Somber Quotes

Wordlessly they settled on a third-story ledge near Patriarch's Pond, of the roof across from Luce's window, where they used to watch her sleep. The memory would be fresher in Daniil's mind, but the faint recollection of Luce lying dreaming under the covers still sent a warm rush across Daniel's wings.
Both were somber.In the bombed-out city, it was sad and ironic that her building had been spared when she hadn't. They stood in silence in the cold night,both carefully tucking back their wings so that they wouldn't accidentially touch. ~ Lauren Kate

The thing I hated while reading this book, it turns out, was me. Bad things happen, and shoulders are shrugged. The most serious of events are blended with the strange. The author pulled me inside his mind, and what I found there was a dead stillness, the somber and poignant wisdom of someone with little hope and scars across his eyes. ~ Hugh Howey

To watch this crystal globe just sent from heaven to associate with me. While these clouds and this somber drizzling weather shut all in, we two draw nearer and know one another. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Harry had not expected Hermione's anger to abate overnight, and was therefore unsurprised that she communicated mainly by dirty looks and pointed silences the next morning. Ron responded by maintaining an unnaturally somber demeanor in her presence as an outward sign of continuing remorse. In fact, when all three of them were together Harry felt like the only non-mourner at a poorly attended funeral. During those few moments he spent alone with Harry, however (collecting water and searching the undergrowth for mushrooms), Ron became shamelessly cheery. ~ J.K. Rowling

Now come," he said. "Does your Alex love you back, or is he a hopeless idiot?"
"He loves me," she said quietly. "But I'm afraid he'll stop after we marry. He'll change his mind. He'll - "
"He'll love you more. Trust me."
"Really?" She was far too somber.
"Really." He had no words to make her smile, and so Gareth tweaked her nose.
And she giggled.
It had been a long time since he'd laughed. But despite all those years, he still remembered how. What he'd
forgotten was the lightness of his soul when he did so. The moment was perfect. ~ Courtney Milan

A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then-the glory-so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. ~ John Steinbeck

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then -the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men. ~ John Steinbeck

I'd heard of Evergreen Care Center before. Cass and I had always made fun of the stupid ads they ran on TV, featuring some dragged-out woman with a limp perm and big, painted-on circles under her eyes, downing vodka and sobbing uncontrollably. "We can't heal you at Evergreen", the very somber voiceover said. "But we can help you to heal yourself." It had become our own running joke, applicable to almost anything.
"Hey Cass, "I'd say, "hand me that toothpaste."
"Caitlin," she'd say, her voice dark and serious. "I can't hand you the toothpaste. But I CAN help you hand the toothpaste to yourself. ~ Sarah Dessen

A lot of times we associate Greenpeace and climate change and shrinking polar caps with heavy-handed, weighty material. It's somber stuff. But with Funny Or Die we thought we could put an interesting take on it. Make it a little more palatable, especially for young people who tune into the website. ~ Alexander Skarsgard

I suddenly recall the arpeggios of laughter lilting across the tender, springtime grass-gay-welling, far-floating, fluent, spontaneous, a bell-like feminine fluting, then suppressed; as though snuffed swiftly and irrevocably beneath the quiet solemnity of the vespered air now vibrant with somber chapel bells. ~ Ralph Ellison

The most important thing about a TV set is to get it back against something and not out in the middle of a room where it's like a somber fellow making electronic judgments on you. ~ Bruce Jay Friedman

I'm not suggesting the world is good, that life is easy, or that any of us are entitled to better. But please, isn't this the kind of thing you talk about in somber tones, in the afternoon, with some degree of hope and maybe even a handful of strategies? ~ Richard Siken

So. I, uh..." Beck ran a hand across the back of his neck, watching as Nolan leaned so far back in the office chair, it was dangerously close to tipping over. Or breaking in half. "I fucked up pretty badly."

"Yeah? What did you do? Wash your whites with colors? Have eleven items in the ten or less line at the grocery store? Sleep with a married chick?" Nolan chuckled to himself at that last part, knowing Beck wouldn't stoop to something so low as adultery.

"I slept with Ash's sister." The stunned look on Nolan's face would've been hysterical, if Beck had been talking about anything even remotely humorous. When the man remained mute, staring at him as if he'd grown another head, Beck couldn't help himself. "Only we didn't sleep."

