Stark Quotes

Uselessness
Let mine not be the saddest fate of all,
To live beyond my greater self; to see
My faculties decaying, as the tree
Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall
Let me hear rather the imperious call,
Which all men dread, in my glad morning time,
And follow death ere I have reached my prime,
Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall.
The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast
Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day
Is kinder than the calm that lets it last,
Unhappy witness of its own decay.
May no man ever look on me and say,
'She lives, but all her usefulness is past. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I want to be one of those people who are always to be found at home, nice restful people whom everybody likes because they give a feeling of permanence to this rushing world. ~ Freya Stark

Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at that moment, the sun shone just right though the grimy windows, but the woman, the shelves, the jars, everything in the room appeared in tones of gold and sepia, except for the painting behind the counter. From behind the shopkeeper's head, a fluorescent Mary and Jesus glared at me, their cartoon-like faces reproaching me for being there. ~ Sara Stark

It is difficult to age because society won't let you. People expect you to look how you did at the height of your fame. ~ Koo Stark

There was only one decline in church attendance, and that was in the late 1960s when the Vatican said it was not a sin to miss Mass. They said Catholics could act like Protestants, and so they did. ~ Rodney Stark

The removal of an electron from the surface of an atom - that is, the ionization of the atom - means a fundamental structural change in its surface layer. ~ Johannes Stark

I am stark sane, but my mind is erratically crazy. ~ Suman Pokhrel

It was the tale of a woman scorned, a woman locked in battle over her man, her money, her children, and her rights as a long-term wife. It was a morality tale of Biblical proportions, involving adultery and covetousness, all of it wrapped in a great big flag emblazoned with the almighty U.S. dollar - and concluding in what, on the face of it, appeared to be a most blood-curdling case of stark, premeditated murder in the first degree. Shooting them in their sleep? No soap opera writer could have concocted better. ~ Bella Stumbo

This book first arose out of a passage in [Jorge Luis] Borges, out of the laughter that shattered, as I read the passage, all the familiar landmarks of my thought - our thought that bears the stamp of our age and our geography - breaking up all the ordered surfaces and all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten with collapse our age-old distinction between the Same and the Other. This passage quotes a 'certain Chinese encyclopaedia' in which it is written that 'animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) suckling pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray dogs, (h) included in the present classification, (i) frenzied, (j) innumerable, (k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, (l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher, (n) that from a long way off look like flies'. In the wonderment of this taxonomy, the thing we apprehend in one great leap, the thing that, by means of the fable, is demonstrated as the exotic charm of another system of thought, is the limitation of our own, the stark impossibility of thinking that. ~ Michel Foucault

Many people who say they have no religion are simply saying they have no official religious affiliation. They may actually have strong personal beliefs. ~ Rodney Stark

On harsh, frigid January days, when the winds are relentless and the snow piles up around us, I often think of our small feathered friends back on the Third Line. I wonder if the old feeder is still standing in the orchard and if anyone thinks to put out a few crumbs and some bacon drippings for our beautiful, hungry, winter birds. In the stark, white landscape they provided a welcome splash of colour and their songs gave us hope through the long, silent winter. ~ Arlene Stafford-Wilson

I know that carrot is not the right word. I've
seen dragonflies and beetles, flying around, stuck together, one on the back of the other; I know it's
called mating. I know about ovipositors, for laying eggs, on leaves, on caterpillars, on the surface of the
water; they're right out on the page, clearly labeled, on the diagrams of insects my father corrects at
home. I know about queen ants, and about the female praying mantises eating the males. None of this is
much help. I think of Mr. and Mrs. Smeath, stark-naked, with Mr. Smeath stuck to the back of Mrs.
Smeath. Such an image, even without the addition of flight, will not do. ~ Margaret Atwood

I like you, Mallory. And God knows you deserve a hell of a lot better than me." He dipped his chin, laughing as he thrust his hand through his hair. "God. I suck at this. Can we just forget - "
I snapped out of it. "You like me?"
His gaze flew to mine. "Yeah, I do. And I know I've been with Paige and I'm not going to pretend that meant nothing, but it's not how I feel for you. Not remotely like how I feel for you. And it's not because of our past - because of you and I knowing each other for so long," he said, and the words kept coming out in a rush. "At first, I thought that was why - this attraction I have to you. I thought it was because of everything we'd shared. And then the night I came to your place and you fixed me up, I thought it was just this physical thing." Pink raced across his cheeks. "And it is most definitely a physical thing, but it wasn't just that. I think part of me knew that from the very first time you said my name."
Now my pulse was pounding. He liked-liked me. Oh my God, this was unexpected. This was totally unplanned. It was an infinite, vast sea of unknown.
"I know you deserve better, but I want to be better. I want to be that for you. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

