Winckelmans Porcelain Quotes

If there is anything more delicious than a sausage roasted over an open Bunsen burner, I can't image what it might be
Porcelain and I tore into our food like cannibals after a missionary famine. ~ Alan Bradley

We can deeply love our poison. We can love the taste of it, the scent of it, the comforting weight of it in our belly and find ourselves woken in the night with stabbing cramps, arms around porcelain toilet bowls, hurling every last bit until collapsing on bathroom tile, limp from dehydration. Sometimes parting with love is essential for survival. I've found the most tragic aspect of losing loved ones wasn't the big boom of the fallout, but realizing later how much healthier I was without them. ~ Maggie Young

She especially liked my bedside lamp, which had a five-sided porcelain shade. Unlit, the shade seemed like bumpy ivory. Lit, each panel came to life with the image of a bird: a blue jay, a cardinal, wrens, an oriole, and a dove. Kathleen turned it off and on again, several times. "How does it do that?"
"The panels are called lithophanes." I knew because I'd asked my father about the lamp, years ago. "The porcelain is carved and painted. You can see it if you look inside the shade."
"No," she said. "It's magic. I don't want to know how it's done. ~ Susan Hubbard

Words can never fully say what we want them to say, for they fumble, stammer, and break the best porcelain. The best one can hope for is to find along the way someone to share the path, content to walk in silence, for the heart communes best when it does not try to speak. ~ Margaret Weis

Just a cold. And I think maybe I'm pregnant, because I'm always riding the porcelain bus, or thinking about it. ~ Alex Adams

Miss Dartle,' I returned, 'how shall I tell you, so that you will believe me, that I know of nothing in Steerforth different from what there was when I first came here? I can think of nothing. I firmly believe there is nothing. I hardly understand even what you mean.' As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing, from which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cruel mark; and lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn, or with a pity that despised its object. She put her hand upon it hurriedly - a hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen her hold it up before the fire to shade her face, I had compared it in my thoughts to fine porcelain - and saying, in a quick, fierce, passionate way, 'I swear you to secrecy about this!' said not a word more. ~ Charles Dickens

It would have made a nice painting, were someone to choose something as lowly as that to study. Another story, a story written in oils rather than one painted on porcelain. But to be most effective, the faces of the children would need to be painted in a blur, the way all children's faces truly are. For they blur as they run; they blur as they grow and change so fast; and they blur to keep us from loving them too deeply, for their protection, and also for ours. ~ Gregory Maguire

A walk through the storage facility of the community museum where I worked might easily have convinced you that people in the past wore only wedding dresses, carried silver candlesticks, and played with porcelain dolls. ~ Susanna Kearsley

today i am going to move
and leave nothing behind.
which is to say, i am going
to unwind like porcelain stars.
which is to say, i will be my own miracle.
which is to say, this day will be endless.
which is to say, i have given up
on black and white. ~ Alison Malee

She crept around the house listening for breathing, chocolate eating, breaking porcelain, or any of the other peculiar little noises children make. ~ R.A. Spratt

As he sat up, he heard soft dripping sounds from the bathroom, little plips like water slipping over the edges of the tub and into the floor. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as he realized where he‟d last heard that sound. His muscles tight with strain from his earlier exertions, he stood and walked warily toward the half open bathroom door and the tub beyond it. Slipping quietly past the door, he saw that the curtain was drawn, and again the shadowed figure lay behind it. One long, slim, leg dangled from the end of the tub, beads of water gliding down its length and off the polished toes. At the other end he saw a mass of auburn curls, matted deep red near the porcelain of the tub. It was the dream and the vision again, more real now, too strong to deny. Shaking, he moved toward the curtain, gagging on the sickly smell of rust and roses, feeling the thin nylon glide between thumb and palm as he pulled it back to reveal his darkest nightmare and deepest regret. He could see the crimson water now, blood bubbles gliding over its surface and clinging to the legs dangling over the tub‟s edge. When he‟d pulled the curtain completely away from the tub and around to its opposite side, he saw her face. Her eyes were closed and he saw that her lids were bruised and purple against the translucent paleness of her face, drained completely dead white under the makeup she‟d brushed on before she‟d died. Staggering by the sight of her, he knelt by the tub and extended one shaking han ~ Amanda M. Lyons

It may be that there is no solution or it may be that I'm not clever enough to find it. Ramakrishna looked upon the world as the sport of God. "It is like a game," he said. "In this game there are joy and sorrow, virtue and vice, knowledge and ignorance, good and evil., The game cannot continue if sin and suffering are altogether eliminated from the creation." I would reject that with all my strength. The best I can suggest is that when the Absolute manifested itself in the world evil was the natural correlation of good. You could never have had the stupendous beauty of the Himalayas without the unimaginable horror of a convulsion of the earth's crust. The Chinese craftsman who makes a vase in what they call eggshell porcelain can give it a lovely shape, ornament it with a beautiful design, stain it a ravishing colour, and give it a perfect glaze, but from its very nature he can't make it anything but fragile. If you drop it on the floor it will break into a dozen fragments. Isn't it possible in the same way that the values we cherish in the world can only exist in combination with evil? ~ W. Somerset Maugham

