Yet Quotes

He kissed her a little more deeply and was happy to hear her gasp of pleasure. The sound brought his erection back to life, and he brushed his fingertips over her collarbone.
"How 'bout you hop on up here with me?"
"I don't think you're quite ready for that yet."
"Wanna bet?" He took her hand and put it under the hospital sheets.
The throathy laugh as she gripped him gently was yet another marvel. Just like her constant presence in his room, her fierce protection of him, her love, her strength.
She was everything to him. His whole world. He'd gone from being blasé about his death to being desperate to live. For her. For them. For their future.
"What do you say we give it another day?" she said.
"An hour."
"Until you can sit up on your own."
"Deal."
Thank God he was a fast healer.
(..............)
Wrath struggled on the bed, trying to force himself upright so that he bore the weight of his upper body on his hips.
Beth watched him the whole time, refusing to help.
When he was steady, he rubbed his hands together in anticipation. He could feel her skin already.
"Wrath," she said with warning as he beamed at her.
"Come up here, leelan, A deal's a deal. ~ J.R. Ward

The Bible holds up before us ideals that are within sight of the weakest and the lowliest, and yet so high that the best and the noblest are kept with their faces turned ever upward. It carries the call of the Saviour to the remotest corners of the earth; on its pages are written the assurances of the present and our hopes for the future ~ William Jennings Bryan

At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different," Sazed said. "Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet, upon closer examination he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Forgiveness is not an easy chore to undertake, nor is it for the weak. I forgive you, God, for leaving me out here to figure out all of this on my own. Yet forgiveness is the daily minimum requirement for a healthy, fulfilling, and meaningful life. I forgive my mind for believing that what was is what always has to be. ~ Iyanla Vanzant

she will stride up to the client, shake his hand firmly (yet femininely), while looking him warmly (yet confidently) in the eye and smiling innocently, and delivering her name unto him with perfectly clipped Received Pronunciation, showing off her pretty (thank-god-they're-not-too-thick) lips coated in a discreet shade of pink, baring her perfect teeth as he adjusts to the collision between reality and expectation, and tries not to show it while she assumes control of the situation and conversation. ~ Bernardine Evaristo

We say release, and radiance, and roses,"

We say release, and radiance, and roses,
and echo upon everything that's known;
and yet, behind the world our names enclose is
the nameless: our true archetype and home.

The sun seems male, and earth is like a woman,
the field is humble, and the forest proud;
but over everything we say, inhuman,
moves the forever-undetermined god.

We grow up; but the world remains a child.
Star and flower, in silence, watch us go.
And sometimes we appear to be the final
exam they must succeed on. And they do. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful to me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad? ~ Herman Melville

The devils never had a Savior offered to them, but you have; and do you yet make light of Him? ~ Richard Baxter

There 's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 't is not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is 't to leave betimes? Hamlet. V.2 ~ William Shakespeare

A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures? ~ Ivan Turgenev

A woman is like a universe; there are many things that even she still needs to discover about herself. Men on the other hand are miners, which means they are in a better position to uncover, perceive and appreciate things about women that they themselves have not yet come to the full realization of. Men know more about women than they can tell (it's for their own safety that they keep their mouths shut and pretend like they don't know anything, lest they get slammed for claming to know anything at all about women in the first place). Sadly, women are losing out on a wealth of knowledge and understanding about themselves by debunking men's ideas and notions about them especially when it comes to their femininity and sensuality. I think there is a need for women to start gently and safely asking men what they 'inherently' know about their femininity. I'm not a chauvinist nor a proponent for men's rights, but I strongly believe that men hold the keys to a lot of treasure chests that most women are daily striving to open up. Perhaps you should start inviting your man to get a little bit more involved in your feminine/sensual journey. It's only a suggestion... ~ Lebo Grand

I was stunned. The steppe seemed to burst into bloom, heaving a sigh and drawing aside the veil of darkness, and I saw two lovers in its vast expanse. They did not seem to notice me, it was as if I was not there. I was walking along and watching as they, oblivious to the world, swayed together in tune with the song. And I did not recognize them. It was the same old Daniyar in his shabby army shirt unbuttoned at the throat, but his eyes seemed to gleam in the gloom. it was my Jamilia clinging to him, yet so quiet and timid, with teardrops sparkling upon her eyelashes. They were newly born, uniquely happy people. Was this not true happiness? Was not Daniyar giving this inspired music utterly to her, was he not singing for her, singing about her? ~ Chingiz Aitmatov

