Reciting Quotes

You've transformed from a rabbit into a furious kitten. Well, you scratched me deeply today, my kitten. You drew blood with every word. Are you happy now? Now that you've humiliated me in front of my students by reciting all my secret sins? It was a true bonfire of the vanities, with you lighting the flame. ~ Sylvain Reynard

We worship the form, and seek the formless. The Nameless is sought by reciting names. With closed hands, closed minds, we seek Him. ~ Meeta Ahluwalia

Our sages of blessed memory have said that we must not enjoy any pleasure in this world without reciting a blessing. ~ Shmuel Yosef Agnon

Alba, it's okay,' Clare says softly. She looks at me. 'Say the poem about lovers on the carpet.'
I blank, and then I remember. I feel self-conscious reciting Rilke in front of all these people, and so I begin: 'Engel!: Es wäre ein Platz, den wir nicht wissen-'
'Say it in English,' Clare interrupts.
'Sorry. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

I also don't believe that whatever come after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions-that sounds too much like an Erudite afterlife to me, all accuracy and no feeling. ~ Veronica Roth

We live in a world of self-deprecation, and while it's healthy to make fun of ourselves from time to time, it bothers me when I see women of all ages belittling their accomplishments because they don't want to appear boastful or overconfident. You don't see a lot of guys out there underplaying their strengths or making light of what they're good at, so why should women? While I get that there's a fine line between owning your accomplishments and reciting every line of your résumé, there is absolutely no shame in being proud of what you've managed to achieve! Own it! ~ Lea Michele

Subhuti, someone might fill innumerable worlds with the seven treasures and give all away in gifts of alms, but if any good man or any good woman awakens the thought of Enlightenment and takes even only four lines from this Discourse, reciting, using, receiving, retaining and spreading them abroad and explaining them for the benefit of others, it will be far more meritorious. Now in what manner may he explain them to others? By detachment from appearances-abiding in Real Truth. -So I tell you-
Thus shall you think of all this fleeting world:
A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream;
A flash of lightening in a summer cloud,
A flickering lamp, a phantom, and a dream.
When Buddha finished this Discourse the venerable Subhuti, together with the bhikshus, bhikshunis, lay-brothers and sisters, and the whole realms of Gods, Men and Titans, were filled with joy by His teaching, and, taking it sincerely to heart they went their ways. ~ Gautama Buddha

The ghosts of the people we could have been and weren't ... Isn't that what it is? The people we dreamed of being, until we were forced to wake from the dream." She was talking in a monotone, as if reciting from memory a lesson learned long ago. "The ghosts of those whom once we loved but never had, of those who loved us and whose hopes we destroyed out of malice, stupidity, or ignorance. ~ Arturo Perez Reverte

It turned out plant collecting was a solitary occupation. In the past Robert had enjoyed being alone, or so he thought. Actually he had rarely been alone for long: working in hotels, in stables, on ranches and farms, and as a miner, he had always been around others. Now, out in the woods or up in the hills or out on the flat central plain, he could go for days without speaking to anyone. His throat seemed to close up and he had to keep clearing it, singing songs aloud or reciting the Latin names of plants, just to check that he still had a voice. 'Araucaria imbricata. Sequoia sempervirens. Pinus lambertiana. Abies magnifica'. He was surprised at how much he missed people.. ~ Tracy Chevalier

She killed Lorena in a fight? Eric's grin grew even broader. He was as proud as if he'd heard his firstborn reciting Shakespeare. ~ Charlaine Harris

< Dear Luke,
I'm sorry for coming by unannounced. You haven't been returning my texts, and a stronger man would have gotten the hint - >
Movement caught my eye. I looked at him. He was signing. Slowly. Imperfectly. Little inflections were wrong, and he got some of the ideas out of order, but he was, as best he could, reciting the letter to me.
- gotten the hint, but I'm not strong. I'm not proud. I'm in love with you, and I'm sorry for hurting you. Please let me say my piece, and then I'll leave if you want. But I'd never be able to look in a mirror if the last time we spoke was that night on the phone.
You are nothing but love and warmth and strength, and the world was a better place when you were a nurse in it. I don't know how serious things are, but if you can get back into nursing, that's what I want for you. If there's a way I can help - any way at all, big or small - please tell me. You deserve your dreams, and I was a complete ass for the things I said during our fight.
I'll never do that again. Never. If you let me in your life, I promise to listen. To always listen. To listen carefully and compassionately. I'll give you advice when you want it or help if you need it, but I will always listen.
And if you want me, a reclaimed ass who promises to do better, in your life, it would make me happy. I don't know what we'd look like in the real world, but I can't think of another person I'd rather figure things out with.
We've ~ Peter Styles