The Ripe Fig
Now that You live here in my chest,
anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.
And those other images,
which have enchanted people
like porcelain dolls from China,
which have made men and women weep
for centuries, even those have changed now.
What used to be pain is a lovely bench
where we can rest under the roses.
A left hand has become a right.
A dark wall, a window.
A cushion in a shoe heel,
the leader of the community!
Now silence. What we say
is poison to some
and nourishing to others.
What we say is a ripe fig,
but not every bird that flies
eats figs. ~ Rumi

Love is Heaven on a Hinge
Memory enfolds upon her's sovereignty of sleep;
her beauty manifests not as pleasing proportion
but as an arcane assemblage of Ming porcelain,
clues pieced together to reveal
the numinous Yin within.
Tangrams of facile shapes recollect
into priceless chinoiserie
excavated with a toothbrush
beneath the clay noses
of a thousand entombed sentinels.
She reposes within my niche,
an ingenuous vase,
her dreams fulcromed by my lever.
My right arm, her nocturnal tiara,
diademed in jewels of sweat,
perfumed in muskiness and ferment,
heralded in the dulcet wail of snores.
Beneath the bay window of her oneiric realm
frogs belch Chopin's Impromptus,
chanticleers trumpet Hayden
cicadas chirp Mozart's Elvira Madigan.
Under the mask of night my niche becomes
her royal box at the Viennese Opera:
concertinas of Chinese silk,
the empyreal music of limns,
the fateful reprise of heaven
on a hinge. ~ Beryl Dov

Coffee?" Isabelle finger-combed her hair and tied a cotton scarf around her head. "No, merci, it is too precious." The old woman gave her a smile. "No one suspects a woman my age of anything. It makes me good at trading. Here." She offered Isabelle a cracked porcelain mug full of steaming black coffee. Real coffee. Isabelle wrapped her hands around the mug and breathed deeply of the familiar, never-again-to-be-taken-for-granted aroma. Madame ~ Kristin Hannah

I was all wrapped up, the streetlamps and lighted windows were glittering, the frost bit into our faces, our lips felt like frozen crusts of bread, our cheeks as smooth and cold as porcelain. Sky and street were nothing but snow, we were driving into a great big snowball. ~ Herta Muller

To his mind there were four kinds of beautiful skin. The first he likened to porcelain: finely grained and flawless in sheen, but marked by a hardness and chill. The second he compared to snow: duller and more coarsely grained, with a deep whiteness and an inner warmth and softness that belied its cold surface. Next was what he called the textile look, what others called silken; this was the complexion most prized by Japanese women, yet it had no virtue in Mikamé's eyes beyond a flat, smooth prettiness. To be supremely beautiful, he thought, a woman's skin had to glow with the internal life-force of spring's earliest buds unfolding naturally in the sun. But city women, too clever with makeup, lost that perishable, flowerlike beauty at a surprisingly early age - and rare indeed was the woman past twenty-five whose skin had kept the freshness of youth. ~ Fumiko Enchi

Valerik spit to one side. "We laugh at religion's brand of love, forms and rules that keep the poor feeding from the church's coffers. It is in deed."
"I agree. That kind of love is porcelain-coated balls of dung.
But what of true affection? ... ~ Ted Dekker

I said nothing as my heart broke again for the thousandth time, the porcelain pieces so small that I didn't know how I could keep putting it back together. ~ Staci Hart

Yet she is happy -- is it happiness she feels? -- as she places her things in the cupboards and drawers. Her quills, stockings, shoes. The room is dotted by porcelain figures. Punctuated, she thinks. She picks one up, puts it down. The former wife's collection? Then opens a window to London bells and that green-silk scent of spring. And she sees now, here in this room, how badly she'd needed to leave. ~ Danielle Dutton

He stayed that way for a while, fallen man, porcelain angel, as if the two of them waited for a bus. ~ Mitch Albom

We're not handling things anymore before they arrive on our doorstep. I like to feel how thin porcelain can be, run my hand over a textile, see if I want to sit in a chair. ~ Nate Berkus

Why don't you have a room done up in every color green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it will be delightful-a melange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens, gay greens, clear, faded, and poison greens? ~ Diana Vreeland

The corridor was still empty of all the feet in sad generations seeking water. yet the eyes unseeing clenched like teeth not disbelieving doubting even the absence of pain shin ankle knee the long invisible flowing of the stair-railing where a misstep in the darkness filled with sleeping Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury door I am not afraid only Mother Father Caddy Jason Maury geting so far ahead sleeping I will sleep fast when I door Door door It was empty too, the pipes, the porcelain, the stained quiet walls, the throne of contemplation. ~ William Faulkner

They made me so smooth like porcelain. Inside I was broken glass. Every fragment was piercing me sharp. At every breath, I felt I was imploding. ~ Sonia Rao

The 19th-century Continental porcelain plaques that are worth the most money are the pretty ones. ~ Judith Miller

That is who I want you to remember, lad. The man so filled with Arman's love that he could forgive his son for taking his life and the life of his bride. That is the man I knew. The king I served. Just you remember it.'
'But a man with many mistresses. A man who wouldn't have had that problem if he'd
'
'Aye, he was no porcelain saint. He was mixed, torn, pulled by light and darkness, as is every follower of Arman. That is what it is to know Arman and yet still live in this world. Pity those who do not know Arman, because in them there is nothing at all pulling them toward light. ~ Jill Williamson

Lady Merritt Sterling was a vibrantly attractive woman with large, dark eyes, a wealth of lustrous sable hair, and a flawless porcelain complexion. Unlike her two sisters, she had inherited the shorter, stockier frame of the Marsden side instead of the slender build of her mother. Similarly, she had her father's square-shaped face and determined jaw instead of her mother's delicate oval one. However, Merritt possessed a charm so compelling that she eclipsed every other woman in the vicinity, no matter how beautiful.
Merritt focused on whomever she was talking to with a wealth of sincere interest, as if she or he were the only person in the world. She asked questions and listened without ever seeming to wait for her turn to talk. She was the guest everyone invited when they needed to blend a group of disparate personalities, just as a roux would bind soap or sauce into velvety smoothness.
It was no exaggeration to say that every man who met Merritt fell at least a little in love with her. When she had entered society, countless suitors had pursued her before she'd finally consented to marry Joshua Sterling, an American-born shipping magnate who had taken up residence in London. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Of all things broken and lost, porcelain troubles me most. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

You are one of the unfortunate ones whose body decays rapidly in the face of radiation poisoning. You hang your head over the toilet to vomit again and again, and die praying to the porcelain gods. ~ A.J. Lauer

Washed clean like a porcelain, with housewifely care ... ~ Marcel Proust

They seem nice, though, your sisters, really,' Porcelain remarked.
'Ha!' I said. 'Shows what little you know! I hate them!'
'Hate them? I should have thought you'd love them.'
'Of course I love them,' I said ... 'That's why I'm so good at hating them. ~ Alan Bradley

It never ended. Even though she'd thought she'd covered her heart with a permanent porcelain shell, he still found a way to chip at it. ~ Jojo Moyes

She could have been a figure in a Welsh fairy tale, a nymph who had formed from the mist off a lake. There was something otherworldly about the delicacy of her porcelain skin, and the arresting contrast between her dark lashes and brows and her silver-blond hair. And those eyes, cool translucence contained in dark rims. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Prom night can be a special night, if you let it be. I know you think it's for losers and something that popular kids do because they are boring people with porcelain hearts who don't know what it means to be lonely. But you're wrong. Prom is a chance for everyone to try oral sex. Go for it. ~ Eugene Mirman

Couples stray," said Edgar. "Part of the breaking-in process."
"Not breaking in, breaking." Nicola differed sharply. "You can glue people together again. But then your relationship's like any other repaired object, with cracks, blobs of epoxy, a little askew. It's never the same. I can see you haven't a notion what I'm on about, so you'll have to take my word for it."
"Christ, you're a babe in the woods." Edgar stopped slicing tomatoes. "You got it ass-backward. A marriage perched like porcelain on the mantelpiece is doomed. Sooner or later grown-ups treat each other like shit. You gotta be able to kick the thing around, less like china than an old shoe - bam, under the bed, or walk it through some puddles. No love's gonna last it if can't take abuse. ~ Lionel Shriver

God is British to the bone, and every fellow here knows it. You can't exploit him to save yourself, you blaspheming cadaverous-prig; you disgusting shambles of porcelain-skin, unwholesome-fat and puny-bones. Your blatant disregard for God's word shan't earn you any favours here! ~ Joss Sheldon

Matthews quietly stood by the closed door, watching the patient. Her dramatic eyes darted back and forth as they stared through nothingness, lost in thought. His gaze shifted to her blazing locks, which elegantly fell upon her bare shoulders. Her skin was a pure porcelain that reminded him of his mother's doll collection. Bridget's petite frame and angelic complexion were stunning, and in another world, Matthews would have allowed himself to fall for her at first sight. He imagined seeing her in a bookstore with a specialty coffee in one hand and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil in another. She would push her frames up her nose with her index finger before flipping the page and sipping her latte. Matthews, free of his work uniform, would sit in a chair across from her with his copy of The Metamorphosis. The young man would steal glances at her from behind his novel as he worked up the courage to speak to her. She would smile coyly when she caught him peeking, and when they finally made eye contact, he would strike up a conversation. Then he would take her to dinner, and everything else would fall into place. ~ Emmie White

The flames of the luau bonfire burned brightly. Sparks flew into the sky and disappeared before they reached the stars above. Near the horizon, the moon was large and round and flawless as porcelain. ~ Victoria Kahler