It was a full three seconds before Nolan blinked. "You're gonna die." The somber statement of fact was barely more than a whisper. ~ Jodi Watters

Those circumstances, which to the dim eye of Jacob's faith wore a hue so somber, were at that very moment developing and perfecting the events which were to shed around the evening of his life the halo of a glorious and cloudless sunset. All things were working together for his good! And so, troubled soul, the "much tribulation" will soon be over, and as you enter the "kingdom of God" you shall then see, no longer "through a glass darkly" but in the unshadowed sunlight of the Divine presence, that "all things" did "work together" for your personal and eternal good. ~ Arthur W. Pink

Wearied with the commonplaces of a prosaic world; where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, St John and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. The enigmas of the symbolists and the ecstasies of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time, but each new mood was drained too soon, of its diverting novelty and appeal. Only the somber philosophy of the decadents could help us, and this we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diablism of our penetrations. Baudelaire and Huysmans were soon exhausted of thrills, till finally there remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity
that hideous extremity of human outrage, the abhorred practice of grave-robbing. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

I love you. I've loved you for longer than I even know. Since before I even knew how to love..."
He shook his head, his eyes smiling even as his expression remained somber.
"I think I've loved you even longer," he whispered back... ~ Caitlin Rush

The true luxury and the real potlatch of our times falls to the poverty-stricken, that is, to the individual who lies down and scoffs. A genuine luxury requires the complete contempt for riches, the somber indifference of the individual who refuses to work and makes his life on the one hand an infinitely ruined splendor, and on the other, a silent insult to the laborious lie of the rich. ~ Georges Bataille

When he came home that night he was in a very somber mood, having begun to see at last how those might be right who had laughed at him for his faith in America. ~ Upton Sinclair

The job has its grandeurs, yes. There is the exultation of arriving safely after a storm, the joy of gliding down out of the darkness of night or tempest toward a sun-drenched Alicante or Santiago; there is the swelling sense of returning to repossess one's place in life, in the miraculous garden of earth, where are trees and women and, down by the harbor, friendly little bars. When he has throttled his engine and is banking into the airport, leaving the somber cloud masses behind, what pilot does not break into song? ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

It was a stern night landscape. The sound of the freezing of snow over the land seemed to roar deep into the earth. There was no moon. The stars, almost too many of them to be true, came forward so brightly that it was as if they were falling with the swiftness of the void. As the stars came nearer, the sky retreated deeper and deeper into the night clolour. The layers of the Border Range, indistinguishable one from another, cast their heaviness at the skirt of the starry sky in a blackness grave and somber enough to communicate their mass. The whole of the night scene came together in a clear, tranquil harmony. ~ Yasunari Kawabata

SOWING LIGHTNING
Seize
Bolts of lightning from the sky
And plant them in fields of life.
They will grow like tender sprouts of fire.
Charge somber thoughts
With unexpected flash,
You, my lightning in the soil! ~ Visar Zhiti

There's a reason I've kept my shit simple. Why I play, but never stay." His gaze turned somber, serious, alarming Reggie. "Is - " "I never want to be attached to anything I can't walk away from." He brushed his lips over Reggie's. "I've had a lifetime of loss, but in my business I'm prepared to lose more. Always more. Except you. I will never be prepared to lose you. ~ Avril Ashton

If I am still a somber man, incapable of laughing whole-heartedly, ~ Malcolm Gladwell

I was happy as a child with my toys in my nursery. I been happier every year since I became a man. But this interlude of school makes a somber grey patch upon the chart of my journey. It was a unending spell of worries that did not then seem petty, and of toil uncheered by fruition; a time of discomfort, restriction and purposeless monotony. ~ Winston Churchill

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposely than he is. ~ James Thurber

This world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks. ~ Helen Keller

I feel like 'Work' was a really good song for people to get to know me, as it's obviously biographical. With 'Bounce,' I wanted to make sure people know there's a fun side to me as well as the somber and serious one. ~ Iggy Azalea

Memento mori and obey the Lord.
Art and religion love the somber chord. ~ Robert Frost

It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

He pinpointed Helen immediately, despite so many women - all dressed in somber mourning attire - against a background of pitch dark. He offered her a weak smile, somewhere between, 'I didn't mean to look at you' and 'I couldn't help but look at you. ~ Becca St. John

The sun was slowly setting in the west, casting golden beams of light into the somber old room. ~ Eleanor Porter

Life is stranger than any of us expected,
There is a somber, imponderable fate.
Enigma rules, and the heart has no certainty. ~ Richard Eberhart

I think it's cool to play characters who are very joke-y and yet you can show a total serious, very somber side to them. You don't normally get that in a film - and in a [film] series especially. To be able to do that was really cool. ~ James Phelps

But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn't hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life lacking all of that.
Probably he should have regretted his decision. He had not. ~ Philip K. Dick

