Sway Quotes

Though he was gone, Stairway to Heaven lingered in the gentle breeze. Sartre and Freya, while holding hands, began to sway back and forth until they found themselves wrapped in each other's arms. Starting in Gimli, everyone followed their lead. Soon, across the whole world, and like the last song at a high school homecoming in the late 70s, people slow danced with each other. ~ Dylan Callens

If we have no idea what we believe in, we'll go along with anything. Truth takes courage. Courage to stand up for what we believe in. Not necessarily in a confrontational way, but in a gentle yet firm way. Like an oak tree, able to sway gently in the wind, but strongly rooted to the ground. ~ A.C. Ping

White-crested waves crash on the shore. The masts sway violently, every which way. In the gray sky the gulls are circling like white flakes. Rain squalls blow past like gray slanting sails, and blue gaps open in the sky. The air brightens.
A cold silvery evening. The moon is overhead, and down below, in the water; and all around it-a wide frame of old, hammered, scaly silver. Etched on the silver-silent black fishing boats, tiny black needles of masts, little black men casting invisible lines into the silver. And the only sounds are the occasional plashing of an oar, the creaking of an oarlock, the springlike leap and flip-flop of a fish. ("The North") ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

The fossil fuel industry commands outsize sway over U.S. politics, markets, and democracy. I knew these companies were formidable, but when I served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, I got a close up view of how the industry disregards government safeguards. ~ Frances Beinecke

I have tried to find a configuration of comfort for you. A word, a sentence, a paragraph that would make you feel better, validated, vindicated, justified in your needs and wants. (...) You are not alone in this need for more, or in falling prey to the sway of expectation. Every person the world over has a ideal. These quintessential assumptions affect every relationship we cultivate, be it family, friendships or even romantic bonds. The truth of the matter is that we cannot hold people to our pie-in-the-sky notions. ~ Tamara Thiel

I questioned the faithful of all communions; I particularly sought the society of clergymen, who are the depositories of the various creeds and have a personal interest in their survival ... all thought the main reason for the quiet sway of religion over their country was the complete separation of church and state. I have no hesitation in stating that throughout my stay in America I met nobody, lay or cleric, who did not agree about that. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

You need some help, Rosie?"
His footsteps quicken behind me, and before I can respond, I feel his calloused hands on my waist. I accidently slide back against his chest and inhale the scent that has always clung to his whole family - something like forests, damp leaves, and sunshine. I suppose when your father is a woodsman you're bound to carry the scent of oak in your veins. One breath is all I get the chance for, though; he kicks the door open and sets me down on the front stoop, then takes a step back. I turn to face him, hoping to thank him for the help and in the same sentence admonish him for carrying me like a little girl.
Instead, I smile. He's still Silas - Silas who left a year ago, the boy just a little older than my sister. His eyes are still sparkling and expressive, hair still the brown-black color of pine bark, body broad-shouldered and a little too willowy for his features. He's still there, but it's as if someone new has been layered on top of him. Someone older and stronger who isn't looking a me as if I'm Scarlett's kid sister . . . someone who makes me feel dizzy and quivery. How did this happen?
Calm down. It's just Silas. Sort of.
"You're staring," he says cautiously, looking worried.
"Oh. Um, sorry," I say, shaking my head. Silas shoves his hands into his pockets with a familiar sway. "It's just been a while, that's all."
"Yeah, no kidding. You're heavier than I remember."
I frown, mortified.
"Oh, no, wait. I di ~ Jackson Pearce

I have increasingly become conversant with Pythagoras' and Goethe's idea of a primordial music, not perceptible to the sensuous ear, but sounding and soaring throughout the cosmos. Tracing it to such exalted origins, I begin to understand more deeply the essence of our art and its elemental power over the human soul. Man, being a creature of Nature and subject to the cosmic influences that inform all earthly beings, must needs have been under the sway of that music from his earliest days; his organism reverberated with its vibrations and received it's rhythmic impulses. ~ Bruno Walter

The wooden shelves were tall and packed with worn covers of books read many times over. Pages were yellowed and paperbacks had arched spines like old sway-backed horses. It was an old folks' home for secondhand books, with that smell of old newsprint and slightly musty wood smell. ~ Nathan Fillion

