Romantic Notions Quotes

I joined the air force. I took to it immediately when I arrived there. I did three years, eight months, and ten days in all, but it took me a year and a half to get disabused of my romantic notions about it. ~ Morgan Freeman

Do all romantic notions and inclinations wither, sag and die as you grew older into the body of a woman who begins to resemble your mother's and then your grandmother's? ~ Abigail George

[On the eve of the French Revolution:]
It is impossible to imagine a more disorderly Assembly. They neither reason, examine, nor discuss. They clap those whom they approve and hiss those whom they disapprove. . . .

Everything almost is elective, and consequently no one obeys. It is an anarchy beyond conception, and they will be obliged to take back their chains for some time to come at least. And so much for that licentious spirit which they dignify with the name of "Love of Liberty." Their Literati, whose heads are turned by romantic notions picked up in books, and who are too lofty to look down upon that kind of man which really exists, and too wise to heed the dictates of common-sense and experience, have turned the heads of their countrymen, and they have run-a-muck at a Don Quixote constitution such as you are blessed with in Pennsylvania. I need say no more. You will judge of the effects of such a constitution upon people supremely depraved. ~ Gouverneur Morris

Moving to the country is a very bold thing to do. You can have vague romantic notions about doing that, but in actuality, it can be a terrifying thing. ~ Nick Cave

She gave a short laugh to throw him off track. "It so happens I am a trifle more sophisticated than that. I hardly go about mooning and cultivating romantic notions of heroic knights sweeping me away to unknown isles aboard stolen ships."
He smiled. "A knight rode a horse, my dear; he was not a sea captain. ~ Linda Lee Chaikin

He fixed her in his gaze and set his jaw, his hands twitching at his sides. "You feel something for me," he said, daring her to try and deny it.
There was no point trying to hide it now. She looked away, numb.
"You can't feel that way about me." He lowered his voice. "It'll only get you hurt."
"Oh, come on! That's so cliche! What's that even supposed to mean?"
"It means my life is one that prevents me from the luxury of silly romantic notions. I can't have you look at me the way you just did. I don't care what Agatha's told you, or what she thinks she knows. This isn't going to happen, okay?"
Silly romantic notions? Farley's embarrassment quickly moved aside to make room for her anger. "Agatha hasn't told me anything. None of you ever do. You're right, I do feel something for you, but don't worry. From your reaction, it's pretty clear that the feeling's not mutual. I'm not some crazy stalker. I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't flatter yourself into thinking that I'm completely head over heels in love with you. So just go!" she screamed, destroyed by his words and the feelings of rejection that coursed through her.
"You don't understand."
"I think I do."
"No! You don't!" The hard look in his eyes morphed into something more pained and desperate. He stepped forward and grabbed her roughly by the arms, the same way he had done in the silo.
"I sat there and watched you for months. Months! I watched you everywhere you went; I watche ~ Frankie Rose

They sat on the outcropping of stone and at bread and fruit. Kasta watched the long grass moving around them. The wind pushed it, attacked it, struck it in one place than another. It rose and fell again. It flowed, like water.
"Is this what the sea is like?" Kasta asked, and they both turned to her, surprised. "Does the sea move the way this grass moves?"
"It's like the sea," she said.
Giddon's eyes on her were incredulous.
"What? Is it such a strange thing to say?"
"It's a strange thing for you to say." He shook his head. He gathered their bread and fruit, then rose. "The Lienid fighter is filling your mind with romantic notions. ~ Kristin Cashore

I had a lot of romantic notions about what it would mean to cross Asia by foot. ~ Rory Stewart

Somebody's been feeding the boy fables. Probably the king's niece. Humph. Nice girl. Too many romantic notions, though. ~ Patrick W. Carr

No." A short, crazed laugh. "Juliette. Please. Please. Don't tell me he's filled your head with romantic notions. Please don't tell me you fell for his false proclamations - ~ Tahereh Mafi

Love is a choice to reach beyond myself not once, but twice. First, I reach out to God to grant me the love that I don't possess, and then I reach out to others to give them that love. And to be a conduit of this sort is to take love beyond the thin romantic notions of men and set it ablaze within me so that it might consume the world around me. ~ Craig D Lounsbrough

