Painted Veil Quotes

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don't. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Everything passed, and what trace of its passage remained? It seemed to Kitty that they were all, the human race, like the drops of water in that river and they flowed on, each so close to the other and yet so far apart, a nameless flood, to the sea. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

The painted veil which those who live call life ~ W. Somerset Maugham

Lift Not The Painted Veil
Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,
behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it
he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Her pain was so great that she could have screamed at the top of her voice. She had never known that one could suffer so much; and she asked herself desperately what she had done to deserve it. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

I describe myself as a member of the Church of England, which I suppose is an inoffensive way of saying that you don't believe in anything very much ~ William Somerset Maugham

You're mistaken in thinking I'm unhappy. T have a great deal too much to do to think of you very often. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

It was a pity that with his great qualities, his unselfishness and honor, his intelligence and sensibility, he should be so unlovable. ~ W. Somerset Maugham

And I'm not too great at that sort of comforting thing, especially when my hands are cold and the bed is warm. I carried him softly through the broken street, with one salty eye and a heavy, deathly heart. With him I tried a little harder. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse Owens as he ran through an imaginary tape. I saw him hip-deep in some icy water chasing a book, and I saw a boy lying in bed, imagining how a kiss would taste from his glorious next door neighbour. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry. ~ Markus Zusak

The store had a hand-painted sign the read: MOOSE PASS GAS. "That's just wrong," Frank said. ~ Rick Riordan

Were our affections filled, taken up, and possessed with these things ... what access could sin, with its painted pleasures, with its sugared poisons, with its envenomed baits, have unto our souls? ~ John Owen

I stop to brace myself against the walls, which are painted with the fingerprints of family. ~ Nancy B. Brewer

But it was too late. I had seen, and seeing then became the habit of my life. Never again was I able to avert my eyes or leave the veil that covers so many truths untouched. ~ Susan Speranza

GRUNT - "Term of affection used to denote that filthy, sweaty, dirt-encrusted, footsore, camouflage-painted, tired, sleepy beautiful little son of a bitch who has kept the wolf away from the door for over two hundred years. ~ H.G. Duncan

I started looking into horse history books and came across the actual story of this half-breed endurance horseman and his painted mustang Hidalgo. I wasn't really sure if I was going to do the movie at that point. ~ John Fusco

How was your journey?" he asked.
"You don't have to make small talk with me," she said. "I don't like it, and I'm not very good at it."
They paused at the shade of portico, beside a sweet-scented bower of roses. Casually Lord St. Vincent leaned a shoulder against a cream-painted column. A lazy smile curved his lips as he looked down at her. "Didn't Lady Berwick teach you?"
"She tried. But I hate trying to make conversation about weather. Who cares what the temperature is? I want to talk about things like... like..."
"Yes?" he prompted as she hesitated.
"Darwin. Women's suffrage. Workhouses, war, why we're alive, if you believe in séances or spirits, if music has ever made you cry, or what vegetable you hate most..." Pandora shrugged and glanced up at him, expecting the familiar frozen expression of a man who was about to run for his life. Instead she found herself caught by his arrested stare, while the silence seemed to wrap around them.
After a moment, Lord St. Vincent said softly, "Carrots."
Bemused, Pandora tried to gather her wits. "That's the vegetable you hate most? Do you mean cooked ones?"
"Any kind of carrots."
"Out of all vegetables?" At his nod, she persisted, "What about carrot cake?"
"No."
But it's cake."
A smile flickered across his lips. "Still carrots."
Pandora wanted to argue the superiority of carrots over some truly atrocious vegetable, such as Brussels sprouts, but heir conversation was inte ~ Lisa Kleypas

My paintings are about light, about the way things look in their environment and especially about how things look painted. Form, colour and space are at the whim of reality, their discovery and organization is the assignment of the realist painter. ~ Ralph Goings

Through a veil of tears I watched the city get smaller and smaller. It was funny, because it sort of felt as if my heart was doing the same thing. ~ E.M. Denning

Love is the beginning, the middle, and the end of the pathway of discipleship. It comforts, counsels, cures, and consoles. It leads us through valleys of darkness and through the veil of death. In the end love leads us to the glory and grandeur of eternal life. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

After dinner was served,
and the kids were done eating,
it was finally time
to go trick-or-treating!
Moms re-painted faces,
and straightened clown hats,
put wings back on fairies,
angels, and bats.