The fastest, cleanest, most joyful way to break out of your own box is by dancing. I'm not talking about doing the stand-and-sway. I'm talking about dancing so deep, so hard, so full of the beat that you are nothing but the dance and the beat and the sweat and the heat. ~ Gabrielle Roth

My mouth crashes onto hers, and as our bodies sway in time to the music, our tongues dance to a rhythm that's all their own. Spencer tastes of liquor and spearmint gum. She smells like heaven. ~ Heather M. Orgeron

We must not allow our emotions to hold sway over our minds. Rather, we must seek to let the truth of God rule our minds. Our emotions must become subservient to the truth. ~ Jerry Bridges

Recognizing that the world is governed by a minority, the sexually active, and that they hold sway of a huge majority of the nonsexual, those people too young or too old or too poor or too homely or sick or crazy or powerless to be able to afford sexual partners (or the luxury of systematic, sustained and shared introspection, so sexual in its own way). All advertisements and films and songs are addressed to sexuals, to their rash whims and finicky tastes. ~ Edmund White

Things I love about spring are these:
Blooming flowers on fruit-bearing trees.
Fire-red tulips - their first reveal -
Followed by sun-yellow daffodils.

Trees acquiring new coats of green.
Natural waterfalls glistening.
The chirps and melodies of birds.
Throaty ribbits of frogs overheard.

A passing whiff of mint to smell,
Oregano and basil as well.
Colorful butterflies with wings.
Fuzzy, industrious bees that sting.

Sunlight waning late in the day.
Warm breezes causing willows to sway.
Most of all, a sense of things new,
Including budding feelings for you. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I don't like it when Christianity and western cultures are used as propaganda to sway impoverished Muslims into becoming self-detonating radicals. ~ Tucker Elliot

The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway. ~ George Washington

Once launched in the dizzy path of jealousy, lovers invariably give full sway to their imaginations and entertain the wildest ideas. ~ Eugene Sue

Everything looked the same every morning: all in order and just the same. It was in the nights that the difference held sway and there was no comfort for lost and lonely things. ~ Alice Thomas Ellis

The fact is that you're never gonna believe any of the reviews, because the movie is to you what it is to you. No one's ever gonna sway you from what you feel about it. ~ Campbell Scott

Rapture

I can feel she has got out of bed.
That means it is seven a.m.
I have been lying with eyes shut,
thinking, or possibly dreaming,
of how she might look if, at breakfast,
I spoke about the hidden place in her
which, to me, is like a soprano's tremolo,
and right then, over toast and bramble jelly,
if such things are possible, she came.
I imagine she would show it while trying to conceal it.
I imagine her hair would fall about her face
and she would become apparently downcast,
as she does at a concert when she is moved.
The hypnopompic play passes, and I open my eyes
and there she is, next to the bed,
bending to a low drawer, picking over
various small smooth black, white,
and pink items of underwear. She bends
so low her back runs parallel to the earth,
but there is no sway in it, there is little burden, the day has hardly begun.
The two mounds of muscles for walking, leaping, lovemaking,
lift toward the east - what can I say?
Simile is useless; there is nothing like them on earth.
Her breasts fall full; the nipples
are deep pink in the glare shining up through the iron bars
of the gate under the earth where those who could not love
press, wanting to be born again.
I reach out and take her wrist
and she falls back into bed and at once starts unbuttoning my pajamas.
Later, when I open my eyes, there she is again,
~ Galway Kinnell

A child's (or an adult's) nervous system may detect danger or a threat to life when the child enters a new environment or meets a strange person. Cognitively, there is no reason for them to be frightened. But often, even if they understand this, their bodies betray them. Sometimes this betrayal is private; only they are aware that their hearts are beating fast and contracting with such force that they start to sway. For others, the responses are more overt. They may tremble. Their faces may flush, or perspiration may pour from their hands and forehead. Still others may become pale and dizzy and feel precipitously faint. ~ Stephen W. Porges

A little rule, a little sway,
A sunbeam in a winter's day,
Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave. ~ John Dyer

Whatever has not come under the sway of man is wild. In this sense original and independent men are wild - not tamed and broken by society. ~ Henry David Thoreau

