Seeming Quotes

Do you like him? Ty asked. "Not that I care." "I do," I said, because it was true. Even though it didn't matter anymore. "Not that I care you don't care. Though you clearly do care, and I don't care about that either." "Well, I don't care that you don't care that I don't care. In fact i'm glad. Because, um, if I were seeming someone that I liked, I'd want you to be happy for me.""Are you seeing someone?" I asked, pretty sure he wasn't. "Not that I care. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

Go on in the certain way, and if you do not receive that thing, you will receive something so much better that you will see that the seeming failure was really a great success. ~ Wallace D. Wattles

Behold,' said the Voice, 'earthly beauty. It is nothing but seeming, for to the uninstructed eye the world appears fruitful and sweet, yet in it is nothing but a pile of skulls, showing where others were lost as they went before. ~ Maria McCann

We hold ourselves back not just out of fear of seeming too aggressive but also by underestimating our abilities. Ask a woman to explain why she's successful and she'll credit luck, hard work, and help from others. Ask a man the same question and he's likely to explain, or at least think, "C'mon, I'm awesome!"4 ~ Sheryl Sandberg

We need not get distracted by the seeming defeat or troubles of our daily lives ("what is seen"), because this affliction is actually being used by God to transform our character (2 Corinthians 3:18) so we can become the kind of citizens who will flourish in his future kingdom ("what is not seen"). ~ J.P. Moreland

It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilizationitself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried closest to our hearts. ~ Woodrow Wilson

No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him. Do not trust her seeming calm; in a moment the sea is moved to its depths. The very day the ships have made a brave show in the games, they are engulfed. ~ Seneca.

I was the "feelings" child. Everything I did was a feeling, and it did not count. It is so difficult to talk about demons and gods and spirits without it seeming that you are mad, or sarcastic, or simple, or talking in pictures, or trying to confuse. Or trying to be interesting. It is difficult to talk about demons and make it understood that even if "spirit" is the best word available, it isn't the right word. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

By the delusions of seeming good the people are often misled to desire their own ruin; and they are frequently influenced by great hopes and brave promises. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

The smallest thing by the influence of eternity is made infinite and eternal. We pass through a standing continent or region of ages, that are already ebfore us, glorious and perfect while we come to them. Like men in a ship we pass forward, the shores and marks seeming to go backward, though we move and they stand still. We are not with them in our progressive motion, but prevent the swiftness of our course, and are present with them in our understandings. Like the sun we dart our rays before us, and occupy those spaces with light and contemplation which we move towards, but possess not with our bodies. And seeing all things in the light of Divine knowledge, eternally serving God, rejoice unspeakable in that service, and enjoy it all. ~ Thomas Traherne

There are many kinds of loss embedded in a loss - the loss of the person, and the loss of the self you got to be with that person. And the seeming loss of the past, which now feels forever out of reach. ~ Meghan O'Rourke

And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering significance, while he suffered its seeming meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of Chaos for revelation and God's presence ... ~ Hermann Hesse

Nothing in this world is perpetual; Every thing, however seemingly firm, is in continual flux and change: The world itself gives symptoms of frailty and dissolution: How contrary to analogy, therefore, to imagine, that one single form, seeming the frailest of any, and subject to the greatest disorders, is immortal and indissoluble? What a daring theory is that! How lightly, not to say how rashly, entertained! How to dispose of the infinite number of posthumous existences ought also to embarrass the religious theory. Every planet, in every solar system, we are at liberty to imagine people with intelligent, mortal beings: At least we can fix on no other supposition. For these, a new universe must, every generation, be created beyond the bounds of the present universe: or one must have been created at first so prodigiously wide as to admit of this continual influx of beings. Ought such bold suppositions to be received by any philosophy: and that merely on the pretext of a bare possibility? When it is asked, whether Agamemnon, Thersites, Hannibal, Nero, and every stupid clown, that ever existed in Italy, Scythia, Bactria, or Guinea, are now alive; can any man think, that a scrutiny of nature will furnish arguments strong enough to answer so strange a question in the affirmative? The want of argument, without revelation, sufficiently establishes the negative. Quanto facilius, says Pliny, certiusque sibi quemque credere, ac specimen securitatis antegenitali sumere experimento. Our ~ David Hume

Patience is, in and of itself, a great challenge and it often holds the key to breaking through a seeming impasse. ~ Daisaku Ikeda

When today's generation reads Jack's books or they listen to the music created by some of us, I believe that they see there is a different way of approaching today's life and today's sometimes seeming hopelessness that can provide answers. ~ David Amram