As one old gentleman put it, Son, I don't care if you're stark nekkid and wear a bone in your nose. If you kin fiddle, you're all right with me. It's the music we make that counts. ~ Robert Fulghum

We love those people who give with humility, or who accept with ease. ~ Freya Stark

Grace had filled those lonely places, replacing them with laughter and conversation. She'd given him the purpose he needed there in his home to maintain his balance in a world of stark duty. ~ Christine Feehan

She loves the smell of his fur, all warm and musky and cat-spit clean. ~ Sara Stark

I love my family, I do, they just drive me stark raving mad. I had the choice of sanity-with-distance or insanity-while-home. I chose sanity. ~ Honor Raconteur

The attack on Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 is a stark reminder that our nation must remain vigilant in protecting our citizens from the threat of Al-Qaeda and similar extremist terrorist entities around the world. ~ Bob Corker

I'm making art and making decisions and editing things. I don't live my life to broadcast it into the art world; I don't see it as my life on the stage. ~ Frances Stark

Someone loved this girl, this utterly useless girl, loved her enough to go on wooing her, even though she was being paraded before all of Europe for takers. A moment of stark despair descended upon her that she would never know such love, that she would go through life sustained only by her facade of invincibility. Then she came to her senses. Love was for fools. Gigi Rowland was many things, but she was never a fool. ~ Sherry Thomas

The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite - plutocrats like the Koch Brothers -want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants. ~ Chuck Schumer

And the first thing I have got to say is, that for my own part I hold my master Don Quixote to be stark mad, though sometimes he says things that, to my mind, and indeed everybody's that listens to him, are so wise, and run in such a straight furrow, that Satan himself could not have said them better; but for all that, really, and beyond all question, it's my firm belief he is cracked. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

What Kant refers to as depression is simply this stark realization: that thought is only incidentally human. It would take a later generation of philosophers to derive the conclusion of this: that thought thinks us, not the reverse. Legend ~ Eugene Thacker

Every day, families in the United States face the stark choice between a roof over their heads and food on the table. Buying health insurance, owning a home, and saving up for college are just too far out of their reach. ~ Chris Van Hollen

There are your enemies, the Red Coats and the Tories. They are ours, or this night Molly Stark sleeps a widow! ~ John Stark

Right. But do you think I could face my children otherwise? You know what's going to happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and pray I can get Jem and Scout through it without bitterness, and most of all, without catching Maycomb's usual disease. Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand... I just hope that Jem and Scout come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town. I hope they trust me enough... Jean Louise?" My scalp jumped. I stuck my head around the corner. "Sir?" "Go to bed. ~ Harper Lee

We'll start our analysis with a truism, stark, self-evident and understated: Sometimes things do not go well. That seems to have much to do with the terrible nature of the world, with its plagues and famines and tyrannies and betrayals. But here's the rub: sometimes, when things are not going well, it's not the world that's the cause. The cause is instead that which is currently most valued, subjectively and personally. Why? Because the world is revealed, to an indeterminate degree, through the template of your values…If the world you are seeing is not the world you want, therefore, it's time to examine your values. It's time to rid yourself of your current presuppositions. It's time to let go. It might even be time to sacrifice what you love best, so that you can become who you might become, instead of staying who you are. ~ Jordan B. Peterson

Art, we are told, is a criterion of one's taste. How humiliating, should our taste turn out to be bad. Rather as though we were caught stark naked with a poor figure. ~ Ilka Chase

(P58) It is curious how, with his stark Darwinian outlook, his elevation of war to the central place in human history, and his racism, as well as his fixation on "great leaders," Churchill's worldview resembled that of his antagonist, Hitler. ~ Ralph Raico

It is because the critics are not detached that they do not see this detachment; it is because they are not looking at things in a dry light that they cannot see the difference between black and white. It is because they are in a particular mood of reaction and revolt that they have a motive for making out that all the white is dirty grey and the black not so black as it is painted. I do not say there are not human excuses for their revolt; I do not say it is not in some ways sympathetic; what I say is that it is not in any way scientific. An iconoclast may be indignant; an iconoclast may be justly indignant; but an iconoclast is not impartial. And it is stark hypocrisy to pretend that nine-tenths of the higher critics and scientific evolutionists and professors of comparative religion are in the least impartial. Why should they be impartial, what is being impartial, when the whole world is at war about whether one thing is a devouring superstition or a divine hope? ~ G.K. Chesterton