I don't read much, as I could care less about echoing or reciting. ~ Jo M. Sekimonyo

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan. ~ Erica Jong

Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally "bright", did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. ~ Ray Bradbury

Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realise that reciting red indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking muppet. ~ Banksy

We are already bound together in the way of my people. Will you speak vows in the way of yours?"
Her blue eyes widened with shock, eyes a man could drown in. Eyes a man could spend eternity staring into. A small, very male smile tugged at his mouth. He had succeeded in shocking her.
"Mikhail, are you asking me to marry you?"
"I am not really certain I know how it is done. Should I be on my knee?" He was grinning openly at her.
"You're proposing to me with a carload of assassins approaching?"
"Potential assassins." He gave her a small, heart-wrenching smile. "Say yes. You know you cannot possibly resist me. Say yes."
"After you made me drink that disgusting apple juice? You set your wolves on me, Mikhail. I know there's a long list of sins I should be reciting." Her eyes were sparkling with mischief.
He pulled her into his arms, against the heavy muscles of his chest, fitting her neatly into the cradle of his hips. "I can see this is going to take some heavy persuasion. ~ Christine Feehan

We have faith that the practices of silence, praying with scripture, or reciting the prayers passed on to us will bear fruit over time. If we continue to fight through our fears and anxieties in order to sit in silence, we trust that God can meet us, even if it leads to results we aren't expecting or doesn't even result in quantifiable progress. ~ Ed Cyzewski

When I walk in the forest just before the meal, while reciting the scriptural phrase that I "meditate" for that day, spiritual joy comes over me as if by appointment. ~ Adalbert De Vogue

She rose from her bed full of new resolutions. 'We must get out and about more,' she told her startled mother. 'We must try different things. We are getting groovy.' She drew up a list of events and activities: concerts, day trips, public meetings. She went in a fit through her address book, writing letters to old friends. She borrowed novels from the library by authors who had never interested her before. She began to teach herself Esperanto, reciting phrases as she polished and swept. ~ Sarah Waters

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists. ~ Roberto Bolano

The Pistons were partly distracted by this short but excitingly fiery chase, and partly distracted by a new threat in the form of a small but enraged Dimity. Dimity, bless her heart, was reciting one of Mademoiselle Geraldine's longest lectures on proper behavior at a dance, finger shaking in autocratic fury, Lord Dingleproops notwithstanding. ~ Gail Carriger

One time I listened to Farmer give a talk on HIV to a class at the Harvard School of Public Health, and in the midst of reciting data, he mentioned the Haitian phrase "looking for life, destroying life," Then he explained, "It's an expression Haitians use if a poor woman selling mangoes falls off a truck and dies." I felt as if for that moment I could see a little way into his mind, It seemed like a place of hyperconnectivity, At moments like that, I thought that what he wanted was to erase both time and geography, connecting all parts of his life and tying them instrumentally to a world in which he saw intimate, inescapable connections between the gleaming corporate offices of Paris and New York and a legless man lying on the mud floor of a hut in the remotest part of remote Haiti. Of all the world's errors, he seemed to feel, the most fundamental was the "erasing" of people, the "hiding away" of suffering. "My big struggle is how people can not care, erase, not remember. ~ Tracy Kidder

In the shock of his loss, Tony Hastings knew the importance of remaining civilized, with a bomb behind his eyeballs that would blow up if he was not careful. The way was to defuse it with delicate ritual operations. The importance of remembering who we was, Tony Hastings, professor, resident of, son of, father of. Reciting his name as he walked along the road in the dark. Organizing words, constituting thought. Shaving carefully around his mustache. Preparing for what would be given him to feel. ~ Austin Wright

Though small, the shrine has a long history. In 1333 - the Third Year of the Genko era - Lord Takeshigé Kikuchi ascended to it in order to implore the divine favor before going into battle. Victory was his, and in gratitude he had the shrine rebuilt. According to tradition, he himself carved the Worship Image, reciting a triple prayer after each stroke. This represented the god as standing on the mountain peak with one hand raised, gazing at the armed host he had blessed. It was an image of victory.
Now, however, the morning after the rising, early on the auspicious Ninth Day of the Ninth Month, the time of the Chrysanthemum Festival, there were gathered around the shrine forty-six hunted survivors of a defeated force. Some standing, some sitting, they stared blankly about them, though the penetrating autumn chill made their wounds sting. The clear light of the rising sun cast a striped pattern as it shone down through the branches of the few old cedars that surrounded the shrine. Birds were singing. The air was fresh and clear. As for signs of last night's sanguinary combat, these were visible in the soiled and bloodstained garments, the haggard visages, and the eyes that burned like live embers.
Among the forty-six were Unshiro Ishihara, Kageki Abé, Kisou Onimaru, Juro Furuta, Tsunetaro Kobayashi, the brothers Gitaro and Gigoro Tashiro, Tateki Ura, Mitsuo Noguchi, Mikao Kashima, and Kango Hayami. Every man was silent, sunk deep in thought, looking off at the sea, ~ Yukio Mishima

