Seduction At Its Finest Quotes

Her eyebrows lifted up. "You came here to seduce me armed with just one condom? What were you thinking?"
He breathed out hard. "Oh come on, Tate, don't be nasty. I wasn't sure whether you'd talk to me. I didn't want to jinx it by being cocky and coming here with a string of latex. You know you would have had mt arrogant, self-centered ass for it," he muttered. ~ Elle Aycart

I believe a man's finest hour often comes when he is at his weakest. When he is broken, affronted and at a place of great emotional transparency. It's there he has the rare insight of an inescapable truth…he's merely a man. As his bravado washes away into a puddle of reflective tears, it reveals that he is merely flesh, blood and bones and amounts to very little without the love and guidance of our creator. It's only then, that I believe, a man begins to truly find his way. ~ Jason Versey

There had been no crises of incident, or marked movements of experience such as in Felipe's imaginations of love were essential to the fulness of its growth. This is a common mistake on the part of those who have never felt love's true bonds. Once in those chains, one perceives that they are not of the sort full forged in a day. They are made as the great iron cables are made, on which bridges are swung across the widest water-channels,
not of single huge rods, or bars, which would be stronger, perhaps, to look at; but myriads of the finest wires, each one by itself so fine, so frail, it would barely hold a child's kite in the wind: by hundreds, hundreds of thousands of such, twisted, re-twisted together, are made the mighty cables, which do not any more swerve from their place in the air, under the weight and jar of the ceaseless traffic and tread of two cities, than the solid earth swerves under the same ceaseless weight and jar. Such cables do not break. ~ Helen Hunt Jackson

It struck me that such analyses had it backward. It's the American public for whom the Iraq War is often no more real than a video game. Five years into this war, I am not always confident most Americans fully appreciate the caliber of the people fighting for them, the sacrifices they have made, and the sacrifices they continue to make. After the Vietnam War ended, the onus of shame largely fell on the veterans. This time around, if shame is to be had when the Iraq conflict ends - and all indications are there will be plenty of it - the veterans are the last people in America to deserve it. When it comes to apportioning shame my vote goes to the American people who sent them to war in a surge of emotion but quickly lost the will to either win it or end it. The young troops I profiled in Generation Kill, as well as the other men and women in uniform I've encountered in combat zones throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, are among the finest people of their generation. We misuse them at our own peril. ~ Evan Wright

Dominance. It's a key aspect of nature and a driving force in society. It separated the working class and the elite, the rich and the poor. In nature, it's. Lack and white - predator versus prey - but humans have a false sense of right and wrong. They believe in shades of gray. They've deluded themselves into thinking there's such a thing as equality. Segregation is wrong, they say, yet only a hundred years ago, they were cracking the whips. Hypocrisy at its finest. ~ Kel Carpenter

Happiness

There's just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basket maker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine. ~ Jane Kenyon

A character like that," he said to himself - "a real little passionate force to see at play is the finest thing in nature. It's finer than the finest work of art - than a Greek bas-relief, than a great Titian, than a Gothic cathedral. It's very pleasant to be so well treated where one had least looked for it. I had never been more blue, more bored, than for a week before she came; I had never expected less that anything pleasant would happen. Suddenly I receive a Titian, by the post, to hang on my wall - a Greek bas-relief to stick over my chimney-piece. The key of a beautiful edifice is thrust into my hand, and I'm told to walk in and admire. My poor boy, you've been sadly ungrateful, and now you had better keep very quiet and never grumble again." The sentiment of these reflexions was very just; but it was not exactly true that Ralph Touchett had had a key put into his hand. His cousin was a very brilliant girl, who would take, as he said, a good deal of knowing; but she needed the knowing, and his attitude with regard to her, though it was contemplative and critical, was not judicial. He surveyed the edifice from the outside and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows and received an impression of proportions equally fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses and that he had not yet stood under the roof. The door was fastened, and though he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of them would fit. She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine ~ Henry James

