Onyx Ivory Quotes

It's always a choice, to do right or wrong, no matter the power. ~ Mindee Arnett

It takes more than holding hands and singing 'Ebony and Ivory'. ~ David Mitchell

her name is Dulcinea, her kingdom, Toboso, which is in La Mancha, her condition must be that of princess, at the very least, for she is my queen and lady, and her beauty is supernatural, for in it one finds the reality of all the impossible and chimerical aspects of beauty which poets attribute to their ladies: her tresses are gold, her forehead Elysian fields, her eyebrows the arches of heaven, her eyes suns, her cheeks roses, her lips coral, her teeth pearls, her neck alabaster, her bosom marble, her hands ivory, her skin white as snow, and the parts that modesty hides from human eyes are such, or so I believe and understand, that the most discerning consideration can only praise them but not compare them. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Jeb frowns. "You didn't give Ivory the chance to explain, did you? You went flying all over the castle half-naked to find me without letting her finish."
I clench my jaw.
He turns me to face him. His face flushes with color and he looks strong and healthy again. His frown turns into a smile, those dimples a vision too lovely for words. "Classic Al." ~ A.G. Howard

Everything in any way beautiful has its beauty of itself, inherent and self-sufficient: praise is no part of it. At any rate, praise does not make anything better or worse. This applies even to the popular conception of beauty, as in material things or works of art. So does the truly beautiful need anything beyond itself? No more than law, no more than truth, no more than kindness or integrity. Which of these things derives its beauty from praise, or withers under criticism? Does an emerald lose its quality if it is not praised? And what of gold, ivory, purple, a lyre, a dagger, a flower, a bush? ~ Marcus Aurelius

Clearly, here is a man who adheres to a widely held theory of attacking the branches of evil. 1. Speak from an ivory tower but rarely take a cutting tool in hand, unless when advising others. 2. Lecture at length, inspire others to unselfish acts of civil disobedience or quiet resistance, but rarely perform such acts yourself. 3. Become a widely-heralded critic of the state from within a respected state institution. ~ Douglas Herman

Cupping my cheeks, he exhaled a soft groan, and his lips scorched mine as he deepened the kiss until we both were breathless from its intensity. Daemon moved as close as he could with the chair between us. Gripping his arms, I held onto him, wanting him closer. The chair prevented all but our lips and hands from touching. Frustrating.
Move, I ordered restlessly.
It trembled under my foot, and then the heavy oak chair slid out from under me, dodging our leaning bodies. Unprepared for the sudden void, Daemon lurched forward, and I was unable to carry the unexpected weight. I collapsed backward, bringing Daemon along with me.
The full contact of his body, flush against mine, sent my senses into chaotic overdrive. His tongue swept over mine as his fingers splayed across my cheeks. His hand slid down my side, gripping my hip as he urged me closer. The kisses slowed and his chest rose as he drank me in.
With one last lingering exploration, he lifted his head and smiled down at me.
My heart skipped a beat as he hovered over me with an expression that tugged deep in my chest. He moved his finger back up, along my cheek, trailing an invisible path to my chin.
"I didn't move that chair, Kitten."
"I know."
"I'm assuming you didn't like where it was?"
"It was in your way," I said. My hands were still curled around his arms.
"I can see that." Daemon smoothed a fingertip over the curve of my bottom lip before taking my hand, pulling m ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

I kept my word. An hour or two sufficed to sketch my own portrait in crayons; and in less than a fortnight I had completed an ivory miniature of an imaginary Blanche Ingram. It looked a lovely face enough, and when compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast was as great as self-control could desire. I derived benefit from the task: it had kept my head and hands employed, and had given force and fixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp indelibly on my heart. ~ Charlotte Bronte

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows. ~ Herman Melville

Stop being so stubborn!" Her bare feet fell to the onyx floor. "Do not make me beg you. Because I won't. I'll merely lose my temper or cry. And I have always secretly despised those who cry to wheedle their objectives. But if you force me to do it, Khalid Ibn al-Rashid, I will. And I cry beautifully." She crossed her arms and pursed her lips.

A corner of his mouth twitched. "You do not cry beautifully."

"Liar!"