As I said earlier it is most surprising that the kingdom of then world should have come under the sway of a species of monkey, and there is reason to suppose that there were other claimants to the throne. ("The Shadmock") ~ R. Chetwynd-Hayes

The key word in her mind was home. Home is the one place where your own priorities hold sway. At home, you decide how you spend your time, how you share your space, and how you manage your possessions. Away from home, you don't. This loss of freedom was what people like Lou Sanders and Wilson's mother, Jessie, dreaded. Wilson ~ Atul Gawande

Courage gives a leader the ability to stand straight and not sway, no matter which way the wind blows. ~ Mike Krzyzewski

Some people are like branches. They sway away even with a gentle breeze. Others, the ones like roots, can only be shaken if there is a hurricane.

Stay with latter - they keep the relationship stable. And, do remember not to stir the hurricane by lies or deceit.
#Stability ~ Saru Singhal

[T]he kingdom of God ... is to be a political institution that shall hold sway over all the earth; to which all other governments will be subordinate and by which they will be dominated. ~ B. H. Roberts

Delhi was once a paradise, Where Love held sway and reigned; But its charm lies ravished now And only ruins remain. No ~ William Dalrymple

How often has an inspired notion been misinterpreted and obscured by later scribes and interpreters … who then created stodgy traditions and rigid dogmas? This happens to religions, cultures and teachings and, as we will see, to individuals on their own interpretations of what is true or not. From the trivial to the profound, opinions have their say, and short sighted viewpoints have their sway. Fanatics have been shortened to fans. It is always good to know the origins of words, ideas and beliefs. ~ Stephen Poplin

Muhammad professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other - beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

It is marriage, perhaps, which had given man the best of his freedom, given him his little kingdom of his own within the big kingdom of the state ... It is a true freedom because it is a true fulfilment, for man, woman and children. Do we then want to break marriage? If we do break it, it means we all fall to a far greater extent under the direct sway of the State. ~ D.H. Lawrence

The believer caught between the flesh and Spirit is also caught between death and life. That is what happens when God intervenes in a human life. That intervention does not necessarily bring tranquility. In fact, it is more likely to bring tension and conflict. It is the life surrendered to the flesh which lacks inner conflict, for the decline through sin to death can be so easy. It is when the Spirit enters a life to contest the sway of sin and counter the weakness of the flesh that conflict ensues. The presence of moral conflict is a sign of the Spirit presence, not the Spirit's absence. ~ James D.G. Dunn

A thing which has lost its idea is like the man who has lost his shadow, and it must either fall under the sway of madness or perish. ~ Jean Baudrillard

Grinning, she hovered over him. Then, like a fist closing around a doorknob, her grin closed around him. With her lips, she turned the knob first one way and then the other: left, right, open, shut; left, right, open, shut. The knob did not squeak. In fact, Wiggs was unusually quiet.

Now, falling into rhythm, she sucked the knob from its axle, sucked the axle from its door, the door from its hinges. Out onto the lawn, tempo increasing, she sucked up the flagstone walk, the rosebushes, the petunia bed, the sprinkler, the driveway, and the small Japanese car parked in the driveway: oh, what a feeling! Toyota! Wiggs moaned as the neighborhood disappeared.

The towers of the city began to sway, and soon, the planet itself fell victim to the force, swelling at its equator, throbbing at its poles. It wobbled violently on its axis, once, twice, then exploded. The Big Bang theory, proven at last. Continuing to impersonate a black hole, she pulled in every drop and particle – she'd never had a man in such entirety – and it wasn't until the final spasm had subsided and the cosmos was at peace that she loosened her grip and, lips glistening like the Milky Way, looked up to see – the legs of a third party standing there. ~ Tom Robbins

But if my forces are not enough, I am hardly the one to relent, I'll plead for the help I need, wherever it may be - if I cannot sway the heavens, I'll wake the powers of hell! ~ Virgil

I could not tame my nature down; for he
Must serve who fain would sway -- and soothe -- and sue --
And watch all time -- and pry into all place --
And be a living lie -- who would become
A mighty thing amongst the mean, and such
The mass are; I disdained to mingle with
A herd, though to be leader -- and of wolves.
The lion is alone, and so am I. ~ George Gordon Byron

There is no doubt that the resistance of the conscious and unconscious ego operates under the sway of the pleasure principle: it seeks to avoid the unpleasure which would be produced by the liberation of the repressed. ~ Sigmund Freud

