Swiftly Quotes

How deaf and stupid have I been!" he thought, walking swiftly along.
"When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not
scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence, and
worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them, letter
by letter. But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and the book
of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had anticipated be-fore I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called the visible world a
deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental and worthless
forms without substance. No, this is over, I have awakened, I have in-deed awakened and have not been born before this very day. ~ Hermann Hesse

They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then - how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

A tree 'fires' its leaves every autumn, and a mother bird 'fires' its babies from the nest in spring, right? Be alert to the need to call an end to a relationship within your business, and if it's your turn to fire, do it swiftly. ~ Andrea J. Lee

How swiftly you dismiss our love... ~ Cassandra Clare

My view is different from this, only to the extent that if a decision is taken, by the parents and doctors, that it is better that a baby should die, I believe it should be possible to carry out that decision, not only by withholding or withdrawing life-support - which can lead to the baby dying slowly from dehydration or from an infection - but also by taking active steps to end the baby's life swiftly and humanely ~ Peter Singer

No one can say how far Herr Hitler's empire will extend before this war is over, but I have no doubt it will pass away perhaps more swiftly than Napoleon's empire and without its glory. The British spirit and temperment, bred in freedom, will prove more enduring and resilient than the most efficient mechanical discipline.
Winston Churchill ~ Michael Tappenden

Terms such as obscene are used swiftly in order to protect people from exposure to the truth. ~ Thomas Hirschhorn

Now Miss Mapp's social dictatorship among the ladies of Tilling had long been paramount, but every now and then signs of rebellious upheavals showed themselves. By virtue of her commanding personality these had never assumed really serious proportions, for Diva, who was generally the leader in these uprisings, had not the same moral massiveness. But now when Elizabeth was so exceedingly superior, the fumes of Bolshevism mounted swiftly to Diva's head. Moreover, the sight of this puzzling male impersonator, old, wrinkled, and moustached, had kindled to a greater heat her desire to know her and learn what it felt like to be Romeo on the music-hall stage and, after years of that delirious existence, to subside into a bath-chair and Suntrap and Tilling. What a wonderful life! . . . And behind all this there was a vague notion that Elizabeth had got her information in some clandestine manner and had muddled it. For all her clear-headedness and force Elizabeth did sometimes make a muddle and it would be sweeter than honey and the honeycomb to catch her out. So in a state of brooding resentment Diva went home to lunch and concentrated on how to get even with Elizabeth. ~ E.F. Benson

Every relationship seems simple at its start. Two people listening to each other, two shells meeting each other, making one world between them. There are no others in the perfect unity of that instant, no other people or things or interests. It is free of ties or claims, unburdened by responsibilities, by worry about the future or debts to the past. And then how swiftly, how inevitably the perfect unity is invaded; the relationship changes; it becomes complicated, encumbered by its contact with the world. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking,
Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle,
Out of the Ninth-month midnight,
Over the sterile sands, and the fields beyond, where the child, leaving his bed, wander'd
alone, bare-headed, barefoot,
Down from the shower'd halo,
Up from the mystic play of shadows, twining and twisting as if they were alive,
Out from the patches of briers and blackberries,
From the memories of the bird that chanted to me,
From your memories, sad brother - from the fitful risings and fallings I heard,
From under that yellow half-moon, late-risen, and swollen as if with tears,
From those beginning notes of sickness and love, there in the transparent mist,
From the thousand responses of my heart, never to cease,
From the myriad thence-arous'd words,
From the word stronger and more delicious than any,
From such, as now they start, the scene revisiting,
As a flock, twittering, rising, or overhead passing,
Borne hither - ere all eludes me, hurriedly,
A man - yet by these tears a little boy again,
Throwing myself on the sand, confronting the waves,
I, chanter of pains and joys, uniter of here and hereafter,
Taking all hints to use them - but swiftly leaping beyond them,
A reminiscence sing. ~ Walt Whitman

A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil--of people passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices--of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray's rhythmic death--of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work--of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller's court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell--of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold the devil-god for long and that swiftly its blight would spread! ~ A. Merritt