The flower was delicate and untouched. It possessed the potential to inspire, to serve a purpose. Yet there it lay, helpless on a disheveled plank of timber; somber, drifting, and alone. Nature meant it to live with color, swaying in the breeze and surrounded by life. But it did not uplift. It did not bring cheer as it should, drained of all light it once held. Where was the inspired affection? The friendship? The love? There was none. Darkness condemned the innocent to despair. ~ Christie Anderson

It was not really alarming at first, since the change was subtle, but I did notice that my surroundings took on a different tone at certain times: the shadows of nightfall seemed more somber, my mornings were less buoyant, walks in the woods became less zestful, and there was a moment during my working hours in the late afternoon when a kind of panic and anxiety overtook me, just for a few minutes, accompanied by a visceral queasiness. ~ William Styron

...During my first few hours in Loja, I had good fortune to run into two young Mormon missionaries who let me sleep one night in their room and three further nights at their temple. My four days in Loja were somber ones, however, not so much because of the Mormons, who didn't try to convert me (at least not very strenuously), but because of the constant rain. ~ George Meegan

Mario's high spirits soon took a somber turn. He rolled himself closer to Frank. "I need this job, but you were right. More than a job, I need a way out."
Frank had him. He was about to detour the rest of Mario's life. Build a team, deploy them, scoop up the data, get the hell out of town. Frank had left an unhappy trail of ruined technicians. Spies do that kind of shit, were his usual parting words. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

Nature reserves some of her choice rewards for days when her mood may appear to be somber. ~ Rachel Carson

Geniuses can be scintillating and geniuses can be somber, but it's that inescapable sorrowful depth that shines through-originality. ~ Jack Kerouac

The anniversary of Hiroshima, should be a day of somber reflection, not only on the terrible events of that day in 1945, but also on what they revealed: that humans, in their dedicated quest to extend their capacities for destruction, had finally found a way to approach the ultimate limit. ~ Noam Chomsky

You see that God deems it right to take from me any claim to merit for what you call my devotion to you. I have promised to remain forever with you, and now I could not break my promise if I would. The treasure will be no more mine than yours, and neither of us will quit this prison. But my real treasure is not that, my dear friend, which awaits me beneath the somber rocks of Monte Cristo, it is your presence, our living together five or six hours a day, in spite of our jailers; it is the rays of intelligence you have elicited from my brain, the languages you have implanted in my memory, and which have taken root there with all of their philological ramifications. These different sciences that you have made so easy to me by the depth of the knowledge you possess of them, and the clearness of the principles to which you have reduced them – this is my treasure, my beloved friend, and with this you have made me rich and happy. Believe me, and take comfort, this is better for me than tons of gold and cases of diamonds, even were they not as problematical as the clouds we see in the morning floating over the sea, which we take for terra firma, and which evaporate and vanish as we draw near to them. To have you as long as possible near me, to hear your eloquent speech, -- which embellishes my mind, strengthens my soul, and makes my whole frame capable of great and terrible things, if I should ever be free, -- so fills my whole existence, that the despair to which I was just on the ~ Alexandre Dumas

The perturbations, anxieties, depravations, deaths, exceptions in the physical or moral order, spirit of negation, brutishness, hallucinations fostered by the will, torments, destruction, confusion, tears, insatiabilities, servitudes, delving imaginations, novels, the unexpected, the forbidden, the chemical singularities of the mysterious vulture which lies in wait for the carrion of some dead illusion, precocious & abortive experiences, the darkness of the mailed bug, the terrible monomania of pride, the inoculation of deep stupor, funeral orations, desires, betrayals, tyrannies, impieties, irritations, acrimonies, aggressive insults, madness, temper, reasoned terrors, strange inquietudes which the reader would prefer not to experience , cants, nervous disorders, bleeding ordeals that drive logic at bay, exaggerations, the absence of sincerity, bores, platitudes, the somber, the lugubrious, childbirths worse than murders, passions, romancers at the Courts of Assize, tragedies,-odes, melodramas, extremes forever presented, reason hissed at with impunity, odor of hens steeped in water, nausea, frogs, devilfish, sharks, simoon of the deserts, that which is somnambulistic, squint-eyed, nocturnal, somniferous, noctambulistic, viscous, equivocal, consumptive, spasmodic, aphrodisiac, anemic, one-eyed, hermaphroditic, bastard, albino, pederast, phenomena of the aquarium, & the bearded woman, hours surfeited with gloomy discouragement, fantasies, acrimonies, monsters, demoral ~ Comte De Lautreamont

There is a collective as well as an individual humor inclining peoples to sadness or cheerfulness, making them see things in bright or somber lights. In fact, only society can pass a collective opinion on the value of human life; for this the individual is incompetent. ~ Emile Durkheim

He got into the tub and ran a little cold water. Then he lowered his thin, hairy body into the just-right warmth and stared at the interstices between the tiles. Sadness--he had experienced that emotion ten thousand times. As exhalation is to inhalation, he thought of it as the return from each thrust of happiness.

