Mrs Duboses House Quotes

The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote ~ Leo Tolstoy

The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like sticky plaster-dust. (House-cleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water. (It didn't have to be anything scary or unpleasant, especially in a cheerful household - magic tended to reflect the atmosphere of the place in which it found itself
but if you want a cup of tea, a cup of lavender-and-gold pansies or ivory thimbles is unsatisfactory.) ~ Robin McKinley

Virtually all letter writers confessed how their encounter with Nietzsche's philosophy either emboldened or chastened them, liberated them from old falsehoods, or saddled them with new moral responsibilities. Helen Bachmuller of Dayton, Ohio, wrote to let Förster-Nietzsche know that her brother had inspired the belief that human greatness was still possible in the modern world. Though unworthy of his greatness, he nevertheless awakened in her a longing for something deeper in herself. Nietzsche, Bachmuller confessed, had saved her from her 'own inner emptiness.' The 'Ohio country' she called home had become 'tame and commonplace,' filled with lives 'trivial and ... essentially ugly, for they are engrossed with matters of money and motors, not with work or faith or art.' She regarded the Methodist church near her house as 'vulgar, pretentious.' Though disgusted by the offensive mediocrity around her, she was also chagrined by her own limitations: 'It would be, probably, impossible for you to imagine anything more superficial than I am.' But reading presumably the recently released translation of Förster-Nietzsche's The_Nietzsche-Wagner_Correspondence had exposed Bachmuller to 'depths beyond depths, of one great soul striking fire against another great soul, and I became thrilled. I could feel the harmonies and dissonances, the swell and surge of those two glorious beings, and I felt much more that I cannot express.' Reading Nietzsche enlivened her to the possibility 'for a com ~ Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

He looked at her, but he was only a shadow now. Livia gave him a warning look. He shook his head sadly and in total defeat. Standing in the house of a man who'd brought him food, with his daughter holding his hand, seemed to break some sort of honor code for Blake.
Livia felt her heart beating in her ears. "Don't give up on me. Please," she said softly. ~ Debra Anastasia

For a few years, skeins of yarn piled up in baskets around the house. There weren't enough humans in my mother's orbit to wear all the scarves and sweaters and hats she knitted. And then, as suddenly as she started, she lost interest, leaving needles still entwined in half-finished fragments. ~ Christina Baker Kline

At night we turned all the lights in every room of our house on. We turned the lights on the front porch on. We turned the lights on the back porch and over the garage on too. We wanted to keep the darkness that surrounded our house and us as far away from us as we could. ~ Michael Kimball

--Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.

A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus's hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man's voice assures us
'Perfectly harmless. . . .'

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
'Sure are big creatures.'
'It's awful plain.'
'Look! It's a she!'

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

'Curious creatures,'
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r's.
'Look at that, would you.'
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there's a dim
smell of moose, an acrid
smell of gasoline. ~ Elizabeth Bishop

Tom lived by the sea. In a small blue house that was from another time. It was squeaky and drafty and held one of my favorite places in the entire world: a big old chair by a front window and a fireplace, from which could be seen a view of the North Sea while one lounged, under a quilt preferably, and read book after book. ~ Paige Shelton

There is a natural curiosity that is inherent to children.
I think it's a bit dishonest to use, 'Have faith like a child,' an a way to shut a person down. Like, somehow, it means we're not supposed to wonder, we're just supposed to accept. Now that I have a house full of small humanity, I think I'm beginning to understand why Jesus would encourage us to have faith like a child.
They don't know. And so they ask.
We don't know. And so we ask. ~ Sarah Bessey

Once I entered the house late at night and overheard Mark and my mom having sex by the fireplace. She was moaning like she was flying on a magic carpet. I almost puked into the kitchen sink. I would give anything for her to dump him. Jade's mom says it will never happen because women over 45 have a better chance of getting blown up by a terrorist than finding a man. Haha! If I ever get that desperate, I will buy a giant vibrator and never leave the house. ~ Allison Burnett

Oh, it's a little worse than that," he said, nettled. "It makes you the illegitimate son of the senior Republican senator from South Dakota. And the press will eat you alive when it comes out. You, Leta, me, everyone our lives touch. Including Cecily. She'll make a damned great sidebar, with her anthropology degree!"
"You'll lose face with your constituents," Tate said coldly.
"Oh, to hell with that! Maybe I'll lose my job, so what?" Holden said, glaring at him. "It wouldn't matter if your mother would speak to me! She cut me off before I got two complete sentences out. She wouldn't come out here and help me tell you the truth. She hung up on me!"
"Good for her! What a pity she didn't try that thirty-six years ago."
The older man's eyes darkened. "I loved her," he said very quietly. "I still love her. I made the mistake of my life when I thought money and power would be worth marrying a vicious damned socialite who could help me politically. Your mother was worth ten of my late wife. I never knew what hell was until I tried to live with the devil's deal I made to get my office." He turned away again and sat down on the sofa wearily, glancing at the beer. "You shouldn't drink," he said absently.
Tate ignored him. He picked up the beer, finished it with pure spite and crushed the empty can.
"Aren't you leaving now?" he asked the other man with biting contempt.
Holden let out a long breath. "Where would I go? I live in a big empty house with a ~ Diana Palmer

For some of us it seems like yesterday when Ike was in the White House, the U.S. Senate censured Joe McCarthy, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that racial segregation in public school was unconstitutional. ~ Malcolm Forbes

All around him the chanting swelled, Harm no one, harm no one. What the hell did that mean? He was going to have to shoot the poor son of a bitch, but maybe that was a far better way to go than what the house of horrors had planned. This was a hell of a way for men to die, even if they deserved it. ~ Christine Feehan

Our house was a collection of silences, each room a mute, empty frame, each of us three oscillating bodies (Mom, Dad, me) moving around in our own curved functions, from space to space, not making any noise, just waiting, waiting to wait, trying, for some reason, not to disrupt the field of silence, not to perturb the delicate equilibrium of the system. We wandered from room to room, just missing one another, on paths neither chosen by us nor random, but determined by our own particular characteristics, our own properties, unable to deviate, to break from our orbital loops, unable to do something as simple as walking into the next room where our beloved, our father, our mother, our child, our wife, our husband, was sitting, silent, waiting but not realizing it, waiting for someone to say something, anything, wanting to do it, yearning to do it, physically unable to bring ourselves to change our velocities. ~ Charles Yu

I'd hate to imply that it's your civic duty to see The House I Live In, but guess what it is. ~ Ty Burr

I will, I do, Amen, Here Here, Let's
eat, drink and be merry. Marriage is
the public spectacle of private
parts:
cheque-books and genitals, house-wares, fainthearts,
all doubts becalmed by kissing
aunt, a priest's
safe homily, those tinkling glasses
tightening those ties that truly bind
us together forever, dressed to the nines.

Darling, I reckon maybe thirty years,
given our ages and expectancies.
Barring the tragic or untimely, say,
ten thousand mornings, ten thousand evenings,
please God, ten thousand moistened nights like this,
when, mindless of these vows, our opposites,
nonetheless, attract. Thus, love's subtactraction:
the timeless from the ordinary times --
nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine. ~ Thomas Lynch

The State of the Union may look rosy from the White House balcony or the suites of George Bush's wealthiest donors. But hardworking Americans will see through this president's efforts to wrap his radical agenda with a compassionate ribbon. ~ Howard Dean

I think I have the best house in the world. I thank God to have it. I thank God that I finished it. And I hope that I will live enough to take profit of it. ~ Max Azria

Betty White met with President Obama at the White House. President Obama invited Betty personally because she's great with animals. And the president's still having a tough time house-training Joe Biden. ~ Craig Ferguson

Better a dry crust of bread with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting with strife. ~ King David

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the new president. He won in a landslide. Landslide makes me think of rocks and dirt falling down a mountain. Not sure what that has to do with an election. But maybe it does. My papa voted. He is a pebble. Lots of pebbles make a landslide, right? His vote counted.