How fit he is to sway That can so well obey. ~ Andrew Marvell

That seemed to be, if anything, the power of writing - to hold sway over memory, making it public, keeping it private, possibly, even, keeping it secret from oneself - ~ Samuel R. Delany

Implied Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway, And by her yielded, by him best receiv'd,- Yielded with coy submission, modest pride, And sweet, reluctant, amorous delay. ~ John Milton

One thing with Sway, when things are starting to press in around you and your mood is as close to shit as it can get, Sway always makes the world a little bit brighter. ~ Harper Sloan

I prithee gentle friend,
Let thy fair wisdom, not thy passions, sway
In this uncivil and unjust extent
Against thy peace. ~ William Shakespeare

Monod proposed an analogy: Just as the biosphere stands above the world of nonliving matter, so an "abstract kingdom" rises above the biosphere. The denizens of this kingdom? Ideas. Ideas have retained some of the properties of organisms. Like them, they tend to perpetuate their structure and to breed; they too can fuse, recombine, segregate their content; indeed they too can evolve, and in this evolution selection must surely play an important role. Ideas have "spreading power," he noted - "infectivity, as it were" - and some more than others. An example of an infectious idea might be a religious ideology that gains sway over a large group of people. The American neurophysiologist Roger Sperry had put forward a similar notion several years earlier, arguing that ideas are "just as real" as the neurons they inhabit. Ideas have power, he said. ~ James Gleick

So powerfully does fortune appear to sway the destinies of men, putting a silver spoon into one man's mouth, and a wooden one into another's, that some of the most sagacious of men, as Cardinal Mazarin and Rothschild, seem to have been inclined to regard luck as the first element of worldly success; experience, sagacity, energy, and enterprise as nothing, if linked to an unlucky star. ~ William Mathews

I had written the sentence, 'You mustn't think that the evolution that gave rise to us was the only evolutionary possibility on this planet ... that cultural developments could be shaped through the mediation of another animal species. If the biological conditions were favorable, some civilization not inferior to our own could arise in the depths of the sea ... Would it do the same stupid things mankind has done? Would it invite the same historical calamities? What would we say if some animal other than man declared that its education and its numbers gave it the sole right to occupy the entire world and hold sway over all creation? ~ Karel Capek

Let's go out to the parking lot so you can get some air," he says, putting an arm around me and hustling me out the door and through the restaurant.
We step outside, and I sway on my feet a little. Peter's trying not to smile. "You're drunk."
"I guess I'm a weightlight!"
"Lightweight." He pinches my cheeks.
"Right. Weightlight. I mean, lightweight." Why is that so funny? I can't stop laughing. But then I see the way he is looking at me, with such tenderness, and I stop. I don't feel like laughing anymore. I feel like crying. Look at the way he made my dad's bachelor party so special. Look at all the ways he loves me so well. I have to love him back just as much. ~ Jenny Han

For the first time, he allowed himself to think of the day when they might part, of what would come of her. He could not imagine a day without hearing the soft, sultry sound of her voice, of smelling roses and finding himself completely distracted by her scent, by the gentle sway of her hips, the soft brush of her hair against his skin. Her smiles alone were worth a king's ransom.
He would send her into a world where a hundred men would be eager to snatch up what he had tossed away so carelessly. They would not care if she ever smiled. Aye, he knew what would become of her. But what would become of him? ~ Elizabeth Elliott

Darkness holds eternal sway over he who cannot first find the light within himself. ~ Melissa McPhail

As the wind swelled, my tree started to sway. Almost like a human body it swung back and around, gently at first, then more and more wildly. While the swaying intensified, so did my fears that the trunk might snap and hurl me to the ground. But in time my confidence returned. Amazed at how the tree could be at once so flexible and so sturdy, I held on tight as it bent and waved, twisted and swirled, slicing curves and arcs through the air. With each graceful swing, I felt less a creature of the land and more a part of the wind itself.
"The rain began falling, it's sound merging with the splashing river and the singing trees. Branches streamed like waterfalls of green. Tiny rivers cascaded down every trunk, twisting through moss meadows and bark canyons. All the while, I rode out the gale. I could not have felt wetter. I could not have felt freer.
"When, at last, the storm subsided, the entire world seemed newly born. Sunbeams danced on rain-washed leaves. Curling columns of mist rose from every glade. The forest's colors shown more vivid, its smells struck more fresh. And I understood, for the first time in my life, that the Earth was always being remade, that life was always being renewed. That it may have been the afternoon of this particular day, but it was still the very morning of Creation. ~ T.A. Barron