...he lifted the fat and frightened hawk onto his fist reciting it passages from Hamlet, Macbeth, Richard II, Othello-- 'but tragedy had to be kept out of the voice'-- and all the sonnets he could remember, whistling hymns to it, playing it Gilbert and Sullivan and Italian opera, and deciding, on reflection, that hawks liked Shakespeare best. ~ Helen Macdonald

Monastic people have long known--and I've experienced it in a small way myself--that the communal reciting, chanting, and singing of the psalms brings a unique sense of wholeness and order to their day, and even establishes the rhythm of their lives. ~ Kathleen Norris

The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leathery covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hands like a fish. ~ Francesca Lia Block

I know this from the hollow sound that persists after the men's prayer, and from their faces pressed against the window of supplication. And from their coloring, the complexion of people who respond to fear of the absurd with zeal. As for me, I don't like anything that rises to heaven, I only like things affected by gravity. I'll go so far as to say I abhor religions. All of them! Because they falsify the weight of the world. Sometimes I feel like busting through the wall that separates me from my neighbor, grabbing him by the throat, and yelling at him to quit reciting his sniveling prayers, accept the world, open his eyes to his own strength, his own dignity, and stop running after a father who has absconded to heaven and is never coming back. Have a look at that group passing by, over there. Notice the little girl with the veil on her head, even though she's not old enough to know what a body is, or what desire is. What can you do with such people? Eh? ~ Kamel Daoud

Throughout its history, the members of Shearith Israel have observed Thanksgiving by reciting in synagogue the same psalms of praise and gratitude sung by Jews all over the world on festive days like Hanukkah. ~ Meir Soloveichik

The real revolution is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff. With raising a reading level from second grade to third. With simplifying history and writing it down (or reciting it) for the old folks. With helping illiterates fill out a food-stamps form - for they must eat, revolution or not. ~ Alice Walker

Certain it is, that as nothing can better do it; so there is nothing greater, for which God made our tongues, next to reciting His praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. ~ Jeremy Taylor

After it's all over, the early childhood, a chain of birthdays woven with candlelight, piles of presents, voices of relatives singing and praising your promise and future, after the years of schooling, fitting yourself into different size desks, memorizing, reciting, reporting, and performing for jury after jury of teachers, counselors, and administrators, you still feel inadequate, alone, vulnerable, and naked in a world that can be unforgiving and terribly demanding. ~ V.C. Andrews

In my midteens I went through a brief stage of religious fanaticism, but it was very much about just saying prayers and stuff like that, reciting rosaries and spending a lot of time on that kind of Catholic ritual. ~ Robert Crumb

One day, while he was idly reciting his verses to a captive audience, a scrap of paper, borne by the wind, landed on his lap. On it were written two words: "Layla" and "Majnun." As the crowd watched, Majnun tore the paper in half. The half on which was written "Layla" he crumpled into a ball and threw over his shoulder; the half with his own name he kept for himself.
"What does this mean?" someone asked.
"Do you not realize that one name is better than two?" Majnun replied. "If only you knew the reality of love, you would see that when you scratch a lover, you find his beloved."
"But why throw away Layla's name and not your own?" asked another.
Majnun glowered at the man. "The name is a shell and nothing more. It is what the shell hides that counts. I am the shell and Layla is the pearl; I am the veil and she is the face beneath it."
The crowd, though they knew not the meaning of his words, were amazed by the sweetness of his tongue. ~ Reza Aslan

Every morning I have been looking at CNN to see if there is any reason for hope . I see a few large and impressive peace protests here and there around the world, but mostly I see empty robot faces monotonously reciting the magic incantations, "We must support the President" and "We must support our troops", both of which mean the killing must continue. ~ Robert Anton Wilson

You've got a lifetime to mull over the Buddhist understanding of interconnectedness." He spoke every sentence as if he'd written it down, memorized it, and was now reciting it. "But while you were looking out the window, you missed the chance to explore the equally interesting Buddhist belief in being present for every facet of your daily life, of being truly present. Be present in this class. And then, when it's over, be present out there," he said, nodding toward the lake and beyond.'
~Dr. Hyde, pg 50 ~ John Green