They had gathered at Eastcheap to wait. At this time of day, the marketplace ought to have been thronged with people looking for bargains, moving from stall to stall, examining the fresh fish, choosing the plumpest hens, buying candles and pepper and needles. The stalls were open, but the fishmongers and cordwainers and butchers were doing no business, despite the growing crowd. The sun was hot, flies were thick, and the odors pungent; no one complained, though. They talked and gossiped among themselves, strangers soon becoming friends, for the normally fractious and outspoken Londoners had forgotten their differences, at least for a day, united in a common purpose and determined to revel in their triumph, for they were pragmatic enough to understand this might be their only one. Now they joked and swapped rumors and waited with uncommon patience, and at last they heard a cry, swiftly picked up and echoed across the marketplace: She is coming! ~ Sharon Kay Penman

Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. the earth welcomes the body-coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves, swiftly, exulting over corruption. ~ Emily Carr

Countries are not like financial markets. Social change cannot be executed as swiftly as credit-default swaps. You cannot sell short on social commitments and practical responsibilities. ~ George Papandreou

The diaries of opium-eaters record how, during the brief period of ecstasy, the drugged person's dreams have a temporal scope of ten, thirty, sometimes sixty years or even surpass all limits of man's ability to experience time
dreams, that is, whose imaginary time span vastly exceeds their actual duration and which are characterized by an incredible diminishment of the experience of time, with images thronging past so swiftly that, as one hashish-smoke puts it, the intoxicated user's brain seems to have something removed, like the mainspring from a broken watch. ~ Thomas Mann

Like water spilt upon the ground
alas, Our little lives flow swiftly on and pass; Yet may they bring rich harvests and green grass! ~ Henry Van Dyke

Nadya Zelenin and her mother had returned from a performance of Eugene Onegin at the theatre. Going into her room, the girl swiftly threw off her dress and let her hair down. Then she quickly sat at the table in her petticoat and white bodice to write a letter like Tatyana's.
'I love you,' she wrote, 'but you don't love me, you don't love me!'
Having written this, she laughed.
She was only sixteen and had never loved anyone yet. She knew that Gorny (an army officer) and Gruzdyov (a student) were both in love with her, but now, after the opera, she wanted to doubt their love. To be unloved and miserable: what an attractive idea! There was something beautiful, touching and romantic about A loving B when B wasn't interested in A. Onegin was attractive in not loving at all, while Tatyana was enchanting because she loved greatly. Had they loved equally and been happy they might have seemed boring.
("After The Theatre") ~ Anton Chekhov

May all beings everywhere plagued with sufferings of body and mind quickly be freed from their illnesses. May those frightened cease to be afraid, and may those bound be free. May the powerless find power, and may people think of befriending each other. May those who find themselves in trackless, fearful wilderness- the children, the aged, the unprotected- be guarded by beneficent celestials, and may they swiftly attain Buddhahood. ~ Gautama Buddha

Love had forged ahead so swiftly that in no time it had displaced agriculture as the leading industry of the period. To anyone who has tried both, this wont come as much of a surprise. ~ Groucho Marx

... while Anne smiled at me with a smile like a caress, and, as we went on up, I surrendered to it, which evoked this other sensation, that I was tripping over the edge, gently but swiftly, like when you fall in a dream, and the world goes with you, you're connected to the world and you take it with you as you fall, wholly accepting the vertiginous abandon. ~ Christian Oster

The animosity that the overwhelming majority of Americans felt toward domestic communists and their sympathizers between 1917 and 1944 - an attitude that typically was more intense and more consistent than the public's generally distrustful but varying views of the U.S.S.R. - helps to explain why America's international/domestic Cold War developed so swiftly after the wartime alliance with Russia ended. U.S.-Soviet ~ Ralph B. Levering

A just society must strive with all its might to right wrongs even if righting wrongs is a highly perilous undertaking. But if it is to survive, a just society must be strong and resolute enough to deal swiftly and relentlessly with those who would mistake its good will for weakness. ~ Eric Hoffer

Said a skunk to a tube-rose, "See how swiftly I run, while you cannot walk nor even creep."
Said the tube-rose to the skunk, "Oh, most noble swift runner, please run swiftly!" ~ Khalil Gibran