Living is a constant process of debunking our romantic notions of how our personal life will unfold. Reality oftentimes fails to meet a person's glamorous expectations. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

You were right the first time, Cathy. It was a stupid, silly story.
Ridiculous! Only insane people would die for the sake of love. I'll
bet you a hundred to one a woman wrote that junky romantic trash!"
Just a minute ago I'd despised that author for bringing about such a
miserable ending, then there I went, rushing to the defense. "T. M.
Ellis could very well have been a man! Though I doubt any woman writer
in the nineteenth century had much chance of being published, unless
she used her initials, or a man's name. And why is it all men think
everything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain silly
drivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of finding
the perfect love? And it seems to me, that Raymond was far more
mushy-minded than Lily! ~ V.C. Andrews

And why is it all men think
everything a woman writes is trivial or trashy-or just plain silly
drivel? Don't men have romantic notions? Don't men dream of finding
the perfect love? ~ V.C. Andrews

I went into motherhood with some pretty romantic notions about what being a mom would be like. I certainly thought that raising kids would be easier than I have found it to be. I also naively imagined that every day with my little ones would be almost effortlessly filled with joy. ~ Debra Sansing Woods

Being is not full transcendence. We learn about ourselves by discovering our imperfections. Experience corrupts any romantic notions that we ever held of achieving perfection. We must live with our limitations and our imperfections. We must cherish the blemishes in people who we love. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

You know, I had a lot of romantic notions about the jungle and this kind of finished that ~ David Grann

It wasn't as if they had a choice. They were soldiers whose choices had ended when they had signed contracts and taken their oaths. Whether they had joined for reasons of patriotism, of romantic notions, to escape a broken home of some sort, or out of economic need, their job now was to follow the orders of other soldiers who were following orders, too. Somewhere, far from Iraq, was where the orders began, but by the time they reached Rustamiyah, the only choice left for a solider was to choose which lucky charm to tuck behind his body armor, or which foot to line up in front of the other, as he went out to follow the order of the day. ~ David Finkel

So what rhyming poems do is they take all these nearby sound curves and remind you that they first existed that way in your brain. Before they meant something specific, they had a shape and a way of being said. And now, yes, gloom and broom are floating fifty miles away from each other in you mind because they refer to different notions, but they're cheek-by-jowl as far as your tongue is concerned. And that's what a poem does. Poems match sounds up the way you matched them when you were a tiny kid, using that detachable front phoneme. ~ Nicholson Baker

...People so often ignored their gut because of social niceties and expectations. Luckily Dax didn't have that issue; he was barely fucking civilized. ~ Katie Reus

through the screen door I find all three of my boys throwing a ball around the yard with Cooper. My heart bursts in my chest. Just explodes. It physically hurts to feel so much all at once. It's like I'm staring at a movie of what my life - our life - could have been. ~ Heather M. Orgeron

I don't have casual sex," she said.

He almost smiled. It was merely an expression in those pale eyes, rather than an actual movement of his mouth. "My dear, I promise you there wouldn't be anything casual about it. ~ Linda Howard

You said she has no travel records leaving Italy?"

"Yes sir."

"So there is a great possibility that she is still here in Italy, isn't?"

"Yes sir."

"What is 'true love' in Italian?"

Secretary Wood showed surprise in his boss' peculiar question that was so not in line with their topic.

"Uh...it's 'vero amore', sir." Secretary Wood answered, looking at Cullan as if he already lost his marbles.

"Okay. Find my wife as soon as possible, Secretary Wood. I want my vero amore back to me." Cullan said with vindiction. ~ Nicholaa Spencer

I encounter forms of this attitude every day. The producers who work at the Ostankino channels might all be liberals in their private lives, holiday in Tuscany, and be completely European in their tastes. When I ask how they marry their professional and personal lives, they look at me as if I were a fool and answer: "Over the last twenty years we've lived through a communism we never believed in, democracy and defaults and mafia state and oligarchy, and we've realized they are illusions, that everything is PR." "Everything is PR" has become the favorite phrase of the new Russia; my Moscow peers are filled with a sense that they are both cynical and enlightened. When I ask them about Soviet-era dissidents, like my parents, who fought against communism, they dismiss them as naïve dreamers and my own Western attachment to such vague notions as "human rights" and "freedom" as a blunder. "Can't you see your own governments are just as bad as ours?" they ask me. I try to protest - but they just smile and pity me. To believe in something and stand by it in this world is derided, the ability to be a shape-shifter celebrated. Vladimir Nabokov once described a species of butterfly that at an early stage in its development had to learn how to change colors to hide from predators. The butterfly's predators had long died off, but still it changed its colors from the sheer pleasure of transformation. Something similar has happened to the Russian elites: during the Soviet period they learne ~ Peter Pomerantsev