"I'm not lying." He held her gaze. "I rarely lie ~ Renee Ahdieh

I would give a lot to actually be able to glamour China into not wanting ivory. I can't even tell you how much I would give to be able to stop the illicit trade of Africa's wildlife, and to just look into the president of China's eyes and say, "You don't want this anymore, your country doesn't want this anymore," and have it be done. That would be great. ~ Kristin Bauer Van Straten

The flowers that I left in the ground,
that I did not gather for you,
today I bring them all back,
to let them grow forever,
not in poems or marble,
but where they fell and rotted.

And the ships in their great stalls,
huge and transitory as heroes,
ships I could not captain,
today I bring them back
to let them sail forever,
not in model or ballad,
but where they were wrecked and scuttled.

And the child on whose shoulders I stand,
whose longing I purged
with public, kingly discipline,
today I bring him back
to languish forever,
not in confession or biography,
but where he flourished,
growing sly and hairy.

It is not malice that draws me away,
draws me to renunciation, betrayal:
it is weariness, I go for weariness of thee,
Gold, ivory, flesh, love, God, blood, moon-
I have become the expert of the catalogue.

My body once so familiar with glory,
My body has become a museum:
this part remembered because of someone's mouth,
this because of a hand,
this of wetness, this of heat.

Who owns anything he has not made?
With your beauty I am as uninvolved
as with horses' manes and waterfalls.
This is my last catalogue.
I breathe the breathless
I love you, I love you -
and let you move forever. ~ Leonard Cohen

Horses are creatures who worship the earth as they gallop on feet of ivory. Constrained by the wonder of dying and birth, the horses still run, they are free. ~ John Denver

The ivory images of the gods that followed were applauded by their particular devotees: Neptune by sailors, Mars by soldiers, Apollo and Artemis by soothsayers and hunters, Minerva by craftsmen, Bacchus and Ceres by drunks and countryfolk in town for the day. Venus and Cupid were cheered by all - who could be so dull as to deny ever being touched by any aspect, physical or otherwise, of love? ~ Harry Sidebottom

Why was I sent away?" "I don't know that answer, Lyssandra. You are going to have to ask Father." The library door swung open violently causing her to jump in surprise. Beyond the door was a furious Vincent. His hands were clenched in tight fists, and his onyx eyes were hard as granite as he stared at her brother. Fury radiated from him, and it looked like he wanted to rush over the threshold to attack Quinton, but something was holding him back. ~ Claire Grimes

None of the palaces in Hell come close to Lucifer's in size or beauty. Lucifer lives at the top of a literal ivory tower, miles high. You can't even see the top from the ground. The joke is that he built it that high so he can lean out the window and pound on Heaven's floor with a broom handle when he wants them to turn down the choir. ~ Richard Kadrey

Soft sun shone down on a misty cathedral at the opposite end of a football-field length courtyard. The cathedral had a long pointed tower with beautiful rose and ivory stained glass windows. Pink-petal flowers and deep green ivy climbed the stones from the ground to it's roof. A large fountain stood in the middle of the courtyard with water falling from several lion's heads. Between the misty air and rolling slope of the earth, the grounds reminded me of a long lost fairy tale. ~ Priya Ardis

You only get what you give away. ~ Jade Onyx

Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers' breath, of ropes of pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine. ~ Virginia Woolf

The progress of Sybilla though a market was the progress of worker bee through a bower of intently propagating blossoms. Everything stuck. From the toy stall she bought two ivory dolls, a hen whistle, a rattle and a charming set of miniature bells for a child's skirts: all were heroically received and borne by Tom, henceforth marked by a faint, distracted jingling. From the spice booth, set with delicious traps for the fat purse, she took cinnamon, figs, cumin seed and saffron, ginger, flower of gillyflower and crocus and - an afterthought - some brazil for dyeing her new wool. These were distributed between Christian and Tom. They listened to a balladmonger, paid him for all the verses of "When Tay's Bank," and bought a lengthy scroll containing a brand-new ballad which Tom Erskine read briefly and then discreetly lost. "No matter," said the Dowager cheerfully, when told. "Dangerous quantity, music. Because it spouts sweet venom in their ears and makes their minds all effeminate, you know. We can't have that." He was never very sure whether she was laughing at him, but rather thought not. They pursued their course purposefully, and the Dowager bought a new set of playing cards, some thread, a boxful of ox feet, a quantity of silver lace and a pair of scissors. She was dissuaded from buying a channel stone, which Tom, no curling enthusiast, refused utterly to carry, and got a toothpick in its case instead. They watched acrobats, invested sixpence for an unconvincing mermaid a ~ Dorothy Dunnett

They have both loved you with a child's love, and now a man's. It is the child's love that holds you together ... cemented by the moments you shared with them that they treasure most. ~ A.G. Howard

Wait
we have one left," the runner said, bringing out what was surely the most expensive bouquet of all: a three-foot tall arrangement of two hundred white roses, in the palest ivory color. All the girls swooned. Almost no boys bought white roses ever. It was a big sign of commitment. But this one practically trumpeted a captured heart.
The runner set the bouquet in front of Schuyler.
Mimi raised an eyebrow. She had always won the roses lottery. What was this all about?
For me?" Schuyler asked, awestruck by the size of the thing.
She took the card from the tallest stem.
For Schuyler, who doesn't like love stories." It was not signed. ~ Melissa De La Cruz

But how can you love a person who is not whole? Because you, like the moon, are not only beautiful when full. In all of your phases and fractions and ivory-white pieces, I love you. ~ Beau Taplin

Floating"

Our canoe idles in the idling current
Of the tree and vine and rush enclosed
Backwater of a torpid midwestern stream;
Revolves slowly, and lodges in the glutted
Waterlilies. We are tired of paddling.
All afternoon we have climbed the weak current,
Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures,
Past muddy fords where the strong smell of cattle
Lay thick across the water; singing the songs
Of perfect, habitual motion; ski songs,

Nightherding songs, songs of the capstan walk,
The levee, and the roll of the voyageurs.
Tired of motion, of the rhythms of motion,
Tired of the sweet play of our interwoven strength,
We lie in each other's arms and let the palps
Of waterlily leaf and petal hold back
All motion in the heat thickened, drowsing air.
Sing to me softly, Westron Wynde, Ah the Syghes,
Mon coeur se recommend à vous, Phoebi Claro;
Sing the wandering erotic melodies
Of men and women gone seven hundred years,
Softly, your mouth close to my cheek.
Let our thighs lie entangled on the cushions,
Let your breasts in their thin cover
Hang pendant against my naked arms and throat;
Let your odorous hair fall across our eyes;
Kiss me with those subtle, melodic lips.
As I undress you, your pupils are black, wet,
Immense, and your skin ivory and humid.
Move softly, move hardly at all, part your thighs,
Take me slowly w ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Programs, systems and methods sit well in the ivory towers of monasteries or in the wooden arms of icons. Head knowledge comes from the pages of a theology text. But the invitation to know God - truly know Him - is always an invitation to suffer. Not to suffer alone, but to suffer with Him. ~ Joni Eareckson Tada

There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we learn and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try to remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life. But some of us awake in the night with strange phantasms of enchanted hills and gardens, of fountains that sing in the sun, of golden cliffs overhanging murmuring seas, of plains that stretch down to sleeping cities of bronze and stone, and of shadowy companies of heroes that ride caparisoned white horses along the edges of thick forests; and then we know that we have looked back through the ivory gates into that world of wonder which was ours before we were wise and unhappy. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Sent to the Monk"

Night falls
and the empty intimacy of the whole world
fills my heart to frothing.
The past has trudged to this one spot
and falls into the stream,
its flashlight in its mouth.
Ancient tears beneath the surface
rise and scatter like carp,
while an ivory hairpin floats away
like a loose tooth going back in time.