Tidiness ... makes life easier and more agreeable, does harm to no one and actually saves time and trouble to the person who practices it: there must be an ominous flaw to explain why millions of generations continue to reject it. ~ Freya Stark

America is an unusually religious nation. ~ Rodney Stark

'Up the Junction' went on to inform my love of British social realism. It was the first film I saw of this ilk, a very stark, visceral reflection of England, an England I didn't necessarily feel a part of but that I knew was out there. You could almost smell the bread and butter and cabbage. ~ Gurinder Chadha

Although it might seem paradoxical, growing up in a family of liberal-minded atheists, committed but never militant, tends to have devastating consequences. Being raised without a rigid backdrop of religious, political, or spiritual beliefs makes it hard to have a real crises later in life. There is no way forward if your point of departure is the comfortable passivity of someone who has been a self-professed agnostic since the age of twelve, without ever having considered those important - one might say grave - matters, such as God, death, love, failure, or fear. For a precocious agnostic, the virtues offered by skepticism become terrifying hands that strangle and suffocate the already rare capacity of an individual to question things. Conversely, intelligent people who grow up thinking one thing and, on reaching a certain age, realize that everything they believe is open to doubt - stark, brutal doubt - can truly enjoy a profound crises that, in the worst cases, leads them to know themselves a little better. ~ Valeria Luiselli

The more debt we owe, the wealthier we are. ~ Pete Stark

What was it Catelyn Stark had called them, that night at Bitterbridge? The knights of summer. And now it was autumn and they were falling like leaves ... ~ George R R Martin

realised where it was in the room he was looking and what it ~ Etta Stark

Damien Stark has many layers, and while I am enjoying the process of slowly revealing the deliciousness at the center of the man, I cannot deny the frustration that goes along with the territory. ~ J. Kenner

Since Stark had come back from the Otherworld, he'd been too weak and out of it to do much more than eat, sleep, and play computer games with Seoras, which was actually a super weird sight, it was like high school meets Braveheart meets Call of Duty. ~ P.C. Cast

Winters are a desolate time where all senses are wiped away, and here in Canada, this is especially true. All smells are sucked clean from the air, leaving only a harsh, icy crispness. Colours are stripped away, leaving a stark white landscape, a sky which stays black at night and gray in the day, a world of only three shades. Stay outside too long, and your hands will get so cold that they'll go numb and turn red, like the claws of a lobster. During a whiteout, even sight itself is reduced to nothingness. ~ Rebecca McNutt

FDR's struggle with illness and subsequent metal-filled life are remarkably similar to the story of another great leader who was part robot: Iron Man. FDR, much like Tony Stark, was cocky and arrogant before his life-changing diagnosis, but the years of suffering changed all of that, and he emerged more humble, more fearless, and ready to defend America. Also, FDR wore iron braces and used a wheelchair, which, for the purposes of this comparison, is exactly like a well-armed robot suit. ~ Daniel O'Brien

This is one of the charms of the desert, that removing as it does nearly all the accessories of life, we see the thin thread of necessities on which our human existence is suspended ... ~ Freya Stark

The man had a hand down between her legs, and he must have been hurting her there, because the woman started to moan, low in her throat. ~ George R R Martin

You little fruitcake, you little fruitcake, I said you are a fruitcake. ~ Pete Stark

Be careful you don't cut yourself. The edges are sharp enough to shave with.'
'Girls don't shave', Arya said.
'Maybe they should. Have you ever seen the septa's legs? ~ George R R Martin

Rachel shook her head, as if casting out the memories from her mind. Something he'd been unable to do in one hundred and ninety-eight years. Memories, painful and stark, failed to retreat, instead they clung to him like a Rottweiler to a bone. ~ D.A. Rhine

Your real progressives are never fair: they are never sufficiently neutral. ~ Freya Stark

While the culture is constantly focused on fluff and positivity, God's Word offers not just a competing worldview but a contrary one. The Bible is not some retouched photo of the human condition, sanitized to save everyone the heartache of reality. The Bible brings far more than a smiley preacher with platitudes that fade before sunset. The Scriptures bring stark reality, the depravity of the human heart apart from God. His Word declares the dangers of sin using the lives of men and women who needed a front-row seat to learn that all sin brings suffering. These real people are not presented to us as perfect but as those whom God was working on. ~ James MacDonald

