Slap In The Face Quotes

Today, few Americans born after 1980 are familiar with the Jonestown tragedy, although anyone with an Internet connection can listen to the haunting tape of the community's mass extinction. And while the phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" has entered the cultural lexicon, its reference to gullibility and blind faith is a slap in the face of the Jonestown residents who were goaded into dying by the lies of Jim Jones, and, especially insulting to the 304 murdered children. As the FBI files clearly document, the community devolved into a living hell from which there was no escape. ~ Julia Scheeres

You want to know what I make? I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor and an A-minus feel like a slap in the face. ~ Taylor Mali

Sports Jerseys: To wear another man's name on your back is a subconscious slap in the face to who you are. Don't fantasize about being someone else. Put in the work required to rise to the level of your greatest self. ~ Steve Maraboli

If you expect a kick in the balls and you get a slap in the face, it's a victory. ~ Ardal O'Hanlon

When you wake up from a nightmare, the reality comforts you. When you wake up from the best dream ever, reality is a burden, a slap-in-the-face reminder that you could feel this, you could have this, but you don't and you won't. ~ Karina Halle

If we refuse to forgive, we have stepped into dangerous waters. First, refusing to forgive is to put ourselves in the place of God, as though vengeance were our prerogative, not his. Second, unforgiveness says God's wrath is insufficient. For the unbeliever, we are saying that an eternity in hell is not enough; they need our slap in the face or cold shoulder to "even the scales" of justice. For the believer, we are saying that Christ's humiliation and death are not enough. In other words, we shake our fists at God and say, "Your standards may have been satisfied, but my standard is higher!" Finally, refusing to forgive is the highest form of arrogance. Here we stand forgiven. And as we bask in the forgiveness of a perfectly holy and righteous God, we turn to our brother and say, "My sins are forgivable, but yours are not." In other words, we act as though the sins of others are too significant to forgive while simultaneously believing that ours are not significant enough to matter. ~ Voddie T. Baucham Jr.

A slap in the face is more effective than ten lectures. It makes you understand very quickly. ~ Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch

Confidential matters are not dealt with over the telephone, you'd better come here in person. I cannot leave the house, Do you mean you're ill, Yes, I'm ill, the blind man said after a pause. In that case you ought to call a doctor, a real doctor, quipped the functionary, and, delighted with his own wit, he rang off.
The man's insolence was like a slap in the face. Only after some minutes had passed, had he regained enough composure to tell his wife how rudely he had been treated. Then, as if he had discovered something that he should have known a long time ago, he murmured sadly, This is the stuff we're made of, half indifference and half malice. ~ Jose Saramago

The cold night air outside was like a slap in the face. If I wasn't in Naughty Girl Martini Land, I would have sobered instantly. Unfortunately, I was deep in Naughty Girl Martini Land. So deep, I was skipping dazedly through the Naughty Girl Martini forest and leaping over the Naughty Girl Martini streams, completely oblivious to everything. ~ Kristen Ashley

I am often asked whether physical aggression by women toward men, such as a slap in the face, is abuse. The answer is: "It depends." Men typically experience women's shoves or slaps as annoying and infuriating rather than intimidating, so the long-term emotional effects are less damaging. It is rare to find a man who has gradually lost his freedom or self-esteem because of a woman's aggressiveness. ~ Lundy Bancroft

It wasn't sealed - she opened the flap. Inside was a cheque for a thousand dollars. Made out to her. From Daniel. It was a colossal slap in the face. ~ Lesley Lokko

After all, people seemed quite easy about having their rights and liberties taken away by those they looked up to, but somehow a space on the perch was a slap in the face, and treated as such. ~ Terry Pratchett

Can't you just let it go? Move on?"

His face darkened. His eyes glared in response and he was silent a long time while his jaw worked over a toothpick. She'd used the same line that the prophet and his representatives had been using for years. Even if these things did happen, there is no point in being bitter. You should forgive and forget and let bygones be bygones.
Kind of galling, considering the insistence upon forgiveness was being made by the people who had done the hurting and done nothing to make up for it. But then, that was the standard 'blame the victim' abuser mentally, and to be expected.

Gideon seemed to work through this slap in the face and let it slide.
He said, "For a while I thought maybe, you know, if I could talk to the people responsible. If I could show them how difficult life has been because of them, that maybe they would care. I don't know. I thought maybe if they apologized, it would be so much easier to forget this shit. You know? To do what they say and 'let it go'. But nobody will take any personal responsibility. My own parents have nothing to offer but a bunch of whiny excuses. They try to convince me that my life wasn't as bad as I remember it."
"Fuck that," he said, "They weren't even there. They don't even know what went on with me. I just..."
He paused and pulled his fingers through his hair.
"Christ," he said. He paused again, eyes to the sky, and then back to her.
"Even the people wh ~ Taylor Stevens