It is in suffering that we are withdrawn from the sway of time and mere things, and find ourselves in the presence of profounder truth. ~ John Hart

The Westerly Wind asserting his sway from the south-west quarter is often like a monarch gone mad, driving forth with wild imprecations the most faithful of his courtiers to shipwreck, disaster, and death. ~ Joseph Conrad

For better or worse, intelligence can come to nothing when emotions hold sway. ~ Daniel Goleman

There will be sway. ~ Lori Lansens

I praise the Lord, the Sovereign of the royal realm, Who has extended his sway over the tract of the world. ~ Taliesin

Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall ?

Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly !

What though Death at times steps in
And calls our Best away ?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway ?

Yet hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair ! ~ Charlotte Bronte

It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? ~ Bram Stoker

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway about the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved. ~ Bertrand Russell

The enemy uses lies to confuse people and fill them with anxiety and fear. The apostle John said, "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one" (1 John 5:19). The enemy's lies completely mess up our thinking and weaken us if we believe them. Every day we must combat his lies with God's truth. ~ Stormie O'martian

17. We live on this earth till we die one day
Though we crave to live, death doth make its sway
None can stop it, thou nor I from its way
Nor tears of kith and kin keeps it away ~ Manuel Newton-Management Consultant And Poet MA M.Com LLB ICWA FIBAM FIMM Etc

The taste for luxury, the love of war, the sway of fashion, and the most superficial as well as the deepest passions of the human heart, co-operated ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Whenever I see the alcove of a tastefully built Japanese room, I marvel at our comprehension of the secrets of shadows, our sensitive use of shadow and light. For the beauty of the alcove is not the work of some clever device. An empty space is marked off with plain wood and plain walls, so that the light drawn into its forms dim shadows within emptiness. There is nothing more. And yet, when we gaze into the darkness that gathers behind the crossbeam, around the flower vase, beneath the shelves, though we know perfectly well it is mere shadow, we are overcome with the feeling that in this small corner of the atmosphere there reigns complete and utter silence; that here in the darkness immutable tranquility holds sway. ~ Junichiro Tanizaki

The train will not find you. You must find the train, its pulse, its way of being beyond obvious rock and sway. The train's pulse is deeper than movement. If you listen, you will hear the song of the train, and when you find the song, you will find the engine, the heart, the blood, the pulse. This is how we create. ~ Cathleen Margaret

He let go of her hand, and she got up to grab her phone. He watched her every move, cataloging the way she still favored her right ankle and the way her ass wiggled in her jeans.


A smile teased the corner of his mouth. He'd spent many hours rebuilding the theater, and the times she'd been there, he'd never noticed her hips having such a sexy sway. If he didn't know better, he'd think she was toying with him.


She came back to him with her phone in hand. "Ready?"


Oh hell yeah, he was ready. ~ Lisa Kessler

I'm trying to decide
Which way to go
I think I made a wrong turn back there somewhere
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Tried to move but I lost my way
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Stopped to watch my emotions sway
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Knew the toll, but I would not pay
Didn't cha know, didn't cha know
Cause you never know where the cards may lay
Time to save the world
Where in the world is all the time
So many things I still don't know
So many times I've changed my mind
Guess I was born to make mistakes
But I ain't scared to take the weight
So when I stumble off the path
I know my heart will guide me back ~ Erykah Badu

Wisdom is the only thing which can relieve us from the sway of the passions and the fear of danger, and which can teach us to bear the injuries of fortune itself with moderation, and which shows us all the ways which lead to tranquility and peace. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The Islamic State's ideology exerts powerful sway over a certain subset of the population. Life's hypocrisies and inconsistencies vanish in its face. Musa Cerantonio and the Salafis I met in London are unstumpable: No question I posed left them stuttering. They lectured me garrulously and, if one accepts their premises, convincingly. To call them un-Islamic appears, to me, to invite them into an argument that they would win. If they had been froth-spewing maniacs, I might be able to predict that their movement would burn out as the psychopaths detonated themselves or became drone-splats, one by one. But these men spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar. I even enjoyed their company, and that frightened me as much as anything else. ~ Graeme Wood

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance in that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association of medieval commune: here independent urban republic (as ~ Karl Marx

Servants, when their lords no longer sway, Their minds no more to righteous courses bend. ~ Homer

Riley's sway as he disappeared down the alley, I recognized it. It wasn't booze. It was the thing that happened when a little too much got a little too messed up. They sway, it's what creeps over a person when they've begun to empty out and don't care enough to put anything back, to replace what has been lost. ~ Kathleen Glasgow

I don't cry to get my way," I defended my emotional inabilities, and then began wiping away the tears. "It's just this is really hard."
"Annalisa, if I thought for one second that the tears were fake, you wouldn't sway me. But, I've never seen so many honest tears in my life. ~ Lindsay Delagair

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them. ~ Albert Einstein

And the God who ruled absolutely in the life and fortunes of the most powerful monarch of that time still rules in the fortunes and destinies of governments today. No government or dictator is so powerful as to be beyond the sway of His sovereign rule over all the nations of the earth. GOD ~ Jerry Bridges

The central aspect I wanted to explore was the path a person takes to get to the point where they can justify doing terrible things in the name of good. What motivations sway them? What stones laid in childhood become the foundation legacies are built on? ~ Kiersten White

He has heard, and causes those with ears to hear, even today, what we shall not see until the end of time - the whole context of Providence. As though in the light of this end, he heard the harmony of creation to which the shadow belongs but in which the shadow is not darkness, deficiency is not defeat, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy and infinite melancholy is ultimately forced to claim undisputed sway ... Mozart causes us to hear that even on the latter side, and therefore in its totality creation praises its master and is therefore perfect. ~ Karl Barth

The creatures I have sent to their God are not men. They abdicated the right to the name by committing acts of inhuman savagery so that they cannot even count themselves among God's beasts. For even the beasts have better reason for what they do- and so have I. If those be men, I rank myself gladly with the animals. There are places in this world where the force of law holds sway; it is a great pity that Larissa is not one of them.
Laertes, Count of Samothrace ~ Rebecca Ashe

One day, lad, your eyes will light upon a woman, and you will never forget that glint in her eye, that toss of her head, or sway of her hips. You will dream of her, whether you are asleep of awake. She will possess your mind, and your body will be on fire for her. Nothing will ever erase the linger of her scent in your nostrils, the touch of her hand on your body, the feel of her flesh beneath your fingers.
When you find a woman to love, Cnut, your life changes forever. ~ Helen Hollick

We found that if you played a bunch of punk singles in a row, people would dance like crazy and then get worn out and go somewhere else in the house. And if you played reggae all the time, people ended up leaning against the walls and nodding their head. But if you mixed it up, the floor got more and more packed, and the energy from the two types of music seemed to feed into each other, and the adrenaline from the punk, and the seductive sway of the reggae seemed to fit together. ~ Dave Wakeling

The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. ~ William James

Religion Caesar never knew Thy posterity shall sway, Where his eagles never flew, None as invincible as they. ~ William Cowper

Taking the logic of Jinnah's demand to its extreme, Congress now offered him a 'Pakistan' stripped of the Punjab's eastern divisions (Ambala and Jullundur), Assam (except Sylhet district) and western Bengal and Calcutta - the 'mutilated and moth-eaten' Pakistan which Jinnah had rejected out of hand in 1944 and again in May 1946. Such a permanent settlement would at a stroke eject Jinnah from the centre, clear the way for a strong unitary government wholly under Congress's sway, and give away only parts of provinces which past experience had shown lay outside the Congress's ken. ~ Ayesha Jalal

The instinct of self-preservation and the urge to self-destruction are equally strong in man! The Devil has equal a sway over humanity as God until a time still unknown to us. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Superstition is the need to view the world in terms of simple cause and effect. As I have already said, religious fundamentalism was on the rise, but that is not the type of superstition I am referring to. The superstition that held sway at the time was a belief in simple causes.

Even the plainest of events is tied down by a thick tangle of permutation and possibility, but the human mind struggles with such complexity. In times of trouble, when the belief in simple gods breaks down, a cult of conspiracy arises. So it was back then. Unable to attribute misfortune to chance, unable to accept their ultimate insignificance within the greater scheme, the people looked for monsters in their midst.

The more the media peddled fear, the more the people lost the ability to believe in one another. For every new ill that befell them, the media created an explanation, and the explanation always had a face and a name. The people came to fear even their closest neighbors. At the level of the individual, the community, and the nation, people sought signs of others' ill intentions; and everywhere they looked, they found them, for this is what looking does.

This was the true challenge the people of this time faced. The challenge of trusting one another. And they fell short ~ Bernard Beckett

Never be afraid to love. Surrender yourself to its sway, & even if it tears your earthly fibres to tatters, it will strengthen the heavenly ones. Such love is the only proof of Immortality. ~ Mary Tyler Peabody Mann

When water is still, it is like a mirror, reflecting the beard and the eyebrows. It gives the accuracy of the water-level, and the philosopher makes it his model. And if water thus derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind? The mind of the Sage being in repose becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.22 [59a] The fluidity of water is not the result of any effort on the part of the water, but is its natural property. And the virtue of the perfect man is such that even without cultivation there is nothing which can withdraw from his sway. Heaven is naturally high, the earth is naturally solid, the sun and moon are naturally bright. Do they cultivate these attributes?23 [63b] ~ Alan W. Watts

A ring-whorled prow rode in the harbour,
ice-clad, outbound, a craft for a prince.
They stretched their beloved lord in his boat,
laid out by the mast, amidships,
the great ring-giver. Far fetched treasures
were piled upon him, and precious gear.
I have never heard before of a ship so well furbished
with battle tackle, bladed weapons
and coats of mail. The massed treasure
was loaded on top of him: it would travel far
on out into the ocean's sway.
They decked his body no less bountifully
with offerings than those first ones did
who cast him away when he was a child
and launched him alone over the waves.
And they set a gold standard up
high above his head and let him drift
to wind and tide, bewailing him
and mourning their loss. No man can tell,
no wise man in hall or weathered veteran
knows for certain who salvaged that load. ~ Seamus Heaney

I watch the tip of my tie sway to and fro and wonder how humans got to a place where we said, "Whoa. Hold on. Before I can take you seriously, you need to hang a brightly colored strip of narrow pointy cloth around your neck. ~ Jeff Zentner

Everyone has a moment in history which belongs particularly to him. It is the moment when his emotions achieve their most powerful sway over him, and afterward when you say to this person "the world today" or "life" or "reality" he will assume that you mean this moment, even if it is fifty years past. The world, through his unleashed emotions, imprinted itself upon him, and he carries the stamp of that passing moment forever. ~ John Knowles

It is like the oak that hardens itself and bears up against the storm. It is weather-beaten and scarred and confident like a sea-captain. Also it straineth like a hound in the leash. It hath pride and great subtlety. Yea, and glee also! Let the Magus act thus in his conjuration. Let him sit and conjure; let him draw himself together in that forcefulness; let him rise next swollen and straining; let him dash back the hood from his head and fix his basilisk eye upon the sigil of the demon. Then let him sway the force of him to and fro like a satyr in silence, until the Word burst from his throat. ~ Anonymous

By November, you wish you were dead. You want nothing more. Every day, every fucking day, you run up the steps of the house, breathing hard, swing open the cupboards, thinking: You pitiful little bitch. Fucking cow. Greedy pig. All day, your stomach pinches and spits up its bile. You sway when you walk. You begin to get cold again. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Purpose answers the question, "Why do I exist?" And as we ask it and explore it, I encourage you to study and look at the purpose statements of others, and of organizations, to fully understand the idea. Remember that your purpose is transcendent, and it is permanent. It doesn't sway with the seasons of life. It is something that brings you fulfillment at every part of your life, and guides you. ~ Josh Hatcher