Darling, I'm the least perfect person in the world."
"Oh, we know you've make mistakes," Cassandra said cheerfully. "What Pandora meant was that you always appear to be perfect, which is all that really matters."
"Actually," Kathleen said, "that's not what really matters."
"But there's no difference between being perfect and seeming perfect as long as no one can tell," Cassandra said. "The result is the same, isn't it?"
Looking perturbed, Kathleen rubbed her forehead. "I know there's a good answer for that. But I can't think of what it is right now ~ Lisa Kleypas

Investors can see that Facebook is feeling old and tired and isn't seeming to be that innovative. ~ Robert Scoble

The criminals who, in the face of contumely, hatred or violence, have led the world to a higher standard and brought humanity to a diviner order, have so loved truth and righteousness as to defy the law, and in every age these men have met the life of outcasts, and the death of felons. Whatever may be said of the necessity of government to protect itself, no one can believe that any human being merits punishment for following his own highest ideal. Punishment can only be in any wise defended upon the theory that the individual is untrue to himself, that his heart is bad. But all schemes of human punishment seem specially contrived to exempt this class of men. Those who are untrue to themselves find no difficulty in obeying the state, or at least in seeming to be subservient to its laws. The cunning man without strong convictions of right and wrong can always find ample room to operate his trade inside the dead line the law lays down. Even Blackstone wrote that a man who governed his conduct solely by the law was neither an honest man nor a good citizen. The penal code cannot pretend to cover all the vicious acts of men. If there is a distinction between vicious acts and righteous acts, each are so numerous that even to catalogue them would be beyond the power of the state. ~ Clarence Darrow

Mary was proud of her husband, not merely because he was a musician, but because he was a blacksmith. For, with the true taste of a right woman, she honored the manhood that could do hard work. The day will come, and may I do something to help it hither, when the youth of our country will recognize that, taken in itself, it is a more manly, and therefore in the old true sense a more _gentle_ thing, to follow a good handicraft, if it make the hands black as a coal, than to spend the day in keeping books, and making up accounts, though therein the hands should remain white--or red, as the case may be. Not but that, from a higher point of view still, all work, set by God, and done divinely, is of equal honor; but, where there is a choice, I would gladly see boy of mine choose rather to be a blacksmith, or a watchmaker, or a bookbinder, than a clerk. Production, making, is a higher thing in the scale of reality, than any mere transmission, such as buying and selling. It is, besides, easier to do honest work than to buy and sell honestly. The more honor, of course, to those who are honest under the greater difficulty! But the man who knows how needful the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," knows that he must not be tempted into temptation even by the glory of duty under difficulty. In humility we must choose the easiest, as we must hold our faces unflinchingly to the hardest, even to the seeming impossible, when it is given us to do. ~ George MacDonald

embrace and fully 'excavate' our Shadow, the seeming darkness within. Only by fully honoring all aspects of our journey (every wound, every person, every trauma) can we begin to accept and eventually honor all of who we are." - JOHN POLLARD, ~ Jeff Brown

We should not be distracted by anything; neither by dreams, whether evil or seemingly good, nor by the thought of anything, whether good or bad, nor by distress or deceitful joy, nor by self-conceit or despair, nor by depression or elation, nor by a sense of abandonment or by illusory help and strength, nor by negligence or progress, nor by laziness or seeming zeal, nor by apparent dispassion or passionate attachment. Rather with humility we should strive to maintain a state of stillness, free from all distraction, knowing that no one can do us harm unless we ourselves wish for it. ~ Peter Of Damascus

Wind rippled the trees, the darkness seeming to gather itself closer around him. ~ Rick Burroughs

A memory rises: Etienne was in a field east of the city with his brother. It was the summer when fireflies showed up in Saint-Malo, and their father was very excited, building long-handled nets for the boys and giving them jars with wire to fasten over the tops, and Etienne and Henri raced through the tall grass as the fireflies floated away from them, illuming on and off, always seeming to rise just beyond their reach, as if the earth were smoldering and these were sparks that their footfalls had prodded free. ~ Anthony Doerr

Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

Men's private self-worlds are rather like our geographical world's seasons, storm, and sun, deserts, oases, mountains and abysses, the endless-seeming plateaus, darkness and light, and always the sowing and the reaping. ~ Faith Baldwin

By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them- all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.
These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, -too; cutting the unborn child from the mothers womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mothers' eyes. Doing it before the mothers' eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion: they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out its little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. A ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

His hair was mussed, and his teeth were very white in his swarthy, dust-streaked face. With his autocratic facade stripped away, and his eyes sparkling with enjoyment, his grin was so unexpectedly engaging that Lillian experienced a curious melting sensation inside. Hanging over him, she felt her own lips curving in a reluctant smile. A loose lock of her hair dangled free of its tether, sliding silkily over his jaw.
"What's a trebuchet?" she asked.
"A catapult. I have a friend who has a keen interest in medieval weaponry. He…" Westcliff hesitated, a new tension seeming to spread through his taut body as he lay beneath her. "He recently built a trebuchet using an ancient design…and enlisted me to help fire it…"
Lillian was entertained by the idea that the normally reserved Westcliff was capable of such boyish antics. Realizing that she was straddling him, she colored and began to wriggle off him. "Your aim was off?" she asked, striving to sound casual.
"The owner of the stone wall we demolished seemed to think so." The earl caught his breath sharply as her body slid away from his, and remained sitting on the ground even after she had gotten to her feet. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm. ~ Criss Jami