Many introverts have so much pain associated with intimacy that we are afraid to get close. There is the pain of being emotionally overwhelmed. The pain of moving too quickly. The pain of being misunderstood and feeling like the bad guy all the time. Then, of course, there is the pain of knowing that we are causing someone else pain simply by fulfilling our innate needs. Our partner feels our need for space as a slap in the face. Our lack of energy is interpreted as a lack of love. All of these pain associations make us reluctant to get close, no matter how much we say we want a meaningful relationship. ~ Michaela Chung

Everybody understands a slap in the face. In Japan, Belgium, or America, a punch is a punch. Comedy will be different in Europe or America or Japan, so my movies are very international. ~ Jean-Claude Van Damme

The jarring change going from an urban environment to an extremely remote natural environment is extremely inspiring. It's constantly stimulating, it's like a slap in the face. ~ Carter Burwell

Old age is an insult. Old age is a slap in the face. It sabotages a fine mind ( ... ). ~ Penelope Lively

No well-bred person goes ashore on someone else's island when there's no one home. But if they put up a sign, then you do it anyway, because it's a slap in the face ~ Tove Jansson

Dear Daniel,
How do you break up with your boyfriend in a way that tells him, "I don't want to sleep with you on a regular basis anymore, but please be available for late night booty calls if I run out of other options"?
Lily
Charlotte, NC

Dear Lily,
The story's so old you can't tell it anymore without everyone groaning, even your oldest friends with the last of their drinks shivering around the ice in their dirty glasses. The music playing is the same album everyone has. Those shoes, everybody has the same shoes on. It looked a little like rain so on person brought an umbrella, useless now in the starstruck clouded sky, forgotten on the way home, which is how the umbrella ended up in her place anyway. Everyone gets older on nights like this.

And still it's a fresh slap in the face of everything you had going, that precarious shelf in the shallow closet that will certainly, certainly fall someday. Photographs slipping into a crack to be found by the next tenant, that one squinter third from the left laughing at something your roommate said, the coaster from that place in the city you used to live in, gone now. A letter that seemed important for reasons you can't remember, throw it out, the entry in the address book you won't erase but won't keep when you get a new phone, let it pass and don't worry about it. You don't think about them; "I haven't thought about them in forever," you would say if anybody brought it up, and nobody does." ~ Daniel Handler

There is a certain type of person to whom a closed door is a challenge - a dare, a taunt, a glove thrown down - and I am one of them. A closed door is more than a mystery to be solved: It's an insult. A slap in the face. ~ Alan Bradley

And maybe it was fair; if a book was any good, it was a slap in the face to someone. ~ John Irving

Every run is a work of art, a drawing on each day's canvas. Some runs are shouts and some runs are whispers. Some runs are eulogies and others celebrations. When you're angry, a run can be a sharp slap in the face. When happy, a run is your song. And when your running progresses enough to become the chrysalis through which your life is viewed, motivation is almost beside the point. Rather, it's running that motivates you for everything else the day holds. ~ Dagny Scott Barrios

It was Kellanved – all of this. Him and Dancer. They used Tavore Paran from the very start. They used all of us, Hedge.'
'That's what gods do, aye. So you don't like it? Fine, but listen to me. Sometimes, what they want – what they need us to do – sometimes it's all right. I mean, it's the right thing to do. Sometimes, it makes us better people.'
'You really believe that?'
'And when we're better people, we make better gods.'
Fiddler looked away. 'It's hopeless, then. We can stuff a god with every virtue we got, it still won't make us any better, will it? Because we're not good with virtues, Hedge.'
'Most of the time, aye, we're not. But maybe then, at our worst, we might look up, we might see that god we made out of the best in us. Not vicious, not vengeful, not arrogant or spiteful. Not selfish, not greedy. Just clear-eyed, with no time for all our rubbish. The kind of god to give us a slap in the face for being such shits. ~ Steven Erikson

I deal with negative, nasty comments on a regular basis. It's difficult to digest because I've always been sensitive and it's a slap in the face to have someone respond cruely when you're trying to lift people up. It's been a huge lesson for me. ~ Kathryn Budig

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer. ~ Katharine Hepburn

I ask, I demand to be respected! Shatov went on shouting. Not for my person
to hell with it
but for something else, just for now, for a few words ... We are two beings, and we have come together in infinity ... for the last time in the world. Abandon your tone and take a human one! At least for once in your life speak in a human voice. Not for my sake, but for your own. Do you understand that you should forgive me that slap in the face if only because with it I gave you an opportunity to know your infinite power ... Again you smile that squeamish, worldly smile. Oh, when will you understand me! Away with the young squire! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder ... but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject ... we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history. ~ Brandi L. Bates

Our difficulty or inability to perceive the experience of others…is all the more pronounced the more distant these experiences are from ours in time, space, or quality," wrote the Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi. We can be moved by the tragedy of mass starvation on a far continent; after all, we have all known physical hunger, if only temporarily. But it takes a greater effort of emotional imagination to empathize with the addict. We readily feel for a suffering child, but cannot see the child in the adult who, his soul fragmented and isolated, hustles for survival a few blocks away from where we shop or work.