Jack-o'-lanterns were set
out on porches with care.
Their grins seemed to say,
"Knock if you dare."
Gypsies and pirates
and zombies in rags,
grabbed their bright flashlights
and trick-or-treat bags.

They walked down each lane,
avenue, and street,
rang every doorbell
and said, "Trick or treat! ~ Natasha Wing

Some artists are able to pull off a very form-fitting, painted-on look that's very modern, but I have actually come around to embracing the idea that that these costumes are more like athletic uniforms than high-tech skin suits. ~ Stuart Immonen

There was no reason why he should not lift the veil aside.
Well, there was Lily. He could imagine his mother's face if he told her he was giving up meat and alcohol and going to live off the land and make sandals. Not to mention homogenic love. The veil might be thin, but in some cases it was insurmountable. ~ Damon Galgut

I try to keep my sitters moving and talking, to make them forget they are being painted. This has nothing to do with extracting intimate secrets or confessions, but rather with establishing, in motion, an essential image of the kind that remains in memory or recurs in dreams. ~ Oskar Kokoschka

In Silence the heart illumines; veil after veil is removed.In the heart shines the Light of Love.When the Light of Love is seen shining within your heart you behold the Light in all.Your heart will be filled with love and compassion for all. ~ Kirpal Singh

Unfortunately most magicians are immune to their own magic. We see behind the veil, we live inside the nuts and bolts, the element of surprise is lost on us. But we can help each other. ~ Menna Van Praag

When I was a kid growing up, the message "Jesus is the Answer" was ubiquitous - painted on barns, outcroppings of rock, or as the final installment of a Burma Shave sign. The message, however, is distinctly unbiblical. The message should be "Jesus is the Assignment. ~ Robin Meyers

We were also born," Line said abruptly. Mendel questioned her with a look, and Line tried to clarify her thought: "Born, expelled. Russia conceived us, nourished us, made us grow in her darkness, as in a womb; then she had labor pains, contractions, and threw us out; and now here we are, naked and new, like babies just born. Isn't it the same for you?"
"Narische meidele, vos darst do freden?" Mendel rebutted, feeling on his lips and affectionate smile and a light veil over his eyes. ~ Primo Levi

Sometimes it made him [Degas] furious that he could not find a chink in my armor, and there would be months when we just could not see each other, and then something I painted would bring us together again. ~ Mary Cassatt

In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hourglass - all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors. ~ Annie Besant

You are mad, Malloreigh!" It is an odd thing to have madness call you mad. Makes you think for a moment that you are sane, but also makes you think that it is truly sane. My mind hurts. I stopped thinking. I painted. ~ D.J. LeMarr

Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye, In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky With all their ancient faces like rain- beaten stones, And all their helms of silver hovering. ~ William Butler Yeats

We were in Venice at the time of the revels before Lent. I went into the plaza wearing a mask and hood. I saw a pretty girl, dark skin, dark eyes. She smelled strong of fish and capers and fried artichokes. I kissed her for Beauty's sake. For Lady's sake. Behind the veil of the mask, in the old Jewish Quarter, I kissed her, kissed her, and didn't cry, because I know one day I will die. And I will not rise again. ~ Alice Randall

Humanity's mission is to find a peace that lies beyond the veil - a peace that is not of this world. The peace that is not of this world is not dependent on human circumstances. ~ Marianne Williamson

I also hang the pictures low rather than high, and particularly in the case of the largest ones, often as close to the floor as is feasible, for that is the way they are painted. ~ Mark Rothko

Being a painter, I ought to say why in pictures people's faces are painted green and red. ~ Kazimir Malevich