Roosevelt will move into the White House and will have a fine supper to celebrate, I guess. Papa had cornbread and buttermilk and beans with his friends at my house. I bet papa enjoyed his celebration more. ~ Sharon M. Draper

Sometimes, on waking, she would close her eyes
For a last look at that white house she knew
In sleep alone, and held no title to,
And had not entered yet, for all her sighs.
What did she tell me of that house of hers?
White gatepost; terrace; fanlight of the door;
A widow's walk above the bouldered shore;
Salt winds that ruffle the surrounding firs.
Is she now there, wherever there may be?
Only a foolish man would hope to find
That haven fashioned by her dreaming mind.
Night after night, my love, I put to sea. ~ Richard Wilbur

A philosopher's house is always more tuneful than a disciplinarian's. ~ Joshua Emmet

Right now he needed to concentrate on keeping himself under control. Inside, his gut churned. There was a war going on. The joy of holding his son again clashed with the waves of anger that rose higher and higher with each passing moment. He thought he had known why Pete had arrived at the farm. He had pushed the fork into the soil and watched the earth turn over sure that the truth of their tragedy was about to be laid before them. He had watched the dry earth give up the rich brown soil and wanted to stay there forever in the cold garden just watching his fork move the earth. He had not wanted to hear what Pete had to say. And now this..this..What did you call this? A miracle? What else could it be? But this miracle was tainted. He was not holding the same boy he had taken to the Easter Show.
This thin child with shaved hair was not the Lockie he knew. Someone had taken that child. They had taken his child and he could feel by the weight of him they had starved him. Someone had done this to him. They had done this and god knew what else. Doug walked slowly into the house, trying to find the right way to break the news to Sarah.
She was lying down in the bedroom again. These days she spent more time there than anywhere else. Doug walked slowly through the house to the main bedroom at the back. It was the only room in the house whose curtains were permanently closed.
How damaged was his child? Would he ever be the same boy they had taken up to the Show ? Wha ~ Nicole Trope

A live-in domestic worker: You are never sure that your soul is your own except when you are out of the house. ~ H.W. Brands

Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the handmaiden of truth.
Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge; it is the servant of discovery.
A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error,
for there is incompleteness and imperfection in every belief.
Doubt is the touchstone of truth; it is an acid which eats away the false.
Let no man fear for the truth, that doubt may consume it;
for doubt is a testing of belief.
The truth stands boldly and unafraid; it is not shaken by the testing;
For truth, if it be truth, arises from each testing stronger, more secure.
He that would silence doubt is filled with fear;
the house of his spirit is built on shifting sands.
But he that fears no doubt, and knows its use, is founded on a rock.
He shall walk in the light of growing knowledge;
the work of his hands shall endure.
Therefore let us not fear doubt, but let us rejoice in its help:
It is to the wise as a staff to the blind; doubt is the handmaiden of truth. ~ Robert T. Weston

Write, if you must; not otherwise. Do not write, if you can earn a fair living at teaching or dressmaking, at electricity or hod-carrying. Make shoes, weed cabbages, survey land, keep house, make ice-cream, sell cake, climb a telephone pole. Nay, be a lightning-rod peddler or a book agent, before you set your heart upon it that you shall write for a living ... Living? It is more likely to be dying by your pen; despairing by your pen; burying hope and heart and youth and courage in your ink-stand. ~ Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

You can't turn a "no" to a "yes" without a "maybe" in between. ~ Kevin Spacey

America wasn't interested in the roots of house music because it was too black, it was too gay, it was all these things, and today it's made very sanitized and white. ~ Felix Buxton

The United States made no secret of its desire to have the House of Saud bankroll Osama bin Laden's Afghan war against the Soviet Union during the 1980s, and Riyadh and Washington together contributed an estimated $3.5 billion to the mujahideen.5 However, U.S. and Saudi participation went far beyond this. ~ John Perkins