Levi quotes Jean Améry, a Jewish-Austrian philosopher and resistance fighter who fell into the grasp of the Gestapo. "Anyone who was tortured remains tortured… Anyone who has suffered torture never again will be able to be at ease in the world…Faith in humanity, already cracked by the first slap in the face, then demolished by torture, is never acquired again." Améry was a full-grown adult when he was traumatized, an accomplished intellectual captured by the foe in the course of a war of liberation. We may then imagine the shock, loss of faith and unfathomable despair of the child who is traumatized not by hated enemies but by loved ones. ~ Gabor Mate

And if you worry that not finishing the food on your plate is a slap in the face of all the hungry people everywhere, you are not living in reality. The truth is that you either throw the food out or you throw it in, but either way it turns to waste. World hunger will not be solved by finishing the garlic mashed potatoes on your plate. ~ Geneen Roth

You have the chance right now to accept your son. I'm not talking about 'tolerating' him. Tolerance is a slap in the face. You tolerate your noisy neighbors. You love your son. You love him, you accept him, you cheer him on, and you don't judge him for one second. ~ Tiffany Reisz

The world today says we cannot openly disagree, especially in the area of religion, without being hateful or bigoted. I suggest that, conversely, it is the world's attitude that is hateful and bigoted. If we will not say that anything is wrong, then at the same time, whether or not we want to admit it, we also are saying there is nothing that is right. Herein we are denying the existence of truth in the realm of faith, and that is a slap in the face of every believer of every creed or background. I ~ James R. White

Some people are saying it's a slap in the face for me to go to a competitor, but it also was a slap in my face that they would go out and trade for Matt Williams, especially when my situation was unsure. ~ Albert Belle

She believed in the miraculous. Or she had, until she reached an age when, all of a sudden, she realized that the life she was living, was in fact, her life. The clay of her being, so long infinitely malleable, had been formed, hardened into what now seemed a palpable, unchanging object. A shell she inhabited. It shocked her then. It shocked her now, like a slap in the face. ~ Robert Goolrick

Those who were so long imprisoned in ice and darkness seem to find the sunlight jarring, painful. The longer I walk around with this grief inside me, the more I understand that. It's as if sunshine is a slap in the face that says, Look, the world's all bright and shiny! Too bad you're not. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I'm sorry, to boycott the Academy Awards is a slap in Chris Rock's face. To host is such a prestigious honor. To boycott it is not the issue. I think it does a disservice to all the African Americans that have worked so hard this year that will be attending and looking at this as an opportunity of a lifetime. I think it's a slap in the face. I understand the sentiment, but I don't appreciate the tactic. ~ Eva Marcille

Most people go to college to get a job, and here I am sitting in class with a job, making exponentially more than whoever's teaching me, you know what I'm saying? At the end of the day, I wanted to finish what I started, and make my mom proud. A lot of people put a lot of hard work and investment to allow me to go to school, and for me not to finish would have been like a slap in the face to my family and those people. ~ Mike Posner

Unfortunately, the greater consciousness among Whites about Black equality has not carried over to the new victims of racism - Muslims and Immigrants. There is no racial enlightenment for these groups, which are huge. Millions of Muslims and an equal number of immigrants, who whether legal or illegal, face discrimination both legally from the government and extra-legally from White Americans - and sometimes Black and Hispanic Americans. The Democratic Presidential candidates are avoiding these issues in order to cultivate support among White Americans. ~ Howard Zinn

In the face of sorrow, imperfection and the fleetingness of our affections and joys, we ask ourselves 'why?'. We need reassurance. We look to art for the proof that life in this world is meaningful and that suffering is not the pointless thing that it so often appears to be, but the necessary part of a larger and redeeming whole. ~ Roger Scruton

The Bible is replete with commands to persevere, especially in the face of injustice. ~ Joni Eareckson Tada

I'll say this, and this has nothing to do with gender or sexuality: You do not want to get licked in the face repeatedly by another human being. You just don't. It's not pleasant. ~ Josh Radnor

We should do this on computer," she said, chalking it carefully for the eighty-ninth time. "With a drawing pad."
"Nonsense. You're lucky I don't make you inscribe it with a stylus on a wax tablet, like the old days," Myrnin snorted. "Children. Spoiled children, always playing with the shinest toy."
"Computers are more efficient!"
"I can perform calculations on that abacus faster than you can solve them on your computer," Myrnin sneered.
Okay, now he was pissing her off. "Prove it!"
"What?"
"Prove it." She backed off on her tone, but Myrnin wasn't looking angry; he was looking strangely interested. He stared at her for a second in silence, and then he got the biggest, oddest smile she'd ever seen on the face of a vampire.
"All right," he said. "A contest. Computer versus abacus."
She wasn't at all sure now that was a good idea, even if it had been her idea, essentially. "Um -- what do I win?" More importantly, what do I lose? Making bargains was a way of life in Morganville, and it was a lot like making deals with man-eating fairies. Better be careful what you ask for.
"Your freedom," he said solemnly. His eyes were wide and guileless, his too-young face shining with honesty. "I will tell Amelie you were not suited to the work. She'll let you go about your life, such as it is."
Good prize. Too good. Claire swallowed hard. "And if I lose?"
"Then I eat you," Myrnin said. ~ Rachel Caine