It's nice to meet you, Evay.' I hold out my hand.
She just stares at it - like it's a spider crawling out of the shower drain. 'I don't make direct female-to-female contact. It depletes the beautification cells.'
O-kay. I glance at Billy. He seems unperturbed. I hook a thumb over my shoulder. 'So...do you guys want to eat? How about a booth?'
When Evay answers, her tone is airy, dazed, like a concussion victim. Or an acting coach - *be the tree.*
'I have my lunch right here.' She opens he realm to reveal an assortment of capsules that make my prenatals look like baby candy. 'But I need water. Do you have clear water from a snowy mountain spring?'
Wow.
Somebody call Will Smith - aliens really have landed.
'Uh...we don't get much snow around here, this time of year. We have Greenville's finest tap water, though.'
She shakes her head. And she still hasn't blinked. Not one freaking time.
'I only drink snowy mountain spring water. ~ Emma Chase

What's happening between us is sexual tension at its finest. It's good – healthier than a cold glass of milk. Just go with it. ~ Gail McHugh

Stupidity is not intelligence 'without' wisdom. Rather, it's intelligence 'without the desire' for wisdom, which is stupidity at its finest. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

After Blakely delivered that infamous and muchrepeated set down, he transferred his gaze to the new
Marchioness of Blakely.
She shook her head, once. Firmly. "Gareth," she said dryly. "It is your sister's wedding day. Behave."
Silence. He'd lifted his chin, in typical Blakely arrogance.
The crowd waited for the blast.
And then Lord Blakely shrugged and grinned helplessly.
Grinned. Helpless. A Blakely.
"Oh," said his sister, from where she stood near him. "Is
that how it's done? I'll have to practice that."
Like that, everything society knew about nine generations of Blakelys went up in smoke.
Since that day, there had been no question. Lady Blakely had been granted otherworldly powers at birth.
Every smile she coaxed from him, every laugh that she surprised from his lips, stood as testament to her arcane abilities.
And those that questioned her worth still had only to see the look in his eyes when he watched her to find all the
proof they required. ~ Courtney Milan

In all honesty, I don't envy you the possession of this power over memory, nor do I admire you. Because humans are usually completely unconcerned with the memories of other creatures. Human existence involves the willful destruction of the existential memories of other creatures and of your own memories as well. No life can survive without other lives, with the ecological memories of other living creatures have, memories of the environments in which the live. People don't realize they need to rely on the memories of other organisms to survive. You think that flowers bloom in colorful profusion just to please your eyes. That a wild boar exists just to provide meat for your table. That a fish takes the bait just for you sake. That only you can mourn. That a stone falling into a gorge is of no significance. That a sambar deer, its head bent low to sip at a creek is not a revelation . . . When in fact the finest movement of any organism represents a change in an ecosystem." The man with the compound eyes takes a deep sign and says: "But if you were any different you wouldn't be human. ~ Wu Ming-Yi

Democratic politics was many things, among them a kind of seduction, documenting once again the interplay of aggression with libido. It awakened and often gratified the electorate's hostile impulses, or at the very least, its desire for aggressive self-assertion. At the same time, it yoked followers to their leaders to produce a community rife with erotic overtones. Love for one's favorite politician was intensified by hatred for the opposition. ~ Peter Gay

Like the rest of us, Tom Paulin is a bundle of contradictions. At its finest, his work is brave, adventurous, original and wonderfully idiosyncratic. ~ Terry Eagleton

All they know is that their deaths are imminent. It's psychological warfare at its finest. ~ Suzanne Steele

I hate you," she declared wretchedly in the vibrating, lust filled air.
He leaned in close, lips barely touching hers as he nudged at her cheek with his nose, his warm breath a seduction of its own until he was at her ear, "No, sweet pet, you hate that you want me," he imparted huskily.
"Do you feel that?" Her kiss bruised mouth parted in a soft gasp, her golden eyes widening as she felt his fingers dancing just beyond the damp barrier of her panties. "How wet you are? That's your pussy salivating for my cock. ~ Francette Phal