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

Balderdash, I say, let the sword turn into an adder and the adder a salmon and the salmon a birch twig and birch twig a sword and the sword a tongue ... Let it all run together so swiftly that it cannot be separated again ... ~ Sjon

The puppet dances, He turns flips and he jigs. His painted red smile looks happy but he is screaming, for he performs on red-hot coals. His wooden feet begin to smoke. A man comes in with a shining axe. He swings it. I think he will cut off the puppet's burning feet, but instead the axe cuts all his strings. But the man with the axe falls just as swiftly as the puppet leaps away, free. ~ Robin Hobb

The ice had been retreating. Humanity had sprung back swiftly, expanded, fought its small wars, re-industrialized, tripping constantly over reminders of what the species had previously achieved. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky

2005 opens with the promise of a number of substantial direct private investments that can swiftly transform the economy and set all sectors on a pronounced upward curve. ~ Baldwin Spencer

Would you let me drive this?" I ask, surprised that I say the words out loud.
"Of course," Christian replies, smiling. "What's mine is yours. If you dent it, though, I will take you into the Red Room of Pain." He glances swiftly at me with a malicious grin.
"You're kidding. You'd punish me for denting your car? You love your car more than you love me?" I tease.
"It's close," he says and reaches across to squeeze my knee, "But she doesn't keep me warm at night."
"I'm sure it could be arranged. You could sleep in her," I snap.
Christian laughs. "We haven't been home one day and you're kicking me out already?" He seems delighted. ~ E.L. James

I could hear the wind whistle behind me as someone swiftly moved away from me in a distance. I heard the autumn leaves crunch beneath his feet as the figure slowly retreated. I could have sworn that it was the red-eyed man from my past that couldn't live with just haunting my dreams - he haunted my life like a ghost lingering around me, his eyes burning like flames in every shadow he could find. But, I wondered, why me? ~ Maria M.

Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease. ~ W. H. Auden

It hardly mattered to him that [his] book was forgotten and that it served no use; and the question of its worth at any time seemed almost trivial ... He let his fingers riffle through the pages and felt a tingling, as if those pages were alive ... The fingers loosened, and the book they had held moved slowly and then swiftly across the still body and fell into the silence of the room. ~ John Edward Williams

Mark responds to Peter's accusation with an uncharacteristically abrupt burst of anger and tries to throw Peter off the roof. Then Mark immediately apologizes to Peter for trying to kill him, and Peter lets it slide. It's probably the most swiftly forgiven attempted murder in the history of film. ~ Greg Sestero

If I enter the room as you are fastening your shoe, I can say, "There will be a lovely moon tonight," and then you will call it to mind. But before I call it forth for you, you have forgotten the moon. One can swiftly understand that for most moments of our lives, we have forgotten almost all of the world around us, except for what currently claims our interest. ~ Robin Hobb

Were the situation not so completely to her disadvantage, she might have enjoyed the prospect of Simon Hunt rendered absolutely speechless.
At first his face was blank, as if he was having tremendous difficulty absorbing the fact that she was standing before him dressed only in a chemise, corset, and drawers. His gaze slid over her, slowly coming to rest on her flushed face. Another moment or two of suffocated silence, and Hunt swallowed hard before speaking in a rusty-sounding voice. "I probably shouldn't ask. But what the hell are you doing?"
The words unlocked Annabelle from her paralysis. She certainly could not stand there and converse with him while she was clad in her undergarments. But her dignity - or the threads that remained of it - demanded that she not screech idiotically and dash for her clothes the way Evie and Daisy were doing. Settling for a compromise, she strode briskly to her discarded gown and clasped it to her front as she turned to face Simon Hunt once more. "We're playing Rounders," she said, her voice far higher-pitched than usual.
Hunt glanced around the scene before settling on her again. "Why did you - "
"One can't run properly in skirts," Annabelle interrupted. "I should think that would be obvious."
Absorbing that, Hunt averted his face swiftly, but not before she saw the sudden flash of his grin. "Never having tried it, I'll have to take your word on that. ~ Lisa Kleypas