I'm curious how someone ... finds God, or solace, or peace or whatever it is he finds out here alone ... while he's reciting words. Is it just a matter of believing what you say? ~ Dana Reinhardt

I am back in my beloved city. The scene of desolation fills my eyes with tears. At every step my distress and agitation increases. I cannot recognize houses or landmarks I once knew well. Of the former inhabitants, there is no trace. Everywhere there is a terrible emptiness. All at once I find myself in the quarter where I once resided. I recall the life I used to live: meeting friends in the evening, reciting poetry, making love, spending sleepless nights pining for beautiful women and writing verses on their long tresses which held me captive. That was life! What is there left of it? Nothing. ~ Khushwant Singh

Learn the words of wisdom uttered by the wise and apply them in your own life. Live them - but do not a make a show of reciting them, for he who repeats what he does not understand is no better than an ass loaded with books. ~ Kahlil Gibran

To find Buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a Buddha. If you don't see your nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless. Invoking buddhas results in good karma, reciting sutras results in a good memory, keeping precepts results in good rebirth, and making offerings results in future blessings-but no Buddha. ~ Bodhidharma

The unlettered man who prayed to his maker would be heard; the pedant reciting a faultless invocation would be ignored. ~ Israel Shenker

frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair - it just won't behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward ~ E.L. James

Because, ten-year-olds of the world, you shouldn't believe what your teachers tell you about the beauty and specialness and uniqueness of you. Or, believe it, little snowflake, but know it won't make a bit of difference until after puberty. It's Newton's lost law: anything that makes you unique later will get your chocolate milk stolen and your eye blackened as a kid. Won't it, Sebastian? Oh, yes, it will, my little Mandarin Chinese-learning, Poe-reciting, high-top-wearing friend. God bless you, wherever you are. ~ Sloane Crosley

One of my first favorite books was 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would just go up to people and say, 'I can sing 'The 12 Days of Christmas,' and I would make them sit through me reciting it, and I'd go all the way, each time. I've always hooked into lyrics. ~ Lin-Manuel Miranda

If the oarsmen of a fast-moving ship suddenly cease to row, the suspension of the driving force of the oars doesn't prevent the vessel from continuing to move on its course. And with a speech it is much the same. After he has finished reciting the document, the speaker will still be able to maintain the same tone without a break, borrowing its momentum and impulse from the passage he has just read out. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

It's not that I literally think I'm a fearie. It's just that I feel so different from most people. And this idea of a race living underground in caverns, spending all their days dancing and playing the fiddle and eating flowers and reciting poetry and sharing their dreams, that to me sounds much more real than the way people live in this world, hating and fighting and wanting and hurting. ~ Francesca Lia Block

Reciting part of a sutra with the desire to benefit others is like reciting a recipe in the hope it will prevent people from starving. ~ Bassui Tokusho

In short, not only was it surprising to be greeted in person with such enthusiastic words, but it was doubly surprising when the person reciting these words displayed the same kind of disengagement as, say, the checkout clerk who utters the words 'Have a nice day' while her expression indicates that it's really a matter of total indifference to her whether you drop dead in the parking lot outside ten seconds from now. ~ David Foster Wallace

If we want to

We will become a people, if we want to, when we learn that we are not angels, and that evil is not the prerogative of others
We will become a people when we stop reciting a prayer of thanksgiving to the sacred nation every time a poor man finds something to eat for his dinner
We will become a people when we can sniff out the sultan's gatekeeper and the sultan without a trial
We will become a people when a poet writes an erotic description of a dancer's belly
We will become a people when we forget what the tribe tells us, when the individual recognizes the importance of small details
We will become a people when a writer can look up at the stars without saying: 'Our country is loftier and more beautiful!'
We will become a people when the morality police protect a prostitute from being beaten up in the streets
We will become a people when the Palestinian only remembers his flag on the football pitch, at camel races, and on the day of the Nakba
We will become a people, if we want to, when the singer is allowed to chant a verse of Surat al-Rahman at a mixed wedding reception
We will become a people when we respect the right, and the wrong. ~ Mahmoud Darwish

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form. ~ Daniel Webster

The park sustained them, the green harbor they preserved as the town extended itself outward, block by block and house by house. Cora thought of her garden back on Randall, the plot she cherished. Now she saw it for the joke it was - a tiny square of dirt that had convinced her she owned something. It was hers like the cotton she seeded, weeded, and picked was hers. Her plot was a shadow of something that lived elsewhere, out of sight. The way poor Michael reciting the Declaration of Independence was an echo of something that existed elsewhere. Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn't sure the document described anything real at all. America was a ghost in the darkness, like her. ~ Colson Whitehead