Drugs flow as effortlessly through the harbour as through los esteros, but the government and the DEA view drug trafficking as more of a hazard to society when it moves through the poor area, with its dirty waters and seeming chaos, than when it has to do with corporate boardrooms and the main harbour. And for the FARC, it is becoming easier and easier to convince the city's Afro-Colombian majority that the focus of the war on drugs is not primarily on the flow of drugs, but on what kind of people are involved in it. ~ Magnus Linton

She never even told me how she felt," Valerie thought aloud, feeling the betrayal in her gut. How had she been so blind? Her sister had loved Henry silently. Did she know about the engagement? Did she overhear our parents planning? Valerie supposed it was possible, but it seemed unlikely since they were always together. Would it have broken her heart?
"Don't worry, you poor child," Madame Lazar said, seeming almost disinterested in the subject of Lucie's death. "I know you're worried about your sister, but Henry always had his eye on you. You are - were always the pretty one. ~ Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Tell me, McFadden, what do you think of our beloved Mr. Chamberlain? Mac didn't care for such direct questions. All his adult life had been spent in the mentality of the gulag, never openly complaining, always seeming to conform, never risking a row. Perhaps that's why he had agreed to marry, not so much to avoid disappointing the lady but more because it was the simplest way to fit into the flow of things. ~ Michael Dobbs

that ugly truth about Manto, the man: that for all his love of Indian multiplicity, he went to Pakistan. He even tried convincing Chughtai to go. 'The future looks beautiful in Pakistan,' he said to her, 'We'll be able to get the houses of people who've fled from there. It'll be just us there. We'll progress very quickly.' When I read this, I had trouble holding the two Mantos in my mind. It seemed impossible that the creator of Manto, the narrator and fictional presence, so immersed in the variety of India, seeming so much to rejoice in it, should also be the author of that remark, with its sly wish for homogeneity, for the place where 'It'll be just us.' Chughtai, for other reasons, was also disgusted. ~ Saadat Hasan Manto

By making no demands (for example, "You must give up your career"), by seeming not to interfere in crucial decisions (should she abort the child she had conceived by him before they were married?) he effectively placed the burden of all decisions on her. She was the one who had to choose - over and over again. Michael could just be himself. This is the free ride men so often enjoy in their marriages. ~ Carl Rollyson

Classification may very well not be useless, but it is never analysis, no matter how baroquely detailed and comprehensive-seeming its categories. At best, it begs questions. At worst it is presumptuous and totalitarian, replacing understanding with filing. We have all heard papers where categories are the driving force, according to which the way we understand literature (or whatever) is to work out what title fits where, as if literary theory was a giant card-catalog. Even when the last book has been slotted neatly into the last of the holes that were cut to be filled with books, what we have are books in neat piles. Which is not nothing, but neither is it that much. ~ China Mieville

Not everything is as it seems, and not everything that seems is. Between being and seeming there is always a point of agreement, as if being and seeming were two inclined planes that converge and become one. There is a slope and the possibility of sliding down that slope, and when that happens, one reaches a point at which being and seeming meet. ~ Jose Saramago

Describe for me, if you can, the nature of this wisdom.'

Anomander snorted impatiently. 'Wisdom is surrender.'

'To what?'

'Complexity.'

'To what end?'

'Swallow it down, spit it out in small measures, to make palatable what many may not otherwise comprehend.'

'An arrogant pose, First Son.'

'I do not claim it, Azathanai, just as I refuse for myself the notion of rule. And, in the name of worship, I am lost in doubt, if not outright disbelief.'

'And why is that?'

'Power does not confer wisdom, nor rightful authority, nor faith in either of the two. If it offers a caress, so too can it by force make one kneel. The former is by nature suspect, while the latter - well, it can at least be said that it does not disguise its truth.'

'You learn for liberty.'

'If I do, then I am the greater fool, because liberty is not in itself a virtue. It wins nothing but the false belief in one's own utterly unassailable independence. even the beasts will not plunge to that depth. No, if I yearn for anything, it is for responsibility. An end to the evasions, the lies spoken in the mind and the lies spoken to others, the endless game of deeds without blame, and all the causes of seeming justice behind which hide venal desires. I yearn for the coward's confession, and understand me well here, Caladan: we are all cowards. ~ Steven Erikson

The silky swirl of his tongue in the hollow of her navel sent fire licking through her veins. Hazily aware of the area his mouth was traversing, she stirred beneath him.
Not seeming to realize just where he was kissing her, Matthew persisted, sliding lower until Daisy let out a muffled yelp and pushed hard at his encroaching head.
"What is it?" he asked, rising to his elbows.
Crimson with mortification, Daisy could hardly bring herself to explain. "You were too close to my…well, you accidentally…"
As her voice faded, understanding dawned in Matthew's eyes. Quickly he bent his head to hide his expression, and a tremor ran through his shoulders. He replied with great care, still looking away from her. "It wasn't accidental. I meant to do that."
Daisy was astonished. "But you were going to kiss me right on my - " She broke off as his gaze met hers, laughter dancing in his blue eyes.
He wasn't embarrassed at all - he was amused.
"You're not shocked, are you?" he asked. "I thought you were well read."
"Well, no one would ever write about something like that."
He shrugged, his eyes glowing. "You're the literary authority."
"You're making fun of me," she said.
"Just a little," he whispered, and kissed her stomach again. Her legs jerked against his restraining hands. ~ Lisa Kleypas

One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, especially those whose skill is literary, find no opportunity for the independent exercise of their talents, but have to hire themselves out to rich corporations directed by Philistines, who insist upon their producing what they themselves regard as pernicious nonsense. If you were to inquire among journalists in either England or America whether they believed in the policy of the newspaper for which they worked, you would find, I believe, that only a small minority do so; the rest, for the sake of a livelihood, prostitute their skill to purposes which they believe to be harmful. Such work cannot bring any real satisfaction, and in the course of reconciling himself to the doing of it, a man has to make himself so cynical that he can no longer derive whole-hearted satisfaction from anything whatever. I cannot condemn men who undertake work of this sort, since starvation is too serious an alternative, but I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to man's constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account. Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect. ~ Bertrand Russell

Ah walk doon Hammersmith Broadway, London seeming strange and alien, after only a three-month absence, as familiar places do when you've been away. It's as if everything is a copy of what you knew before, similar, yet somehow lacking in its usual qualities, a bit like the wey things are in a dream. They say you have to live in a place to know it, but you have to come fresh tae really see it. ~ Irvine Welsh

Many people begin their criticism with sincere praise followed by the word "but", which signals that the criticism is about to begin. This may make the listener questions the sincerity of the praise. Use "and" instead, and provide constructive advice rather than criticism. this is possibly the most effective ways to address an issue in written form without seeming false in your praise. ~ Dale Carnegie

Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, they should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but by attraction. ~ Pope Francis

Everywhere you are a stranger.' Finished Iskra with seeming carelessness, and quickly and unceremoniously placed a beret with turkey feathers on her head. 'An Outsider everywhere and always different. How shall we call you, little hawk?' Ciri looked into her eyes. 'Gvalch'ca.' The elf laughed. 'Once you start to speak, you speak in multiple languages, little hawk! Very good. You will carry the name from the Elder People, a name that you yourself have chosen. You will be called Falka. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

And Edward was staring at me curiously, that same, familiar edge of frustation even more distinct now in his black eyes.
I stared back, surprised, expecting him to look quickly away. But instead he continued to gaze with probing intensity into my eyes. There was no question of me looking away. My hands started to shake.
"Mr. Cullen?" the teacher called, seeking the answer to a question that I haden't heard.
"The Krebs Circle," Edward answered, seeming relucant as he turned to look at Mr. Banner.
I looked down at my book as soon as his eyes released me, trying to find my place. Cowardly as ever, I shifted my hair over my right shoulder to hide my face. I couldn't believe the rush of emotion pulsing through me - just because he'd happened to look at me for the first time in a half-dozen weeks. I couldn't allow him to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. More than pathetic, it was unhealthy. ~ Stephenie Meyer

The time there was only the one warm-up room for everyone, a room so astonishingly hot and airless and noisy, so crowded with extraordinarily talented-seeming musicians, that everything had begun to spin like a merry-go-round, and a French cellist had reached out a languid hand to save Clementine's cello as it slipped from her grasp. (She was a champion fainter.) The ~ Liane Moriarty

Nooooooooooo!" Screaming the word, Amy and Dan moved as one.
Time slowed down, which, Dan knew from experience, often happened when you were in midair. By the time they leaped onto the hood of Fiske's car (oops, dents), and Dan had ripped off a windshield wiper to use as a weapon (probably not the best idea, but hey, he was improvising), Scarey Harley Dude had turned around.
He strode off in his motorcycle boots, moving swiftly to his bike without seeming to hurry. His helmet back on, sunglasses adjusted, he roared off straight into the road, weaving through the thick traffic like smoke.
Amy's face was squashed against the windshield. Dan held the wiper aloft like a club.
And Evan Tolliver stood on the sidewalk, blinking at them.
Dan waved the windshield wiper at him. "Hey, bro. We didn't want to miss our ride. ~ Jude Watson