I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description. ~ Winslow Homer

I look into the future and see my brother's face, impossibly middle-aged. His daughter has rejected all of his values, and stands now on the dais of a major university, the valedictorian preparing to deliver her commencement speech. What will she think when her dad stands in the aisle, releasing a hog call and raising his T-shirt to reveal the jiggling message painted upon his bare stomach? Will she turn away, as my father predicts, or might she remember all the nights she awoke to discover him: this slob, this lump, this silly drooling toy asleep at her feet. ~ David Sedaris

It's hard sometimes, especially with a book like 'Scorch Trials,' to truly adapt to the way the book is because so many of the scenes that take place in the book are really graphed and painted for the imagination. Trying to bring that to life is a really big task. ~ Dexter Darden

I don't write for a particular audience. I work as an artist, and I think the audience of one, which is the self, and I have to satisfy myself as an artist. So I always say that I write for the same people that Picasso painted for. I think he painted for himself. ~ August Wilson

Two sailors hauled on ropes, hoisting the jolly boat up to the ship's side, revealing two apocryphal figures standing in the center of the small craft. At first glance, Sophia only saw clearly the shorter of the two, a gruesome creature with long tangled hair and a painted face, wearing a tight-fitting burlap skirt and a makeshift corset fashioned from fishnet and mollusk shells. The Sea Queen, Sophia reckoned, a smile warming her cheeks as the crew erupted into raucous cheers. A bearded Sea Queen, no less, who bore a striking resemblance to the Aphrodite's own grizzled steward.
Stubb.
Sophia craned her neck to spy Stubb's consort, as the foremast blocked her view of Triton's visage. She caught only a glimpse of a white toga draped over a bronzed, bare shoulder. She took a jostling step to the side, nearly tripping on a coil of rope.
"Foolish mortals! Kneel before your king!"
The assembled sailors knelt on cue, giving Sophia a direct view of the Sea King. And even if the blue paint smeared across his forehead or the strands of seaweed dangling from his belt might have disguised him, there was no mistaking that persuasive baritone.
Mr. Grayson.
There he stood, tall and proud, some twenty feet away from her. Bare-chested, save for a swath of white linen draped from hip to shoulder. Wet locks of hair slicked back from his tanned face, sunlight embossing every contour of his sculpted arms and chest. A pagan god come swaggering down to earth.
He ~ Tessa Dare

God in Christ above me, God in the Spirit within me. [. . .]

'And even as it taught you, ye abide in Him.' Here we have again the Holy Trinity: the Holy One, from whom the holy anointing comes; the Holy Spirit, who is Himself the anointing; and Christ, the Holy One of God, in whom the anointing teaches us to abide. [. . .]

The teaching of the Holy Spirit is in the heart first; man's teaching in the mind. Let all our thinking ever lead us to cease from thought, and to open the heart and will to the Spirit to teach there in His own Divine way, deeper than thought and feeling. Unseen, within the veil, the Holy Spirit abideth. Be silent and still, believe and expect, and cling to Jesus. ~ Andrew Murray

The world seemed leached of color. The river was the color of steel, the sky gray as a dove, the horizon a thick black painted line in the distance. ~ Cassandra Clare

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else. ~ L. Frank Baum

Wow!" My whole body exploded with joy and excitement to see this magnificent sight. Overwhelmed by their presence, my stomach fluttered right along with them. Butterflies of every color, looking as if they were painted with patches of bold bright reds, oranges, blues, purples, and yellows, all intertwined, overlapping each other. As I continued to follow their path, I squinted at the brilliant sun in the cloudless sky. It blinded me for a split second, and then I saw that the butterflies were returning, circling around Michael and me - all of them dancing in the sky. Each knew its location and position with such precision, never colliding while reaching higher and higher to form a tunnel. Countless butterflies, circling around us, gave me chills as I could feel the air gently flowing from their wings. It was incredible to experience such beauty of color and grace so close within reach. ~ C. Gockel