Marie felt a sudden urge to smash the glass, break down the door, pull down the building. She wanted to tear apart the world. Mather would have never treated a white student that badly, nor would he have shut the door in the face of a man. At that moment, she wanted Dr. Mather to disappear. She wanted every white man to disappear. She wanted to burn them all down to ash and feast on their smoke. Hateful, powerful thoughts. She wondered what those hateful, powerful thoughts could create. ~ Sherman Alexie

In the face of nature's overwhelming forces, humans needed a God who would protect them from harm. When they felt that they had broken the law or committed wrongdoing, people turned to a God who would judge them on the one hand and redeem their sins on the other. In this way, purely from slef-interest, the project of creating God in our own image proceeded
and continues to proceed. ~ Deepak Chopra

If my face is uncovered, a man - even someone I do not know - may fall into sin. Consequently, the scarves are necessary, essential. For life, I am wrapped as if in death.
Why not have the man cover his eyes instead? ~ Kerry Nietz

He who owns a wood of proper land in this country, and, in the face of all the personal riches of the day, only raises crabs and choke pears, deserves to lose the respect of all sensible men. ~ Andrew Jackson Downing

You count the days and watch the years go by. You tell yourself, and you believe it, that you'd rather just die. You'd rather stare death boldly in the face and say you're ready because whatever is waiting on the other side has to be better than growing old in a six-by-ten cage with no one to talk to. You consider yourself half-dead at best. Please take the other half.
You've watched dozens leave and not return, and you accept the fact that one day they'll come for you. You're nothing but a rat in their lab, a disposable body to be used as proof that their experiment is working. An eye for an eye, each killing must be avenged. You kill enough and you're convinced that killing is good.
You count the days, and then there are none left. You ask yourself on your last morning if you are really ready. You search for courage, but the bravery is fading. When it's over, no one really wants to die. ~ John Grisham

He was decisive and wholehearted in everything he did, so intent non the task at hand that he never looked over his shoulder, even if his cloak got caught in a thorny bush. When he did turn to speak to somebody, he used to swing his entire body and dress him full face. When he shook hands, he was never the first to withdraw his own. He inspired such confidence that he was known as al-Amin, the Reliable One. ~ Karen Armstrong

So that's what I am about? Keeping you together?" Dan turned to face Vadim, and he was pale under the tan. "Keeping you alive? What the fuck happened to the touches in the cave, to the vows and the cutting, to the one fucking big thing that isn't about need and doing but about being? What the fuck happened to the love?" He shook his head, agitated, and damn, this was painful all of sudden. "I don't want to be needed. I want to be loved, for fuck's sake. ~ Aleksandr Voinov

Say it." His teasing tone took on a rougher undercurrent. "Say the words. Say you're mine."
Alarms clanged in her heart. She knew he needed to feel strong and powerful right now, but truly. There was possessive, and then there was...medieval. "It's so belittling, Bram. I wish you wouldn't say that."
"You just wish you didn't like it so much." He added a second finger to the first. "Mine. Mine. Mine." He thrust his fingers deeper with each repetition. Her intimate muscles clenched around them, and she gasped with pleasant shock.
"See?" he gloated.
Drat it. For a man, he was right entirely too often. It did feel so good. But ever since her illness and those horrid treatments, she'd set a great deal of comfort in the idea that her body was hers. No one else's.
"Say it," he whispered, nuzzling her ear. His thumb circled her pearl. "Susanna fair. I want to hear you say you're mine."
She framed his face in her hands and looked him in the eye. "I'll say this. I claim sole possession of my body, my heart, and my soul. And tonight, I choose to share them all with you."
His fingers slid from her body, leaving her feeling hollow inside. "God. That's..."
"Disappointing? Intimidating? Too much, too soon?"
He shook his head, moving in for a kiss. "I was going to say, it's even better." His tongue traced her bottom lip. "So much better."

