Lovely Turns Of Phrase Quotes

Be not afraid to love.
Those who never love, do not know what love is. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I keep trying, and manage some workmanlike stuff that doesn't require inspiration, and then I check my phone, check my email, go on Facebook. I read other people's posts, make jaunty comments, flitter away the time, profane the time. ~ Deborah Meyler

Leukemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukemia
had been treated successfully by Dianetics after medicine had
traditionally given up. The source of leukemia has been reported to be
an engram containing the phrase 'It turns my blood to water. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

But you know, the longer you listen to this abortion debate, the more you hear this phrase "sanctity of life". You've heard that. Sanctity of life. You believe in it? Personally, I think it's a bunch of shit. Well, I mean, life is sacred? Who said so? God? Hey, if you read history, you realize that God is one of the leading causes of death. Has been for thousands of years. Hindus, Muslims, Jews, Christians all taking turns killing each other 'cause God told them it was a good idea. The sword of God, the blood of the land, vengeance is mine. Millions of dead motherfuckers. Millions of dead motherfuckers all because they gave the wrong answer to the God question. "You believe in God?" "No." Boom. Dead. "You believe in God?" "Yes." "You believe in my God? "No." Boom. Dead. "My God has a bigger dick than your God!" Thousands of years. Thousands of years, and all the best wars, too. The bloodiest, most brutal wars fought, all based on religious hatred. Which is fine with me. Hey, any time a bunch of holy people want to kill each other I'm a happy guy.

But don't be giving me all this shit about the sanctity of life. I mean, even if there were such a thing, I don't think it's something you can blame on God. No, you know where the sanctity of life came from? We made it up. You know why? 'Cause we're alive. Self-interest. Living people have a strong interest in promoting the idea that somehow life is sacred. You don't see Abbott and Costello running around, talking about th ~ George Carlin

Since they weren't sleepy and nothing had been left unsaid, they began to read poetry to each other, taking turns like children and enjoying it. Bachir had a lovely voice, one that was already that of a man. He knew many poems by heart. He lovingly recited Victor Hugo, with warmth Rimbaud's Le bateau ivre, and poems written by young people going into battle; he then moved on to the poets of liberty - Rimbaud again, Eluard, and Desnos. ~ Assia Djebar

I suddenly knew that religion, God - something beyond everyday life - was there to be found, provided one is really willing. And I saw that though what I felt in the church was only imagination, it was a step on the way; because imagination itself can be a kind of willingness - a pretense that things are real, due to one's longing for them. It struck me that this was somehow tied up with what the Vicar said about religion being an extension of art - and then I had a glimpse of how religion can really cure you of sorrow; somehow make use of it, turn it to beauty, just as art can make sad things beautiful.

I found myself saying: 'Sacrifice is the secret - you have to sacrifice things for art and it's the same
with religion; and then the sacrifice turns out to be a gain.' Then I got confused and I couldn't hold on to what I meant - until Miss Blossom remarked: 'Nonsense, duckie - it's prefectly simple. You lose yourself in something beyond yourself and it's a lovely rest.'

I saw that, all right. Then I thought: 'But that's how Miss Marcy cured her sorrow, too - only she lost herself in other people instead of in religion.' Which way of life was best - hers or the Vicar's? I decided that he loves God and merely likes the villagers, whereas she loves the villagers and merely likes God - and then I suddenly wondered if I could combine both ways, love God and my neighbor equally. Was I really willing to? ~ Dodie Smith

The walking of passers-by offers a series of turns and detours that can be compared to "turns of phrase" or "stylistic figures." There is a rhetoric of walking. The art of "turning" phrases finds an equivalent in an art of composing a path. ~ Michel De Certeau

If the moderns really want a simple religion of love, they must look for it in the Athanasian Creed. The truth is that the trumpet of true Christianity, the challenge of the charities and simplicities of Bethlehem or Christmas Day never rang out more arrestingly and unmistakably than in the defiance of Athanasius to the cold compromise of the Arians. It was emphatically he who really was fighting for a God of Love against a God of colourless and remote cosmic control; the God of the stoics and the agnostics. It was emphatically he who was fighting for the Holy Child against the grey deity of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He was fighting for that very balance of beautiful interdependence and intimacy, in the very Trinity of the Divine Nature, that draws our hearts to the Trinity of the Holy Family. His dogma, if the phrase be not misunderstood, turns even God into a Holy Family. ~ G.K. Chesterton

What is the point. That is what must be borne in mind. Sometimes the point is really who wants what. Sometimes the point is what is right or kind. Sometimes the point is a momentum, a fact, a quality, a voice, an imitation, a thing that is said or unsaid. Sometimes it's who's at fault, or what will happen if you do not move at once. The point changes and goes out. You cannot be forever watching for the point, or you lose the simplest thing: being a major character in your own life. But if you are, for any length of time, custodian of the point-- in art, in court, in politics, in lives, in rooms-- it turns out there are rear-guard actions everywhere. To see a thing clearly, and when your vision of it dims, or when it goes to someone else, if you have a gentle nature, keep your silence, that is lovely. Otherwise, now and then, a small foray is worthwhile. Just so that being always, complacently, thoroughly wrong does not become the safest position of them all. The point has never quite been entrusted to me. ~ Renata Adler

Carpe Diem

By Edna Stewart

Shakespeare, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman did it, why can't I?

The words of Horace, his laconic phrase. Does it amuse me or frighten me?

Does it rub salt in an old wound? Horace, Shakespeare, Robert Frost and Walt Whitman my loves,

we've all had a taste of the devils carpe of forbidden food.

My belly is full of mourning over life mishaps of should have's, missed pleasure, and why was I ever born?

The leaf falls from the trees from which it was born in and cascade down like a feather that tumbles and toil in the wind.

One gush! It blows away. It's trampled, raked, burned and finally turns to ashes which fades away like the leaves of grass.

Did Horace get it right? Trust in nothing?

The shortness of Life is seventy years, Robert Frost and Whitman bared more, but Shakespeare did not.

Butterflies of Curiosities allures me more.

Man is mortal, the fruit is ripe. Seize more my darling!

Enjoy the day. ~ Edna Stewart

We even, at the worst, reach the state for which Buddhism, in the East presents most ably the case: as in the West, does James Thomson (B.V.) in The City of Dreadful Night; we come to wish for - or, more truly to think that we wish for "blest Nirvana's sinless stainless Peace" (or some such twaddle - thank God I can't recall Arnold's mawkish and unmanly phrase!) and B.V.'s "Dateless oblivion and divine repose."

I insist on the "think that you wish," because, if the real You did really wish the real That, you could never have come to exist at all! ("But I don't exist." - "I know - let's get on!")

Note, please, how sophistically unconvincing are the Buddhist theories of how we ever got into this mess. First cause: Ignorance. Way out, then, knowledge. O.K., that implies a knower, a thing known - and so on and so forth, through all the Three Waste Paper Baskets of the Law; analysed, it turns out to be nonsense all dolled up to look like thinking. And there is no genuine explanation of the origin of the Will to be.

How different, how simple, how self-evident, is the doctrine of The Book of the Law! ~ Aleister Crowley

I think I'm going to wear blue to the wedding. I saw this gorgeous dress on sale at Macy's the other day. I think I have a coupon," Mom tells Liz.

"Oh hell no! I already told you I was going to wear blue, you whore. You can't wear the same color as me, that's tacky," Liz complains.

Oh my God, this is not happening right now.

"Fuck your mother. I'm wearing blue. I already found my dress," Mom argues.

"I'm the mother of the bride. The mother of the f**king bride! That means it's up to me!" Liz fires back.

"Claire, I think you would look lovely in blue," Tyler pipes in.

Mom turns to face Tyler and folds her arms on top of the table. "When I'm finished neutering you, I'm going to take your tiny little neuticles and light them on fire. ~ Tara Sivec

None of the children knew who Aslan was any more than you do; but the moment the Beaver had spoken these words everyone felt quite different. Perhaps it has sometimes happened to you in a dream that someone says something which you don't understand but in the dream it feels as if it had some enormous meaning--either a terrifying one which turns the whole dream into a nightmare or else a lovely meaning too lovely to put into words, which makes the dream so beautiful that you remember it all your life and are always wishing you could get into that dream again. It was like that now. At the name of Aslan each one of the children felt something jump in it's inside. Edmund felt a sensation of mysterious horror. Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of Summer. ~ C.S. Lewis

I do believe that our modern English usage has become way too clipped and austere. I have been reading excerpts from the journals of 18th-century seafarers lately, and even the lowliest press-ganged deck-swabber turns a finer phrase than I do most days. ~ Geraldine Brooks

Thomas Teal, a luminous translator of Jansson's twin talent for surface and depth, simplicity and reverberation in language, and someone who knows exactly how to convey her gift for sensing the meaning embedded in the most mundane act or turn of phrase. ~ Ali Smith

There's a catch phrase that you all must have heard at one time or another. You walk into a room or go over toward a group. Someone turns and says with huge emphasis: 'There he is.' As though you were the most important one of all. (And you're not.) As though you were the one they were just talking about. (And they weren't.) As though you were the only one that mattered. (And you're not.) It's a nice little tribute, and it don't cost anyone a cent.
("New York Blues") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Bough of a tree to the rain ... he turns the phrase over in his mouth as if it were fine wine, trying to guess its vintage, realizing somewhat indifferently that it is beyond him. ~ Laszlo Krasznahorkai

How recognisable, how familiar to us, is the man so beautifully portrayed in the 'groundwork', who confronted even with Christ turns away to consider the judgement of his own conscience and to hear the voice of his own reason...This man is with us still, free, independent, lovely, powerful, rational, responsible, brave, the hero of so many novels and books of moral philosophy. The raison detre of this attractive but misleading creature is not far to seek. He is the offspring of the age of science, confidently rational, and yet increasingly aware of his alienation from the material universe which his discoveries reveal... his alienation from the material universe which his discoveries reveal..his alienation is without cure... It is not such a long step from Kant to Neitzsche to existentialism, and the Anglo-Saxon ethical doctrines which in some ways closely resemble it.... In fact, Kant's man had already received a glorious incarnation nearly a century earlier in the work of Milton: his proper name is Lucifer. ~ Iris Murdoch

A lovely, pure, noble, and most moral nature, without the strength of nerve which forms a hero, sinks beneath a burden which it cannot bear, and must not cast away. All duties are holy for him; the present is too hard. Impossibilities have been required of him; not in themselves impossibilities, but such for him. He winds, and turns, and torments himself; he advances and recoils, is ever put in mind, ever puts himself in mind; at last does all but lose his purpose from his thoughts; yet still without recovering his peace of mind. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What you need to do, is to put your will over completely into the hands of your Lord, surrendering to Him the entire control of it. Say, "Yes, Lord, YES!" to everything, and trust Him to work in you to will, as to bring your whole wishes and affections into conformity with His own sweet, and lovable, and most lovely will. It is wonderful what miracles God works in wills that are utterly surrendered to Him. He turns hard things into easy, and bitter things into sweet. It is not that He puts easy things in the place of the hard, but He actually changes the hard thing into an easy one. ~ Hannah Whitall Smith

Jane shared his sentiment, but was hard-pressed not to laugh at her husband's inventive turns of phrase - her favourite was "goat-licking amateur," followed closely by "mongrel's handmaiden. ~ Mary Robinette Kowal

A number of porcupines huddled together for warmth on a cold day in winter; but, as they began to prick one another with their quills, they were obliged to disperse. However the cold drove them together again, when just the same thing happened. At last, after many turns of huddling and dispersing, they discovered that they would be best off by remaining at a little distance from one another. In the same way the need of society drives the human porcupines together, only to be mutually repelled by the many prickly and disagreeable qualities of their nature. The moderate distance which they at last discover to be the only tolerable condition of intercourse, is the code of politeness and fine manners; and those who transgress it are roughly told - in the English phrase - to keep their distance. By this arrangement the mutual need of warmth is only very moderately satisfied; but then people do not get pricked. A man who has some heat in himself prefers to remain outside, where he will neither prick other people nor get pricked himself. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving? ~ George MacDonald

People who believe in 'universal health care' show remarkably little interest - usually none - in finding out what that phrase turns out to mean in practice, in those countries where it already exists, such as Britain, Sweden or Canada. For one thing, 'universal health care' in these countries means months of waiting for surgery that Americans get in a matter of weeks or even days. ~ Thomas Sowell

I love when he's in these moods, this affectionate. Though it can be said of Gray that he's this way all the time with me. He never has an off day. I've known every single day of our life together so far just what he's thinking and feeling because he tells me, he shows me in so many different, lovely, sometimes depraved ways.

Usually with my clothes off.

Most often with his head between my legs.

And that's where I think this hot kiss is going - forget dinner, forget needing to shower off the busy workday. I'm wholly in this when I grip the back of his head and fall deeper into his mouth, moaning my protest when we part too soon.

His forehead rests to mine.

I spur him on. "Your sugar wife needs attention. You've neglected my needs all day, Grayson."

A growl comes out of his mouth and it delights me. Turns me on. Makes me wetter than a summer rain. "You know how hard that smart mouth of yours makes me. I'm about to put you on your knees. ~ V. Theia

Sweet Grace amazes me
The way that she can see
Beyond the man I am
To the man that I could be
She's bringing out my best
While she covers all the rest
Some say her love is blind
But I say her love forgets

She don't like it when I try so hard to impress her
'Cause when I do that, it's a lie that makes her love look the lesser
The truth is I know

I'll never be, I'll never be good enough
I'll never deserve her love
I'll never be, I'll never be good enough for Grace
But she takes me anyway

I am the cheatin' kind
But she's changing my mind
The way she takes me back
Though I fail her every time
She's got friends who tell her that she
Is much too good for me
Well, I've told her that myself
But she refuses to leave

I'd like to think my strength won her affection
But the truth is it was my weakness that caught her attention
I'm grateful to know

When my tears fall down like rain
She wipes them from my face
She tells me that I'm lovely
And if I am, it's all because of Grace
This love turns my inside out
And my world upside down
Grace is changing me ~ Jason Gray

You don't always have to go so far as to murder your darlings – those turns of phrase or images of which you felt extra proud when they appeared on the page – but go back and look at them with a very beady eye. Almost always it turns out that they'd be better dead. (Not every little twinge of satisfaction is suspect – it's the ones which amount to a sort of smug glee you must watch out for. ~ Diana Athill

In spring when maple buds are red,
We turn the clock an hour ahead;
Which means, each April that arrives,
We lose an hour out of our lives.
Who cares? When autumn birds in flocks
Fly southward, back we turn the clocks,
And so regain a lovely thing
That missing hour we lost in spring. ~ Phyllis McGinley

That's how oppression works. Thousands of otherwise decent people are persuaded to go along with an unfair system because changing it seems like too much bother. The appropriate response when somebody demands a change in that unfair system is to listen, rather than turn away or yell, as a child might, that it's not your fault. Of course it isn't your fault. I'm sure you're lovely. That doesn't mean you don't have a responsibility to do something about it. ~ Laurie Penny

O where will you go when the blinding flash
Scatters the seed of a million suns?
And what will you do in the rain of ash?

I'll draw the blinds and pull down the sash,
And hide from the sight of so many noons.
But how will it be when the blinding flash

Disturbs your body's close-knit mesh
Bringing to light your lovely bones?
What will you wear in the rain of ash?

I will go bare without my flesh,
My vertebrae will click like stones.
Ah. But where will you dance when the blinding flash

Settles the city in a holy hush?
I will dance alone among the ruins.
Ah. And what will you say to the rain of ash?

I will be charming. My subtle speech
Will weave close turns and counter-turns-
No. What will you say to the rain of ash?
Nothing, after the blinding flash

- Terminal Colloquy ~ Charles Martin

And at night the river flows, it bears pale stars on the holy water, some sink like veils, some show like fish, the great moon that once was rose now high like a blazing milk flails its white reflection vertical and deep in the dark surgey mass wall river's grinding bed push. As in a sad dream, under the streetlamp, by pocky unpaved holes in dirt, the father James Cassidy comes home with lunchpail and lantern, limping, redfaced, and turns in for supper and sleep.

Now a door slams. The kids have rushed out for the last play, the mothers are planning and slamming in kitchens, you can hear it out in swish leaf orchards, on popcorn swings, in the million-foliaged sweet wafted night of sighs, songs, shushes. A thousand things up and down the street, deep, lovely, dangerous, aureating, breathing, throbbing like stars; a whistle, a faint yell; the flow of Lowell over rooftops beyond; the bark on the river, the wild goose of the night yakking, ducking in the sand and sparkle; the ululating lap and purl and lovely mystery on the shore, dark, always dark the river's cunning unseen lips, murmuring kisses, eating night, stealing sand, sneaky.

'Mag-gie!' the kids are calling under the railroad bridge where they've been swimming. The freight train still rumbles over a hundred cars long, the engine threw the flare on little white bathers, little Picasso horses of the night as dense and tragic in the gloom comes my soul looking for what was there that disappeared and le ~ Jack Kerouac

1/2 cup plain flour 1 cup caster sugar 3/4 cup desiccated coconut 4 eggs vanilla 125 g butter, melted 1/2 cup flaked almonds 1 cup milk Grease a deep pie dish and preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Put all the ingredients except half the almonds and the milk in a bowl and mix well, then add the milk slowly and beat until you get a cake batter. Pour it into the pie dish, top with the with rest of the almonds. Bake for about 35 minutes. It miraculously turns itself into a spongy sort of layered coconut cake, lovely with stewed fruit and cream. ~ Kerry Greenwood

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer. ~ Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

As Summer into Autumn slips
And yet we sooner say
"The Summer" than "the Autumn," lest
We turn the sun away,
And almost count it an Affront
The presence to concede
Of one however lovely, not
The one that we have loved -
So we evade the charge of Years
On one attempting shy
The Circumvention of the Shaft
Of Life's Declivity. ~ Emily Dickinson

Any beautiful mind, full of ideas, would always express itself in the most natural, simple and straightforward way, anxious to communicate its thoughts to others (if this is at all possible) and thus relieve the solitude that he must experience in a world such as this: but conversely, intellectual poverty, confusion and wrong-headedness, clothe themselves in the most laboured expressions and obscure turns of phrase in order to conceal petty, trivial, bland or trite thoughts in difficult and pompous expressions. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Effective altruism is about asking "How can I make the biggest difference I can?" and using evidence and careful reasoning to try to find an answer. It takes a scientific approach to doing good. Just as science consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's true, and a committment to believe the truth whatever that turns out to be. As the phrase suggests, effective altruism consists of the honest and impartial attempt to work out what's best for the world, and a commitment to do what's best, whatever that turns out to be. ~ William MacAskill

The nations of the earth are mostly swayed by fear - fear of the sort that a little cheap oratory turns easily to rage, hate, and violence. ~ Joseph Conrad

Mathematics is the abstract key which turns the lock of the physical universe. ~ John Polkinghorne

Somewhere we turn ourselves into victims instead of being the powerful women we really are meant to be. ~ Judith Light

If I think of the audience too much, then I'm going to start catering to them ... and it turns into entertainment. And I've got time for entertainment; I'm just not at all that interested in doing it myself. I'd rather go for some pretty raw expression. ~ Henry Rollins

Being in grief, it turns out, is not unlike being in love.
In both states, the imagination's entirely occupied with one person. The beloved dwells at the heart of the world, and becomes a Rome: the roads of feeling all lead to him, all proceed from him. Everything that touches us seems to relate back to that center: there is no other emotional life, no place outside the universe of feeling centered on its pivotal figure. ~ Mark Doty