Perhaps we too seldom reflect how much the life of Nature is one with the life of man, how unimportant or indeed merely seeming, the difference between them. ~ Richard Le Gallienne

She hesitated for a moment longer, then tentatively placed her fingers in his. Her hand was hot and dry and so fragile-seeming that James cradled it gingerly. The next moment, she squeezed so hard his eyes widened.
Fragile lady be damned. He squeezed back spitefully. Vicious minx. ~ Y.S. Lee

Solitude, seeming a sanctuary, proves a grave; a sepulchre in which the living lie, where all good qualities grow sick and die ~ William Cowper

Girl : do you hear me?
cause although it seemed to be the end of the world to me -
it wasn't.

There was a lot more world : cause roads that look set to take you in one direction will sometimes twist back on themselves without ever seeming anything other than straight, ... many things get forgiven in the course of a life : nothing is finished or unchangeable except death and even death will bend a little if what you tell of it is told right. ~ Ali Smith

Some hypocrites and seeming mortified men, that held down their heads, were like the little images that they place in the very bowing of the vaults of churches, that look as if they held up the church, but are but puppets. ~ William Laud

Maggie Botwin.

Prim, quiet lady, like an upright piano, seeming taller than she was because of the way she sat, rose and walked, and the way she held her hands in her lap and the way she coifed her hair up on top of her head, in some fashion out of World War I.

I had once heard her on a radio show describe herself as a snake charmer.

All that film whistling through her hands, sliding through her fingers, undulant and swift.

All that time passing, but to pass and repass again.

It was no different, she said, than life itself.

The future rushed at you. You had a single instant, as it flashed by, to change it into an amiable, recognizable, and decent past. Instant by instant, tomorrow blinked in your grasp. If you did not seize without holding, shape without breaking, that continuity of moments, you left nothing behind. Your object, her object, all of our objects, was to mold and print ourselves on those single fits of future that, in the touching, aged into swiftly into vanishing yesterdays. ~ Ray Bradbury

This new idea of cure instead of punishment, so humane in seeming, had in fact deprived the criminal of all rights and by taking away the name Punishment made the thing infinite. ~ C.S. Lewis

8.
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee: 'thou single wilt prove none. ~ William Shakespeare

God is bigger than any problem. God in you is greater than any difficulty you have to meet. God cares for you more than it is possible for any human being to realize. God can help you in proportion to the degree in which you worship him. You worship God by really putting your trust in him instead of in outer conditions, or in fear, or in depression, or in seeming dangers, and so forth. You worship God by recognizing his presence everywhere, in all people and conditions that you meet; and by praying regularly. You pray well when you pray with joy. ~ Emmet Fox

The peach gown she'd chosen was the color of the sunrise, the rippling watered silk seeming to subtly change from rose to pink to nearly orange in different lights. She'd fallen in love with it at once. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

He laughed, looking down into his empty cup. "Decent people don't expect that kind of twistedness." He put the cup down on the floor. "And if they ever did suspect it, they'd just blame themselves for thinking too mean. You should trust your disquiet the next time. That's what it's there for. A man like that gets where he is by seeming. And then he makes you feel obligated to him. It's an old trick. ~ Kristen D. Randle

Yet, sluggard, wake, and gull thy soul no more With earth's false pleasures, and the world's delight, Whose fruit is fair and pleasing to the sight, But sour in taste, false as the putrid core: Thy flaring glass is gems at her half light; She makes thee seeming rich, but truly poor: She boasts a kernel, and bestows a shell; Performs an inch of her fair-promis'd ell: Her words protest a heav'n; her works produce a hell. ~ Francis Quarles

Idealism is one of the greatest forces in the world. It makes seeming impossibilities possible and succeeds where prudence fails. But unless the idealist is brave and has the courage to face the truth, his idealism creates nothing. ~ Grenville Kleiser

It's to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek, knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It's what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What's left? What else is there that hasn't been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what's shared - she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she's everybody's and it don't mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it's held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it's gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part o ~ Tom Stoppard

The God who inspired the Bible is the same God who made the universe, Earth, and all life. This God is the very definition of truth; therefore nature's record will never contradict Scripture and vice versa. When a seeming contradiction confronts us, we can know with certainty we have either misunderstood (one, the other, or both revelations) or perhaps we haven't yet dug deploy enough. Whatever the case, we can embrace the opportunity to gain greater knowledge and appreciation for the Bible, for nature, and for the God who is responsible for both. ~ Hugh Ross

nature. Take courage. Being free is neither difficult nor distant. I know it has often been conceived, perceived and presented to be rare, remote and difficult, but all that is delusion - a great seeming. I don't know why awakening happens in one heart so completely and in another there is some delay or postponement. I am not deeply concerned about this. But I know that the voice that calls you is true, and where you are being called to is real and true. Heaven is inside your own heart. This is why I am here. I ~ Mooji