Looking down at the stiff, cream-colored rice paper--the good kind that came in the books that we had never been able to afford--I was both excited and apprehensive. Remembering my rather precipitous departure from that wood gatherer's house, I decided that much as I valued my friends, I wanted to read Bran's letter alone.
No one followed me as I walked out. Behind, I heard Oria saying, in a voice very different from what I was used to hearing from her, "Come, Master Jerrol, there's some good ale here, and I'll make you some bread and cheese…"
As I walked up to my room, I reflected on the fact that I did want to read it alone, and not have whatever it said read from my face. Then there was the fact that they all let me go off alone without a word said, though I knew they wanted to know what was in it.
It's that invisible barrier again, I thought, feeling peculiar. We can work all day at the same tasks, bathe together at the village bathhouse, and sit down together at meals, but then something comes up and suddenly I'm the Astiar and they are the vassals…just as at the village dances all the best posies and the finest plates are brought to me, but the young men all talk and laugh with the other girls.
Was this, then, to be my life? To always feel suspended midway between the aristocrat and the vassal traditions, and to belong truly to neither? ~ Sherwood Smith

When the artist leaves a painting on a wall with the full confidence that the mastery of his skill, soul and vision will draw others into its vortex long after he is gone, he is using the grip of seduction. When the musician's performance, the manipulation of her instrument and the command of her talents are so raw and uninhibited that onlookers feel connected to the cosmos, bridged by the pure genius they are now experiencing, she is using the mystery of seduction. The unexplainable feeling fans get when the athlete ceases to be an athlete and rises to the level of the untouchable magician that can make anything happen, is nothing less than the power of seduction at work. The immense value of seduction is its ability to skillfully allure others into one's world . . . . ~ Curtis Tyrone Jones

A boat, for all its complexity, is in fact a version of simplicity, but of a satisfyingly complex kind. Get to know the hundreds of ways in which a boat-at-sea works and you become its master and commander. A boat provides control in what looks like uncontrollable circumstances. It is the mirror image of the realities of life on land, which look easier but are, psychologically, far more difficult, more subtle, less visible, and less predictable. The boat, in other words, is the haven from the storms at home. And because a boat's workings are a mystery, in the old sense that it is an arcane art, with its own equipment and vocabulary, its nostrums and obscurities from which the vulgar are excluded, it is also a source of potency and seduction. ~ Adam Nicolson

You might think lunchtime at Willing would be different from other high schools. That everyone would be welcome at any table, united by the knowledge that we, at Willing, are the Elite, the Chosen, stellar across the board.
Um.No.Of course not.High school is high school, regardless of how much it costs or how many kids springboard into the Ivies. And nowhere is social status more evident than in the dining room (freshman and sophomores at noon; upperclassmen at one). Because, of course, Willing doesn't have a cafeteria, or even a lunch hall. It has a dining room, complete with oak tables and paneled walls that are covered with plaques going all the way back to 1869, the year Edith Willing Castoe (Edward's aunt) founded the school to "prepare Philadelphia's finest young ladies for Marriage,for Leadership, and for Service to the World." Really. Until the sixties, the school's boastful slogan was "She's a Willing Girl."
Almost 150 years, three first ladies, and one attorney general-not to mention the arrival of boys-later, female members of the student body are still called Willing Girls. You'd think someone in the seventies would have objected to that and changed it. But Willing has survived the seventies of two different centuries. They'll probably still be calling us Willing Girls in 2075. It's a school that believes in Tradition, sometimes regardless of how stupid that Tradition is. ~ Melissa Jensen

Lately I can't help wanting us
to be like other people.
For example, if I were a smoker,

you'd lift a match to the cigarette
just as I put it between my lips.
It's never been like that

between us: none of that
easy chemistry, no quick, half automatic
flares. Everything between us

had to be learned.
Saturday finds me brooding
behind my book, all my fantasies

of seduction run up
against the rocks.
Tell me again

why you don't like
sex in the afternoon?
No, don't tell me--

I'll never understand you
never understand us, America's strangest
loving couple: they never

drink a bottle of wine together
and rarely look at each other.
Into each other's eyes, I mean. ~ Deborah Garrison

After the Grand Perhaps"

After vespers, after the first snow
has fallen to its squalls, after New Wave,
after the anorexics have curled
into their geometric forms,
after the man with the apparition
in his one bad eye has done red things
behind the curtain of the lid & sleeps,
after the fallout shelter in the elementary school
has been packed with tins & other tangibles,
after the barn boys have woken, startled
by foxes & fire, warm in their hay, every part
of them blithe & smooth & touchable,
after the little vandals have tilted
toward the impossible seduction
to smash glass in the dark, getting away
with the most lethal pieces, leaving
the shards which travel most easily
through flesh as message
on the bathroom floor, the parking lots,
the irresistible debris of the neighbor's yard
where he's been constructing all winter long.
After the pain has become an old known
friend, repeating itself, you can hold on to it.
The power of fright, I think, is as much
as magnetic heat or gravity.
After what is boundless: wind chimes,
fertile patches of the land,
the ochre symmetry of fields in fall,
the end of breath, the beginning
of shadow, the shadow of heat as it moves
the way the night heads west,
I take this road to arrive at its end
where the toll taker passes the night, reading.
I fee ~ Lucie Brock-Broido

So now begins the first war with Cordelia' in which I retreat and thereby teach her to be victorious as she pursues me. I continually fall back, and in this backward movement I teach her to know through me all the powers of erotic love, its turbulent thoughts' its passion, what longing is, and hope, and impatient expectancy. As I perform this set of steps before her' all this will correspondingly in her' It is a triumphant procession in which I am leading her, and I myself am just as much the one who dithyrambically sings praises to her victory as I am the one who shows the way. She will gain courage to believe in erotic love, to believe it is an etemal force, when she sees its dominion over me, sees my movements. She will believe me, partly because I rely on my artistry, and partly because at the bottom of what I am doing there is truth. If that were not the case, she would not believe me. With my every move, she becomes stronger and stronger; love is awakening in her soul; she is being enthroned in her meaning as a woman ~ Søren Kierkegaard

Poetry is not an esoteric art cultivated by dreamy young men in open collars and with wispy beards. Its finest masters have always been men and women of outstanding energy and great, though by no means common, sense. Poetry is the most economical way of saying certain things that cannot be said in any other way. At its most intense it expresses better than other forms of literature whatever is left of us when we are not involved in instinct-following, surviving, competing, or problem-solving. Its major property is not, as some suppose, beauty. It is power. It is the most powerful form of communication. It does the most work per syllable, operating on a vast field - that of our emotions. It gains its efficiency from the use of certain levers - rhythm, music, rhyme, metaphor, and many more - for which other forms of communication are less well adapted. Some poetry, especially modern poetry, is difficult. But just as our ears have accustomed themselves to difficult music, so our understanding, if we are willing to make an effort, can accustom itself to the most condensed and superficially strange verse. At one time poetry was as democratic an art as the novel is nowadays. It can be so again, if we are willing to make it so. ~ Clifton Fadiman

What do you see when you look at me?"
"I see you," he answered as if it was obvious. "It's not like I see a place, or a time, or a name: just you. Your essence. Your soul. That's how I find you every time you come back. I know it's hard to understand, but your soul calls me…and I'm drawn to it. I couldn't keep away if I tried."
Sage raised his hand to my cheek, cupping it gently. I closed my eyes, resting against the warmth of his palm. When I opened them he had moved closer.
I closed the distance between us and kissed him.
I felt dizzy and hot and floaty, like every cliché…but it was true. I couldn't feel my feet. I finally felt like I was where my soul belonged.
There was only one problem. The gearshift was digging into my side.
"Ow!" I winced.
"You okay?"
"Yeah…it's just…" I gestured down, feeling like an idiot for ruining the moment.
Sage didn't seem to mind. He reached down and moved his seat back to its maximum leg room, then held out his hand. I grabbed it and clambered over the center console, clumsily ducking and folding myself until I finally settled onto his lap, straddling his legs. It was the least coordinated act of seduction ever.
"Better?" he asked.
"Better."
He kissed me, sliding his hands up the back of my shirt. It felt incredible. Without breaking away from his lips, I reached underneath his tee and felt his bare, sleek chest. My breath came faster, caught up in the frenzy of finally letting go an ~ Hilary Duff

