The Great Lover Quotes

My night shall be remembered for a star
That outshone all the suns of all men's days ~ Rupert Brooke

The evil and suffering in this world are greater than any of us can comprehend. But evil and suffering are not ultimate. God is. Satan, the great lover of evil and suffering, is not sovereign. God is. ~ John Piper

One needs great tenacity and a tremendous will to begin such an enterprise at all. And I should like to say this to you: If I had this faith, I had it only because I knew the people and because I had no doubts as to the quality of the German people. ~ Adolf Hitler

The headdresses of the Egyptians have great symbolic and emblematic importance, for they represent the auric bodies of the superhuman intelligences, and are used in the same way that the nimbus, halo, and aureole are used in Christian religious art. ~ Manly Hall

And everyone loved sunsets. The light lost its sanity as it fell over the hills and into the Pacific--it went red and deeper red, orange, and even green. The skies seemed to melt, like lava eating black rock into great bite marks of burning. Sometimes all the town stopped and stared west. Shopkeepers came from their rooms to stand in the street. Families brought out their invalids on pallets and in wheelbarrows to wave their bent wrists at the madness consuming their sky. Swirls of gulls and pelicans like God's own confetti snowed across those sky riots. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

she was afraid, as much of the great pillared hall and the roof of stone as of the company of many eyes that watched her. And when Thingol bade her speak, she said: 'Lord, I was sitting in a tree'; but then she faltered in awe of the King, and could say no more. At that the King smiled, and said: 'Others have done this also, but have felt no need to tell me of it. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

As a developer, it's a great feeling knowing you have made an impact. There's also a lot of responsibility that goes with that: you have to really put the city's needs first. It's not all about making money. ~ Stephen M. Ross

Ancient traditions have long associated holy wells and springs as very special places of the Goddess or anima mundi: symbolic of the Great Mother and associated with birth, the feminine principle, the universal womb, the prima materia, the waters of fertility and refreshment and the fountain of life. The dreaming sites, as they are called, have also been associated with visions, healing, and other paranormal experiences. In ancient Greece, for example, there were more than three-hundred medical centers placed at water sources, where patients experienced healing. ~ Christopher McDowell

ANCIENT AIR (39)

I climb up high and look on the four seas,
Heaven and earth spreading out so far.
Frost blankets all the stuff of autumn,
The wind blows with the great desert's cold.
The eastward-flowing water is immense,
All the ten thousand things billow.
The white sun's passing brightness fades,
Floating clouds seem to have no end.
Swallows and sparrows nest in the wutong tree,
Yuan and luan birds perch among jujube thorns.
Now it's time to head on back again,
I flick my sword and sing 'Taking the Hard Road'. ~ Li Bai

That was true, Iris would sometimes think, about marriage: it was only a boat, too. A wooden boat, difficult to build, even more difficult to maintain, whose beauty derived at least in part from its unlikelihood. Long ago the pragmatic justifications for both marriage and wooden-boat building had been lost or superseded. Why invest countless hours, years, and dollars in planing and carving, gluing and fastening, caulking and fairing, when a fiberglass boat can be had at a fraction of the cost? Why struggle to maintain love and commitment over decades when there were far easier ways to live, ones that required no effort or attention to prevent corrosion and rot? Why continue to pour your heart into these obsolete arts? Because their beauty, the way they connect you to your history and to the living world, justifies your efforts. A long marriage, like a classic wooden boat, could be a thing of grace, but only if great effort was devoted to its maintenance. At first your notions of your life with another were no more substantial than a pattern laid down in plywood. Then year by year you constructed the frame around the form, and began layering memories, griefs, and small triumphs like strips of veneer planking bent around the hull of everyday routine. You sanded down the rough edges, patched the misunderstandings, faired the petty betrayals. Sometimes you sprung a leak. You fell apart in rough weather or were smashed on devouring rocks. But then, as now, in the teeth of a storm, ~ Ayelet Waldman