The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge - much older than the desire for truth - to command attention, dominate one's fellows. ~ Barry Unsworth

She imagined Jack standing among the bins of nails and tool belts and the ranks of crowbars, unspoken to beyond the ordinary courtesies, seeming unaware of their awareness of him, watching flickering television in that cave full of the smells of leather and wood and oily metal, idle among all those implements of force and purpose, citified among the steel-toed boots and the work shirts. An odd place for a man to loiter who was so alive to embarrassment, so predisposed to sensing even the thought of rebuke. ~ Marilynne Robinson

There is that idea of seeming crazy when you're seeing spirits or you're seeing dead people, you know what I mean? There's a certain sort of stigma, a sort of kookiness, when it comes to that. ~ Deborah Mailman

I have always had a suspicion that Aunt Dahlia, while invariably matey and bonhomous and seeming to take pleasure in my society, has a lower opinion of my intelligence than I quite like. Too often it is her practice to address me as 'fathead', and if I put forward any little thought or idea or fancy in her hearing it is apt to be greeted with the affectionate but jarring guffaw. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

I suppose it means that I will be free to travel with my maid, or to live in the country while you are in town, or I may live in town while you are in the country if I wish. I mean if I find your company...er...unpleasant."
"I see," Daniel said dryly. "And if we are always apart, how exactly are we to gain heirs?"
"Oh." Suzette flushed. "Well, I suppose we could arrange for occasional visits for...er...procreative purposes."
"Occasional visits for procreative purposes?" he achoed with disbelief, and then muttered dryly, "My, how scintillating that sounds."
Suzette frowned, for really it did sound rather cold, nothing like the passionate delirium she had read about in one of Lisa's novels. But then, truthfully,she simply couldn't fathom the ecstasies described in that book. She'd never even been kissed and what if she didn't enjoy his kisses? Just because he didn't have bad breath didn't mean she would enjoy these visits she spoke of so boldly. Coming to a decision, she straightened abruptly, and said, "We must kiss."
That caught his attention and he asked with amazement, "What?"
"Well, we should see if we would deal well together in...er...that regard," she muttered, blushing hotly. Swallowing, she forced herself to add firmly, "You should kiss me. Then we will know."
"My dear young lady," Daniel began seeming half amused and half horrified, "I really do not think-"
"Oh,for pity's sake," Suzette interuppted impatiently, and then leaned ~ Lynsay Sands

He dropped his arms on the bed and peered over at Jenna.
She lay on her side facing him, hand tucked under her chin, not looking the least bit settled or relaxed.
"Whatchu need?"
"You." She spoke the word without and hesitation, any doubt, any seeming self-consciousness. ~ Laura Kaye

Without realizing what she was doing and more on an impulse than anything else, she leaned forward and kissed him. It was a simple, yet firm kiss and she pulled back after only a moment. But it sent a thrill through her.
He leaned down for another. But she put her finger on his lips to stop him.
"That was my reward to you," she said as they danced. "Don't squander it."
"Reward? he asked still seeming both surprised and delighted at this unexpected attention. "What for?"
"Why for living, Vaelros. And for doing so much else to help me. I will have you rewarded in state as well. But that was just from me."
She saw Vaelros flush and she gave him a brilliant smile. "You don't like my reward?" she asked.
"I do!" he replied. "I want only to learn how to earn more."
The music was fading. The song was ending. Luthiel stepped back and let her hands drop.
"A mysterious thing, my heart," she said. ~ Robert Fanney

My lady looks so gentle and so pure When yielding salutation by the way, That the tongue trembles and has nought to say, And the eyes, which fain would see, may not endure. And still, amid the praise she hears secure, She walks with humbleness for her array; Seeming a creature sent from Heaven to stay On earth, and show a miracle made sure. She is so pleasant in the eyes of men That through the sight the inmost heart doth gain A sweetness which needs proof to know it by: And from between her lips there seems to move A soothing essence that is full of love, Saying for ever to the spirit, Sigh! ~ Dante Alighieri

I say she was strong. We all say she was strong. Yes, and in this bicentennial springtime we can say that she was like a legendary pioneer woman in her seeming strengths. We know now that she was only pretending to be strong - which is the best any of us can do. Of course, if you can pretend to be strong all your life, which is what Lavina did, then you can be very comforting to those around you. You can allow them to be childlike now and then. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

for the existentialists, what generated anxiety was not the godlessness of the world, per se, but rather the freedom to choose between God and godlessness. Though freedom is something we actively seek, the freedom to choose generates anxiety. "When I behold my possibilities," Kierkegaard wrote, "I experience that dread which is the dizziness of freedom, and my choice is made in fear and trembling." Many people try to flee anxiety by fleeing choice. This helps explain the perverse-seeming appeal of authoritarian societies - the certainties of a rigid, choiceless society can be very reassuring - and why times of upheaval so often produce extremist leaders and movements: Hitler in Weimar Germany, Father Coughlin in Depression-era America, or Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Vladimir Putin in Russia today. But running from anxiety, Kierkegaard believed, was a mistake because anxiety was a "school" that taught people to come to terms with the human condition. ~ Scott Stossel

I'm not helping you kill anybody else. It's just not happening. I'm done.""What makes you think you have a choice?""You know why? I'll tell you. Because we were just kissing in the street, and deep down, I don't believe you could actually blow up my house or kill my sister. I just don't, and she's probably not even in the house anymore anyway, so if you want to go in there and shoot somebody, fine, but you're on your own."Gobi paused, seeming to consider all of this. "What is it that you want to hear from me, Perry? Do you want me to tell you that these are bad people that I am killing tonight? Because they are. They are very bad people. They deserve to die, each and every one of them.""Nobody deserves to die.""Oh, really?""Okay, I mean, maybe people like Hitler and Pol Pot . . . dictators, tyrants, African warlords who starve their people into submission . . . but that guy at the bar wasn't an evil man.""How do you know? Because he had drinks with Hemingway?""I just know. ~ Joe Schreiber

What we witnessed with the death of Kennedy was the triumph of television; what we saw with his assassination, and with his funeral, was the beginning of television's dominance of our culture
for television is at its most solemnly self-serving and at its mesmerizing best when it is depicting the untimely deaths of the chosen and the golden. It is as witness to the butchery of heroes in their prime
and of all holy-seeming innocents
that televisions achieves its deplorable greatness. ~ John Irving

And I walk out of space
Into an overgrown garden of values,
And tear up seeming stability
And self-comprehension of causes.
And your, infinity, textbook
I read by myself, without people -
Leafless, savage medical book,
A problem book of gigantic radicals. ~ Osip Mandelstam

Yes, Kālāmas, it is proper that your have doubt, that you have perplexity, for a doubt has arisen in a matter which is doubtful. Now, look you Kālāmas, do not be led by reports, or traditions, or hearsay. Be not led by the authority of religious texts, not by the delight in speculative opinions, nor by seeming possibilities, not by the idea: 'this is our teacher'. But, O Kālāmas, when you know for yourself that certain things are unwholesome, and wrong, and bad, then give them up... And when you know for yourself that certain things are wholesome and good, then accept them and follow them. ~ Gautama Buddha

From time to time the by-products of using your inner energy worker will result in your experiencing odd sensations, seeming illnesses, unusual pimples or rashes, and unexpected emotional responses. Remember - these physical and emotional reactions are the by-products of the work you are doing. Release your anxiety over their occurrence and remind yourself they will be short-lived, do not reflect an aging or ill body, but are rather normal responses of a reflective energetic being. ~ Elaine Seiler

A mist crept into the valley - how could this be, by the light of the climbing sun? It drifted over the form in the grass, nearly obscuring it, seeming to draw all sound into itself. I thought I might burst from the strain of that silence... until a single sound shattered it:

The gasp of an indrawn breath. ~ Tosca Lee

(where the more distant phrasing can lend a veneer of respectability to the otherwise prurient-seeming habit of a naturalist spying on other creatures' intimate lives). ~ Marie Brennan

That plain, middle-aged face, with a grave penetrating kindness in it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand, but was looking with helpful pity towards the strugglers still tossed by the waves, had an effect on Maggie at this moment which was afterwards remembered by her as if it had been a promise. ~ George Eliot

Let us not torment each other because we are not all alike, but believe that God knew best what He was doing in making us so different. So will the best harmony come out of seeming discords, the best affection out of differences, the best life out of struggle, and the best work will be done when each does his own work, and lets every one else do and be what God made him for. ~ James Freeman Clarke

I was at a loss suddenly; but conscious all the while of how Armand listened; that he listened in the way that we dream of others listening, his face seeming to reflect on every thing said. He did not start forward to seize on my slightest pause, to assert an understanding of something before the thought was finished, or to argue with a swift, irresistible impulse
the things which often make dialogue impossible.
And after a long interval he said, 'I want you. I want you more than anything in the world. ~ Anne Rice

A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich. ~ William Shenstone

We simply cannot afford to allow our government to go unscrutinised, most of all in amid the bleak seeming imperatives of the 'war on terror'. ~ Nick Harkaway

Arriving at a mansion with another gate, low and nearly invisible inside its landscape gardening, seeming so much constructed of night itself that at sunrise it might all disappear. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Seeming and being are not one and the same. ~ Cecelia Ahern