A stranger hurrying as fast as he could over the icy sidewalks looked in. He saw a circle of singing people bathed in the clean white light from a tree, and his heart did a somersault, and the image stayed with him; it merged with him even as he came home to his own children, who were already sleeping in their beds, to his wife crossly putting together the tricycle without the screwdriver that he'd run out to borrow. It remained long after his children ripped open their gifts and abandoned their toys in puddles of paper and grew too old for them and left their house and parents and childhoods, so that he and his wife gaped at each other in bewilderment as to how it had happened so terribly swiftly. All those years, the singers in the soft light in the basement apartment crystallized in his mind, became the very idea of what happiness should look like. ~ Lauren Groff

Snow pressed herself against the cool wall to make sure he didn't see her. When he was out of sight, she peeked again to look at the guard. He was young and very thin. Not much older than she. And he had a family he was feeding on meals that weren't arriving. She looked down at the warm bread and fruit on her breakfast tray.
Her belly was still full from the night before. She could make it until dinner without anything more. Looking both ways to make sure the hall was clear before stepping out of the shadows, Snow walked swiftly toward the guard, her eyes cast downward. The guard looked surprised when she placed her tray at his feet.
"Your Highness," he said, struggling for words. "But that's your meal."
Snow was too shy to speak. Instead, she waved the food away and pushed the tray closer to his boots. With a small nod and smile, she hurried back to the safety of her chambers before anyone could see them conversing and tell the queen, but not before she heard him speak softly.
"Thank you, kind princess. Thank you. ~ Jen Calonita

Kyle strained his eyes to the horizon while they paddled swiftly through the fog. ~ Nicholai Ball

It takes truth to live with a swiftly changing world. Nothing less than truth can survive. You cannot survive with anything less than truth. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

She watches Simon's profile as he drives, concentrating, but he keeps turning to her, and every time he does so, he is smiling. He doesn't seem to care, and she wonders if, actually, he wants to be caught. In some ways she does, because she knows, already, albeit crazily swiftly, that she wants more of this man, that once was never, ever going to be enough. ~ Sarah Rayner

Today's Europeans and Americans who reached the age of awareness after midcentury when the communications revolution lead to expectations of instantanaiy are exasperated by the slow toils of history. They assume that the thunderclap of cause will be swiftly followed by the lightening bolt of effect. ~ William Manchester

When you are getting on in years it is nice to sit by the fire and drink a cup of tea and listen to the school bell sounding dinner, call-over, prep., and lights out. Chips always wound up the clock after that last bell; then he put the wire guard in front of the fire, turned out the gas, and carried a detective novel to bed. Rarely did he read more than a page of it before sleep came swiftly and peacefully, more like a mystic intensifying of perception than any changeful entrance into another world. For his days and nights were equally full of dreaming. ~ James Hilton

A tiny smile played over his lips as he glanced down at my hand. "Do you mean to win me over with feminine wiles? I must admit it is a more diverting notion than your usual method of screaming at me like a fishwife."
I did not rise to the bait. I simply looked at him. "Please."
He caught his breath, a slow smile warming his features. "My god, you are trying to seduce me."
"I am not." I said primly. "I am merely trying to get your attention."
He bent swiftly and kissed me hard, pulling back so suddenly I nearly toppled over. "I believe I have already made it quite clear you have my attention. ~ Deanna Raybourn

What monstrous absurdities and paradoxes have resisted whole batteries of serious arguments, and then crumbled swiftly into dust before the ringing death-knell of a laugh! ~ Agnes Repplier

The West was not dull, it was stupendously dull, and when not dull it was murderous. A man could get killed without realizing it. There were unbelievable flash floods, weird snakes, and God Himself did not know what else, along with Indians descending as swiftly as the funnel of a tornado. On ~ Evan S. Connell

The news filled me with such euphoria that for an instant I was numb. My ingrained self-censorship immediately started working: I registered the fact that there was an orgy of weeping going on around me, and that I had to come up with some suitable performance. There seemed nowhere to hide my lack of correct emotion except the shoulder of the woman in front of me, one of the student officials, who was apparently heartbroken. I swiftly buried my head in her shoulder and heaved appropriately. As so often in China, a bit of ritual did the trick. Sniveling heartily she made a movement as though she was going to turn around and embrace me I pressed my whole weight on her from behind to keep her in her place, hoping to give the impression that I was in a state of abandoned grief.

In the days after Mao's death, I did a lot of thinking. I knew he was considered a philosopher, and I tried to think what his 'philosophy' really was. It seemed to me that its central principle was the need or the desire? for perpetual conflict. The core of his thinking seemed to be that human struggles were the motivating force of history and that in order to make history 'class enemies' had to be continuously created en masse. I wondered whether there were any other philosophers whose theories had led to the suffering and death of so many. I thought of the terror and misery to which the Chinese population had been subjected. For what?

But Mao's theory might just be the extension o ~ Jung Chang

You ask yourself: where are your dreams now? And you shake your head and say how swiftly the years fly by! And you ask yourself again: what have you done with your best years, then? Where have you buried the best days of your life? Have you lived or not? Look, you tell yourself, look how cold the world is becoming. The years will pass and after them will come grim loneliness, and old age, quaking on its stick, and after them misery and despair. Your fantasy world will grow pale, your dreams will fade and die, falling away like the yellow leaves from the trees ... Ah, Nastenka! Will it not be miserable to be left alone, utterly alone, and have nothing even to regret - nothing, not a single thing ... because everything I have lost was nothing, stupid, a round zero, all dreaming and no more! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There was no manifestation of contemporary culture that did not indicate to my grandmother how steadfast was the nation's decline, how merciless our mental and moral deterioration, how swiftly all-embracing our final decadence. I never saw her read a book again; but she referred to books often - as if they were shrines and cathedrals of learning that television had plundered and then abandoned. ~ John Irving

I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves. ~ Haruki Murakami

My school has apparently never seen someone so gothically adorable." "What does that even mean?" She smirks at me. "You know, dark, mysterious, sullen, yet cute." I gape at her. "Do you even have a filter?" She swiftly shakes her head. "No way. Where's the fun in that? ~ Jessica Sorensen

Bright youth passes swiftly as a thought. ~ Theognis Of Megara

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

Swiftly we covered the ground, far too swiftly, I thought, far too easily, and the callous countryside watched us with indifference. We came to the bend in the road that I had wished to imprison as a memory, and the peasant girl was gone, and the color was flat, and it was no more after all than any bend in any road passed by a hundred motorists. The glamour of it had gone with my happy mood, and at the thought of it my frozen face quivered into feeling, my adult pride was lost, and those despicable tears rejoicing at their conquest welled into my eyes and strayed upon my cheeks. I ~ Daphne Du Maurier

I looked at Hayle.

"I'm yours, you're right. I started with you, you end with me," the voice said.

"I wonder who you are, then," Hayle said. "Because I'm not positive you're Sylvester."

"I'm not. I'm every monster I've ever fought. Every enemy I've defeated. I'm Sylvester and I'm not. I'm the Noble that Sylvester will become."

A frown creased the space between his eyes. "The Noble you describe sounds like a monstrous one."

"Isn't it?" the voice asked. "What a mistake you've made."

We stuck a knife between his ribs, and swiftly backed away, bringing the knife with us, so the wound could bleed freely, air escaping his lungs. ~ Wildbow

Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, 'Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

Know thyself first immortal
and loke ay besyly thow werche and wysse
To commune profit, and thow shatl not mysse
To comen swiftly to that place deere
That ful of blysse is and of soules cleere ~ F. N. Robinson - Editor

Mr. Schock smiled at Peter and raised his hand into the air. Peter instinctively struck it in a perfect high five. Mr. Schock's smile transformed into a puzzeled frown.
"Joshua, how did you...?"
"Peter used to do it," said Peter swiftly. ~ Linda Buckley-Archer

How did she do it, I'd always wondered. Dancing with Q., I understood. Once in a while the pain falls asleep on the job, and the experienced sufferer knows enough to seize such moments swiftly and without thought - for when we realize we're actually dancing, the jolt of joy wakens the pain.
Laura Acosta ~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

