Mortal Wound Quotes

Maman never told me what to do when the world falls apart like a dress ripped at its seams, the beads scattering into faraway corners, the fabric a storm of shredded pieces left destroyed and unrecognizable. She never told me how to battle the nightmares that creep in like icy shadows, lingering behind closed eyes. She never told me what to do when all the color leaks out of the world like blood oozing from a mortal wound. ~ Dhonielle Clayton

Now fairy stories are at risk too, like the forests. Padraic Column has suggested that artificial lighting dealt them a mortal wound: when people could read and be productive after dark, something fundamental changed, and there was no longer need or space for the ancient oral tradition. The stories were often confined to books, which makes the text static, and they were handed over to children. ~ Sara Maitland

As we do at such times I turned on my automatic pilot and went through the motions of normalcy on the outside, so that I could concentrate all my powers on surviving the near-mortal wound inside. ~ Sonia Johnson

The Word of God gives wounded Christian the victory. God renews his hope with His own promises, and Christian gives the Destroyer a deadly thrust resulting in a mortal wound to the enemy of the pilgrim's soul. Christian on his own could not defeat Apollyon. The sword of the Word of God is the only instrument that can accomplish such a task.
4. ~ John Bunyan

Youth is a mortal wound. ~ Katherine Paterson

If the Christian religion, as I understand it, or as you understand it, should maintain its ground, as I believe it will, yet Platonic, Pythagoric, Hindoo, and cabalistical Christianity, which is Catholic Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires. ~ John Adams

Everyone has secret.
Like the oyster with its grain of sand, we bury it deep within, coating it with opalescent layers, as if that could heal our mortal wound. Some of us devote our entire lives to keeping our secret hidden, safe from those who might pry it from us, hoarding it like the pearl, only to discover that it escapes us when we least expect it. revealed by a flash of fear in our eyes when caught unawares, by a sudden pain, a rage or hatred, or an all-consuming shame. ~ C.W. Gortner

Can this be love that twists and tears the heart so? Does love give nothing but the power to hurt each other? Is this what makes the simplest touch blend longing and terror in equal measure? Whatever this is, it feels like a mortal wound. ~ Juliet Marillier

You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That'€s the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world. ~ Octave Mirbeau

Of all weapons in the world, I now know love to be the most dangerous. For I have suffered a mortal wound. When did I fall so deeply under your spell, Miss Bennet? I cannot fix the hour or the spot or the look or the words which lay the foundation. I was in the middle before I knew I began. But a proud fool I was. I have faced the harsh truth: that I can never hope to win your love in this life. ~ Seth Grahame-Smith

A timid mind is apt to mistake every scratch for a mortal wound. ~ George Gordon Byron

He said, and his voice was strained as if he had had a mortal wound, 'Gwenhwyfar-' He so seldom spoke her formal name, it was always my lady or my queen, or when he spoke to her in play it was always Gwen. When he spoke it now, it seemed to her she had never heard a sweeter sound. 'Gwenhwyfar. Why do you weep?'
Now she must lie, and lie well, because, she could not in honor tell him the truth. She said, 'Because-' and stopped, and then, in a choking voice, she said, 'because I do not know how I shall live if you go away. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

The black ice of that dark fortress received the sunlight like a mortal wound. ~ Salman Rushdie

The gaudy colouring with which she veiled her unhappiness afforded as little real comfort as the gay uniform of the soldier when it is drawn over his mortal wound. ~ Walter Scott

Words are like weapons; they wound sometimes. ~ Cher

Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King and, faced with the choice to acquiesce or resist, took less than three hours to make her decision, knowing it might be mortal. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

The self-defence class was a mixed bunch, chosen because each had once been in mortal danger. ~ Angie Sage

If our democracy worked as it should, we would elect wise women and men who made laws for the good of the people and enforced those laws.
That, though, is not the way things work. Greedy, power–mad billionaires spend money so that politicians such as George W. Bush can buy elections. Corrupt corporations such as Enron defraud old ladies and commit crimes. And they get away with it. They get away with it because most of us are so afraid of losing the security of our nice, normal lives that we are not willing to risk anything about those lives. We are either afraid to fight or we don't know how. Or we believe that bad things won't happen to us.
And so, in the end, too many people lose their lives anyway. In Nazi Germany, millions of men who acquiesced to Hitler's murderous rise to power wound up marching into Russia's icy wasteland - into the Soviet Army's machine guns and cannon - to themselves be murdered. In America after 9–11, trusting teenagers who had joined the National Guard found themselves sent to Iraq on extended and additional tours. Our enemy killed many of them because we, citizens of the richest country in the world, did not provide them with body armor.
Grieving mothers protested the wasting of their sons' lives. Nadia McCaffrey defied Bush's shameful ban on the filming of U.S. soldiers' coffins returning home from Iraq. She knew, as we all did, that this tyrannical dictum of Bush dishonored our soldiers' sacrifice. And so she invited the press to ~ David Zindell

We went down for pilot season, I got Full House, and we wound up never leaving. ~ Marla Sokoloff

We burn the evil men do with their mortal remains. We treasure the memory of the good they do, and distance magnifies it. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

I will continue to judge on the content of character and not the shape or color of a mortal coil. My heart demands no less of me, my spiritual peace must be held as the utmost goal. ~ R.A. Salvatore

Ideals are dangerous things. Realities are better. They wound, but they're better. ~ Oscar Wilde

I think it's important to reiterate here that I didn't start out wanting to be a gardener, or a designer for that matter. It was all trial and error and figuring things out. And sometimes you've got to try something outside of your comfort zone to figure out what it is that you truly love.

Well, you could say that about you and me right from the start. You were never looking for the loud guy, and I certainly wasn't looking for the quiet girl.

Now I look back and go, "If I would've ended up with that quiet guy or that stable guy or that safe guy, I would never have been able to pursue any of these dreams, because no one would have pushed me to these new places I discovered in myself." Those other types of guys might have allowed me to stay in that safe place.

They wouldn't have drawn you out. That's interesting. And if I had wound up with some cheerleader who was always the life of the party, I don't think I would have found my way, either. I needed you for that.

Nowadays when I think about the name Magnolia, I think about it in terms that refer to much more than the blossoming of our business. I think about the buds on the three, and how they really are just the tightest buds--they look like rocks, almost. And I feel like when Chip and I met, that tight little bud was me. I was risk averse, and in some ways, I don't think I saw the beauty or the potential in myself. Then I wound up with Chip Gaines and--

You bloomed?
Joanna Gaines

In the Whole Wide World Museum, Grover visits "The Things You See in the Sky Room", and the room full of "Long Thin Things You Can Write With", where a carrot has mistakingly wound up, so he returns it to an elegant marble pedestal in the middle of the otherwise empty "Carrot Room". As Grover reaches the end of the exhibit, he wonders: "Where did they put everything else?" That's when he reaches the wooden door marked: "Everything Else". When he opens it, of course, it's just the exit. ~ Leslie Jamison

Im mortal and theres nothing you can do about it
it doesn't matter cuz youll always be my baby
- Beautiful Darkness ~ Kami Garcia

Moderation in all good things of this mortal world, however there must be no Spiritual moderation... Devotion to our loving
Father in Heaven must never be of moderation. ~ Raymond D. Longoria Jr.

We are all united by both pain and love. Both a smile and a wound. We are all united by these very basic yet very influential things, because we all recognize them, we all know what they feel like to have or to give. Everything else, all the other things that do not unite us - those things are all illusions. ~ C. JoyBell C.

I HAD one clear day of happiness, and I shall never forget it. Even the miserable ending to it cannot change its quality in my memory; for everything that Jennie and I did was good, and unhappiness came only from the outside. Not many - lovers or friends - can say as much. For friends and lovers are quick to wound, quicker than strangers, even; the heart that opens itself to the world, opens itself to sorrow. I don't think that we spoke of the question of where Jennie was to stay that night. She was sailing in the morning (on the Mauretania, I remember she told me - how strange it was to hear the old name again) and we both seemed to take it for granted that we'd stay together until then. We ~ Robert Nathan

The simultaneous scream sounded from teh twins. Borth clasped their hands over their mouths, their eyes wide with horror. Azalea followed their gaze.
There, in patches of light, scratched-up Fairweller held a weeping clover in his arms, cradling her head against his shoulder. He murmured into her ear.
Delphinium screamed.
"Oh, Clover, how could you?" said Eve.
"Is he a good kisser?" said Hollyhock.
The King had no words as he strode to them. In an instant he had torn Fairweller away from Clover, wound up, and boxed Fairweller straight in the face.
Fairweller stumbled backward and fell to the floor, glass crunching beneath him.
"You may fill out your resignation paperwork tomorrow," said the King. "ExPrime Minister Fairweller! ~ Heather Dixon

In a syllogism (1. All men are mortal, 2. Socrates is a man, 3. Therefore Socrates is mortal), the generalization (all men are mortal) must have been arrived at by induction. No inductive process is ever absolutely certain. There is always the leap, the assumption, of generalizing and therefore one of the premises of a syllogism must have an element of uncertainty. So it cannot prove anything with certainty.

A syllogism is therefore a signpost pointing where to look for direct experience, but can inherently never give information that is 100% certain. But a syllogism (on metaphysical subjects) can also point to what can, inherently, never be experienced; then it is an anomaly. ~ Nanamoli Thera

Toulouse then felt a cool touch on his right hand as something wound around his wrist. It was the Lucefate snake, slowly coiling around him, winding tightly, but not enough to leave more than a slight impression afterwards. Toulouse flinched at first, yet forced himself to remain still and calm. It was Nature's first commandment to humans: remain still and calm until you understand, until you have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt all that was needed before acting. ~ Mary-Jean Harris

She carried a scabbedover wound on her hip where her mate had bitten her two weeks before somewhere in the mountains of Sonora. He'd bitten her because she would not leave him. Standing with one forefoot in the jaws of a steeltrap and snarling at her to drive her off where she lay just beyond the reach of the chain. She'd flattened her ears and whined and she would not leave. In the morning they came on horses. She watched from a slope a hundred yards away as he stood up to meet them. ~ Cormac McCarthy

He was fully anticipating her lips being bright red to go with her toenail polish. Damn, he loved red lipstick.

But before he could get to those lips, she used them, to say, "Oh, dammit, it's you."

Owen's gaze bypassed her mouth to fly to her eyes.
Because he'd know that voice anywhere.

Madison Allain was home.

A day early.

Not that an extra day would have helped him prepare. He'd been thinking about her visit for a week and was still as wound tight about it as he'd been when Sawyer had told him that she was coming home. For a month.

Owen stood just watching her, fighting back all of the first words that he was tempted to say.

Like, "Damn, you're even more gorgeous than the last time I saw you."

Or, "I haven't put anyone in the hospital lately."

Or, "I've missed you so damned much."

Just for instance.

He wiped his hands on his jeans. Okay, he was supposed to be nice to her. That meant treating her like she was one of the tourists who frequented this dock. Polite. Friendly,

But not I've-known-you-my-whole-life-and-kissed-you-a-whole-bunch friendly. Just mildly hey-how's-it-goin' friendly.

Nice. Polite. A little friendly - but not too much. He could do that. Though it probably meant not saying things like, "I still remember how your nipples taste. ~ Erin Nicholas

Czernobog snorted and woke, sitting up slowly. "I dreamed a strange dream," he said. "I dreamed that I am truly Bielebog. That forever the world imagines that there are two of us, the light god and the dark, but that now we are both old, I find it was only me all the time, giving them gifts, taking my gifts away." He broke the filter from a Lucky Strike, put it between his lips and lit it with his lighter. Shadow wound down his window. "Aren't you worried about lung cancer?" he said. "I am cancer," said Czernobog. "I do not frighten myself. ~ Neil Gaiman

Do you remember the sight we saw, my soul,
that soft summer morning
round a turning in the path,
the disgusting carcass on a bed scattered with stones,
its legs in the air like a woman in need
burning its wedding poisons
like a fountain with its rhythmic sobs,
I could hear it clearly flowing with a long murmuring sound,
but I touch my body in vain to find the wound.
I am the vampire of my own heart,
one of the great outcasts condemned to eternal laughter
who can no longer smile.
Am I dead?
I must be dead. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Don't you see? Your mortal heart shines like a candle flame and I, like one of those hapless black moths you used to leave as an offering, am helpless before its lure. ~ Robin LaFevers

What, in fact, is the absurd man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live without appeal and to get along with what he has; the second informs him of his limits. Assured of his temporally limited freedom, of his revolt devoid of future, and of his mortal consciousness, he lives out his adventure within the span of his lifetime. That is his field, that is his action, which he shields from any judgement but his own. ~ Albert Camus

No mortal ear could have heard the kelpie passing through the night, for the great black hooves of it were as soundless in their stride as feathers falling. ~ Mollie Hunter

Dear God, May all the tears I cry, and all the tears I have not cried but hold within, pour forth into Your hands. Please take each painful thought and unhealed wound, and send angels here to me. I long for peace. Amen. ~ Marianne Williamson

An undying hatred, and a wound never to be healed. ~ Juvenal

With our mortal minds we should seek from the gods that which becomes us. ~ Pindar

My late Uncle Henry, you see, was by way of being the blot on the Wooster escutcheon. An extremely decent chappie personally, and one who had always endeared himself to me by tipping me with considerable lavishness when I was at school; but there's no doubt he did at times do rather rummy things, notably keeping eleven pet rabbits in his bedroom; and I suppose a purist might have considered him more or less off his onion. In fact, to be perfectly frank, he wound up his career, happy to the last and completely surrounded by rabbits, in some sort of a home. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

The missing remained missing and the portraits couldn't change that. But when Akhmed slid the finished portrait across the desk and the family saw the shape of that beloved nose, the air would flee the room, replaced by the miracle of recognition as mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, and cousin found in that nose the son, brother, nephew, and cousin that had been, would have been, could have been, and they might race after the possibility like cartoon characters dashing off a cliff, held by the certainty of the road until they looked down -- and plummeted is the word used by the youngest brother who, at the age of sixteen, is tired of being the youngest and hopes his older brother will return for many reasons, not least so he will marry and have a child and the youngest brother will no longer be youngest; that youngest brother, the one who has nothing to say about the nose because he remembers his older brother's nose and doesn't need the nose to mean what his parents need it to mean, is the one who six months later would be disappeared in the back of a truck, as his older brother was, who would know the Landfill through his blindfold and gag by the rich scent of clay, as his older brother had known, whose fingers would be wound with the electrical wires that had welded to his older brother's bones, who would stand above a mass grave his brother had dug and would fall in it as his older brother had, though taking six more minutes and four more bullets to die, would be bur ~ Anthony Marra

{Debbs' letter to Robert Ingersoll's granddaughter}

I was the friend of your immortal grandfather and I loved him truly… the name of Ingersoll is revered in our home, worshipped by us all, and the date of birth is holy in our calendar... I have never loved another mortal as I have loved Robert Green Ingersoll. ~ Eugene V. Debs

A Letter to Andre Breton, Originally Composed on a Leaf of Lettuce With an Ink-dipped
Carrot

On my bed, my green comforter
draped over my knees like a lumpy turtle,
I think about the Berlin Wall of years that separates us.
In my own life, the years are beginning to stack up
like a Guinness World Record's pile of pancakes,
yet I'm still searching for some kind of syrup to believe in.
In the shadows of my pink sheet, I see your face, Desnos' face,
and two clock faces staring at each other. I see a gaping wound
that ebbs rose petals, while a sweaty armpit
holds an orchestra. Beethoven, maybe.
A lover sings a capella, with the frothiness of a cappuccino.
Starbucks, maybe. There's an hourglass, too, and beneath the sands
lie untapped oil reserves. I see Dali's mustache,
Magritte's pipe, and bowling shoes, which leaves the question--
If you could time travel through a trumpet, would you find
today and tomorrow too loud? ~ Jarod Kintz

We want all the benefits of the resurrection without acknowledging our dependence on God as mortal creatures. ~ Matthew Lee Anderson

It was time for Cork to return to the bed in the guest room. But he lingered beside this son who trusted him lay awake knowing there were monsters in the wind outside, that his son's fear was not unjustified, and that Stevie would have to face them alone someday. There were people out there so cruel they would wound him for the pleasure of it, dreadful circumstances no man in his worst imaginings could conjure, disappointments so overwhelming they could crush his dreams like eggshells. For a child like Stevie, a child of special graces, there would be such pain that Cork nearly wept in anticipation of it. Against those monsters, a father was powerless. But again the simple terrors of the night, he would do his best. ~ William Kent Krueger

He who loves his neighbor burns his heart, and the heart, like green wood, groans when it burns, and distills itself in tears. There is no point in taking opium; it is better to put salt and vinegar in the soul's wound, for if you fall asleep and no longer feel the pain, then you no longer exist. And the point is to exist. ~ Miguel De Unamuno

He's kissing me and though this is the first time, it feels like recovering a long-forgotten memory. My body seems to say, "Yes, this," and then I'm kissing him back as if I were born to be in his arms. I never realized how tightly guilt and fear had been wound about me until this moment, when they unwind into the air and fly away, leaving me with nothing but this guileless delight. ~ Rosamund Hodge

The soul aches as much as the body.there are days when all the scars , all the old and long forgotten hurts" lights up", just like old injuries before winter or bones hurt from blows you have collected in a long life and only forgotten for a short time. in those days you are bad tempered and absorbed in yourself, in your soul whose wound reopened only to remind you that nothing is lost,nothing vanishes, least of all pains and bad memories.they just whither away for a while, withdraw into an unknown depth, just like they will this time and you will put them behind you, until the next time. ~ Alija Izetbegovic

Grief is a form of validation; it says the wound mattered. It mattered. You mattered. That's not the way life was supposed to go. ~ John Eldredge

I have waited for this day, and grief faded with time.
Or did it? Perhaps grief never leaves us but is merely drowned out by a flood of life overwhelming it. Perhaps the wound that bled once is bleeding still, and I did not notice it until now. ~ Claire North

I have just committed the mortal sin of laughing in the Members' Library. No-one around here has done that for a while. ~ Nadine Dorries

We have observed, through our own experiences and those of others, that one never gets over the loss of a brother or a child or a spouse, or any dearly loved one; one simply learns to live life differently, with a sort of a hole in the heart. The wound in the heart heals over, but the tender scar remains. ~ Scott Rosenow

Mothers don't go to heaven when they die. They get special permission from God to stay around a bit longer and watch over their children, no matter what has passed between them in their brief mortal lives. ~ Elif Shafak

In the chaos of this world, where we carom and collide in the everyday turbulence, there's something about the specific gravity of the helpless individual, the lost and the fractured, that draws kindness from us, like venom from a wound. ~ David Stuart MacLean

This I have always known - that if I did not live my life immersed in the one activity which suits me, and which also, to tell the truth, keeps me utterly happy and intrigued, I would come someday to bitter and mortal regret. ~ Mary Oliver

You shouldn't do that. Not to your child. You should-carry your own burdens. ~ Cassandra Clare

As his raft skimmed over the water, taking him back to the mortal world, he understood a line from the Prophecy better-an oath to keep with a final breath.
He understood how dangerous oaths could be. But Leo didn't care.
"I'm coming back for you, Calypso," he said to the night wind. "I swear it on the River Styx. ~ Rick Riordan

Even if my wings broken,
even if i couldn't fly anymore,
I would rather to stay here,
with you,
with all your wounded stories,
that slowly began to hurt me. ~ Robi Aulia Abdi

Historically, the shock of war, the humiliation of defeat, and the open wound of lost territories have served as potent instruments for building national solidarity and forging a strong national identity. ~ Serhii Plokhy