3. Alone
The long march up the fulvous ridgebacks to
The marches, the frontiers of difference --
Where flesh marches with bone, day marches with
His wife the night, and country marches with
Another country -- is accomplished best,
By paradox, alone. A world of twos,
Of yangs and yins, of lives and objects, of
Sound grasses and deaf stones, is best essayed
By sole infiltrators who have cast off
Their ties to living moorings, and stand out
Into the roads of noon approaching night
Casting a single shadow, earnest of
Their honorable intention to lay down
Their lives for their old country, humankind,
In the same selfish spirit that inspired
Their lifelong journey, largely and at last
Alone, across the passes that divide
A life from every other, the sheer crags
Of overweening will, the deepening scarps
Like brain fissures that cunningly cut off
Each outcrop from the main and make it one
While its luck lasts, while its bravura holds
Against all odds, until the final climb
Across the mountains to the farther shore
Of sundown on the watersheds, where self,
Propelled by its last rays, sways in the sway
Of the last grasses and falls headlong in
The darkness of the dust it is part of
Upon the passes where we are no more:
Where the recirculating shaft goes home
Into the breast that armed it for the air,
And, as we must expect, the ~ L.E. Sissman

Perhaps as the sway of tradition in our eating decisions weakens, habits we once took for granted are thrown up in the air, where they're more easily buffeted by a strong idea or a breeze of fashion. ~ Michael Pollan

Here haue I cause, in men iust blame to find,
That in their proper prayse too partiall bee,
And not indifferent to woman kind,
To whom no share in armes and cheualrie
They do impart, ne maken memorie
Of their brave gestes and prowess martiall;
Scarse do they spare to one or two or three,
Rowme in their writs; yet the same writing small
Does all their deeds deface, and dims their glories all,
But by record of antique times I find,
That women wont in warres to beare most sway,
And to all great exploits them selues inclind:
Of which they still the girlond bore away,
Till enuious Men fearing their rules decay,
Gan coyne straight laws to curb their liberty;
Yet sith they warlike armes haue layd away:
They haue exceld in artes and policy,
That now we foolish men that prayse gin eke t'enuy. ~ Edmund Spenser

The mother sings a hungry song
Of blood and cracking teeth
She dances in the dark below
wants to pull us underneath

Her claws, they rise, they sway in dance
to the melody of screams
Her lullaby will never end
till the world comes apart at the seams ~ Amy Lukavics

Oh, anywhere, driver, anywhere - it doesn't matter. Just keep driving.
It's better here in this taxi than it was walking. It's no good my trying to walk. There is always a glimpse through the crowd of someone who looks like him - someone with his swing of the shoulders, his slant of the hat. And I think it's he, I think he's come back. And my heart goes to scalding water and the buildings sway and bend above me. No, it's better to be here. But I wish the driver would go fast, so fast that people walking by would be a long gray blur, and I could see no swinging shoulders, no slanted hat.
Dorothy Parker, Sentiment, Harper's Bazaar, May 1933. ~ Dorothy Parker

Peter was a gentle, red-haired bear of a man. Standing at six-four in his socks, he moved everywhere with a slight and nautical sway, but even though he was broad across the chest there was something centered and reassuring about him, like an old ship's mast cut from a single timber. ~ Graham Joyce

I understood that the attachment to myself and my image ... was actually taking me away from my self, away from this wonderful opportunity to just sit, just breathe, just feel the warm animal of my body, just feel the soft, sultry heat of June. The density of my attachment was making it impossible for me to have a truly satisfying experience of life in my body just as it was in the moment. When under the sway of this obsession, my mind's attention was always in the fantasized future, or the idealized or devalued past - never present to the reality of the moment. ~ Stephen Cope

Be rather like a strong, big old tree, firmly anchored in your soil, deeply rooted, knowing yourself, knowing what you are anchored into, which is Source and Truth, and no currents from the outside world, no matter how strong, have any sway over you. ~ Maha Devi Li Ra La

Thoroughly ruffled, Rachel turned her back on the source of her annoyance and started for the door. She could feel his gaze on her, and the notion that he was watching her made her suddenly self-conscious. In her teetering heels, she could not help but sway.
Just as she reached the door, he made an odd sound that caused her to glance back at him, startled.
"Rachel," he said in what was scarcely more than a husky whisper, while his eyes drilled into hers, "don't sleep with him. Sleep with me instead."
Her breath caught for a moment as the words coiled around her like a seductive snake. Only by forcing herself to keep walking was she able to escape. ~ Karen Robards