How good are the best musical imaginations? Can a trained musician, swiftly reading a score, tell just how that voicing of dissonant oboes and flutes over the massed strings will sound? ~ Daniel Dennett

Maggie Botwin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The current of my mind carried me swiftly into the open sea. ~ Daniel Keyes

That's it, Skyco. That is the way to be a hunter. Never be in a hurry, never rush things. Wait until the prey is within your grasp, then strike swiftly and strike hard. Don't miss or it may be a long time before another opportunity appears. ~ Jennifer Frick-Ruppert

Although signs may be found in everything that comes to us, as though a river at our doorstep carried these messages on its surface, the Quran (like other sacred books) speaks in terms of empirical experience, since it is intended to endure through the ages and cannot bind itself to the 'scientific' theories of any particular time. Its images are the phenomena of nature as they appear to us in our experience - the rising and setting of the sun, the domed sky above and the mountains, which are like weights set upon the earth. Scientific observations change according to the preconceptions of the observer and the instruments at his disposal, and the speculations which blinkered human minds construct on the basis of these observations change no less swiftly. But man's experience of the visual universe does not change. The sun 'rises' for me today as it 'rose' for the man of ten thousand years ago. ~ Charles Le Gai Eaton

She reminded me of something, and suddenly I knew. I was a tiny child again at Radford, my uncle's home, and he was walking me through the glass-houses in the gardens. There was one flower, an orchid, that grew alone; it was the colour of pale ivory, with one little vein of crimson running through the petals. The scent filled the house, honeyed, and sickly sweet. It was the loveliest flower I had ever seen. I stretched out my hand to stroke the soft velvet sheen, and swiftly my uncle pulled me by the shoulder. 'Don't touch it, child. The stem is poisonous. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

If the breadth of perspectives is wide enough to represent the fullest range of views, consensus is unlikely. If consensus is swiftly achieved, it probably means too few voices have been heard. ~ Ron Suskind

Sustainability is a seemingly laudable goal - it tells us we need to live within our means, whether economic, ecological, or political - but it's insufficient for uncertain times. How can we live within our means when those very means can change, swiftly and unexpectedly, beneath us? ~ Jamais Cascio

I stood on the street corner. I thought about chasing after her, but she was churning swiftly through the neighborhood -- she was already almost a block away -- so instead I entered a coffee shop. This is why I was on the street. I was going to a coffee shop, and I was buying a coffee, and then I was walking to class, and then I would teach, and then during office hours I would reassure the students who needed reassuring, and I would be tough on the students who could take it, and if someone cried in my office for reasons unrelated but maybe sort of related to the imperfect short story they'd written, I would tell them that fiction makes you cry, the fiction you read though more often it's the shitty fiction you write that makes you cry, and I would also be thinking, You poor person, you have no idea what awaits you. A life awaits you, like a serious fucking life. This is what I would want to say. And then I would go home to my serious fucking life, and it would be so ridiculously unserious; it would involve soup spills and dirty dishes and lengthy logic proofs meant to coerce tired, inarticulate people to bed, and I would think how lucky I was to have this unserious life, i.e., to be forced to do somewhat or even thoroughly banal things every day. Because what awaits you if you don't? What kind of life awaits you then? A life where you don't calmly think, as you're scraping up the crystallized juice rings before showering before getting dressed before buying coffee before te ~ Heidi Julavits

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life - another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod - there's only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It's the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. ~ Liu Cixin

Quick as a hummingbird ... she darts so eagerly, swiftly, sweetly dipping into the flowers of my heart. ~ James Oppenheim

No knife cuts as swiftly, deeply and precisely as the blade of the Beloved. ~ Tiziana Stupia

I was always into noir. When I lived in Vermont I was drawing stuff that looked like an amateur doing Sin City. When I first got to New York I was swiftly informed that they only did guys in tights. ~ Frank Miller

The only way to lose a kingdom is if your power drops or..well, if you're killed."
"I'm sure Volusian would love to help with that."
My minion walked near me, needing no horse to move swiftly. Upon hearing his name, he said, "I would perform the deed with great relish and much suffering on your part, mistress."
"You can't put a price on that kind of loyalty," I told Kiyo. ~ Richelle Mead

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Use the occasion, for it passes swiftly. ~ Ovid

Prophase, he agreed, writing it neatly in the first space on our worksheet. He swiftly switched out the first slide for the second, ~ Stephenie Meyer

It's a bird of some sort. It's like a duck, only I never saw a duck have so many colors.
The bird swam swiftly and gracefully toward the Magic Isle, and as it drew nearer its gorgeously colored plumage astonished them. The feathers were of many hues of glistening greens and blues and purples, and it had a yellow head with a red plume, and pink, white and violet in its tail. ~ L. Frank Baum

The planes are crowded and noisy and late, and everybody hates everybody. If armed terrorists had tried to hijack any of the flights I've been on lately, we passengers would have swiftly beaten them to death with those hard rolls you get with your in-flight meals. ~ Dave Barry

But it was dreadful to think of Henry, slowly or swiftly corrupted by his detestable father and mother, growing up with the fat slime of their abominations upon him. ~ Arthur Machen

Beauty often fades, but seldom so swiftly as the joy it gives us. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

Really? Only one class and you're ready to kick him out?" the woman on the other end of the line inquired. "I'm sorry, that's not why I was calling," Melanie said swiftly. "I'm calling because I wanted to know a little bit more about Mr. Styles, to see if there is a more efficient way that I can help him." "Mr. Styles has been through three anger management courses and one Hugs for Healing program in the past two weeks. His attempts at fulfilling the court order with these classes have resulted in two counselors quitting, and several restraining orders. ~ Kaelyn Swan

He realized that all men were like this; that each person was to himself one alone. One oneness, a unit in a society, but always afraid. Like here, standing. If he should scream, if he should holler for help, would it matter?
Blackness could come swiftly, swallowing; in one titanically freezing moment all would be concluded. Long before dawn, long before police with flashlights might probe the dark, disturbed pathway, long before men with trembling brains could rustle down the pebbles
to his help. Even if they were within five hundred yards of him now, and help certainly was, in three seconds a dark tide could rise to take all ten years from him and - The essential impact of life's loneliness crushed his beginning-to-tremble body. Mother was alone, too. She could not look to the sanctity of marriage, the protection of her family's love, she could not look to the United States Constitution or the City Police, she could not look anywhere, in this very instant, save into her heart, and there she would find nothing but uncontrollable repugnance and a will to fear. In this instant it was an individual problem seeking an individual solution. He must accept being alone and work on from there. ~ Ray Bradbury

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

What did she say?" Gavin snapped. René was right beside Tony in case Gavin became violent. He didn't want to fight Gavin, but he also didn't want Gavin attacking his newest child because he was the one receiving Lissa's mindspeech. Winkler and Roff had left the safe house the moment Gavin became angry.

"She said something about not liking the holding cells," Tony said, watching Gavin carefully.

"Inform her, please, that she is still recuperating from two gunshot wounds to her chest. Inform her please, that I am about to lose my mind. Inform her, please, that I have already lost my temper and I have been commanded by Wlodek to let him know if she goes off on her own at any time. Inform her, please, that the hole I am about to put in the wall is her fault and no other's." Gavin set his cell phone carefully on the tiny kitchen table and then punched his fist through the cinderblocks of the wall so swiftly even Tony couldn't follow it. ~ Connie Suttle

Come below for a moment. Please."
"Zephyr, I don't have time t - "
"Bradshaw, do me the courtesy of at least looking at me when I'm talking to you, or I shall punch you in the nose."
His lean jaw twitched, but he folded his arms across his chest and faced her. "What is it, then?"
She took a deep breath. This would have been so much easier in a more intimate setting and if he wasn't glaring at her. "Shaw, I just wanted to say - that is, I mean - I . . . I love you."
Something crossed his expression so swiftly that she couldn't decipher it. But then he very obviously scowled. At her. "You're only saying that now because I bullied you into it."
Oh, that was enough of that. "Idiot. You have no idea how much considering I've been doing. And you have never bullied me into anything. I said I love you because I love you."
He hesitated again. "Very well. Thank you. Now you won't have to worry that you drove me to my death if I don't return."
Zephyr narrowed her eyes. "All you did was say you loved me and then run away. I'm standing here saying it back to you, and all you can do is try to make me into a liar. It's your fault, for surprising me. I don't keep a response to that sort of thing in my pocket, ready for use."
"I know that. And I said thank you. ~ Suzanne Enoch

Here's the poem in part: If things go bad for you - And make you a bit ashamed, Often you will find out that You have yourself to blame ... Swiftly we ran to mischief And then the bad luck came. Why do we fault others? We have ourselves to blame ... Whatever happens to us, Here are the words we say, "Had it not been for so-and-so Things wouldn't have gone that way." And if you are short of friends, I'll tell you what to do - Make an examination, You'll find the fault's in you ... You're the captain of your ship, So agree with the same - If you travel downward, You have yourself to blame.* ~ Ben Carson

On, those ever-changing moods of Moscow! How swiftly they go from black to white, from one extreme to another, from friendship to accusations, from adoration to hatred, from the permissive 'da' to that annihilating 'nyet.' Those eternal swings from a thaw to a freeze, whims that disregard their own rules, norms, and regulations! ~ Svetlana Alliluyeva

The who with the what now?"The dragon cocked its head to one side and gave this utterance careful consideration. "I'm afraid that I don't quite follow you, young warlock," it admitted, sounding rather testy."Your young
language does change so swiftly."
"Sorry! I just meant – I meant: 'bloody hell'! ~ FayJay

The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. ~ Ray Bradbury

It is not a large exaggeration to say that everything else in a computer exists in order to bring information swiftly to the ALU for manipulation; and for the ALU, adding is the mechanical equivalent of breathing. But ~ Tracy Kidder

Habakkuk 3:19 says that the way we develop hind's feet (a hind is an animal that can climb mountains swiftly) is "to walk [not to stand still in terror, but to walk] and make [spiritual] progress upon" the "high places [of trouble, suffering or responsibility]!" The way God helps us make spiritual progress is by being with us to strengthen and encourage us to "keep on keeping on" in rough times. It's easy to quit; it takes faith to go through. ~ Joyce Meyer

They tell me that you have been crying in your sleep. Do not grieve our separation, my love, for our reunion will come just as swiftly.
-Letter from unknown prisoner, convicted of treason, to fiancee ~ Marie Lu

The older you get, the more swiftly the years pass. It's easy to forget how quickly people die. ~ Joe Abercrombie

The very act of drawing an object, however badly, swiftly takes the drawer from a woolly sense of what the object looks like to a precise awareness of its component parts and particularities. ~ Alain De Botton

Some dry leaf blows into a campfire well-stoked and drawing well. What follows? That leaf catches at once, swiftly is consumed, a shadow withering briefly in the fierce light, and thereafter little remains, not cinder and ash so much as smudges of char. ~ Kai Ashante Wilson

Lead then, said EVE. Hee leading swiftly rowld In tangles, and make intricate seem strait, To mischief swift. Hope elevates, and joy Bright'ns his Crest, as when a wandring Fire Compact of unctuous vapor, which the Night Condenses, and the cold invirons round, Kindl'd through agitation to a Flame, Which oft, they say, some evil Spirit attends, Hovering and blazing with delusive Light, Misleads th' amaz'd Night-wanderer from his way To Boggs and Mires, & oft through Pond or Poole, There swallow'd up and lost, from succour farr. ~ John Milton

She thrusts hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the second button of your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word, "parallelogram!" and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder. That ~ O. Henry

The justice system works swiftly in the future now that they've abolished all lawyers. ~ Dr. Emmett Brown, Back To The Future II

When hope is taken away from a people, moral degeneration follows swiftly thereafter. ~ Pearl S. Buck

Like a stone tossed into a flock of birds, talk startled swiftly into flight whenever the new postmaster was mentioned. ~ Sarah Blake

First developed as a weapon by the U.S. Army, VX is an oily, odorless and tasteless liquid that kills on contact with the skin or when inhaled in aerosol form. Like other nerve agents, it is treatable in the first minutes after exposure but otherwise leads swiftly to fatal convulsions and respiratory failure. ~ Barton Gellman