-Bram & Susanna ~ Tessa Dare

When, in the street, I see a mother walking with her grown-up daughter, I can hardly bear to witness the mother's pride, the softening of her face, her incredulous joy at being granted her daughter's company; and the iron discipline she imposes on herself, to muffle and conceal this joy. ~ Helen Garner

Food is something I am going to have to face at least three times a day for the rest of my life. And I am not perfect. But one really bad day does not mean that I am hopeless and back at square one with my eating disorder. Olympic ice skaters fall in their quest for the gold. Heisman Trophy winners throw interceptions. Professional singers forget the words. And people with eating disorders sometimes slip back into an old pattern. But all of these individuals just pick themselves back up and do the next right thing. The ice skater makes the next jump. The football player throws the next pass. The singer finishes the song. And I am going to eat breakfast. ~ Jenni Schaefer

And you think that's it? All is forgiven and he'll just be cool with me having Storm King's grandchildren because we're all united in some super team? That's naive."
Dorian's face suddenly hardened. "Equally naive is the thought that I would carelessly allow him to do anything to you or your children. How many times do I have to convince you of my protection? Do you really think that if he comes back here and attempts to harm one hair on your head, I'll allow it? Eugenie, if he so much as looks at you in a way I don't like, Rurik and his conspirators over there won't have a chance to act because I'll have long since run that bastard kitsune through myself." Dorian's tone astonishingly became light and easy again. "Now then. I wonder where we'll be making camp tonight. ~ Richelle Mead

And yes, even in the poor lighting, I could see that she was beautiful - in a deadly way - and that struck me too. Her pictures hadn't done her justice. Long, dark hair framed a face filled with the sort of hard-edged beauty a man might easily dash his heart against. ~ Richelle Mead

I would probably have more in common with a whale than with a bourgeois married couple employed at worthy institutions that I would wipe from the face of the earth if it was given to me to do so. ~ Che Guevara

The charms of money are distinctly under-represented in literature. There are no songs or poems extolling its virtues. This seems on the face of it strange. The claims of money to be celebrated in verse might well seem to be no less than those of faithful dogs, beautiful women, or jugs of wine. ~ Celia Green

Hyacinth," he said.
She looked at him expectantly.
"Hyacinth," he said again, this time with a bit more certitude. He smiled, letting his eyes melt into hers. "Hyacinth."
"We know her name," came his grandmother's voice.
Gareth ignored her and pushed a table aside so that he could drop to one knee. "Hyacinth," he said, relishing her gasp as he took her hand in his, "would you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?"
Her eyes widened, the misted, and her lips, which he'd been kissing so deliciously mere hours earlier, began to quiver. "I ... I ... "
It was unlike her to be so without words, and he was enjoying it, especially the show of emotion on her face.
"I ... I ... "
"Yes!" his grandmother finally yelled. "Yes! She'll marry you!"
"She can speak for herself," he said.
"No," Lady D said, "she can't. Quite obviously. ~ Julia Quinn

She's in the Catskill," Shopie began, but Scathach reached over and pinched her hand. "Ouch!"
I just wanted to distract you," Scathach explained. "Don't even think about Black Annis. There are some names that should never be spoken aloud."
That like saying don't think of elephants, Josh said, "and then all you can think about is elephants."
Then let me give you something else to think about," Scathach said softly. "There are two police officers in the window staring at us. Don't look," she added urgently.
Too late. Josh turned to look and whatever crossed his face
shock, horror, guilt or fear
bought both officers racing into the cafe, one pulling his automatic from its holster, the other speaking urgently into his radio as he drew his baton. ~ Michael Scott

A few minutes later, a tall, bronze-skinned woman with masses of dark hair, eyes like pale emeralds, and more curves than the Nürburgring racetrack appeared next to my table. My SEAL stood and started to intervene, but I held up a lazy hand, gave a droopy-eyed smile, slurred my words, and waved him off. The stripper sat on my lap with nothing between her and the Lord but a smile and three pieces of strategically placed duct tape. She slipped a glittering arm around my shoulders - she apparently was wearing lotion with metal flakes in it and it felt rough. Then she leaned her décolletage my way, placing her head next to my ear. "You know what you're supposed to do, right?" she whispered, smiling and acting like she had just said something terribly wrong. She was a good actress for Elizabeth City.
Laughing, smiling, and acting wasted, I slurred as loudly and obnoxiously as I could, "Oh, I know exactly what I'm doing, woman!" With that, I reached up and placed my hand on her massive breast, just as I'd been instructed to do - all for the good of my country.
The slap that followed could[…]"

Excerpt From: Jamie Smith. "Gray Work ~ Jamie Smith

He moves the hand I still hold captive to my face, touching my scar. "You fought for me, killed for me. You wore my crown and carried my child. Don't distort what you mean to me, what you've always meant to me. "And I'm going to keep you in this bed until you understand something: I won't let you go. Everything you are is mine, and everything I am is yours. ~ Laura Thalassa

Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's face. I felt like saying: What in God's name are you doing to yourself? ~ John Howard Griffin