Well, after the nature of any great hero from the stories, he was going to do his best to avoid this particular trial. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Then J.D. appeared at the door. He was alone. She found Sam's eyes. They were filled with defeat. She was about to go to him when his face suddenly brightened. Glancing toward J.D., she saw Michael come up from behind. He was wearing a new blazer and slacks, looking adorable and terribly grown-up. Annie felt a great swelling fullness inside as Sam excused himself and strode across the room. He stopped several yards from Michael and waited. Annie stopped, too, with her heart in her throat. Michael didn't once take his eyes from Sam. He blinked and swallowed. In a flash of Annie's memory, he was a scared little boy on his first bicycle, with Sam calling, "You can do it, Mike. Give a push off, then pedal. That's it. Good boy. Keep going. You've got it." With the videocam in one hand and his eyes filled with sudden determination, he walked forward. That was all Sam needed. He met the boy halfway in a hearty hug. "I'd just about given up hope. ~ Barbara Delinsky

I love Philadelphia. I was shocked at what a great city this is. For me, it is the cat's pajamas. I love everything about it. I love where I live. I love the people. I have been met with such kindness and affection here. ~ George Dzundza

Rock stardom and all that stuff like that was never like my main M.O., my main M.O. is musical growth, and if I become a rock star in the process, great! ~ Kip Winger

Most historians agree that the decline of the Great Library of Alexandria was due to what endangers libraries of the present day--general indifference and bureaucratic neglect. ~ Library Of Congress

Obviously, there's a big homage to Outland in Moon. I obviously had Ridley Scott's response, which was great. But Peter Hyams really loved Moon and was really enthusiastic about it. He was also enthusiastic about the fact we'd remembered Outland and had remembered it fondly. I think, for him, it was like some kind of edification that there were people out there who loved his film. So, that was a really lovely feeling. ~ Duncan Jones

Such is putting! 2% technique, 98% inspiration or confidence or touch ... the only thing great putters have in common is touch and that is the critical ingredient ... none of them found it through mechanizing a stroke, nor do I believe they could maintain it that way. ~ Jack Nicklaus

Management works in the system; leadership works on the system. ~ Stephen Covey

When you're cooking with food as alive as this
these gorgeous and semigorgeous fruits and leaves and flesh
you're in no danger of mistaking it for a commodity, or a fuel, or a collection of chemical nutrients. No, in the eye of the cook or the gardener ... this food reveals itself for what it is: no mere thing but a web of relationships among a great many living beings, some of them human, some not, but each of them dependent on each other, and all of them ultimately rooted in soil and nourished by sunlight. ~ Michael Pollan

Their gazes locked,he said,"I made a mistake."
"Confusing your wife with a goat?"
What was that he had thought about the difficulty of having a wife who was a truthsayer?
He took a breath,let it out slowly, and sent with it a prayer. "There was a time-a brief time-when I considered you might be guilty."
Truth.
Rycca smiled. She freed her hands, cupped them to his face,and rose on her toes to touch her mouth to his.
"What is that for?" he asked, caught between relief and bewilderment. Likely she would always keep him so off balance and likely he would always be glad of it for truly fortune smiled upon him. A great knot seemed to be untangling in his chest.
"For believing me."
"I only briefly didn't," he repeated.
"No,I mean for believing I am a truthsayer."
"And you know that because-"
She laughed and took his hand again. "Because you are a wise and canny man, Lord Dragon. You could as easily have insisted you never even flirted with the thought that I might be guilty and thereby saved yourself what must surely have been an uneasy moment for a husband."
He was slightly stung but not too much, for her ready forgiveness was as a balm over all else. "Generally speaking, I do tell the truth for its own sake."
"I never thought otherwise. And I would be as truthful with you. Last night, I realized suddenly that I was not afraid. All things considered, that was rather ridiculous but it was how I felt nonetheless."
~ Josie Litton

Elm

BY SYLVIA PLATH

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?

Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it
Listen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.

All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,
Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf,
Echoing, echoing.

Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons?
This is rain now, this big hush.
And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.
Scorched to the root
My red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.

Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs.
A wind of such violence
Will tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.

The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me
Cruelly, being barren.
Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.

I let her go. I let her go
Diminished and flat, as after radical surgery.
How your bad dreams possess and endow me.

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feather ~ Sylvia Plath

Not only is there often a right and wrong, but what goes around does come around, Karma exists, chickens do come home to roost, and as my mother, Phyllis, liked to say, "There is always a day of reckoning." The good among the great understand that every choice we make adds to the strength or weakness of our spirits - ourselves, or to use an old fashioned word for the same idea, our souls. That is every human's life work: to construct an identity bit by bit, to walk a path step by step, to live a life that is worthy of something higher, lighter, more fulfilling, and maybe even everlasting. ~ Donald Van De Mark

I've often said that great things can happen to you and for you, but if it doesn't happen in you, then the way you view yourself won't change. ~ Maria Durso

How did it ever happen that, when the dregs of the world had collected in western Europe, when Goth and Frank and Norman and Lombard had mingled with the rot of old Rome to form a patchwork of hybrid races, all of them notable for ferocity, hatred, stupidity, craftiness, lust, and brutality--how did it happen that, from all of this, there should come Gregorian chant, monasteries and cathedrals, the poems of Prudentius, the commentaries and histories of Bede, the Moralia of Gregory the Great, St. Augustine's City of God, and his Trinity, the writings of Anselm, St. Bernard's sermons on the Canticles, the poetry of Caedmon and Cynewulf and Langland and Dante, St. Thomas' Summa, and the Oxoniense of Duns Scotus?

How does it happen that even today a couple of ordinary French stonemasons, or a carpenter and his apprentice, can put up a dovecote or a barn that has more architectural perfection than the piles of eclectic stupidity that grow up at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars on the campuses of American universities? ~ Thomas Merton

I loved New Jersey. I thought it was the greatest place in the world because on Halloween kids could start trick or treating right after school. Isn't that great? ~ Joel McHale

The great danger of riches is that our affections will be carried away from God to His gifts. ~ John Piper

though he is a Lamb, he has wrath in him, and when the great day of his wrath comes in any form on earth, there is no standing before him; and how much less when he shall appear as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire; then kings and freemen will call to the rocks to fall upon them, and hide them from him; ~ John Gill

In life, when one gets to the point of a deeper sense of understanding about himself and his purpose, he least explains himself much to people who fail to understand him and his purpose. That must not be interpreted as neither pride nor an uncaring attitude but a great respect for purposefulness ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

But down from the end of the path it looked so charming that she wished she could paint it in watercolours - the great trees, the tempered sunlight, the glimpse of the old church at one end, the glimpse of the embosomed lake at the other, and in the middle, set out so neatly, with such a grace of spotlessness, the table of her first tea-party. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

He tsked. "No tits, no manners." He shook his head. "You should try to have at least one or the other. A pair of great tits covers a multitude of sins. ~ Dana Marton

To make a great future India, the whole secret lies in organization, accumulation of power, co-ordination of wills. ~ Swami Vivekananda

We'd been through something our parents hadn't. The war made us older than our parents. And when you're older than your parents, what are you going to do? Who's going to show you how to live? ~ Rebecca Makkai

On the street below, the weather is calm. But up here, high winds threaten to topple the workers. A sudden gust can knock them from their footing with its sheer force or send a fatal vibration through the beams on which they stand. And yet the men joke, laugh, stroll across the foot-wide beams as though they are on solid ground. To the people on the sidewalk, tiny as ants below, the skywalkers appear entirely unafraid. A hundred years ago, their grandfathers and great-grandfathers built the skyscrapers and bridges that surround them. ~ David Weitzman

How and what we eat determines to a great extent the use we make of the world
and what is to become of it. To eat with a fuller consciousness of all that is at stake might sound like a burden, but in practice few things in life afford quite as much satisfaction. ~ Michael Pollan

The iPhone calendar isn't bad, but it isn't great, either. It only offers a day view and a month view - it doesn't have a week view, which drives me crazy. ~ Susan Orlean

The great thing about a sitcom is that you're in front of a live audience, so you really get in touch with what audience reaction is, but also there are lots of elements of film that you're dealing with, and there's kind of a great boot camp or graduate school mentality to it, because you're going to suck. ~ Topher Grace

One of the great self-deceptions
and one of the great foolishnesses
is to tell yourself, Only I will know. Only you will know that you are a liar; only you will know you deal unethically with people who trust you; only you will know you have no intention of honoring your promise. Whose knowledge or judgment do you imagine is more important? It is precisely your own ego from which there is no escape. ~ Nathaniel Branden

I believe we inherit a great river of knowledge, a flow of patterns coming from many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past we call genetics. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago we call family, and the information offered months ago we call education. But it is all information that flows through us. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and exists only as a creature in that river. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it. ~ David Brooks

[On writing:] "There's a great quote by Julius Irving that went, 'Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them.'"
(One On 1, interview with Budd Mishkin; NY1, March 25, 2007.) ~ David Halberstam

Resurrection, he thought, comes not by plan or effort, and should the past ever come alive, it will be a great surprise, in which images and ritual memory will pale. ~ Mark Helprin