The ocean. For miles and miles it stretches, seeming endless. Calm at times, and a ravage monster at other times, swallowing anything it can grasp, clawing at the sides of the lands with its cold, salty claws.
But for now it rested peacefully, awaiting the boy who should come sit upon its banks and stare at it with a peaceful mind... ~ Al Jackson

One lesson we learn early, that in spite of seeming difference, men are all of one pattern. We readily assume this with our mates, and are disappointed and angry if we find that we are premature, and that their watches are slower than ours. In fact, the only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Paul's exciting and paradoxical proclamation is that "God's folly is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength" (1 Corinthians 1:25). He says that only Spirit can hold and absorb the seeming contradictions and allow us to see and to know from an utterly new and unitive vantage point, which is the deepening fruit of contemplation. Only Spirit-in-us can know non-dually or paradoxically and absorb contradictions - inside of and with God. Only God's Spirit-with-us can fully forgive, accept, and allow reality to be what it is. Neither logic nor law can fully achieve this, but participation with and in God can. (This does not make logic or law unnecessary; they are simply inadequate to the work of transformation.) ~ Richard Rohr

You must find some way to elevate your act of writing into an entertainment. Usually this means giving the reader an enjoyable surprise. Any number of devices will do the job ... These seeming amusements in fact become your 'style.' When we say we like the style of certain writers, what we mean is that we like their personality as they express it on paper. ~ William Zinsser

If you happen to find it hard to have sustained conversations, try keeping your voice up at the end of the sentence. There is a charming graciousness in doing so, for it seems to say that you do not think your remarks are the last words to be said on the subject. It prevents you from seeming opinionated. How men dislike an opinionated woman! No one really likes her! To keep your voice up sounds as though you are interested in other people's ideas. The subject is still open! ~ Margery Wilson

TIME WENT ON, life with the children unfolding in its own ecosystem, small plastic toys seeming to grow up from the carpet like mushrooms, clothes falling to the floor like autumn leaves. Every once in a while she would blaze through the house and clean everything
at which point, the process would start all over. ~ Erica Bauermeister

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white whose gentle voice was soft and sad. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

For the machine meant the conquest of horizontal space. It also meant a sense of that space which few people had experienced before – the succession and superimposition of views, the unfolding of landscape in flickering surfaces as one was carried swiftly past it, and an exaggerated feeling of relative motion (the poplars nearby seeming to move faster than the church spire across the field) due to parallax. The view from the train was not the view from the horse. It compressed more motifs into the same time. Conversely, it left less time in which to dwell on any one thing. ~ Robert Hughes

Never really loved by anyone, never seeming really to love anyone either ~ Haruki Murakami

Be as you wish to seem. ~ Socrates

Our emotions are different but we have them. We never cast a cold eye on life or death. Don't misunderstand our seeming serenity. After all, we live in a world of perfect trust in The Maker, and we are keenly aware that humans often do not, and we feel an active sorrow for them. ~ Anne Rice

But it was no good trying to tell about the beauty. It was just that life was beautiful beyond belief, and that is a kind of joy which has to be lived.

Sometimes, when they came down from the cirrus levels to catch a better wind, they would find themselves among the flocks of cumulus: huge towers of modeled vapor, looking as white as Monday's washing d as solid as meringues. Perhaps one of these piled-up blossoms of the sky, these snow-white droppings of a gigantic Pegasus, would lie before them several miles away. They would set their course toward it, seeing it grow bigger silently and imperceptibly, a motionless growth; and then, when they were at it, when they were about to bang their noses with a shock against its seeming solid mass, the sun would dim. Wraiths of mist suddenly moving like serpents of the air would coil about them for a second. Grey damp would be around them, and the sun, a copper penny, would fade away. The wings next to their own wings would shade into vacancy, until each bird was a lonely sound in cold annihilation, a presence after uncreation. And there they would hang in chartless nothing, seemingly without speed or left or right or top or bottom, until as suddenly as ever the copper penny glowed and the serpents writhed. Then, in a moment of time, they would be in the jeweled world once more: a sea under them like turquoise and all the gorgeous palaces of heaven new created, with the dew of Eden not yet dry. ~ T.H. White

God's extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family. ~ Neal A. Maxwell

Sometimes seeming happy can be self-destructive even when you're sane. ~ Brandi Carlile

For it is difficult to speak, even any old rubbish, and at the same time focus one's attention on another point, where one's true interest lies, as fitfully defined by a feeble murmur seeming to apologize for not being dead. And what it seemed to me I heard then, concerning what I should do, and say, in order to have nothing further to do, nothing further to say, it seemed to me I only barely heard it, because of the noise I was engaged in making elsewhere, in obedience to the unintelligible terms of an incomprehensible damnation. ~ Samuel Beckett