Sometimes all you need in love is to make each other happy, to make each other laugh. So long as you can still do that ten years down the line then I think you're gold. Never let the laughter slip from your relationship. ~ Maya Angelou

I might want to help the paranormals, but I'm not willing to give up my soul for it."
"Of course not! No one can ask you to do that. No one should. If you decide to do this - and I man you decide, not anyone else - then we'll figure out how to make it work so you come out safe and sound. Besides, I wouldn't let you sacrifice your own soul. It's mine."
"Uh, I think you mean my heart is yours. That's a little more romantic and less stalker creepy."
"Well, regardless, you know mine is yours, right? Heart, soul, whatever. It's all yours. ~ Kiersten White

Marry me, Rachel.'

'Not yet.'

'Tomorrow, Rachel. Marry me.'

'Maybe tomorrow.'

'There is no common blood between us. Say it,' pleads Zachariah.

'There is no common blood between us,' murmurs Rachel.

'I am not your brother.'

'I know.'

He traces her face with his swollen fingers, across the brow bones and down the zygomatics, and along the jaw from earlobe to chin, sweeping away the brine as he goes.

'I am your Wolff,' he says.

'And I am your Wolff,' she replies.

Let the day begin. ~ Emma Richler

Walking with Murphy
through the bone-freezing chill
toward the bus stop,
I start shivering.
And somehow,
when he slips his arm around me
to warm me up,
it feels right.
Righter than anything ever has. ~ Sonya Sones

I lost one woman I loved. I'm not losing another. ~ Katie Reus

Well, we all start thinking we're going to be Romantic rock stars, but then reality hits and you realize no one reads you but other poets. ~ George Murray

Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves. ~ Philip Yancey

Ronan tightened his grip before leaning over and whispering, "Do you have any idea how much I want you? ~ Sara Humphreys

Hers were gloriously improbable tales, stuffed with happy coincidences, eternal devotion, and the unwavering recognition of inner beauty. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

He lowered his head, his mouth on her neck. "You're all I think about. I can't breathe without you in my head, my body, everywhere. Even when I close my eyes, you're there ... " Sera arched her neck and moaned, feeling as if every inch of her skin was begging to be touched by those lips.
Unable to stand it any longer, she found his mouth and pushed herself against him, wanting to devour him and, in turn, be devoured by him. She was falling, falling, falling ... ~ Ava Zavora

Be truly romantic even when you are alone. ~ Debasish Mridha

The lie [of compulsory female heterosexuality] is many-layered. In Western tradition, one layer - the romantic - asserts that women are inevitably, even if rashly and tragically, drawn to men; that even when that attraction is suicidal (e. g, Tristan and Isolde, Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening') it is still an organic imperative. In the tradition of the social sciences it asserts that primary love between the sexes is 'normal,' that women need men as social and economic protectors, for adult sexuality, and for psychological completion; that the heterosexually constituted family is the basic social unit; that women who do not attach their primary intensity to men must be, in functional terms, condemned to an even more devastating outsiderhood than their outsiderhood as women. ~ Adrienne Rich

Uh, I wondered if you were a boxers or briefs kind of guy."
"You want to find out right now?" he asked playfully. ~ Katie Reus

He mounted the stairs. You're a romantic, Daisy. It's not that I think I'm so irresistible - God knows, I don't - but over the years it's been my observation that the minute any man puts a red flag in front of a woman, she changes it in her mind to a green one. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

They wanted so desperately to love each other more, to remove their clothes and submit their naked bodies to each other, but it was almost as if they were cursed since the first day that they met, and it was pure torture knowing that they could only get so close, but was unable to go the height that the both of them wanted so intimately to climb. ~ Keira D. Skye