Columbia Poetry Review. Spring 2014 ~ Mary Ruefle

I judge wisely ... as if nothin ever surprise me,
Loungin, between two pillars of ivory.
I'm lively, my dome piece is like buildin stones in Greece.
My poems are deep, from ancient thrones I speak. ~ Killah Priest

If the only people we seek to impress are within our own ivory towers of artistic excellence or our hallowed institutions, we will find the audience is gone in 20 to 30 years. I find as I keep a broader audience in mind, I choose to sing and say more things I actually want to share and fewer things just for the sake of impressing others. ~ Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick

The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history. ~ Oscar Wilde

The philosophers make still another objection: "What you gain in rigour," they say, "you lose in objectivity. You can rise toward your logical ideal only by cutting the bonds which attach you to reality. Your science is infallible, but it can only remain so by imprisoning itself in an ivory tower and renouncing all relation with the external world. From this seclusion it must go out when it would attempt the slightest application. ~ Henri Poincare

Though he'd treated me like crap, I fell asleep thinking of how his bottom lip was slightly plumper than the top - perfect for kissing - and how those onyx eyes glittered when he first glanced at me. I knew he wouldn't be there in the morning, but I still hoped that I'd see him again. ~ Inger Iversen

To become a celebrity is to become a brand name. There is Ivory Soap, Rice Krispies, and Philip Roth. Ivory is the soap that floats; Rice Krispies the breakfast cereal that goes snap-crackle-pop; Philip Roth the Jew who masturbates with a piece of liver. ~ Philip Roth

I like the idea of it. Just look at the world around you. Wars, terror, starvation, poverty, disease. Take the Middle East conflict, for example. An area on earth that contains so much hatred, so many frustrations, that a bomber is always lurking around the next corner, and where checkpoints and walls have become a permanent part of daily life. When I look at such a world from here in my little Danish ivory tower, it's a very appealing idea that there might exist at least--at the very least--36 righteous people on this earth. Small human pillars to ensure that we maintain a minimum of kindness and righteousness. ~ A.J. Kazinski

He did not appear to be a very tall man; what I could see of legs seemed stumpy, though heavily muscled. His chest was broad and deep. Later I learned that he swam in the sea almost every morning. His thick strong arms were circled with leather wristbands and a bronze armlet above his left elbow that gleamed with polished onyx and lapis lazuli ... Puckered white scars from old wounds stood out against the dark skin of his arms, parting the black hairs like roads through a forest ... Odysseos wore a sleeveless tunic, his legs and feet bare, but he had thrown a lamb's fleece across his wide shoulders. His face was thickly bearded with dark curly hair that showed a trace of grey. His heavy mop of ringlets came down to his shoulders and across his forehead almost down to his black eyebrows. Those eyes were as grey as the sea outside on this rainy afternoon, probing, searching, judging. ~ Ben Bova

And the blind eye creates
The. empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks ~ T.S. Eliot

They stood up and the world was totally different. The wheat was an onyx sea, ever moving in shadow. Above it the heavens were illuminated with the wink of stars and planets, the Milky Way like a giant streak of glimmer slashing across the sky.
She was standing right next to him, awed by the beauty of the night sky and their tiny, tiny place in it. It seemed perfectly natural that he leaned down to gently press his lips to her temple. It wasn't a kiss really, it was a consolation.
"Take my hand," he said.
D.J. could see nothing as he unerringly led her through the darkened grain to the edge of the field. ~ Pamela Morsi

What never fails inside the mind of an intellectual never works outside the confines of his head. The world's stubborn refusal to vindicate the intellectual's theories serves as proof of humanity's irrationality, not his own. Thus, the true believer retrenches rather than rethinks; he launches a war on the world, denying reality because it fails to conform to his theories. If intellectuals are not prepared to reconcile theory and practice, then why do they bother to venture outside the ivory tower or the coffeehouse? Why not stay in the world of abstractions and fantasy? ~ Daniel J. Flynn

I'm merely exploring souls & cities
From the vantage point
Of my ivory tower built,
Built with the assistance
of Opium
That's enough, isnt it? ~ Jack Kerouac

She said, "What would you do if you left?" "I'm not sure. Get a doctorate maybe. I know some people who work in think tanks. I'd want to talk to them. Sound them out." She gave him a sour look. The term made her unhappy - think tank - and he didn't blame her. Passive, mild, middle-aged, ivory-towerish. People rustling papers in redoubts of social strategy. Situation reports, policy alternatives, statistical surveys. He ~ Don DeLillo

Skin like ivory, perfect; A goddess, she
must be.
Slender fingers, unadorned; beautiful
simplicity.
A single teardrop; when did it fall?
Could this goddess be mortal, after all? ~ Amelia Atwater-Rhodes