Snuggle up with a hot fireman! Meet Tanner West.
Sharon looked up into the most gorgeous face she had ever seen. Eyes like dark chocolate, deep and warm, stared out at her from a face that looked like it could have been chiseled in stone. Skin the color of burnished copper, high cheekbones, a sharp nose, full lips, and a cleft chin. How the hell had she failed to notice him before? Her heart skipped a beat and she ran her gaze down the rest of his body. He was tall, well over six feet, she would guess, with broad shoulders that tapered into a trim waist. His thighs, encased in worn denim, fit like a second skin against legs the size of tree trunks, and oh my, what lay between those thighs ... Her attention snapped back to his face and she could feel the heat of a blush suffuse her skin. ~ Tamara Hoffa

This is not (as you have charged) to paint religion with a broad brush. I am very quick to distinguish gradations of bad ideas; some clearly have no consequences at all (or at least not yet); some put civilization itself in peril. The problem with dogmatism, however, is that one can never quite predict how terrible its costs will be. To use one of my favorite examples, consider the Christian dogma that human life begins at the moment of conception: On its face, this belief seems likely to only improve our world. After all, it is the very quintessence of a life-affirming doctrine.

Enter embryonic stem-cell research. Suddenly, this "life begins at the moment of conception" business becomes the chief impediment to medical progress. Who would have thought that such an innocuous idea could unnecessarily prolong the agony of tens of millions of people? This is the problem with dogmatism, no matter how seemingly benign: it is unresponsive to reality. Dogmatism is a failure of cognition (as well as a commitment to such failure); it is the state of being closed to new evidence and new arguments. And this frame of mind is rightly despised in every area of culture, on every subject, except where it goes by the name of "religious faith." In this guise, parading its most grotesque faults as virtues, it is granted a special dispensation, even in the pages of Nature. ~ Sam Harris

That's not necessarily a bad thing," Caitlyn protested. "I'm sure it keeps you out of trouble."
"Thierry told me I was cold. He wasn't the first boy to say that, either."
Caitlyn winced. "Ouch."
Amalia turned toward Caitlyn. "I wish I could be more like you."
"Me? Are you kidding? Why?"
"You let your emotions show on your face. They're right on the surface, for all to see."
Caitlyn grimaced. "I thought I'd learned to control that."
"See?" Amalia copied her grimace. "Right on the surface!"
"Mmph," Caitlyn grunted unhappily.
"Mmph," Amalia copied.
Caitlyn threw up her hands in defeat, then cast a quick warning look at Amalia. "Don't you do it!"
Amalia chuckled. ~ Lisa Cach

In the Queen's dream she ran hazily through an emerald mist. Behind her trailed caricatures of elves. Their bodies were shadows, long and twisted. Just one of their strides covered two of hers. They were like harlequins, and their smiles gleamed white as they fired arrows that left bare trails in the Nixus. She looked over her shoulder just as an arrow sliced at her face and severed locks of her scarlet hair. Her bones made an unpleasant jolt as the Queen hit what felt like a wall. A great shadow towered over her, its face a porcelain white mask. Unlike the elves, however, the figure did not smile. Claws plucked her from the fog as if she were a child's toy, and the shadow's mask flipped open, revealing a familiar face. ~ Plague Jack

See thou, whatsoever be thy name
whether Fate, Life, or Devil! I cast thee down my gauntlet, I challenge thee to battle! Men of faint heart may bow before thy mysterious power, thy face of stone may inspire them with dread, in thy unbroken silence they may discern the birth of calamity and an impending avalanche of woe. But I am daring and strong, and I challenge thee to battle! Let us draw our swords, and join our bucklers, and rain such blows upon each other's crests as shall cause the very earth to shake again! Ha! Come forth and fight with me! ~ Leonid Andreyev

You can come up with reasons for why you can't do something until you're blue in the face. Instead of wasting the energy coming up with those reasons, use that same energy to find ways to make it happen. You'll be surprised at your ingenuity. ~ Erin Rooney Doland

A-Actually, the flower that sprang up would have been the iris or larkspur, not the modern hyacinth, but that is how it earned its name."
"Fascinating." His unfathomable eyes locked onto hers.
Elizabeth knew he was referring to her and not the history of the hyacinth, and though she commanded herself to move out of his reach, her legs refused to budge.
"Absolutely fascinating," he murmured again, and in slow motion she watched his hands reach out and gently grasp her shoulders, rubbing lightly. "Last night you were ready to do battle with a roomful of men because they dared believe I'd cheated, yet now you're afraid. Is it me you fear, sweetheart? Or something else?"
The endearment spoken in his rich baritone voice had the same stirring effect on her as the touch of his lips. "I'm afraid of the things you make me feel," she admitted desperately, trying to get control of herself and the situation. "I realize that this is merely a-a little weekend dalliance-"
"Liar," he teased, and he took her lips in a sweet, swift kiss. Her mind reeled from the brief touch, but the moment he lifted his mouth from hers she rushed into frightened speech. "Thank you," she blurted inanely. "H-Hyacinths are not the only flower with an interesting history. There are lilies, too, which are also part of the genus-"
A lazy, seductive grin swept across his handsome face, and, to Elizabeth's helpless horror, her gaze fastened on his mouth. She couldn't still the shiver of a ~ Judith McNaught

