Wondrously Polished Quotes

Her voice was polished with a hint of a New England-boarding-school accent that shouted refinement over geographic locale. I was trying not to stare. She saw that and smiled a little. I don't want to sound like some kind of pervert because it wasn't like that. Femal beauty gets to me. I don't think I'm alone in that. It gets to me like a work of art gets to me. It gets to me like a Rembrandt or Michelangelo. It gets to me like night views of Paris or when the sun rises on the Grand Canyon or sets in the turquoise Arizona sky. My thoughts were not illicit. Ther were, I self-rationalized, rather artistic. ~ Harlan Coben

Unscripted, unedited, and wholly authentic people are almost universally admired, especially if they have flaws, are not afraid to make live, red-blooded mistakes, and rather than trying are busy simply being. Which is something you should consider hiring a tattoo artist to script across the palm of your hand: Be, Don't Try. "Oh my God, I can't do that. I would totally mess up." You better pray to the corn god that you do. Messing up is how you tell other people, "It's okay to like me, because I'm just like you." Everybody feels a bit like a dented can inside. Even the slickest, most polished person you can think of is more aware of their shortcomings and flaws than their talents and gifts. ~ Augusten Burroughs

In a world full of polished and perfected final drafts, she was the raw and honest scribbled story. ~ Kavya Janani U.

A while later Catch woke to the sound of the bathroom door opening. Hallie emerged wearing a white bathrobe, which hung suggestively low, revealing the slender line of her neck where it met her perfect collarbone. Her hair was damp and her skin shone ethereally in the golden glow of the lamplight, smooth, flawless, like porcelain polished to perfection.
She smiled and for a moment Catch was left breathless. ~ Sean J. Quirk

This backwards journey in the narrating of this 'membering, this remembrance, is a lesson I learned from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and which considers how language, in this case, English, the only language I know, is at present of profound interest, when used in a non-traditional manner. I have used this language in The Polished Hoe, and I call it many things, but the most precise definition I have given it is contained in a booklet published by the Giller Prize Foundation, celebrating the tenth anniversary of this literary prize. In that review of the literary problems I faced in the writing of The Polished Hoe in 2002, my main concern was to find a language, or to more strictly use the language I already knew, in such a way that it became, in my manipulation of it, a "new" language. And to explain the result of this experiment, I said that I intended to "creolize Oxford English. ~ Austin Clarke

Perhaps misguidedly, I always admire the people who are so polished. ~ Rosamund Pike

Slavery is not a horror safely confined to the past; it continues to exist throughout the world, even in developed countries like France and the United States. Across the world slaves work and sweat and build and suffer. Slaves in Pakistan may have made the shoes you are wearing and the carpet you stand on. Slaves in the Caribbean may have put sugar in your kitchen and toys in the hands of your children. In India they may have sewn the shirt on your back and polished the ring on your finger. They are paid nothing.

Slaves touch your life indirectly as well. They made the bricks for the factory that made the TV you watch. In Brazil slaves made the charcoal that tempered the steel that made the springs in your car and the blade on your lawnmower. Slaves grew the rice that fed the woman that wove the lovely cloth you've put up as curtains. Your investment portfolio and your mutual fund pension own stock in companies using slave labor in the developing world. Slaves keep your costs low and returns on your investments high. ~ Kevin Bales

Though it seems to be a running theme that all well-polished men with model faces and insanely hot bodies are assholes. ~ Michelle A. Valentine

Satire should, like a polished razor keen, Wound with a touch that's scarcely felt or seen. ~ Mary Wortley Montagu

I thank the Lord that I may have passed some of the tests, but maybe there will have to be more before I shall have been polished to do all that the Lord would have me do. Sometimes when the veil has been very thin, I have thought that if the struggle had been still greater that maybe then there would have been no veil. ~ Harold B. Lee

Here at Hajj, I was experiencing a taste of the same poison. While the women in my tent weren't nearly as wealthy or polished as the bewitching woman at al-Multaqa, they subscribed to the same view, deciding (based on skin color and ethnicity) that I surely must be a handmaid or at best nanny to a poor Saudi family who couldn't afford the much better Filipina maids, having instead to resort to Pakistani or worse, Bengali help. In fact I did remember one Saudi woman in the tent asking me if I was Bengali. ~ Qanta A. Ahmed

In the good times of Dada, we detested polished works, the distracted air of spiritual struggle, the titans, and we rejected them with all out being. ~ Hans Arp

A 3K word story might well be done in some caffeine-and-nicotine-fuelled 36 hour session, and at the end of it, there'll be a few passes of editing required, but I basically have a polished draft. ~ Hal Duncan

Practicality rules our perceptions.
To survive, our tiny brains need to tame the blizzard of
delusion generator
information that threatens to overwhelm us. Our perceptions
are wondrously flexible, transforming our worldview
automatically and continuously until we find safe harbor in
a comfortable delusion. ~ Scott Adams

SHE HAD NO CLASSES to teach, no grants to write, no new research to conduct, no conferences to attend, and no invited lectures to give. Ever again. She felt like the biggest part of her self, the part she'd praised and polished regularly on its mighty pedestal, had died. And the other smaller, less admired parts of her self wailed with self-pitying grief, wondering how they would matter at all without it. She ~ Lisa Genova

THE ACCIDENT maybe you read it in the paper i was so young just a child i did something stupid nightstand by the bed found it in the drawer that was so often locked but not this time sunlight through curtains high noon reflected on polished steel heavy in my hand pretending to be a cop like my father but more like dirty harry like i saw on tv my little brother burst into the room four years old just four years old without thinking i aimed killer instinct squeeze tug bang slow motion exploding blood not a sound from him as if what happened was completely natural i replay it again and again efficient little hum that burning memory pulled the trigger and watched him fold like a house of cards and the questions hammer through my brain and i ask you again "how much more do i have to pay before becoming whole again? ~ Thee Karkajou Automaton

As the sky behind the Eddy Match Factory across the river filled with light, the steady timbre of the water and rapids became sentences spoken in a soft female voice and Eileen accepted, without surprise, the presence of her mother's lost words. So this is what it is to be away, her mother's voice told her. You are never present where you stand. You see the polished dishes in your kitchen cupboard throwing back the hearth light, but they know neither you nor the meals you have taken from their surfaces. Your flagstones are a series of dark lakes that you scour, and the light that touches and alters them sends you unspeakable messages. Waves arch like mantles over everything that burns. Each corner is a secret and your history is a lie. ~ Jane Urquhart

Polished air-tight stove (new and deadly invention), ~ Mark Twain

Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Red Army. This is the only language they understand and respect. ~ George S. Patton

As for the primitive, I hark back to it because we are still very primitive. How many thousands of years of culture, think you, have rubbed and polished at our raw edges? One probably; at the best, no more than two. And that takes us back to screaming savagery, when, gross of body and deed, we drank blood from the skulls of our enemies, and hailed as highest paradise the orgies and carnage of Valhalla. ~ Jack London

The more polished a diamond the more valuable it is;
the more tested a man the more refined he is. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The polished oak floors reflected the light of the overhead crystal chandelier and gleaned under the plush deep red Persian rug. ~ Robin R. Murphy

A wise person is like a smoothly polished rock: it takes time to become either. ~ Vera Nazarian

God gives us these raw, little people, and we have to form them and mold them and teach them how to operate in society. And if we get a glimpse of all the ugliness that lies right beneath our own polished surface? Well, then, there's a humbling lesson too. It's those moments when I realize I have to extend grace to Caroline as she figures these things out by trial and error in the same way God lavishes me with mercy, even as I make the same mistakes over and over again. ~ Melanie Shankle

Observation is like a piece of glass, which, as a mirror, must be very smooth, and must be very carefully polished, in order that it may reflect the image pure and undistorted. ~ Justus Von Liebig

With an easy grin he peered up at me. It took every ounce of self-control I had not to stare slack-jawed into his eyes. They gleamed like freshly polished emeralds, speckled with tiny flecks of gold. They were so pretty. Almost hypnotic...
That's right about the time when I realized he had said something. I missed it because I was too busy gawking at him. Oh, crap! Did he order? Introduce himself? Ask me to marry him? Request a restraining order? I have no idea!
How do I fix this and not come off like a total loser?
"Huh?"
Yeah, no. That wasn't it. ~ Stacey Rourke

Georgette was a hip queer. She (he) didn't try to disguise or conceal it with marriage and mans talk, satisfying her homosexuality with the keeping of a secret scrapbook of pictures of favorite male actors or athletes or by supervising activities of young boys or visiting turkish baths or mens locker rooms, leering sidely while seeking protection behind a carefully guarded guise of virility (fearing that moment at a cocktail party or in a bar when this front may start crumbling from alcohol and be completely disintegrated with an attempted kiss or groping of an attractive young man and being repelled with a punch and - rotten fairy - followed with hysteria and incoherent apologies and excuses and running from the room) but, took a pride in being a homosexual by feeling intellectually and esthetically superior to those (especially women) who weren't gay (look at all the great artists who were fairies!); and with the wearing of womens panties, lipstick, eye makeup (this including occasionally gold and silver - stardust - on the lids),long marcelled hair, manicured and polished fingernails, the wearing of womens clothes complete with a padded bra, high heels and wig (one of her biggest thrills was going to BOP CITY dressed as a tall stately blond ( she was 6'4 in heels) in the company of a negro (he was a big beautiful black bastard and when he floated in all the cats in the place jumped and the squares bugged. We were at crazy pad before going and were blasting like crazy, and ~ Hubert Selby Jr.

I saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial not as an object placed into the earth but as a cut in the earth that has then been polished, like a geode. ~ Maya Lin

I couldn't help noticing
certain parts of the statues
have been polished
to a high sheen
by passing hands
as the centuries passed.
If it's a form of worship
it is not much odder
or more perverse
than the saint's stone toe
kissed to a stub by fervent lips. ~ Gregory Orr

Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said that he resembled Byron - at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old. ~ Jules Verne

You guys are so caught up in your polished images and your passive-aggressive comments that no one ever comes right out and says anything. Well, I'm going to. ~ Richelle Mead

Fear crawled up Daniel's spine at the realization that Vincent's humanity was only and affectation to be discarded like a mask when it was no longer useful, revealing the polished bone remnants of his personality, left after the softer emotions had been scoured off after a century or more of power and command. ~ Michael Langlois

The polished executive is ultimately the happy executive who can walk gracefully through life. ~ Letitia Baldrige

But he never looked at his daughter, and strode out of the room, leaving in the minds of the women a sense, half of awe, half of amusement, and the extravagant, inconsiderate, uncivilized male, outraged somehow and gone bellowing to his lair with a roar which still sometimes reverberates in the most polished of drawing rooms. ~ Virginia Woolf

Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration. ~ John Steinbeck

It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental beauty (for, like all artists, they never seek to realise the value of those dreams, or to enclose them in the four-square frame of everyday life), and their gold, which counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched and ill-polished lives of men. ~ Marcel Proust

Our father came to sleep in our house that night. He carried a small suitcase with a black mourning suit and a pair of polished shoes. Corrigan stopped him as he made his way up the stairs. 'Where d'you think you're going?'Our father gripped the bannister. His hands were liverspotted and I could see him trembling in his pause. 'That's not your room,' sad Corrigan. Our father tottered on the stairs. He took another step up. 'Don't,' said my brother. His voice was clear, full, confidant. Our father stood stunned. He climbed one more step and then turned, descended, looked around, lost.
'My own sons,' he said.
We made a bed for him on a sofa in the living room, but even then Corrigan refused to stay under the same roof; he went walking in the direction of the city center and I wondered what alley he might be found in later that night, what fist he might walk into, whose bottle he might climb down inside. ~ Colum McCann

When life puts you through a tumbler, it's your choice whether you come out polished or crushed. ~ Elisabeth Kubler Ross

The expedition for the occupation of the Marquesas had sailed from Brest in the spring of 1842, and the secret of its destination was solely in the possession of its commander. No wonder that those who contemplated such a signal infraction of the rights of humanity should have sought to veil the enormity from the eyes of the world. And yet, notwithstanding their iniquitous conduct in this and in other matters, the French have ever plumed themselves upon being the most humane and polished of nations. A high degree of refinement, however, does not seem to subdue our wicked propensities so much after all; and were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged. One ~ Herman Melville

In the days when the spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses
and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread lace, had their toy spinning wheels of polished oak
there might be seen, in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain palled undersized men who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. ~ George Eliot

Yet whenever someone comes upon his very own half then they are wondrously struck with affection and intimacy and love, and are practically unwilling to be separated from one another even for a short time. And it is they who stay together for life, and who wouldn't be able to say what they want to get for themselves from one another. ~ Plato

Ronan wasn't exactly sure why he was angry. Although Gansey had done nothing to invoke his ire, he was definitely part of the problem. Currently, he propped his cell between ear and shoulder as he eyed a pair of plastic plates printed with smiling tomatoes. His unbuttoned collar revealed a good bit of his collarbone. No one could deny that Gansey was a glorious portrait of youth, the well-tended product of a fortunate and moneyed pairing. Ordinarily, he was so polished that it was bearable, though, because he was clearly not the same species as Ronan's rough-and-ready family. But tonight, under the fluorescent lights of Dollar City, Gansey's hair was scuffed and his cargo shorts were a greasy ruin from mucking over the Pig. He was barelegged and sockless in his Top-Siders and very clearly a real human, an attainable human, and this, somehow, made Ronan want to smash his fist through a wall. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

It seemed to him that love was like a great fire, and that people went flying here and there among the flame and smoke seeking wildly for some rich jewel; and when they found it the flame died down; and, in the end, time polished the jewel into a calm beautiful thing. And the two who had found it sometimes forgot about this jewel of love, and that they ever possessed it, or shared it with each other. But sometimes, toward the end of their lives, they remembered about love once more, and opened the casket of memory in which it lay, faded but still beautiful, and looked at it again before they went their ways. ~ Lynn Doyle