Bugle"

Black beetles know where the most recent bones
bake in the heat, tendons and meat long gone,
bleached white, and if you give them cheap wine --
drizzle a few red drops on a flat stone--
they will lead you to a barren gulch
surrounded by sages and nettles, dirt
burnt to powdery sand and sharp thorns. Hunch
above the skeleton, bow your head, start reciting verses you learned as a child, there, under the sun with rocks and brush, bare
locust tree a telling reliquary
of dust to dust, all so brutally hot.
You must pull ribs from that rotting body,
words that matter: love me, love me not. ~ Tod Marshall

Three days a week she helped at the Manor Nursing Home, where people proved their keenness by reciting received analyses of current events. All the Manor residents watched television day and night, informed to the eyeballs like everyone else and rushed for time, toward what end no one asked. Their cupidity and self-love were no worse than anyone else's, but their many experiences' having taught them so little irked Lou. One hated tourists, another southerners; another despised immigrants. Even dying, they still held themselves in highest regard. Lou would have to watch herself. For this way of thinking began to look like human nature
as if each person of two or three billion would spend his last vital drop to sustain his self-importance. ~ Annie Dillard

He looked at me the way you'd look at a poodle that suddenly started reciting Hamlet. ~ Serra Elinsen

Energy-fire experiences take us into ourselves only that we might reach outside of ourselves. Metanoia is a de-centering experience of connected-ness and community. It is not an exercise in reciting what Jesus has done for me lately. Energy-fire ecstasy, more a buzz than a binge, takes us out of ourselves, literally. That is the meaning of the word 'ecstatic.' ~ Leonard Sweet

Are all Dumnonian warriors so ill-mannered?" she asked the table at large in an acid voice.
"You want warriors to be courtiers?" Celwin retorted brusquely. "You'd send your precious poets to kill the Franks? And I don't mean by reciting their verses at them, though come to think of it that might be quite effective." He leered at the Queen and the three poets shuddered. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Now you are walking in Paris all alone in the crowd
As herds of bellowing buses drive by
Love's anguish tightens your throat
As if you were never to be loved again
If you lived in the old days you would enter a monastery
You are ashamed when you discover yourself reciting a prayer
You make fun of yourself and like the fire of Hell your laughter crackles
The sparks of your laugh gild the depths of your life
It's a painting hanging in a dark museum
And sometimes you go and look at it close up ~ Guillaume Apollinaire

Christian swiped the keys from my hand. "Maybe the fates want us to take the car home. Why do I have a feeling I'm going to regret this?
I smirked. "Is that what Viktor said before he hired you?"
"That's what your husband is going to say before reciting his vows."
"That's what every woman says before they have sex with you."
Christian swaggered toward the door, swinging the keys around his finger. "That's what I'm going to say before you serve our dinner tonight. ~ Dannika Dark

Creeds/Confessions: What if we wrote new creeds that put love in the spotlight? Imagine if, instead of reciting a statement of beliefs, we spoke confessions of love, beginning with "We love" rather than "We believe. ~ Brian McLaren

There is much more to being a patriot and a citizen than reciting the pledge or raising a flag. ~ Jesse Ventura

My nerves were wrapped so tight I could explode at any second. Some jaguar reciting poetry was not helping. Just tell me which way to go, Shakespeare. ~ Lisa Kessler

Most of his face had been hidden by long, greasy bangs, and he mumbled in a low voice that made him difficult to understand. From what little Kyosuke had been able to make out, Usami had killed one person, but he mostly spent his time at the podium reciting strange names that Kyousuke didn't recognize like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ed Gein... Maybe they're actors? ~ Mizuki Mizushiro

I was always the hero with no vices, reciting practically the same lines to the leading lady. The current crop of movie actors are less handicapped than the old ones. They are more human. The leading men of silent films were Adonises and Apollos. Today the hero can even take a poke at the leading lady. In my time a hero who hit the girl just once would have been out. ~ Ramon Novarro

I know in a way I never knew before that there is nowhere for me to go, nothing for me to do, and no one for me to know. The voice in my head keeps reciting these old principles of mine. The voice is his voice, and the voice is also my voice. And there are other voices, voices I have never heard before, voices that seem to be either dead or dying in a great moonlit darkness. More than ever, some sort of new arrangement seems in order, some dramatic and unknown arrangement
anything to find release from this heartbreaking sadness I suffer every minute of the day (and night), this killing sadness that feels as if it will never leave me no matter where I go or what I do or whom I may ever know. ~ Thomas Ligotti