Never close your lips to those whom you have already opened your heart. ~ Charles Dickens

Faith is trusting, trusting wholly upon the person, work, merit, and power of the Son of God. Some think this trusting is a romantic business, but indeed it is the simplest thing that can possibly be. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I wanted to have a good relationship. One that's romantic and dramatic, like in the movies. But I finally became a woman at 17 and learned that men aren't really that simple. ~ Ai Yazawa

People are paying a premium to see movies in 3-D, and that's a very big deal. It's never been done before that someone says you have to pay more to see 'Spider-Man' than a romantic comedy. ~ Michael Lynton

Her emotions boiled up like one of the Yellowstone geysers just down the road. First shock and right on its heels came fury. When Hud had left town five years ago, she'd convinced herself she'd never have to lay eyes on that sorry son of a bitch again. And here he was. Damn, just when she thought things couldn't get any worse. ~ B. J. Daniels

As a romantic ideal, turbulent, impoverished India could still weave its spell, and the key to it all - the colours, the moods, the scents, the subtle, mysterious light, the poetry, the heightened expectations, the kind of beauty that made your heart miss a beat - well, that remained the monsoon. ~ Alexander Frater

'There's a seagull eating our food,' he told me, and it was the most romantic thing I'd ever heard. ~ T.J. Klune

No Absolutes

The sound of the human voice like the bell ring of metal and crisp air under grey skies -

romantic yet ominous -

Don't worry about contradictions. No one is innocent.

No one is guilty.

We are all misunderstood even by ourselves.

Yet when we know love

we know everything. ~ Belinda Subraman

I look upon every good man, as a good book, lent by its owner for another to read, and transcribe the excellent notions and golden passages that are in it for his own benefit, that they may return with him when the owner shall call for the book again: but in case this excellent book shall be thrown into a corner and no use made of it, it justly provokes the owner to take it away in displeasure.
Funeral of John Upton, Esq ~ John Flavel

My only regret," he gently tugged me back toward him, "would be leaving this world before naming you as my wife. If I die tomorrow, at least I'll have that to my credit." Wrapping his arms around my waist, he vowed, "You don't have to be queen ... but you will not fall into obscurity on a foreign world. You will bear the Omuran name, and I have to believe that will protect you." He brought his forehead to rest against mine, adding sorrowfully, "I have to believe that our family line wasn't meant to end with this. ~ M.A. George

Only take someone's hand in a certain way, even look into their eyes in a certain way, and the world is changed forever. ~ Iris Murdoch

One of the keystones of romantic love - and also of the ecstatic religion practiced by mystics - is the powerful desire to become one with the beloved. ~ Diane Ackerman

PRETEND YOU ARE DRIVING a car in the middle of a thunderstorm and you happen upon three people on the side of the road. One of them is a frail old woman, who looks on the verge of collapse. Another is a friend who once saved your life. The other is the romantic interest of your dreams, and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet him or her. You have only one other seat in the car. Who do you pick up? There's a good reason to choose any of the three. The old woman needs help. The friend deserves your payback. And clearly, a happy future with the man or woman of your dreams will have an enormous long-term impact on your life. So, who should you pick? The old woman, of course. Then, give the car keys to your friend, and stay behind with the romantic interest to wait for the bus! ~ Shane Snow

The term railway was to Victorian England what atomic or aerodynamic were to be after World War II, and network and virtual are today. When it came to investments, the romantic appeal of being a party to this technological revolution often dominated profit considerations. ~ Richard Bookstaber

I was busy falling in love at first sight. So I had to stare. That's what you do when you're falling in love at first sight. You go into soft focus, and romantic music starts playing in the background. ~ Sylvia Brownrigg

He sat beside her. "What sort of things did you dream of?"
"Oh, what most young girls do, I imagine. Fey tales. True love." She gave a small, self-conscious laugh. "You. ~ C.L. Wilson

Nothing looked the same, and everything looked the same. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Paris does something to a person. It unleashes the pent-up romantic. Even if you're not the touchy-feely type, you find yourself begging to hold hands and grope the nearest person as you walk over a bridge just so you can say later that you did it and wasn't that marvelous. What was his name? Does it matter? ~ Janice Macleod