He is astonished at the fact of his being, and this astonishment leads to reflection: as he leans over the river of his consciousness, he asks himself if the face that appears there, disfigured by the water, is his own. The singularity of his being, which is pure sensation in children, becomes a problem and a question ~ Octavio Paz

In the moonlight and under the stars
Somehow your face seems clearer
I revere your presence and remember
We are warriors
Thrusted onto this plane
We are strong
We must use our strength
While bearing compassion
It's easy to get lost
This place makes it so easy to get lost
But-
In the moonlight and under the stars
Somehow your presence seems clearer
And I remember
We are warriors ~ Nancy Navene

For many years, February was a difficult month for me after the death of my parents. My father died in February, just a week before my mother's birthday. For years their loss cast a pall over the month. I missed them terribly. But time has changed things. I see my father often in the face of my son and I run into my mother daily each time I pass the hall mirror. ~ Mary Morrell

Mirrors in metal, and the masked
Mirror of mahogany that in its mist
Of a red twilight hazes
The face that is gazed on as it gazes ~ Jorge Luis Borges

This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I've never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards. Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the ways of mercantilism and minimum-wage expectations. I've never burgled a house. Held up a liquor store. Never boarded a crowded bus or subway car, sat in a seat reserved for the elderly, pulled out my gigantic penis and masturbated to satisfaction with a perverted, yet somehow crestfallen, look on my face. But here I am, in the cavernous chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, my car illegally and somewhat ironically parked on Constitution Avenue, my hands cuffed and crossed behind my back, my right to remain silent long since waived and said goodbye to as I sit in a thickly padded chair that, much like this country, isn't quite as comfortable as it looks. ~ Paul Beatty

Quickly, I too bent and bowed in the short pants and corky white helmet with my overheated face and great nose. My face can be like the clang of a bell, and because I am hard of hearing on the right side I have a way of swinging the left into position, listening in profile and fixing my eyes on some object to help my concentration. So I did. I waited for him to say more, sweating boisterously, for I was confounded down to the ground. I couldn't believe it; I was so sure that I had left the world ~ Saul Bellow

And now Christine felt as if her face was bursting open and glowing coals were being birthed from it, quickening into life and swarming across her face and all her limbs, and everything within her face had sprung to life, a fiery swarming all across her body. In the lightning's pallid glow she saw, long-legged and venomous, innumerable black spiderlings scurrying down her limbs and out into the night, and as they vanished they were followed, long-legged and venomous, by innumerable others. ~ Jeremias Gotthelf

New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face, and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments,
constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther. And all these become the victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet; others she condemns to a fate like that of galley slaves; a few she favors and fondles, riding them high on the bubbles of fortune; then with a sudden breath she blows the bubbles out and laughs mockingly as she watches them fall. ~ James Weldon Johnson

The only gold stars the CIA gives out are for death in the field, and then only to actual employees, not contracted assets. You get my appreciation." She smiled. "You'll get a gold star in a forgotten file when you die. It will have to wait for now, but I doubt it will wait for too long." "With friends like you." "All your friends fucked you over, Court. Face it, you are better off with a straight shooter like me managing you. ~ Mark Greaney

Something deep in my guts, below my heart, has made a shift to the left and settled in a more comfortable place. It's not the Shift, but it's a shift. I picture Nia with her gorgeous face and little body and black hair and pouty lips and Aaron's hands all over her but also with her pot smoking and the pimples on her forehead and making fun of people all the time and the way she's always so proud of how she's dressed. And I picture her fading. ~ Ned Vizzini

For two nights Félicité never left the dead girl. She said the same prayers over and over again, sprinkled holy water on the sheets, then sat down again to watch. At the end of her first vigil, she noticed that the child's face had gone yellow, the lips were turning blue, the nose looked sharper, and the eyes were sunken. She kissed them several times, and would not have been particularly surprised if Virginie had opened them again: to minds like hers the supernatural is a simple matter. She laid her out, wrapped her in a shroud, put her in her coffin, placed a wreath on her, and spread out her hair. It was fair and amazingly long for her age. Félicité cut off a big lock, half of which she slipped into her bosom, resolving never to part with it. ~ Gustave Flaubert

He'd thought it would be the right thing to say, but she scoffed a little ... and that, more than anything - more than the prospect of having his ribs crushed in or his face pulled off or his neck stretched on a rope - scared him out of his wits. ~ V.S. Carnes

I want a life with you, Annie. I want to make love with you until you can't walk. And have kids with you. I'm sorry it took me so long to figure out, but I'm not exactly used to having love feel good. He poked his finger in the rough direction of her face. "You talked about being a romantic. Romance is nothing! It's a tiny word that doesn't come close to what I feel for you. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

She might come in to bride-bed: and he laughed,
As one that wist not well of wise love's craft,
And bade all bridal things be as she would.
Yet of his gentleness he gat not good;
For clothed and covered with the nuptial dark
Soft like a bride came Brangwain to King Mark,
And to the queen came Tristram; and the night
Fled, and ere danger of detective light
From the king sleeping Brangwain slid away,
And where had lain her handmaid Iseult lay.
And the king waking saw beside his head
That face yet passion-coloured, amorous red
From lips not his, and all that strange hair shed
Across the tissued pillows, fold on fold,
Innumerable, incomparable, all gold,
To fire men's eyes with wonder, and with love
Men's hearts; so shone its flowering crown above
The brows enwound with that imperial wreath,
And framed with fragrant radiance round the face beneath.
And the king marvelled, seeing with sudden start
Her very glory, and said out of his heart;
"What have I done of good for God to bless
That all this he should give me, tress on tress,
All this great wealth and wondrous? Was it this
That in mine arms I had all night to kiss,
And mix with me this beauty? this that seems
More fair than heaven doth in some tired saint's dreams,
Being part of that same heaven? yea, more, for he,
Though loved of God so, yet but seems to see,
But to me sinful such g ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

No one charged you with being my savior," Camille's voice shook, the confrontation not something she really wanted.
"No one had to charge me with it. I made the decision on my own the night the Christina went down." Oscar sealed his lips as if he'd let something slip he hadn't intended.
"What are you talking about?" she asked, her boots slipping once on the moss. He avoided her by looking out at the stream. He took a few moments to answer, and when he did he still didn't meet her stare.
"Do you remember when you woke up on the Londoner? When you asked me if I'd seen your father?"
Camille nodded, and hoped their argument was over. "You said you didn't see him."
He shook his head. "I lied. I did see him in the water. He was trying to stay above the surface after I got ahold of the dory."
It was as though freezing shocks of ocean water were striking Camille in the face all over again. She jumped from the rock, the hem of her skirt nearly tripping her.
"Did you row to him? Did you try and save him?"
He shook his head again. "No."
"Why not?" she screeched. "Oscar, how could you not help him?" She couldn't blink. She couldn't do anything but stare at him in disbelief. He'd abandoned her father, the man who had given him everything.
"Because I spotted you," he answered, hardly loud enough for her to hear. "I saw you in the waves and I chose to row to you."
She loosened her fists, stunned.
Oscar sat down on the rock, the toe ~ Angie Frazier

It is the perennial problem of the teacher to be able to judge where the student currently is in his or her understanding and lead them onwards from there. This is why a living 'guru' is really needed, so that questions may be asked and answered face to face.

When we read a book, or even listen to a tape recording of a lecture or dialogue, we are receiving only a particular viewpoint, aimed at a student of a particular level. It may resonate or it may not. Even the method of expression is crucial. Whilst one person may appreciate logic and intellectual analysis, another may need sympathetic reassurance and practical guidance.
(...)
Ultimately, the truth is one and everything else that might be said is only at the level of appearance, using a language that is necessarily objective and dualistic. What is needed is a teacher whose words and style 'click' with our particular mental conditioning. This book aims to present excerpts from traditional and modern teaching in a wide variety of styles, in the hope that something will click. ~ Dennis Waite

You know it's true."
"Even if it is," I cried, "what does it matter? You could sleep with anybody, Wesley. So what if I walk away? So what if I have feelings for you? I was just a screw to you! You would never actually commit to me. You could never commit to anyone, but especially not to Duffy. You don't even find me attractive."
"Bullshit," he growled, his eyes on my face as he moved closer to me again.
He was so close. My back was pressed to the wall, and Wesley stood only inches away. It had only been a week, but it felt like ages since we'd been in this kind of proximity. A shiver ran up my spine as I remembered the way his hands felt on me. The way he'd always made me feel wanted, even if he had called me the Duff. Did he? Did he find me attractive despite the nickname? How? Why?
"Then why would you call me that?" I whispered. "Do you know how much it hurts? Every time you call me Duffy, do you know how shitty it makes me feel?"
Wesley looked surprised. "What?"
"Every time you call me that," I said, "you're telling me how little you think of me. How ugly I am. God, how can you possibly find me attractive when you put me down all the time." I hissed the last words through gritted teeth.
"I didn't-" His eyes fell, staring at his shoes for a moment. I could tell he felt guilty. "Bianca, I'm sorry." He looked into my eyes again. "I didn't mean-" His hand reached out to touch me.
"Don't," I snapped, shrugging away from him. I slid to th ~ Kody Keplinger

Whether the pain you face now is the consequence of your sin or the sin of others, in God's providence and in saving faith, Romans 8:28 still reigns: "God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." It is not the absence of sin that makes you a believer. It is the presence of Christ in the midst of your struggle that commends the believer and sets you apart in the world. ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield