felt things in the place where the limb had been. It was natural enough, then, that with Bill suddenly gone he and Gus would continue to have some of the feelings that went with friendship, even though the friend was gone. ~ Larry McMurtry

Man is all symmetry, Full of proportions, one limb to another. ~ George Herbert

I know he's coming by this sign, That baby's almost wild; See how he laughs and crows and starts - Heaven, bless the merry child! He's father's self in face and limb, And father's heart is strong in him. Shout, baby, shout! and clap thy hands, For father on the threshold stands. ~ Mary Howitt

How to Sleep at Night

Try to think of nothing.
That's the secret.

Try to think of nothing.
Do not think of work not done,
or of promises unkept, calls to return,
or agendas you have failed to prepare for meetings
yet unheld.

Think of nothing.
Do not think of words said and unsaid,
or minor scandals and major investigations,
of humiliations endured, insults suffered,
or retorts that did not spring to mind
in time.

Think of nothing.
Do not think of your wife,
of lonely children and their reproachful demands,
or the smile of the pretty woman
whose handshake lingered just a shade too long
in your palm.

Think of nothing.
Do not think of newspaper headlines,
of the insistent transience of the shortwave radio,
or the seductive stridency of the TV microphones
thrust so thrillingly
into your face.

Think of nothing.
Do not think of the waif on the foreign sidewalk,
her large eyes open in supplication,
her ragged shift stained by dirt and dust,
stretching her despairing hand towards you
in hope

No, do not think
of the solitary tear, the broken limb,
the rubble-strewn home, the choking scream;
never think
of piled up bodies, blazing flames,
shattered lives, or sundered souls.
Do not think of the triumph of the torturer,
the wails of the hungry,
Shashi Tharoor

And as for small difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. ~ Herman Melville

Later, just before she drifted off to sleep, Jess realized the ghastly fact that, just as she had assumed that Edouard smelt disgusting, Edouard's first impression of her would have been that she did. The only difference was that she really had. It was not the greatest start to their relationship. ~ Sue Limb