I have no reason to go, except that I have never been, and knowledge is better than ignorance. What better reason could there be for travelling? ~ Freya Stark

Standing, Rider lifted his arms and stretched. His shirt rode up, baring a sliver of his stomach. My gaze dropped and focused in. His lower stomach was unbelievably taut. Defined.
Nice.
Very nice.
Cheeks flushing, I looked away and caught Hector's knowing gaze. Crap. I needed to be better about checking out guys. Like incognito style. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

On the whole, age comes more gently to those who have some doorway into an abstract world-art, or philosophy, or learning-regions where the years are scarcely noticed and the young and old can meet in a pale truthful light. ~ Freya Stark

From sublime affairs of state to the stark and vulgar popular culture of our own contemporary lives, let's make this descent into the lower registers together and recognize the good, nasty fun of 'Gone Girl,' Chicago writer Gillian Flynn's novel about the mysterious disappearance of a clever and deceptive young Midwestern housewife. ~ Alan Cheuse

America's still-segregated modern life is marked by three realities. First, geographic segregation has meant that - although places like Ferguson and Baltimore may seem like extreme examples - most white Americans continue to live in locales that insulate them from the obstacles facing many majority-black communities.21 Second, this legacy, compounded by social self-segregation, has led to a stark result: the overwhelming majority of white Americans don't have a single close relationship with a person who isn't white. Third, there are virtually no American institutions positioned to resolve these persistent problems of systemic and social segregation. ~ Robert P. Jones

The string is a stark data structure and everywhere it is passed there is much duplication of process. It is a perfect vehicle for hiding information. ~ Alan J. Perlis

We can in fact first place the beam of rays of moving positive atomic ions in a plane perpendicular to the axis in which we see the spectral lines emitted by them. ~ Johannes Stark

Advertisement ... has brought our disregard for truth into the open without even a figleaf to cover it. ~ Freya Stark

When the guy with asthma finally came in from the fire escape, Parker rabbit-punched him and took his gun away. ~ Richard Stark

Compulsive behavior occurs when the urge to act out is greater than our will to say no. Recovery then, is the process of reversing that equation. ~ Roger Stark

If the experimental physicist has already done a great deal of work in this field, nevertheless the theoretical physicist has still hardly begun to evaluate the experimental material which may lead him to conclusions about the structure of the atom. ~ Johannes Stark

We are a long way from getting back the jobs lost since President Bush took office. ~ Pete Stark

We sealed my father's grave on a day of stark contrasts, of black against white, and it was the last time I'd ever find myself in a place of such extremes. Because in the months after the dirt fell on the coffin, my life began to shift to shades of gray, almost like the universe had taken a big stick and stirred up the whole scene at that cemetery, mixing up everything and repainting my world. ~ Beth Fantaskey

And then the years were gone, and he was back at Winterfell once more, wearing a quilted leather coat in place of mail and plate. His sword was not made of wood, and it was Robb who stood facing him, not Iron Emmett.
Every morning they had trailed together, since they were big enough to walk; Snow and Stark, spinning and slashing about the wards of Winterfell, shouting and laughing, sometimes crying when there was no one else to see. They were not little boys when they fought, but knights and mighty heroes. "I'm Prince Aemon the Dragonknight," Jon would call out, and Robb would shout back, "Well, I'm Florian the Fool." Or Robb would say, "I'm the Young Dragon," and Jon would reply, "I'm Ser Ryam Redwyne."
That morning he called it first. "I'm Lord of Winterfell!" he cried, as he had a hundred times before. Only this time, this time, Robb had answered, "You can't be Lord of Winterfell, you're bastard-born. My lady mother says you can't ever be the Lord of Winterfell. ~ George R R Martin

When a brother is given the right to pass into the third life as a father, then he chooses his greatest rival or his truest friend to give him passage. You. Speaker - ever since I first learned Stark and read The Hive Queen and the Hegemon, I waited for you. I said many times to my father, Rooter, of all humans he is the one who will understand us. Then Rooter told me when your starship came, that it was you and the hive queen aboard that ship, and I knew then that you had come to give me passage, if only I did well."
"You did well, Human. ~ Orson Scott Card

When a fresh-faced guy in a Chevy offered him a lift, Parker told him to go to hell. ~ Richard Stark

The stark truth is that as long as the welfare state makes it possible for young women - or teenage girls - to have children without a husband and survive without a job, out-of-wedlock births will remain ruinously high, and the inner city will continue to be marked by crime, poverty, and despair. ~ David Boaz

I wish you always the joyous summer you deserve and blame you not for fleeing the stark winter you saw in me.
-Stanton Horne, Lord Wyndham (in his letter to Lady Alicia) ~ Celeste Bradley

How...how do you feel about me?"
"I think it's pretty obvious."
"Let's just say I need a detailed account."
His lashes lifted and his eyes met mine. "I can do that for you."
"Okay." I leaned toward him.
"I never once stopped thinking about you when you were taken away. Four years. All I could hope was that you were in a good place. Never expected you to walk into school. Didn't even allow myself to dream about that. And then you did, and seeing you blew me away. You were just like I remembered, but different. The hints of the girl I saw in you when we were younger were now right in front of me. The moment you said my name - the moment you hugged me I knew." Rider reached between us, folding his hand around mine. "I knew I'd fall in love with you and I did. I love you, Mallory."
My lips parted on an inhale. "What?"
"I love you, and not the kind of love we had for each other when we were younger, you know? Paige knows that. So does Hector. So did Jayden. I love you. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

A stark sense of isolation encloses anyone who looks outward for validation. ~ Gina Barreca

Those who belong to megachurches display as high a level of personal commitment as do those who attend small congregations. ~ Rodney Stark

To me, a king is a lighthouse. A guide who can cast his glow across his kingdom and bring every last one of us out of the shadows. A beacon who we can look up to when the world seems lost. A bridge who can unite us when our differences seem to stark to reconcile. Tonight, we need a king who is all of those things. A king who can look each of you in the eye and make you feel that you won't just fight for him or his kingdom, but you'll fight for our way of life. ~ Soman Chainani

By then Ser Gregor Clegane was in position at the head of the lists. He was huge, the biggest man that Eddard Stark had ever seen. Robert Baratheon and his brothers were all big men, as was the Hound, and back at Winterfell there was a simpleminded stableboy named Hodor who dwarfed them all, but the knight they called the Mountain That Rides would have towered over Hodor. He was well over seven feet tall, closer to eight, with massive shoulders and arms thick as the trunks of small trees. His destrier seemed a pony in between his armored legs, and the lance he carried looked as small as a broom handl ~ George R R Martin

In white, everything was vividly stark, like those line drawings in which everyone's black hair seems to literally to grow from the paper. ~ Liza Dalby

This is excellence - the following of anything for its own sake and with its own integrity ... ~ Freya Stark

Bran's father sat solemnly on his horse, long brown hair stirring in the wind. His closely trimmed beard was shot with white, making him look older than his thirty-five years. He had a grim cast to his grey eyes this day, and he seemed not at all the man who would sit before the fire in the evening and talk softly of the age of heroes and the children of the forest. He had taken off Father's face, Bran thought, and donned the face of Lord Stark of Winterfell. There ~ George R R Martin

That power he had to deplete things before getting them, that stark premonition he had of "afterward" ...Before taking the first step toward action, he had already tasted the saturation and sorrow that follow victories... ~ Clarice Lispector

I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and children collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diphtheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand propping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentery which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross a ~ Imperial War Museum

The financial crisis is a stark reminder that transparency and disclosure are essential in today's marketplace. ~ Jack Reed

We are surrounded with people who think that what we have been doing for that one-fortieth of a second can go on indefinitely. They are considered normal, but they are stark, raving mad. ~ John McPhee

American churches work very hard at reaching out to people to bring them in. ~ Rodney Stark

Alyn carried the Stark banner. When she saw him rein in beside Lord Beric to exchange words, it made Sansa feel ever so proud. Alyn was handsomer than Jory had been; he was going to be a knight one day. The Tower of the Hand ~ George R R Martin

What if the wolves come?" – Lommy Greenhands

"Yield." – Arya Stark ~ George R.R. Martin

An ocean of ink in a single drop,
Trembling at the tip of my brush.
Poised above stark white paper,
A universe waits for existence. ~ Lao-Tzu

The Stark River flowed around the oxbow at Murrayville the way blood flowed through Margo Crane's heart. ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell

There was colour everywhere you looked. Colour and beauty and she understood how desperately Lockie would have missed his home. Under the table in that cold stark kitchen he would have held on to what he had known all his life and it would have helped him hold on to himself. That was what you did when you couldn't see a way out; you held on to the past, hoping it would become the future. You grabbed on to the good stuff and tried to believe that everything would be okay again. It was stupid but it was human nature. ~ Nicole Trope

The histories and tragedies of Shakespeare that Lincoln loved most dealt with themes that would resonate to a president in the midst of civil war: political intrigue, the burdens of power, the nature of ambition, the relationship of leaders to those they governed. The plays illuminated with stark beauty the dire consequences of civil strife, the evils wrought by jealousy and disloyalty, the emotions evoked by the death of a child, the sundering of family ties or love of country. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Stark though he heard Seoras mutter,"Arrogant feckr," at the same time Sgiach whispered, "Interesting. ~ Kristin Cast

The wolf blood, Arya remembered now. I'll be as strong as Robb, I said I would. She took a deep breath, then lifted the broomstick in both hands and brought down across her knee. It broke with a loud crack, and she threw the pieces aside. 'I am a direwolf, and done with the wooden teeth. ~ George R R Martin

I have been brought up open-minded. If I didn't know any people from other countries, I'd think everyone was evil based on news stories. But I know a lot of people, and know that there is no such thing as stark good and evil. Isn't it possible there is the same amount of evil everywhere? ~ Marjane Satrapi

There are many critics who think the megachurches thrive on people who enjoy dramatic Sunday services with fine music but don't wish to become very 'religious' on a day-to-day basis - that the megachurch appeal is a mile wide and an inch deep. ~ Rodney Stark

I knew how he felt, how it was like being swallowed by winter, so that even your insides were too stark and too cold. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

What you end up experiencing is really a personal presentation of the world according to you, rather than the stark, unfiltered experience of what is really out there. This mental manipulation of the outer experience allows you to buffer reality as it comes in. ~ Michael Singer

His eyes met mine and the rest of the room faded away. ―I'm always going to keep your heart safe, even if mine has to stop beating for that to happen,‖ he told me softly. ~ P.C. Cast

Don't run away from the world. The world is God. Don't run towards the world. God is the void. Don't be afraid of the complexities of this life, nor the stark simplicity of death. ~ Frederick Lenz

During all that time I didn't see Willie. I didn't see him again until he announced in the Democratic primary in 1930. But it wasn't a primary. It was hell among the yearlings and the Charge of the Light Brigade and Saturday night in the back room of Casey's saloon rolled into one, and when the dust cleared away not a picture still hung on the walls. And there wasn't any Democratic party. There was just Willie, with his hair in his eyes and his shirt sticking to his stomach with sweat. And he had a meat ax in his hand and was screaming for blood. In the background of the picture, under a purplish tumbled sky flecked with sinister white like driven foam, flanking Willie, one on each side, were two figures, Sadie Burke and a tallish, stooped, slow-spoken man with a sad, tanned face and what they call the eyes of a dreamer. The man was Hugh Miller, Harvard Law School, Lafayette Escadrille, Croix de Guerre, clean hands, pure heart, and no political past. He was a fellow who had sat still for years, and then somebody (Willie Stark) handed him a baseball bat and he felt his fingers close on the tape. He was a man and was Attorney General. And Sadie Burke was just Sadie Burke.

Over the brow of the hill, there were, of course, some other people. There were, for instance, certain gentlemen who had been devoted to Joe Harrison, but who, when they discovered there wasn't going to be any more Joe Harrison politically speaking, had had to hunt up a new friend. The new friend ha ~ Robert Penn Warren

He caught the first man in the back of the knee before they even knew he was there, and the heavy axehead split flesh and bone like rotten wood. Logs that bleed, Tyrion thought inanely as the second man came for him. Tyrion ducked under his sword, lashed out with the axe, the man reeled backward ... and Catelyn Stark stepped up behind him and opened his throat. The horseman remembered an urgent engagement elsewhere and galloped off suddenly. ~ George R R Martin

Surely, of all the wonders of the world, the horizon is the greatest. ~ Freya Stark

If one were given a single window from which to look upon the changing Eastern world, it should face, I think, the road. ~ Freya Stark

The main necessity on both sides of a revolution is kindness, which makes possible the most surprising things. To treat one's neighbor as oneself is the fundamental maxim for revolution. ~ Freya Stark

You never know what to expect on encountering royalty. I've seen 'em stark naked except for wings of peacock feathers (Empress of China), giggling drunk in the embrace of a wrestler (Maharani of the Punjab), voluptuously wrapped in wet silk (Queen of Madagascar), wafting to and fro on a swing (Rani of Jhansi), and tramping along looking like an out-of-work charwoman (our own gracious monarch). ~ George MacDonald Fraser