Lazily soaping himself, he gave examples.

When he was five and Irwin eight, their father had breezed into town with a snowstorm and come to see them where they lived with their grandparents in the small Connecticut city. Their father had been a vagabond salesman and was considered a bum by people who should know. But he had come into the closed, heated house with all the gimcrack and untouchable junk behind glass and he had smelled of cold air and had had snow in his curly black hair. He had raved about the world he lived in, while the old people, his father and mother, had clucked sadly in the shadows. And then he had wakened the boys in the night and forced them out into the yard to worship the swirling wet flakes, to dance around with their hands joined, shrieking at the snow-laden branches. Later, they had gone in to sleep with hearts slowly returning to bearable beatings. Great flowering things had opened and closed in Norman's head, and the resonance of the wild man's voice had squeezed a sweet, tart juice through his heart. But then he had wakened to a gray day with his father gone and the world walking gingerly over the somber crust of ~ Edward Lewis Wallant

Here and there, set into the somber red, were rivers of bright yellow - incandescent Amazons, meandering for thousands of miles before they lost themselves in the deserts of this dying sun. Dying? No - that was a wholly false impression, born of human experience and the emotions aroused by the hues of sunset, or the glow of fading embers. This was a star that had left behind the fiery extravagances of its youth, had raced through the violets and blues and greens of the spectrum in a few fleeting billions of years, and now had settled down to a peaceful maturity of unimaginable length. All that had gone before was not a thousandth of what was yet to come; the story of this star had barely begun. ~ Arthur C. Clarke

But it wasn't. They both knew that. Darling wasn't sure if it, or he, would ever be all right again. "Have you ever felt lost, Mari?" He folded his hands in front of him in a somber pose that was out of character for him. "Yes, I have. And I know that place of crazy where you asphyxiate every time reality crashes down and you see the nightmare that has become your life. The darkness that swallows you whole until you fear you'll never see light again." Darling paused by his side. "How did you find your way home?" "I didn't." Maris reached out and brushed a strand of Darling's hair back from his mask. "My best friend found me wandering in the darkness and carried me back to the light." Darling ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I went to see 'Phantom of the Opera' with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music ... Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time - the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music. ~ Lady Gaga

Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide.
(Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?)
Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They w ~ Don DeLillo

Pierce through the livid face of a human being at certain moments as they ponder, look behind the facade, look into the soul, look into the darkness. There, beneath the outer silence, titanic struggles are taking place. What a somber thing is this infinity that each man carries within him and against which he measures in despair what his his brain wants and what his life puts into action! ~ Victor Hugo

I don't think I'm a particularly somber human being. ~ Cass McCombs

You scare me Stella." I looked at him, frowning. "What? Why?" He looks into my eyes his voice serious. "You make me want a life I cant have." I know exactly what he means. He shakes his head his face somber. "That's the scariest thing I've ever felt. ~ Rachael Lippincott

And even to me, one who likes life, it seems butterflies and soap bubbles and whatever is of their kind among human beings know most about happiness.
To see these light, foolish, delicate, sensitive little souls fluttering
that seduces Zarathustra to tears and songs.
I would only believe in a god who knew how to dance.
And when I saw my devil, there I found him earnest, thorough, deep, somber; it was the spirit of gravity
through him all things fall.
Not by wrath does one kill, but by laughing. Up, let us kill the spirit of gravity! ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

ON THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF D-Day, I was broadcasting from the American cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach at Colleville-sur-Mer in Normandy, one of the bloodiest battlefields in American history. The cemetery is at once haunting and beautiful, with 9,386 white marble headstones in long, even lines across the manicured fields of dark green, each headstone marking the death of a brave young American. The anniversary was a somber and celebratory ~ Tom Brokaw

it occurred to me that the modern spiritual leaders of my tradition were always somber, self-important men, thickly coated in others' idea of who they were supposed to be. ~ Roland Merullo

I'm really sorry, Nathan." Her accent thickened as she stared up at him, biting her lip nervously as she wondered how much he would pout.
Nathan could go all quiet, somber, and answer her in monosyllables that drove her insane. He would glare at her.
He would watch ball games. He would come to bed late. Late. After she went to sleep. And wouldn't give her any until the next morning. It really wasn't fair.
"Nathan, please don't be mad at me . . ."
"How did you hit my truck? How? It was sitting in plain view. Plain view, Sabella." He was getting angry. He only said her full name when he was really getting angry or really, really horny. And he was not horny. Okay, this wasn't good. She could do without for days. But she didn't like it.
She stomped her foot, glaring back at him in irritation. "If it weren't for you, I would have never hit it."
"Me?" He stepped back, shaking his head fiercely. "How the hell was this my fault?"
"Because you were cutting the grass, with no shirt, in sexy jeans and boots, and seeing your tight ass striding across the lawn made me horny. You distracted me. It's all your fault. If you dress properly things like this just would not happen, Nathan . . ."
He kissed her. It wasn't a gentle, easy kiss. It was rough and ready and smack full of lust as he jerked her against him, pressing his cock into her belly as she gasped in pleasure.
"You are so spanked." He picked her up, striding across the lawn, leaving her ~ Lora Leigh

The South Col is a vast, rocky area, maybe the size of four football pitches, strewn with the remnants of old expeditions.
It was here in 1996, in the fury of the storm, that men and women had struggled for their lives to find their tents. Few had managed it. Their bodies still lay here, as cold as marble, many now partially buried beneath snow and ice.
It was a somber place: a grave that their families could never visit.
There was an eeriness to it all--a place of utter isolation; a place unvisited by all but those strong enough to reach it. Helicopters can barely land at base camp, let alone up here.
No amount of money can put a man up here. Only a man's spirit can do that.
I liked that.
The wind now blew in strong gusts over the lip of the col and ruffled the torn material of the wrecked tents.
It felt as if the mountain were daring me to proceed. ~ Bear Grylls

Ordinarily, a person leaving a courtroom with a conviction behind him would wear a somber face. But I left with a smile. I knew that I was a convicted criminal, but I was proud of my crime. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Serene was a word you could put to Brooklyn New York. Especially in the summer of 1912. Somber as a word was better. But it did not apply to Williamsburg Brooklyn. Prairie was lovely and Shenandoah had a beautiful sound but you couldn't fit those words into Brooklyn. Serene was the only word for it especially on a Saturday afternoon in summer. ~ Betty Smith

The environmental crisis is somber evidence of an insidious fraud hidden in the vaunted productivity and wealth of modern, technology-based society. This wealth has been gained by rapid short-term exploitation of the environmental system, but it has blindly accumulated a debt to nature-a debt so large and so pervasive that in the next generation it may, if unpaid, wipe out most of the wealth it has gained us. ~ Barry Commoner

I'm lost right now, Tessnia. And trust me when I tell you, I'm a mess. I'm nothing like how I used to be. I really need to get myself together. But more importantly, you don't need to be involved in my mess. You may not understand right now, but I meant what I said last night. I do believe that me staying here will cause you more harm than good," Chayse answers, his voice somber.
"I'm willing to take that chance," I say softly. ~ Jalpa Williby

In somber mood, I re-called my whole life up to this day, and my head spun with the buzzing of a hundred and one ouroboristic worms. I remembered the drinking parties that made us thirsty and the thirst that made us drink; I thought back to Sidonius recounting his endless dream; to the people who worked to be able to eat and who ate to have the strength to work; to the black thoughts I drowned with such sadness in the cask and which were reborn in different hues. Between the vicious circles of the drinking party and those of the delusory paradises, I would never again be able to choose, I could no longer be part of their revolutions, I was from that moment no more than a wasteland. ~ Rene Daumal

You were like reading a good novel. The kind were you wanted to turn every page, & never put it down... And absorb every second. But for whatever reason, that novel isn't there for me to read, & so, it's endless chapters are gone from my reach. And I don't dare to pretend to be surprised. But I do dare to wonder why.

And though it's gone, I smile because it was the best novel I ever read. In those brief moments the novel of you possessed me, mind, body, & soul alike.
I felt joy & adoration in such a degree, that if I never do again it'll be okay.

When you read a great novel, you never forget it. And you never let go of the feeling of it in your mind. The captivating nature of it. But greater than a novel, not mere words on a page, but a reality. Reality in a vivid form that can't begin to be put into words. That words, could not touch.

You're the kind of novel one would desperately want to finish. To keep near at hand & close at heart.
But it can't be. And though it's a mournful & somber thought, there's enjoyment in the knowledge that for a brief moment in time, it was there.

The novel of her, was a novel of breathtaking wonder. And if I never get to read another page, I'll cherish those I had the privilege of reading. And you can only hope that whoever reads it next, values it in the way you so know is deserved. ~ Trevor Driggers

We have said that Athos loved d'Artagnan like a child, and this somber and inflexible personage felt the anxiety of a parent for the young man. ~ Alexandre Dumas

When it came time for Chris to leave, we drove his Yukon down to the base. Chris was excited to go to war-he'd spent years training for it, after all. He was somber and serious, but also looking forward to it.
Me?
I felt as if a part of myself was leaving, and there was nothing I could do about it. I longed to be with him, but knew that our separation would be deep, and perhaps permanent. I felt trapped by fate, a prisoner of whatever inevitability the future was bringing.
We sat together in the back of the SUV, waiting until it was time for him to board the bus waiting to take him to the plane. Finally, it was time to go. Chris was wearing sunglasses, but I could see his eyes leaking tears under them.
I thought he was nervous because he was going to war and was afraid that he would die. It wasn't until years later that he straightened me out: "I was afraid you wouldn't be there when I came back. ~ Taya Kyle

It would not be until darkness had taken indisputable control over the land, until the flames of the bonfire created an unreal world of shadows, until tequila and mescal untied men from their somber selves. ~ Warren Eyster

Snowbound up here with you. Without books or business to occupy my time, I wonder what I'll do," he added with a leer.
She blushed gorgeously, but her voice was serious as she studied his face. "If things hadn't gone so well for you-if you hadn't accumulated so much wealth-you could have been happy up here, couldn't you?"
"With you?"
"Of course."
His smile was as somber as hers. "Absolutely."
"Although," he added, linking her hands behind her back and drawing her a little closer, "you may not want to remain up here when you learn your emeralds are back in their cases at Montmayne."
Her head snapped up, and her eyes shone with love and relief. "I'm so glad. When I realized Robert's story had been fabrication, it hurt beyond belief to realize I'd sold them."
"It's going to hurt more," he teased outrageously, "when you realize your bank draft to cover their cost was a little bit short. It cost me $45,000 to buy back the pieces that had already been sold, and $5,000 to buy the rest back from the jeweler you sold them to."
"That-that unconscionable thief!" she burst out. "He only gave me $5,000 for all of them!" She shook her head in despair at Ian's lack of bargaining prowess. "He took dreadful advantage of you."
"I wasn't concerned, however," Ian continued teasing, enjoying himself hugely, "because I knew I'd get it all back out of your allowance. With interest, of course. According to my figures," he said, pausing to calculate in his ~ Judith McNaught

Every night was a somber, adults-only slumber party - no giggles or whispers, just lots of coughing and farting and snoring and groaning, the sounds and smells of too many stressed-out of people packed into too small a place. ~ Tom Perrotta

You didn't always have to give it back. And in that cold, somber chapel, Dan Kelly discovered that there were some things that you could not be forgiven for, and those were the things that you carried into the next life, if there was such a place; and if there was no next life nor any God, the consequence was the same: if you were not forgiven, you would die with regret. ~ Christos Tsiolkas

Zeke was cleared by the Candor an hour ago, in a short interrogation on the eighteenth floor. It was not as somber an occasion as Tobias's and my interrogation, partly because there was no suspicious video footage implicating Zeke, and partly because Zeke is funny even when under truth serum. Maybe especially so. In any case, we came to the Gathering Place "for a 'Hey, you're not a dirty traitor!' celebration," as Uriah put it.
"Yeah, but we've been insulting you since the simulation attack," Lynn says. "And now I feel like a jerk about it."
Zeke puts his arm around Shauna. "You are a jerk, Lynn. It's part of your charm."
Lynn launches a plastic cup at him, which he deflects. Water sprays over the table, hitting him in the eye.
"Anyway, as I was saying," says Zeke, rubbing his eye, "I was mostly working on getting Erudite defectors out safely. ~ Veronica Roth

Somber Yellowstone Park and its colored hot springs, baby geysers, rainbows of bubbling mud - symbols of my passion. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

You took his guns away from him, didn't you?"
Maude asked Cash when Cash pulled up in front of the
house.
He nodded. "They're locked up in my office." His expression was somber. "But there's still a pistol and a
shotgun in the house somewhere. Crissy told me. You'd
better get all the ammunition and lock it up somewhere."
"The minute I get inside," Maude promised.
Tippy glanced from one of them to the other. "You
aren't serious," she remarked.
Cash met her eyes. "If she were my wife, that's what
Maude would be doing for me," he said flatly. "And yes,
I'm serious. Maybe Judd hasn't realized it yet, but he
won't have a life left if Christabel dies. It isn't logical, but
it's what some men do when they're out of their minds
with grief. We don't need another tragedy. ~ Diana Palmer

Haven't you got anything humorous that stays away from waters and valleys and God? I'd like to keep away from the subject of religion altogether if we can."
The chaplain was apologetic. "I'm sorry, sir, but just about all the prayers I know are rather somber in tone and make at least some passing reference to God. ~ Joseph Heller

Nature at times adds her own commentary to our actions with a kind of somber and considered eloquence, as though she were bidding us reflect. ~ Victor Hugo

His day is done.

Is done.

The news came on the wings of a wind, reluctant to carry its burden.

Nelson Mandela's day is done.

The news, expected and still unwelcome, reached us in the United States, and suddenly our world became somber.

Our skies were leadened.

His day is done.

We see you, South African people standing speechless at the slamming of that final door through which no traveller returns.

Our spirits reach out to you Bantu, Zulu, Xhosa, Boer.

We think of you and your son of Africa, your father, your one more wonder of the world.

We send our souls to you as you reflect upon your David armed with a mere stone, facing down the mighty Goliath.

Your man of strength, Gideon, emerging triumphant.

Although born into the brutal embrace of Apartheid, scarred by the savage atmosphere of racism, unjustly imprisoned in the bloody maws of South African dungeons.

Would the man survive? Could the man survive?

His answer strengthened men and women around the world.

In the Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, in Chicago's Loop, in New Orleans Mardi Gras, in New York City's Times Square, we watched as the hope of Africa sprang through the prison's doors.

His stupendous heart intact, his gargantuan will hale and hearty.

He had not been crippled by brutes, nor ~ Maya Angelou

On St. Patrick's Day, the traditional Irish family would rise early and find a solitary sprig of shamrock to put on their somber Sunday best. Then they'd spend the morning in church listening to sermons about how thankful they should be that St. Patrick saved such a bunch of ungrateful sinners. Nobody wore green clothing as it was considered an unlucky color not suitable for church. ~ Rashers Tierney

The Dark Stranger nodded in agreement knowing the time had come for the boys to know more, but it would not be tonight. He grabbed Kinsu's arm, nodded again, and then ran off into the night. With Chase and Rhee standing behind Kinsu, whose hair was briefly whipped from the air flying from the Dark Stranger's cape, they understood that they were all alone. They had no clues to a dramatic puzzle which had simply been forced upon them. "Unbelievable," said Kinsu. And they all walked away feeling somber, drained, and still wondering, who was that girl? ~ K.N. Smith

His life had been tied to the past. He'd seen himself a point on a moving wavefront, propagating through sterile history - a known past, a projectable future. But she was the breaking of the wave. Suddenly there was a beach, the unpredictable ... new life. Past and future stopped at the beach: that was how he'd set it out. But he wanted to believe it too, the same way he loved her, past all words - believe that no matter how bad the time, nothing was fixed, everything could be changed and she could always deny the dark sea at his back, love it away. And (selfishly) that from a somber youth, squarely founded on Death - along for Death's ride - he might, with her, find his way to life and to joy. ~ Thomas Pynchon

People have found her somber, but it is sometimes because her humor is so deadpan dry that it escapes many. ~ Irin Carmon

Rich colours actually look more luminous on a grey day, because they are seen against a somber background and seem to be burning with a lustre of their own. Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Every life has dark tracts and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas. ~ Alexander MacLaren

In Mexico, I first encountered the attitude that was missing from the optimistic sense of living in the United States: a tragic sense of life. Such a sense doesn't force us into a somber cone of depression and futility; it urges the opposite. The tragic sense opens a human being to the exuberant joys of the present. To laughter, carnal ity, the comical varieties of love, to music and art, to the small human glories of the day. ~ Pete Hamill

At one edge of the base, pressed between the fenceline and the sea, shimmered the pale archways and columns, the madrone and wind-shaped cypresses of the clifftop campus of College of the Surf. Against the somber military blankness at its back, here was a lively beachhead of drugs, sex, and rock and roll, the strains of subversive music day and night, accompanied by tambourines and harmonicas, reaching like fog through the fence, up the dry gulches and past the sentinel antennas, the white dishes and masts, the steel equipment sheds, finding the ears of sentries attentuated but ominous, like hostile-native sounds in a movie about white men fighting savage tribes. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Whether you are possessed of a simple heart or the ambitions of an Amazon, whether you are trying to make it to the top or just make it through tomorrow, whether you be spicy or somber, regal or roughshod - the Wild Woman belongs to you. She belongs to all women. To ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Where do we come from? Where are we going? These fundamental questions of human existence have always obsessed me, and for years I've dreamed of finding the answers." Edmond paused, his tone turning somber. "Tragically, on account of religious dogma, millions of people believe they already know the answers to these big questions. And because not every religion offers the same answers, entire cultures end up warring over whose answers are correct, and which version of God's story is the One True Story. ~ Dan Brown

Cold eyelids that hide like a jewel
Hard eyes that grow soft for an hour;
The heavy white limbs, and the cruel
Red mouth like a venomous flower;
When these have gone by with their glories,
What shall rest of thee then, what remain,
O mystic and somber Delores,
Our Lady of Pain? ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

Cadaver dissection epitomizes, for many, the transformation of the somber, respectful student into the callous, arrogant doctor. ~ Paul Kalanithi

I slid back into our booth. My pie was still there. For some reason, that seemed like it shouldn't be. Hadn't I been gone a long time? I felt like a death should resonate, like the whole diner should have felt it. The pie should have crumbled into dust by now. People should be somber. But the Goth kids still laughed over their coffee, the drunks were still drunk, and my pie refused to mourn. ~ Lish McBride

These were no ordinary celebrations. The world, devoid of color, embraced a somber gray tone, and no sunlight dared to pierce the clouds overhead. A chill in the air caressed Brad's skin as he searched within for some hope that this was just a nightmare he would awaken from. Nothing but a void of despair presented itself, and still the people rejoiced. No, these weren't ordinary celebrations. They were dark celebrations. ~ Calvin Demmer

The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness. ~ Joseph Conrad

To make a simple change of a typeface can instantly transform text which had the appearance and tone of a joyous announcement to suddenly convey that of a somber tragedy. ~ Paul Babicki

The old man was brilliant at looking somber and energetic at the same time. If he hadn't been the executive of the largest governing body in the history of the human race, he'd have made a killing promoting health drinks. ~ James S.A. Corey

The ship had come sweeping in over a dark and somber landscape, a terrain so desperately far removed from the heat and light of its parent sun, Sol, that it seemed like a map of the psychological scars of the mind of an abandoned child. ~ Douglas Adams

Night.
The beach and the sea are in darkness.
A dog passes, going toward the sea wall.
No one walks on the boardwalk, but, on the benches lining it, people sit. They relax. Are silent. Separated from one another. They do not speak.
The traveler passes. He walks slowly, he goes in the same direction as the dog.
He stops. Returns. He seems to be out for a walk. He starts off again.
His face is no longer visible.
The sea is calm. No wind.
The traveler returns. The dog does not return. The sea begins to rise, it seems. Its sounds getting closer. Muffled thudding coming from the river's many mouths. Somber sky. ~ Marguerite Duras

My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides, life has so much humor. ~ Manuel Puig

It is difficult to imagine this kind of a new world because our present world is so different. On the whole, our life is too complex, our scholarship too serious, our philosophy too somber, and our thoughts too involved. This seriousness and this involved complexity of our thought and scholarship make the present world such an unhappy one today. ~ Lin Yutang

We must, with God's help, eradicate the deadly poison of the demon of anger from the depths of our souls. So long as he dwells in our hearts and blinds the eyes of the heart with his somber disorders, we can neither discriminate what is for our good, nor achieve spiritual knowledge, nor fulfill our good intentions, nor participate in true life; and our intellect will remain impervious to the contemplation of the true, divine light; for it is written, 'Man's anger does not bring about the righteousness of God' (Jms. 1:20). ~ John Cassian

Allie." Dean leans forward and fixes me with an eerily somber stare. "This show is fucking stupid."

"I know," I say sheepishly. "But it's addictive. Trust me, one episode of this crap and you'll be hooked."

"Sorry, baby doll, but I can pretty much guarantee that's not gonna happen."

*

Dean

It happened.

God help me. I'm into this show.

I came over tonight with the single-minded purpose of working the charm and convincing Allie to get naked with me again. Instead, I'm sipping on a margarita, I've just watched two hours' worth of a French soap opera, and now I'm texting Logan to let him know I won't make it to Malone's. Because…God help me…I want to know what happens next. ~ Elle Kennedy

Catastrophes have a somber way of arranging things. ~ Victor Hugo

All through the crowd were men in uniform, sailors from the great fleet anchored in the Hudson, soldiers with divisional insignia from Massachusetts to California, wanting fearfully to be noticed, and finding the great city thoroughly fed up with soldiers unless they were nicely massed into pretty formations and uncomfortable under the weight of a pack and rifle. Through this medley Dean and Gordon wandered; the former interested, made alert by the display of humanity at its frothiest and gaudiest; the latter reminded of how often he had been one of the crown, tired, casually fed, overworked, and dissipated. To Dean the struggle was significant, young, cheerful; to Gordon it was dismal, meaningless, endless. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald