Mabel Quotes

She had watched other women with infants and eventually understood what she craved: the boundless permission-no, the absolute necessity- to hold and kiss and stroke this tiny person. Cradling a swaddled infant in their arms, mothers would distractedly touch their lips to their babies' foreheads. Passing their toddlers in a hall, mothers would tousle their hair even sweep them up in their arms and kiss them hard along their chins and necks until the children squealed with glee. Where else in life, Mabel wondered, could a woman love so openly and with such abandon? ~ Eowyn Ivey

I stalked around the edge of the wood, crouching low, holding my breath. My attention was microscopically fierce. I'd become a thing of eyes and will alone. Mabel held her wings out from her sides, her head snaking, reptilian, eyes glowing. It felt like I was holding the bastard offspring of a flaming torch and an assault rifle. ~ Helen Macdonald

I say, Bertie," he said, after a pause of about an hour and a quarter.
"Hallo!"
"Do you like the name Mabel?"
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"You don't think there's a kind of music in the word, like the wind rustling gently through the tree-tops?"
"No."
He seemed disappointed for a moment; then cheered up.
"Of course, you wouldn't. You always were a fat-headed worm without any soul, weren't you?"
"Just as you say. Who is she? Tell me all. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman
Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it. ~ Julian Fellowes

God (Love) can heal anything. Your job is to give permission. It takes a lot
of trust. ~ Mabel Katz

The kiss intimately relates to the most primitive kind of human contact, which can satisfy all of our needs, like: feeding, enjoying pleasure, tasting, wanting, rejecting, everything we associate with love. ~ Mabel Iam

We have thought that because children are young they are silly. We have forgotten the blind stirrings, the reaching outward of our own youth. ~ Mabel Robinson

Surely there is no greater garden for human-nature study than the flotsam and jetsam of the hospital. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

Mabel, I manscape," he says in a very offended voice. ~ Lily Morton

I have always wanted to make a film about my parents' generation, which tried every way to escape from the deadly shadow of war and finally settled down in Hong Kong in the '50s to build a home from nothing. Arguably, they are the first generation of Hong Kong people to turn this remote island into a modern city. ~ Mabel Cheung

was coarse, exhausting, and largely a matter of faith - a farmer threw everything he had into the earth, but ultimately it wasn't up to him whether it rained or not. Sewing was different. Mabel knew if she was patient and meticulous, if she carefully followed the lines, took each step as it came, and obeyed the rules, that in the end when it was turned right-side out, it would be just how it was meant to be. A small miracle in ~ Eowyn Ivey

It doesn't so much matter what one loves. To love is the transfiguring thing. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

From the elevator, Mabel watched the old woman's bare feet hobbling away, a trail of salt and the lace hem of her nightgown left in her wake like sea foam. ~ Libba Bray

The exact science of one molecule transformed into another
that Mabel could not explain, but then again she couldn't explain how a fetus formed in the womb, cells becoming beating heart and hoping soul. She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable? ~ Eowyn Ivey

You are remarkably modern, Mabel. A little too modern, perhaps. Nothing is so dangerous as being too modern. One is apt to grow old-fashioned quite suddenly. ~ Oscar Wilde

Hamilton found it difficult to concentrate on what Eliza was saying. Her lips were moving rapidly, but he couldn't actually decipher what the words coming out of her mouth were. It was such a lovely mouth, and he found it quite quirky, given the fact that it could assume different positions with alarming frequency. Like now, it was pursed in a most attractive manner, and now ... it was moving again as if the lady could not get the words out fast enough. His gaze traveled upward, past the eyes that were flashing and settled on her hair. He couldn't help but appreciate the efforts of Mabel. The curls she'd been able to produce on Eliza's head, well, they were tantalizing. He had the strangest urge to reach out and touch them, to feel with his own hand if they were as soft as they appeared, something he'd been contemplating ever since he got a good look at her in the dining room. He pulled abruptly back to reality when Eliza poked him in the chest. ~ Jen Turano

Our lives go by in our own minds. The war is inside our heads and only we can return the peace. It is essential to remember that in one sense we are always right. If we say, we can, we can. If we say we cannot, that's how it is, we cannot. ~ Mabel Katz

Following the pattern offered a kind of comfort, a quiet balance to working in the field during the day. The farmwork was coarse, exhausting, and largely a matter of faith - a farmer threw everything he had into the earth, but ultimately it wasn't up to him whether it rained or not. Sewing was different. Mabel knew if she was patient and meticulous, if she carefully followed the rules, that in the end when it was turned right-side out, it would be just how it was meant to be. A small miracle in itself, and one that life so rarely offered. ~ Eowyn Ivey

Oh good, you're ready."
"No, I've only just got out of the bath. What should I put on?"
"Put on?" he says in obvious mystification.
"Well I've only got a towel on." When he still doesn't get it I sigh. God, he's so dense sometimes. "Charlie, I haven't got any knickers on," I mutter.
His eyes seem to darken and then he starts laughing. "Mabel, I'm shocked. What sort of massages have you been having? I'm not massaging down there however much you expect it. I'm not that type of boy! ~ Lily Morton

On Decoration Day, while everyone else in town was at the cemetery decorating the graves of our Glorious War Dead, Willie Beaner and me, Robert Burns Hewitt, took Mabel Cramm's bloomers and run them up the flagpole in front of the town hall. That was the beginning of all my troubles. ~ Katherine Paterson

Why has no one written a November rhapsody with plenty of lilt and swing? The poets who are moved at all by this month seem only stirred to lamentation, giving us year end and 'melancholy days' remarks, thereby showing that theory is stronger than observation among the rhyming brotherhood, or else that they have chronic indigestion and no gardens to stimulate them. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

Pity is something only weakness wants. ~ Mabel Seeley

Jack?"
"Hmmm?"
"We are going to be all right, aren't we? I mean, the two of us?"
He groaned as he eased his feet onto the bed. He rolled on his side to face Mabel, reached to her, and ran his hand down her unbraided hair, again and again, without speaking. Mabel saw tears in the corners of his eyes, and she propped herself on an elbow. She leaned to him and kissed him on his closed wet eyelids.
"We will, Jack. We will be all right," and she cradled his head in the crook of her arm and let him cry. ~ Eowyn Ivey

I can't muster a smile. Even with the knowledge that it's dark outside and light up here, it's hard to believe that he can see us. We should be invisible. We are so alone. Mabel and I are standing side by side, but we can't even see each other. In the distance are the lights of town. People must be finishing their workdays, picking up their kids, figuring out dinner. They're talking to one another in easy voices about things of great significance and things that don't mean much. The distance between us and all of that living feels insurmountable. ~ Nina LaCour

She watched Mabel mix bread dough, and it was as if a songbird had landed on a bedroom windowsill. ~ Eowyn Ivey

Swell. Isn't there some kinda ghost primer in this joint: Reading, Writing, 'Rithmetic, Ridding Yourself of Soul-Stealing Demons for Fun and Profit? Why isn't there ever anything useful around here?"
Mabel handed Sam a watercress sandwich.
"Thanks, Mabes. ~ Libba Bray

They do as they please, they say what they think, and nobody cares, for everyone is busy doing likewise. ~ Mabel Dodge Luhan

To obtain the pure silence necessary for the disciple, the heart and emotions, the brain and its intellectualisms, have to be put aside. Both are but mechanisms, which will perish with the span of man's life. It is the essence beyond, that which is the motive power, and makes man live, that is now compelled to rouse itself and act. ~ Mabel Collins

That is the lure: that is why we lose ourselves, when powerless from hurt and grief, in drugs or gambling or drink; in addictions that collar the broken soul and shake it like a dog. I had found my addiction on that day out with Mabel. It was as ruinous, in a way, as if I'd taken a needle and shot myself with heroin. I had taken flight to a place from which I didn't want to ever return. ~ Helen Macdonald

It was beautiful, Mabel knew, but it was a beauty that ripped you open and scored you clean so that you were left helpless and exposed, if you lived at all. ~ Eowyn Ivey

We all have an eraser incorporated within us, a delete key, but we forget how to use it. Ho'oponopono helps us to remember the power that we have to choose between erasing (letting go) or reacting, being happy or suffering. It is only a matter of choice in every moment of our lives. ~ Mabel Katz

Set yourself free. Realize you already have everything you need and don't need anything else. ~ Mabel Katz

Imagination is so much harder to face than reality. ~ Mabel Seeley

It was funny how their odd little family of friends had changed him. Made him feel safe. Theta, Memphis, Henry, Jericho, Mabel, Ling, Isaiah, and especially Evie. They'd been there for him. Opened the parts of him he was afraid would be closed off forever. Why had he wasted so much time bottling up his feelings? What did that ever get anybody but dumb fights? He had friends. He had a home in them. And Evie was home, too. ~ Libba Bray

Why is it that so many people think that charity consists in giving away merely what they cannot use instead of the article the recipient needs? ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

I like the powerful story, the excellent performances the beautiful cinematography and the vision of the "The Piano". ~ Mabel Cheung