In a tavern in Fulkeston, Tristran gained great renown by reciting from memory Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," the Twenty-Third Psalm, the "Quality of Mercy" speech from The Merchant of Venice, and a poem about a boy who stood on the burning deck where all but he had fled, each of which he had been obliged to commit to memory in his school days. He ~ Neil Gaiman

That's the spirit, kid," said the voice of the grown man. "Come on, Snow Scouts, let's all say the Snow Scout Alphabet Pledge together."
Instantly the cave echoed with the sound of many voices speaking in perfect unison, a phrase here which means "reciting a list of very odd words at the very same time." "Snow Scouts," recited the Snow Scouts, "are accommodating, basic, calm, darling, emblematic, frisky, grinning, human, innocent, jumping, kept, limited, meek, nap-loving, official, pretty, quarantines, recent, scheduled, tidy, understandable, victorious, wholesome, xylophone, young, and zippered - every morning, every afternoon, every night, and all day long! ~ Lemony Snicket

Joe Paterno would end every game by gathering the players and reciting the Lord's Prayer. He loved it - not so much for religious reasons but for the words. Look. The Lord's Prayer uses the words "us" and "we" and "our." It doesn't use the word "I" or "me" or "mine." Paterno understood. It's a team prayer. ~ Joe Posnanski

What
Would
Happen if God leaned down

And gave you a full wet
Kiss?

Hafiz
Doesn't mind answering astronomical questions
Like that:

You would surely start
Reciting all day, inebriated,

Rogue-poems
Like
This. ~ Daniel Ladinsky

I was silently reciting to myself the 23rd Psalm, 'The Lord is my shepherd; I shal not want ... ' [ ... ] The man with the tinted spectacles and the man from the police department were looking at me thoughtfully. They mistook my silence as a sign of weakening. I knew I had to show courage. In fact, I felt much better for having recited the words of the psalm. I had not been so free of fear the whole evening as I was in that moment standing beside the black jeep, a symbol of repression. I lifted my head and said in a loud and firm voice, 'I'm not guilty! I have nothing to confess. ~ Nien Cheng

When I awake dramatically I start off my day by reciting aloud a fan letter. ~ Austin Mahone

Women don't use knives,' Griffoni answered, reciting it as though she were Euclid listing another axiom. Although he agreed with her, Brunetti was curious about the basis for her belief. 'You offering proof of that?' 'Kitchens,' she said laconically. 'Kitchens?' 'The knives are kept in the kitchen, and their husbands pass through there every day, countless times, yet very few of them get stabbed. That's because women don't use knives, and they don't stab people. ~ Donna Leon

God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good. ~ W. H. Auden

Look you," Pandora told him in a businesslike tone, "marriage is not on the table."
Look you? Look you? Gabriel was simultaneously amused and outraged. Was she really speaking to him as if he were an errand boy?
"I've never wanted to marry," Pandora continued. "Anyone who knows me will tell you that. When I was little, I never liked the stories about princesses waiting to be rescued. I never wished on falling stars, or pulled the petals off daisies while reciting 'he loves me, he loves me not.' At my brother's wedding, they handed out slivers of wedding cake to all the unmarried girls and said if we put it under our pillows, we would dream of our future husbands. I ate my cake instead. Every crumb. I've made plans for my life that don't involve becoming anyone's wife."
"What plans?" Gabriel asked. How could a girl of her position, with her looks, make plans that didn't include the possibility of marriage?
"That's none of your business," she told him smartly.
"Understood," Gabriel assured her. "There's just one thing I'd like to ask: What the bloody hell were you doing at the ball in the first place, if you don't want to marry?"
"Because I thought it would be only slightly less boring than staying at home."
"Anyone as opposed to marriage as you claim to be has no business taking part in the Season."
"Not every girl who attends a ball wants to be Cinderella."
"If it's grouse season," Gabriel pointed out acidly, "and you're keeping co ~ Lisa Kleypas

Desiree the child bride, and her sister Miranda, had gone grave-robbing for a wedding gown. In the north end of the cemetery, among the palatial mausoleums with their broken windows of stained glass where the ivy crept in, was the resting place of a young woman who'd been murdered at the altar while reciting her marital vows. The decaying tombstone, among the cemetery's most envied, was a limestone bride in despair, shoulders as slumped as a mule's, a bouquet of lilies strewn at her feet. Though her murder, by her groom's jealous mother, had been long in the past, everyone knew that her father had had her buried in her gown of lace and silk. ~ Timothy Schaffert

Reciting from rote seems a terrible way to honor the gods and a precise killing of the power of the words. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

So many questions crowd my brain at once, it's like one of the famous Portland fogs has swept up from the ocean and settled there, making it impossible to think normal, functional thoughts. We're sitting on the floor of the living room, which is squashed up right next to the "dining room", and I'm holding Jenny's workbook on my knees, reciting the problems to her, but my mind is on autopilot and my thoughts are a million miles away. Or rather, they're exactly 3.4 miles away, down at the marshy edge of Back Cove. ~ Lauren Oliver

I was emotional. I wanted to be taken seriously. I was pretty emo. I was reciting Shakespeare monologues when I was 10. I still know the whole 'To be, or not to be ... ' monologue, because I knew it when I was 10. ~ Constance Wu

Today's generation didn't want to watch ancient actors reciting the same tired lines. They wanted to see themselves reflected onscreen –rude, raw, entitled. These kids needed to believe that they themselves were only one daring, controversial act away from being up on that screen themselves. ~ Melissa Jo Peltier

It's good luck!" Winter said suddenly, her eyes bright with mischief.
Scarlet paused. "What's good luck?"
"On Luna," said Winter, folding her hands as if she were reciting from a wedding etiquette guide, "it's considered good luck for the bride to don her dress for at least an hour for each of the three days leading up to the wedding. It symbolizes her commitment to the marriage. And as your groom is Lunar, I think we should follow some of his traditions, don't you?"
"An hour? said Scarlet. "That's really pushing it, don't you think?"
Winter shrugged.
With a drawn-out sigh, Scarlet said, "Fine, I'll go put it on. But I'm not going to stay in it for an hour. I still have chores to do." She slipped out of the bedroom carrying the dress, and a moment later they heard the click of the bathroom door in the hall.
"I've never heard of that tradition before," said Cress.
"That's because I made it up," said Winter. ~ Marissa Meyer

My daughter was sixteen," she went on. Tears ran over the bridge of her nose and onto the block, but her voice remained strong and loud. "Sixteen, when you burned her. Her name was Kaleen, and she had eyes like thunderclouds. I still hear her voice in my dreams."
The king jerked his chin to the executioner, who stepped forward.
"My sister was thirty-six. Her name was Liessa, and she had two boys who were her joy."
The executioner raised his ax.
"My neighbor and his wife were seventy. Their names were Jon and Estrel. They were killed because they dared to try and protect my daughter when your men came for her."
Rena Goldsmith was still reciting her list of the dead when the ax fell. ~ Sarah J. Maas

My wings," the faerie whispered.
"You'll get them back."
The Faerie struggled to open his eyes. "You swear?"
"Yes," I breathed. The faerie managed a slight smile and closed his eyes again. My mouth trembled. I wished for something else to say, something more to offer him than my empty promises. The first false vow I'd ever sworn. But Tamlin began speaking, and I glanced up to see him take the faerie's other hand.
"Cauldron save you," he said, reciting the words of a prayer that was probably older than the moral realm. "Mother hold you. Pass through the gates, and smell that immortal land of milk and honey. Fear no evil. Feel no pain." Tamlin's voice wavered, but he finished. "Go, and enter eternity. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Her hand shot out, gripped his arm. "M.J. and Bailey?"
"Your friends are fine." He felt her grip go limp. "They've had an eventful holiday weekend, all of which could have been avoided if they'd contacted and cooperated with the police. And it's cooperation I'll have from you now, one way or the other."
She tossed her hair back. "Where are they? What did you do,toss them in a cell? My lawyer will have them out and your butt in a sling before you can finish reciting the Miranda." She started toward the phone, saw it wasn't on the Queen Anne table.
"No,they're not in a cell." It goaded him, the way she snapped into gear, ready to buck the rules. "I imagine they're planning your funeral right about now. ~ Nora Roberts

I suppose that now would be the time to ask for forgiveness for all the things I've done, but I'm sure my list would never be complete. I also don't believe that whatever comes after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions ... I don't believe that what comes after depends on anything I do at all. ~ Veronica Roth

We had different lives. We come from different places."
"Surely ye do. And you got different bodies, too. That's what marriage is about, Meggie-gal, making differences intertwine into something whole and new."
Meggie didn't want to argue. "He didn't love me, Pa," she said.
"I'll believe that when I see coons a-taking up farming," the old man answered. He raked his hair with his hands helplessly. "What do ye think love is, Meggie. Do you think it's heart pounding and breath stealing and verse reciting?" he asked. "Yes, ma'am, there is some of that involved, but mostly love is quiet and caring and friendlylike. It's wanting to tell that person something afore you whisper it to another soul. It's not being alone. ~ Pamela Morsi

Women don't want all that. Women just want a partner who is considerate and attentive, who will spoon with them while reciting Keats, and feed them organic yogurt by candlelight on a seaside cliff at sunset. ~ Stephen Colbert