Dastardly devious, cleverly conceived, and just a whole lot of fun to read, DEATH PERCEPTION is Lee Allen Howard on fire and at his finest. Rife with winsome weirdness, it's like the mutant stepchild of Carl Hiaasen and Stephen King, mixing a truly unique paranormal coming-of-age story with a quirky cast of offbeat noir characters into a novel that's simply unforgettable ... and hilariously original. A supernatural crime story, blazing with creative intrigue ... don't miss it. ~ Michael Arnzen

I'm not an actress and I suck at lying. I am also far from being a seductress. It's hard to practice the art of seduction when you're always pushing your kid sister around in her wheelchair. Not to mention that daily jeans and baggy sweatshirt do not a seductress make. ~ Susan Ee

Mr. Bredon had been a week with Pym's Publicity, and had learnt a number of things. He learned the average number of words that can be crammed into four inches of copy; that Mr. Armstrong's fancy could be caught by an elaborately-drawn lay-out, whereas Mr. Hankin looked on art-work as waste of a copy-writer's time; that the word "pure" was dangerous, because, if lightly used, it laid the client open to prosecution by the Government inspectors, whereas the words "highest quality," "finest ingredients," "packed under the best conditions" had no legal meaning, and were therefore safe; that the expression "giving work to umpteen thousand British employees in our model works at so-and-so" was not by any means the same thing as "British made throughout"; that the north of England liked its butter and margarine salted, whereas the south preferred it fresh; that the Morning Star would not accept any advertisements containing the word "cure," though there was no objection to such expressions as "relieve" or "ameliorate," and that, further, any commodity that professed to "cure" anything might find itself compelled to register as a patent medicine and use an expensive stamp; that the most convincing copy was always written with the tongue in the cheek, a genuine conviction of the commodity's worth producing - for some reason - poverty and flatness of style; that if, by the most far-fetched stretch of ingenuity, an indecent meaning could be read into a headline, that was the meaning tha ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

At its finest moments climbing allows me to step out of ordinary existence into something extraordinary, stripping me of my sense of self-importance. ~ Doug Scott

The 'Robben Island Bible' has arrived at the British Museum. It's a garish thing, its cover plastered with pink and gold Hindu images, designed to hide its contents. Within is the finest collection of words generated by human intelligence: the complete works of William Shakespeare. ~ Daniel Hannan

The richness and endless variety of human relationships ... that's what authors, even the finest and greatest, only succeed in hinting at. It's a hopeless business, like trying to dip up the ocean with a tea-spoon. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Most love, I've observed, is narcissism at its finest and most cunning. Love is always about how you feel but not necessarily how the other person feels. The notion that simply because you love someone they should be willing to love you in return. ~ Kat Savage

To write about him is to write about Greatness. To discuss him is to
discuss Intellectual Brilliance. To think of him is to think of Modesty,
Simplicity and Lucidity. To remember him is to remember Nationalism at
its finest hour. He was not one of those who merely achieved greatness
nor certainly one of those upon whom greatness was thrust-he was in
fact born great. ~ Munindra Misra

Providence then - and this is what is most important to grasp - is not the same thing as a universal teleology. To believe in divine and unfailing providence is not to burden one's conscience with the need to see every event in this world not only as an occasion for God's grace, but as a positive determination of God's will whereby he brings to pass a comprehensive design that, in the absence of any single one of these events, would not have been possible. It may seem that this is to draw only the finest of logical distinction, one so fine indeed as to amount to little more than a sophistry. Some theologians - Calvin, for instance - have denied that the distinction between what God wills and what he permits has any meaning at all. And certainly there is no unanimity in the history of Christian exegesis on this matter. Certain classic Western interpretations of Paul's treatment of the hardening of Pharaoh's heart and of the hardened heart of Israel in Romans 9 have taken it as a clear statement of God's immediate determination of his creatures' wills. But in the Eastern Christian tradition, and in the thought of many of the greatest Western theologians, the same argument has often been understood to assert no more than that God in either case allowed a prior corruption of the will to run its course, or even - like a mire in the light of the sun - to harden the outpouring of God's fiery mercy, and always for the sake of a greater good that will perhaps redound even to the benef ~ David Bentley Hart

It needs to said that Gerard Brennan's The Point is terrific. Scorchingly funny, black humour at its finest and the most inventive car theft ever! ~ Arlene Hunt

I will only sell coffee less than 48 hours out of the roaster to my customers, so they may enjoy coffee at its peak of flavor. I will only use the finest, most delicious and responsibly sourced beans. ~ James Freeman

If everything is happy go-lucky all the time, you don't know when you're experiencing joy and feeling life at its finest moments. You have to suffer a little. ~ Corey Taylor

It's not hard to be sexy when you're standing in front of Angelina Jolie or Robin Wright Penn. They're two of the most beautiful women in the world and two of the finest actresses. I think that if you're with people who are good in your profession they become sexy because they're good at what they do. I enjoyed being 6ft 6ins, having an eight pack and a long todger, you know? If I fold mine in half it's the same length! ~ Ray Winstone

Then we are nothing to him,' said the merchant, sorrow brimming in his eyes. 'I surrendered everything, all my wealth, for yet another indifferent god. If he cannot protect us, what is the point?'

She wished that she had an answer to such questions. Were these not the very grist of priestly endeavours? To grind out palatable answers, to hint of promising paths to true salvation? To show a benign countenance gifted by god-given wisdom, glowing as if fanned by sacred breath? 'It is my feeling,' she said, haltingly, 'that a faith that delivers perfect answers to every question is not a true faith, for its only purpose is to satisfy, to ease the mind and so end its questing.' She held up a hand to still the objections she saw awakened among these six honest, serious believers. 'Is it for faith to deliver peace, when on all sides inequity thrives? For it shall indeed thrive, when the blessed walk past blissfully blind, content in their own moral purity, in the peace filling their souls. Oh, you might then reach out a hand to the wretched by the roadside, offering them your own footprints, and you may see the blessed burgeon in number, grow into a multitude, until you are as an army. But there will be, will ever be, those who turn away from your hand. The ones who quest because it is in their nature to quest, who fear the seduction of self-satisfaction, who mistrust easy answers. Are these ones then to be your enemy? Does the army grow angered now? Does it strike out at ~ Steven Erikson

Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles places the loyalist experience and the aftermath of the American Revolution in an entirely new light. Alongside the Spirit of 1776, Jasanoff gives us the Spirit of 1783, dedicated to remaking the mighty British Empire, and then offers a stunning reinterpretation of the Loyalists' complicated role in that remaking. Her meticulously researched and superbly written account is historical revision at its finest, and it affirms her place as one of the very finest historians of the rising generation. ~ Sean Wilentz

On Being Afraid to Use the Elementary School Bathrooms to Defecate
Son, you're complaining to the wrong man. I can shit anywhere, at any time. It's one of my finer qualities. Some might say my finest. ~ Justin Halpern

Keep a logical but open mind. What one may pass off as a psychological dysfunction could be a burst of imagination at its finest. ~ Lauren Lola

You have five minutes to call someone, anyone, I don't care who, and order me the finest blend of coffee that rat hole town has, and a dozen beers. If it's not sitting on this table ... " a slender finger pointed furiously at the table in question," ... in one hour, you die" - Faith telling Jacob ~ Lora Leigh

'To Kill a Mockingbird' represents Hollywood at its very finest, when a popular film could truly contain a message. It has one of the most moving scores of all time. ~ Mark Mothersbaugh

At this point the door of the hospital room swung open and Lieutenant Adam Burke strode into the room, followed by a couple of uniformed officers. He glared at Andy Winslow. "You left the scene of the crime, Winslow."

Andy looked innocently at the cop. "I did?"

"You know damned well you did. Who the hell do you think you are, letting a corpse into the house and then leaving her there on the floor to die."

Andy grinned. "What corpse would that be, Lieutenant?"

"This one!" Burke jabbed a thumb at the slight figure on the bed.

"You mean Miss Mayhew, Lieutenant? I don't think Miss Mayhew is dead. Are you dead Miss Mayhew?"

The slim woman managed a wan, tiny smile. "I don't think I'm dead. I don't even feel sick. I do have a dreadful headache, though."

Andy Winslow grinned, "You're entitled to that." Then, to the cop, "It's true that Miss Mayhew was shot at Caligula Foxx's house. I though it was more important to make sure that she was all right, than to wait around for New York's Slowest -- er pardon me, I mean New York's Finest - to arrive. ~ Richard A. Lupoff

The machinery of compulsory equalization works against the finest trait of the human species, the fact that we recognize ourselves in our differences and build links based on them. The best of the world lies in the many worlds the world contains, the different melodies of life, their pains and strains: the thousand and one ways of living and speaking, thinking and creating, eating, working, dancing, playing, loving, suffering, and celebrating that we have discovered over so many thousands of years. Equalization, which makes us all goofy and all the same, can't be measured. No computer could count the crimes that the pop culture business commits each day against the human rainbow and the human right to identity. But its devastating progress is mind-boggling. Time is emptied of history, and space no longer acknowledges the astonishing diversity of its parts. Through the mass media the owners of the world inform us all of our obligation to look at ourselves in a single mirror. ~ Eduardo Galeano

The moral, dear child, is that such powers are never to be considered as the main object; it ought in fact to be obvious from the start that any one's True Will must be deeper and more comprehensive than any mere technical achievement. I will go further and say that any such endeavour must be a magical mistake, like cherishing a gun or a clock or a fishing-rod for its own sake, and not for the use that one can make of it. Indeed, that remark goes to the root of the matter; for all these powers, if we understand them properly, are natural by-products of one's real Great Work. My own experience was very convincing on this point; for one power after another came popping up when it was least wanted, and I saw at once that they represented so many leaks in my boat.

And really they are quite a bit of a nuisance. Their possession is so flattering, and their seduction so subtle. One understands at once why all the first-class Teachers insist so sternly that the Siddhi (or Iddhi) must be rejected firmly by the Aspirant, if he is not to be side-tracked and ultimately lost. ~ Aleister Crowley

I don't think we're crumbling as a civilization, but this is not our finest hour, and it's good to be mindful that we're all susceptible to fall and to look at what are the earmarks of a civilization on the wane. What are they - destruction of the environment? Conspicuous consumption? Heard of those? ~ Mel Gibson

Dom rose from his kneeling position, a keen hunger shining in his eyes. "Was that wicked enough for you, sweeting?" he drawled as he used his cravat to wipe his mouth.
With her heart thundering loudly in her ears and her breathing staggered, it took her a moment to answer. "Not quite," she managed, then tugged at the waistband of his drawers. "You still have these on."
That seemed to startle him. Then one corner of his lips quirked up. "I never guessed you were such a greedy little--"
"Wanton?" she asked before he could accuse her of being one.
But he just shot her a smoldering smile. "Siren."
"Oh." She liked that word much better. Feeling her oats, she gestured to his drawers. "So take them off."
With a laugh, he did so. "There, my lusty beauty. You have your wish."
"Yes…yes, I do." Now she could study him to her heart's content.
But the reality was rather sobering. His member, jutting from a nest of dark curls, couldn't possibly be hidden behind a tiny fig leaf like the ones on statues. "Oh my. It's even bigger and more…er…thrusting without the drawers."
"Are you rethinking your plan for seduction now?" he asked, with a decided tension in his voice.
"No." She cast him a game smile. "Just…reassessing the…er…fit."
"It's not as fearsome as it looks."
"Good," she said lightly, only half joking. She looped her arms about his neck. "Because I'm not as fearless as I look."
"You're a great deal more fearless than you ~ Sabrina Jeffries

A fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot. ~ Samuel Johnson