The mountains were breathtakingly beautiful. It was so serene and tranquil. The rising sun with other balloons around it painted the sky with a silhouette that was major eye candy. ~ Jenna Roads

What if I can't forget you?
I'll burn your name into my throat,
I'll be the fire that'll catch you.
What's so good about picking up the pieces?
What if I don't even want to? ~ Caraphernelia By Pierce The Veil

The bus had a name too. Elaborately painted letters across the back declared it to be "Old but Sexy." It occurred to me that as I slipped inexorably into middle age, such a title might be the best I myself could hope for. ~ Lyn Hamilton

I do not know whether it is an act of faithfulness to her or a betrayal of the dignity she never lost, to say that she had bitten her tongue, to say that there was blood flowing across her mouth and lips which my brother kept wiping away. I do not know whether I have the right to say, though I will do so, that her body was shaken with epileptic tremors and that she took enormous, terrifying breaths that went on and on until you could not believe she had the strength for them. I do not know whether, as we thought at the time, she could feel our hands on her forehead and cheek, or whether she had waited until we were both there to die.

I did not say 'I am here'. I did not say anything. Her mouth was open wide, as in those portraits by Francis Bacon of caged prisoners in their final extremity. I watched and listened to those terrifying, rattling, hoarse breaths, wondering at the strength remaining in her aged body and at the violence it still had to endure. I looked over at my brother as if he might know, as if he might understand whether she had the strength to continue. He was stroking her forehead, whispering soundlessly to her, attempting even at this moment to reach behind the veil and find her.

If you believe that she knew we were there, if you believe--I cannot be sure--that she understood what her sons needed at that instant, her eyes which had been shut and which, by being closed, made her seem completely out of our reach, suddenly opened. Blue-gre ~ Michael Ignatieff

Today our unsophisticated cameras record in their own way our hastily assembled and painted world. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

You hear people say that there's too much CG in movies today, but CG is what allows me to take a green-painted wall in a studio and make it disappear, and then put 100 miles of landscape in. CG, in the right hands, can be a marvelous tool. ~ David Twohy

Despite my incessant desperation, I simply cannot paint the perfect picture within which I would wish to live out my life. And because I cannot, God picked up the brush of love, positioned the canvas of history and painted a manger. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Outside the walls of the Crimson Cabaret was a world of rain and darkness. At intervals, whenever someone entered or exited through the front door of the club, one could actually see the steady rain and was allowed a brief glimpse of the darkness. Inside it was all amber light, tobacco smoke, and the sound of the raindrops hitting the windows, which were all painted black. On such nights, as I sat at one of the tables in that drab little place, I was always filled with an infernal merriment, as if I were waiting out the apocalypse and could not care less about it. I also liked to imagine that I was in the cabin of an old ship during a really vicious storm at sea or in the club car of a luxury passenger train that was being rocked on its rails by ferocious winds and hammered by a demonic rain. Sometimes, when I was sitting in the Crimson Cabaret on a rainy night, I thought of myself as occupying a waiting room for the abyss (which of course was exactly what I was doing) and between sips from my glass of wine or cup of coffee I smiled sadly and touched the front pocket of my coat where I kept my imaginary ticket to oblivion. ~ Thomas Ligotti

Faith, if the truth were known, I was begot
After some gluttonous dinner; some stirring dish
Was my first father. When deep healths went round,
And ladies' cheeks were painted red with wine,
Their tongues as short and nimble as their heels,
Uttering words sweet and thick, and when they rose
Were marrily disposed to fall again:
Oh, damnation met
The sin of feasts, drunken adultery!
I feel it swell me; my revenge is just:
I was begot in impudent wine and lust
( ... )
As for my brother, the duke's only son,
Whose birth is more beholding to report
Than mine, and yet perhaps as falsely sown,
I'll loose my days upon him, hate all I. ~ Thomas Middleton

I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don't want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested. ~ Robert Rauschenberg

When the Left agitates over government policies, it's considered righteous anger. When the Right - and much of the center - agitate, it's painted as the rantings of the criminally and violently insane. ~ Monica Crowley