Among the many answers I have found, I believe love is the most beautiful and simple art that reflects the beauty of life. ~ Mabel Iam

People who know their worth can live austerely; it's the people nagged by the gnawing knowledge of their own cheapness who have that eternal necessity for submerging themselves in what they feel is superlative in material things, as if fine possessions could make them fine. ~ Mabel Seeley

The various earth odors all have a separate tale to tell, and the leaf mold of the woods bears a wholly different fragrance from that of the soil under pasture turf, or the breath that the garden gives off in great sighs of relief when it is relaxed and refreshed by a summer shower. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

Stay curious, stay weird, stay kind and don't let anyone ever tell you you aren't smart or brave or worthy enough. ~ Alex Hirsch

Mabel stops looking murderous and assumes an expression of severe truculence. How the hell, I imagine her thinking, am I supposed to catch things with this idiot in tow? ~ Helen Macdonald

When you do what you love, there is nothing you need to worry about. Everything comes easily. ~ Mabel Katz

I know I'm immature in some ways, but inside me there's a cranky old lady yelling at the damn kids to get off her lawn. She's been there awhile. I've decided to call her Mabel. ~ Lucy A. Snyder

I roll a magazine into a tube and peer at her through it as if it were a telescope...She pushes her beak into it as far as it will go, biting the empty air inside. Putting my mouth to my side of my paper telescope I boom into it: 'Hello, Mabel.' She pulls her beak free. All the feathers on her forehead are raised. She shakes her tail rapidly from side to side and shivers with happiness. ~ Helen Macdonald

Mabel. Loving on you is prayer, like the prayers of bees is honey. We loved on each other like we always been. My fingers caressed your naps in this life. It placed oils. And we was infinite and knew how to love. On the scalp. Along the cornrow and on each other. These coilings was anoited like a real love. We was a cosmic conversation, before I even met you in this life. ~ Junauda Petrus

There's less skill and more plain hard work to writing than anyone except a writer thinks. ~ Mabel Seeley

Don't listen to him." Mabel waved a hand in disregard. "He's gone and lost his mind since the last time you paid us a visit. All his marbles fell out; rolled under the tables and counters, and he's too old to bend down and find them. ~ Ania Ahlborn

Even as a boy Jack had loved the smell of the ground softening in the thaw and coming back to life. Not this spring. A damp, moldy dreariness, something like loneliness, had settled over the homestead. At first Jack did not know its source. Maybe it was only his own mood. Perhaps it was the spring weather, with overcast skies and freezing rain that soaked through the cabin walls. Mabel, too, seemed beset by a morose restlessness. ~ Eowyn Ivey

I think of my chastened surprise when Mabel played with a paper telescope. She is real. She can resist the meanings humans give her. But the condor? The condor has no resistance to us at all. I stare at the attenuated, drifting image on the gallery screen. It is a shadow, a figure of loss and hope; it is hardly a bird at all. ~ Helen Macdonald

In the city at best one lives the life of others, the life of the shop, the street, the crowd, while in the country one must live one's own life. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

People are…" Mabel wheezed. "Mostly good, you…" Wheeze. "Know? Mostly." She tried to take a breath. It was hard. Like breathing through layers of gauze. Where were her parents? She loved them so. "Mostly. I believe that with…" A bloody cough tore through Mabel's lungs. "… With all my… all my heart. ~ Libba Bray

Being a very bad daughter, I never really took time to sit down and listen to my mother's story, and she passed away in 2003. I became very guilty and began to spend a lot of time with older people. I listened carefully to their stories. ~ Mabel Cheung

There in the first row of seats in the court room, sitting with Tate, were Jumpin' and Mabel. Folks had made a stir when they walked in with Tate and sat downstairs in the "white area." But when the bailiff reported this to Judge Sims, still in his chambers, the judge told him to announce that anybody of any color or creed could sit anywhere they wanted in his courtroom, and if somebody didn't like it, they were free to leave. In fact, he'd make sure they did. ~ Delia Owens

Learn that there is no cure for desire, no cure for the love of reward, no cure for the misery of longing, save in the fixing of the sight and hearing on that which is invisible and soundless. ~ Mabel Collins

That's easy," Mabel said. "Why don't you have a Champagne?" "I can barely sell wine," Michael said. But he thought, you know, why don't we? "What would I call it, anyway?" Mabel barely paused. "Well, I'd call it Barefoot Bubbly," she said. It took a few years. Barefoot's sparkling wine didn't hit the market until 1997. A year later, Michael and Bonnie toasted Mabel for her 80th birthday with a wine named Barefoot Bubbly. ~ Michael Houlihan

Naturally society cherished itself alone; it prized what everyone agreed was precious, despised what everyone agreed was despicable, and ignored what no one mentioned-all to it's own enhancement, and with the loud view that these bubbles and vapors were eternal and universal. If June had stressed to Mabel that she was going to die, would she have learned to eat with a fork? Society's loyal members, having sacrificed their only lives to it's caprices, hastened to entrap the next generation into agreement, so their follies would not have been in vain and they could all go down together, blind and well turned out. The company, the club, and the party had offered him a position like bait, and he bit. He had embedded himself in the company like a man bricked into a wall, and whirled with the building's maps, files, and desks,senselessly, as the planet spun and death pooled on the cold basement floors. Who could blame him?- when people have always lived so. Now , however, he saw the city lifted away, and the bricks and files vaporized; he saw the preenings of men laid low, and the comforts of family scattered. He was free and loosed on the black beach. ~ Annie Dillard

I've tried to keep pleasant," Mabel went on. "You don't know how I've tried. I have that verse pinned up on my dresser, about
The man worth while is the man who can smile,
When everything goes dead wrong."
"Take it down," Mother said cheerfully. "If there's a verse in the world that has been worked overtime, it's that one. I can't think of anything more inane than to smile when everything goes dead wrong, unless it is to cry when everything is passably right. That verse always seemed to me to be a surface sort of affair. Take it down and substitute 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.' That goes to the heart of things
when you feel that strength, then the dead-wrong things begin to miraculously right themselves. ~ Bess Streeter Aldrich

Secreted and hidden in the heart of the world and in the heart of the human is the light which can illuminate all life, the future and the past. Shall we not search for it? ~ Mabel Collins

THE TWO OTHER GIRLS in the room, Mabel and Deirdre, said I imagined it. But they were wrong. My brother appeared to me there. A beam of light from the streetlamp lay in a crooked zigzag along the floor, toward the bed, and my brother stepped onto it, his face pensive but not crying, dressed as he might be for a wedding, his good suit, his collar and tie, and not a mark on him, no bloodstain, ~ Edna O'Brien

If you ask, flowers and plants will tell you many stories. God can talk through them, and if you ask them, they will raise their hands if they know they can help you with an illness. ~ Mabel Katz

Love is beyond reason. Love is not measurable in words. Love cannot be partial; it cannot have owners. Love is essentially beyond definition or concept. ~ Mabel Iam

Mabel Elsworth Todd,The Thinking Body, ~ Alexander Lowen

Imagine how terrifying it would be if we had to decide the beginnings of things for ourselves: as to what race we should belong, what sex, and all that, instead of placidly coming out of unconsciousness to find it all arranged! ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

Could I have a Sloe Gin Fizz, without the gin?"
"What's the point of that, Miss?" the waiter said.
"Tomorrow morning," Mabel said. ~ Libba Bray

Even as human vitality is at its lowest ebb in the early morning, so it is with plant life in the early spring. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

What is life worth if one has nothing to give away? This lack, it seems to me, must be the sharpest pang of poverty. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

Remember, the security and happiness you are seeking is not in your material possessions, your degrees, or relationships. It is much closer than you think. ~ Mabel Katz

That's it," Mabel said, getting up. She tossed her napkin on the table. "No. That is not right. I don't know what you just said, but whatever it was, I'm pretty certain it was pure hokum. I don't want to dance. I don't want to hear about your plans for a summer house. I am not your sister. And if I were your sister, I'd have to tell people you'd been adopted as an act of charity. Please, don't get up. ~ Libba Bray

The days diminished. Light lasted just six hours, and it was a feeble light. Mabel organized her hours into patterns - wash, mend, cook, wash, mend, cook - and tried not to imagine floating beneath the ice like a yellow leaf. ~ Eowyn Ivey

Womanhood is a wonderful thing. In womankind we find the mothers of the race.There is no man so great, nor none sunk so low, but once he lay a helpless, innocent babe in a woman's arms and was dependent on her love and care for his existence. It is woman who rocks the cradle of the world and holds the first affections of mankind. She possesses a power beyond that of a king on his throne.
... Womanhood stands for all that is pure and clean and noble. She who does not make the world better for having lived in it has failed to be all that a woman should be. ~ Mabel Hale

Then he returned to Mabel and put his mouth to her ear. I'd never let anything happen to you. You know that, don't you? ~ Eowyn Ivey

[He] has always believed in me. Even when I didn't believe in myself. Even when I was at my worst, he saw only the best in me, and he was determined for me to see it too. Now I know for certain that Mabel was right. There's nothing in the world like having someone love you for who you really are. Looking at your heavy baggage and leaning down to whisper in your ear, You're perfect. ~ Julie Cantrell

My parents' names were Florian and Mabel Smith. My mother's maiden name was Dersam. They were of German heritage and were part of a family community with my grandparents and uncles and relatives. I was an only child. ~ Paul Smith

I hope so," grumbled Ian. "I'm going to look for another one of 'em winged dogs for Mabel. ~ Ness Kingsley

Oh, I love London Society! I think it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be. lord caversham. Hum! Which is Goring? Beautiful idiot, or the other thing? mabel chiltern. ~ Oscar Wilde

I found out that the sunshine in New Mexico could do almost anything with one: make one well if one felt ill, or change a dark mood and lighten it. It entered into one's deepest places and melted the thick, slow densities. It made one feel good. That is, alive. ~ Mabel Dodge Luhan

Dead bodies are such trouble, Evie said with a little sigh, and Mabel had to turn her head away so as not to laugh. ~ Libba Bray

The world is mean from the start and gets meaner every day. It uses you up until you only dream of death. Mabel ~ Colson Whitehead

He thought Mabel would cry, and he wanted to be anywhere else. It was wrong and cowardly, and he'd done it before
when Mabel lost the baby and shook with grief ... But it was like the need to take a breath. The urge was too strong, and without saying another word, Jack left the cabin. ~ Eowyn Ivey

...Mabel put on the boiled potatos, unmashed, the stewed tomatos, some inferior dried beef, and some bread that plainly said, 'Darling, I am growing old'. ~ Bess Streeter Aldrich

For within you is the light of the world - the only light that can be shed upon the Path. ~ Mabel Collins

Let everyone who makes garden plans frequently insert the letters C.P. in them as a reminder, the same standing for climate permitting. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

All uncleanness seems washed clean in its lonely stretches ; the life-giving sun and ardent air must still bring singular joy, the eager morning breeze, the opalescent distance, the
plaintive evening sky all will continue to tell an exquisite if inarticulate story.
That Tripoli will remain, whatever the
Powers may decree. ~ Mabel Loomis Todd

Shadow had no idea what a pasty was, but he said that would be fine, and in a few moments Mabel returned with a plate with what looked like a folded-over pie on it. The lower half was wrapped in a paper napkin. Shadow picked it up with the napkin and bit into it: it was warm and filled with meat, potatoes, carrots, onions. "First pasty I've ever had," he said. "It's real good. ~ Neil Gaiman

She could not fathom the hexagonal miracle of snowflakes formed from clouds, crystallized fern and feather that tumble down to light on a coat sleeve, white stars melting even as they strike. How did such force and beauty come to be in something so small and fleeting and unknowable? You did not have to understand miracles to believe in them, and in fact Mabel had come to suspect the opposite. To believe, perhaps you had to cease looking for explanations and instead hold the little thing in your hands as long as you were able before it slipped like water between your fingers. (kindle location 2950) ~ Eowyn Ivey

The Principle which gives life dwells in us, and without us, is undying and beneficent, is not heard or seen or smelt, but it is perceived by the man who desires perception. ~ Mabel Collins

What's the good of having news an' ye must coop it? It's like cold veal pie upon the chest for supper, the same being over old, under done, and dry o' gravy. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

Mary: "Don't be spiky, when I only want what you want – for you and Tony to walk into the sunset together."
Mabel: "Then why turn up looking like a cross between a Vogue fashion plate and a case of dynamite?"
Mary: "Well, I can't make it too easy for him. ~ Julian Fellowes

He had remained steadfast in agnosticism and therefore, as Mabel took comfort in remarking, 'he never denied God.' Neither did he affirm God. ~ Robert V. Bruce

The only time I'm pleased with myself is when I'm exhausted and shaking from having written too much. ~ Mabel Seeley

Neither a garden nor a gardener can be made in one year, nor in one generation even. ~ Mabel Osgood Wright

I'm sure I'm not Ada for her hair goes in such long ringlets, and mine does'nt go in ringlets at all; and I'm sure I'm not Mabel, for I know all sorts of things, and she's she and I'm I, and-oh dear, how puzzling it all is! i'll try if I know all the things I used to know. Let me see: four times five is tweleve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is-oh dear! I shall never get to tewnty at that rate! However, the Multiplication- Table doesn't signify: let's try geography. London is the capital of Paris, and Paris is the capital of Rome, and Rome-no, that's all wrong, I'm certain! I must have been changed for Mabel! ~ Lewis Carroll

I'm a hopeless romantic. I consider myself a realistic person who usually finds stories from real life people. ~ Mabel Cheung