Japan

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It's the one about the one-ton
temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it into the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed. ~ Billy Collins

All our life is like a day of celebration for us; we are convinced, in fact, that God is always everywhere. We work while singing, we sail while reciting hymns, we accomplish all other occupations of life while praying. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

We got quiet. The garden was combing her hair and putting on earrings. The house was full of dancing creatures, not male and female but both, two lovers in one body. The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leather covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hand like a fish. ~ Francesca Lia Block

Personally I do not believe in world reform. No. I do not believe in any kind of world reform. Not because I consider that the world is perfect as it is - certainly not, the world is crooked and grim and full of suffering - but whoever comes along to reform it soon sinks in rivers of blood. Now let's drink a glass of tea and leave aside these obscenities you've brought me today. If only all religions and all revolutions vanished from the face of the earth someday, I tell you - all of them, without exception - there would be far fewer wars in the world. (p. 68)

Only in one window a feeble light glowed, and he pictured a young rabbinical student sitting there reciting psalms. He said to him in his heart: You and I are both searching for something that has no fixed measure. And for that reason we will not find it even if we search till morning and the next night and every night to come until the day of our death, and maybe after that. (p. 184)

"The eyes," Gershom Wald said, "will never open. Almost everyone traverses their lifespan, from birth to death, with eyes closed. Even you and I, my dear Shmuel. With eyes closed. If we open our eyes for just a moment, a great and terrible cry will burst forth from us and we shall scream and never stop. And if we don't cry out day and night, that's a sign that our eyes are closed... " (p. 192)

Anyone willing to change," Shmuel said, "will always be considered a traitor by those who cannot change and are sca ~ Amos Oz

Before reciting his prayers, a man should give to charity. ~ Nachman Of Breslov

A tattered copy of Johnson's large Dictionary was a great delight to me, on account of the specimens of English versifications which I found in the Introduction. I learned them as if they were so many poems. I used to keep this old volume close to my pillow; and I amused myself when I awoke in the morning by reciting its jingling contrasts of iambic and trochaic and dactylic metre, and thinking what a charming occupation it must be to "make up" verses. ~ Lucy Larcom

Straight away, remove yourself from the field of spiritual progression , stay away from contemplation and skillful discourse, do not do research or meditate on the divinities, and stop concentrating and reciting textbooks! Tell me, what is the absolute nature of reality which allows no room for doubt? Listen carefully! Stop holding on to this or that, inhabit your true absolute nature, and peacefully enjoy the essence of what it is to be alive! ~ Abhinavagupta

We have an obligation to feel guilty." The words came out of her lips as if she were reciting an elegy. "Guilty. Because we kill the ones we love. ~ Cristiane Serruya

He causes huge bodies like sun to proclaim His Majesty through His Names the All-Gracious, Great, reciting: ' O Glorious One, O Great One, O Mighty One', while tiny animate creatures like flies and fish proclaim His Mercy, reciting: 'O Gracious One, O Compassionate One, O Generous One ~ Said Nursi

If the hearts are pure, they will never have enough from reciting Allah's words (the Qur'an). ~ Uthman Ibn Affan

I labored in vain reciting the Three Histories
I wasted my time reading the Five Classics
I've grown old checking yellow scrolls
recording the usual everyday names
Continued Hardship was my fortune
Emptiness and Danger govern my life
I can't match riverside trees
every year with a season of green ~ Han-shan

Which natural gift would you most like to possess? The ability to master other languages (which would have hugely enhanced the scope of these answers).
How would you like to die? Fully conscious, and either fighting or reciting (or fooling around).
What do you most dislike about your appearance? The way in which it makes former admirers search for neutral words. ~ Christopher Hitchens

On his last voyage he had seemed on the brink of success and had stood in the prow reciting a grand poem of his own composition to a dim blue promontory in which he recognized one of the capes of Greenland. But it is idle to deny that the general feeling was dampened somehow, when they discovered it was the Cape of Good Hope. In short, the admiral was one of those who keep the world young. ~ G.K. Chesterton

His tales took on the form of an epic poem, and I felt I was hearing some Canadian Homer reciting his Iliad of the High Arctic regions. ~ Jules Verne

Several performers have told me that they do the following brief lovingkindness meditation if they have stage fright: Standing in front of an audience, before they start acting, playing music, or reciting a poem, they send out wishes for the well-being of everyone in the room. 'When I do that,' one singer told me, 'I no longer have a sense of the audience as a group of hostile people out there waiting to judge me. I feel, okay, here we all are together. ~ Sharon Salzberg