We are all a complete mixture;yet at the same time,we are all related.Each gene can trace its own journey to a different common ancestor.This is a quite extraordinary legacy that we all have inherited from the people who lived before us.Our genes did not just appear when we were born.They have been carried to us by millions of individual lives over thousands of generations. ~ Bryan Sykes

There is a place called 'heaven' where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Yet while Vidal writes best about power, politics, and history White's strengths are sex, art and – sometimes – love. Each tends to stumble when he enters the other's domain. ~ Christopher Bram

Diagnosed incidentally with stage IV, grade 4 metastatic renal cell carcinoma, I had bone metastases in my femur (which eventually fractured), ulna, and cranium; five metastases in my lungs; and muscle metastases in my thigh and tongue. Yet six months after diagnosis, my treatment ended: I've not had a drop of anything since. ~ Dave DeBronkart

He was beautiful.
Whatever else he was, Sage was by far the most magnetic man I had ever seen. I had felt it in my dreams, and it was even more true in real life. I welcomed the chance to study him without his knowledge.
He glanced up, and I quickly closed my eyes, feigning sleep. Had he seen me? The scratching stopped. He was looking at me, I knew it. I held my breath and willed my eyes not to pop open and see if he was staring.
Finally the scratching started up again. I forced myself to slowly count to ten before I opened my eyelids the tiniest bit and peeked through my lashes.
Good-he wasn't looking at me.
I opened my eyes a little wider. What was he doing? Moving only my eyes, I glanced down at the dirt floor in front of him…
…and saw a picture of me, fast asleep.
It was incredible. I could see his tools laid out beside the picture: rocks in several sizes and shapes, a couple of twigs…the most rudimentary materials, and yet what he was etching into the floor wouldn't look out of place on an art gallery wall. It was beautiful…far more beautiful than I thought I actually looked in my sleep. Is that how he saw me?
Sage lifted his head again, and I shut my eyes. I imagined him studying me, taking careful note of my features and filtering them through his own senses. My heartbeat quickened, and it took all my willpower to remain still.
"You can keep pretending to be asleep if you'd like, but I don't see a career for you as an actres ~ Hilary Duff

The women that I picked spoke sweet and low
And yet gave tongue. "Hound voices" were they all. ~ William Butler Yeats

When Francie brought a ticket and a dime back and pushed them across the counter, he gave her the wrapped shirt and two lichee nuts in exchange. Francie loved these lichee nuts. There was a crisp easily broken shell and the soft sweet meat inside. Inside the meat was a hard stone that no child had ever been able to break open. It was said that this stone contained a smaller stone and that the smaller stone contained a smaller stone which contained a yet smaller stone and so on. It was said that soon the stones got so small you could only see them with a magnifying glass and those smaller ones got still smaller until you couldn't see them with anything but they were always there and would never stop coming. It was Francie's first experience with infinity. ~ Betty Smith

By the way, I haven't heard an 'I'm sorry' from you yet." My sense of grievance had overwhelmed my sense of self-preservation.
I am sorry that the maenad picked on you."
I glared at him. "Not enough," I said. I was trying hard to hang on to this conversation.
Angelic Sookie, vision of love and beauty, I am prostrate that the wicked evil maenad violated your smooth and voluptuous body, in an attempt to deliver a message to me."
That's more like it. ~ Charlaine Harris

That little hypocrites and half-crazed people dare to imagine that on their account the laws of nature are constantly broken; such an enhancement of every kind of selfishness to infinity, to impudence, cannot be branded with sufficient contempt. And yet Christianity owes its triumph to this pitiable flattery of personal vanity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Girls and women, in their new, particular unfolding, will only in passing imitate men's behavior and misbehavior and follow in male professions. Once the uncertainty of such transitions is over it will emerge that women have only passed through the spectrum and the variety of those (often laughable) disguises in order to purify their truest natures from the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life abides and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more trustingly, are bound to have ripened more thoroughly, become more human human beings, than a man, who is all too light and has not been pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of a bodily fruit and who, in his arrogance and impatience, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity which inhabits woman, brought to term in pain and humiliation, will, once she has shrugged off the conventions of mere femininity through the transformations of her outward status, come clearly to light, and men, who today do not yet feel it approaching, will be taken by surprise and struck down by it. One day (there are already reliable signs which speak for it and which begin to spread their light, especially in the northern countries), one day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer just signify the opposite of the male but something in their own right, something which does not make one think of any supplement or limit but only of life and existence: the female human being.

This ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

It's the simplest things in your life that help you achieve the greatest BLESSINGS. None of those things cost you, yet they can bring abundant reward. Faith, honesty and good manners will take you places and assist you in obtaining things that money NEVER will. ~ Carlos Wallace

And yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered, because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

You're beautiful," Archer murmured, his husky voice rolling over my skin. He reached up with his other hand to touch the blue streak in my hair. "You're like a creature from some exotic land that no one has discovered yet. ~ Nina Lane

I have traveled so far and loved so much, and yet I am still following the Sun Trail, heading for my new hunting grounds.
-Gray Wing ~ Erin Hunter

My thing is that most scripts arent bad scripts, theyre just not finished yet. ~ Michael Arndt

She went as through a forest
the columns were furrowed like ancient trees, and in through the forest flowed the light, many-hued and clear as song, from the pictured windows. High up above her, beasts and men sported among the stone leafage, and angels played
and yet far, dizzily far higher, the vaulting soared, lifting the church towards God. In a hall that lay to one side, worship was being held at an altar. Kristin sank down on her knees by a pillar. The singing cut into her like a too strong light. Now she saw how low she lay in the dust ... Pater noster. Credo in unum Deum. Ave Maria, gratia plena. ~ Sigrid Undset

She was like a heroine in a novel that she herself was writing the character kept protesting that she was too strong for love and yet the narrator went on describing her desire. ~ Anna Godbersen

Outsong in the Jungle

[Baloo:] For the sake of him who showed
One wise Frog the Jungle-Road,
Keep the Law the Man-Pack make
For thy blind old Baloo's sake!
Clean or tainted, hot or stale,
Hold it as it were the Trail,
Through the day and through the night,
Questing neither left nor right.
For the sake of him who loves
Thee beyond all else that moves,
When thy Pack would make thee pain,
Say: "Tabaqui sings again."
When thy Pack would work thee ill,
Say: "Shere Khan is yet to kill."
When the knife is drawn to slay,
Keep the Law and go thy way.
(Root and honey, palm and spathe,
Guard a cub from harm and scathe!)

Wood and Water, Wind and Tree,
Jungle-Favour go with thee!

[Kaa:] Anger is the egg of Fear--
Only lidless eyes see clear.
Cobra-poison none may leech--
Even so with Cobra-speech.
Open talk shall call to thee
Strength, whose mate is Courtesy.
Send no lunge beyond thy length.
Lend no rotten bough thy strength.
Gauge thy gape with buck or goat,
Lest thine eye should choke thy throat.
After gorging, wouldst thou sleep ?
Look thy den be hid and deep,
Lest a wrong, by thee forgot,
Draw thy killer to the spot.
East and West and North and South,
Wash thy hide and close thy mouth.
(Pit and rift and blue pool-brim,
Middle-Jungle follow him!)

Wood and Water, W ~ Rudyard Kipling

And yet what a man is speaks louder than what he does. ~ Ed Hindson

Given everything we know about the universe it would seem utterly impossible for any sane person to believe that the ultimate truth about the universe and human existence is the story of Israeli, German or Russian nationalism – or indeed of nationalism in general. A story that ignores almost the whole of time, the whole of space, the Big Bang, quantum physics and the evolution of life is at most just a tiny part of the truth. Yet people somehow manage not to see beyond it.
Indeed, billions of people throughout history have believed that for their lives to have meaning, they don't even need to be absorbed into a nation or a great ideological movement. It is enough if they just 'leave something behind', thereby ensuring that their personal story continues beyond their death. The 'something' I leave behind is ideally my soul or my personal essence. If I am reborn in a new body after the death of my present body, then death is not the end. It is merely the space between two chapters, and the plot

"that began in one chapter will carry on into the next. Many people have at least a vague faith in such a theory, even if they do not base it on any specific theology. They don't need an elaborate dogma – they just need the reassuring feeling that their story continues beyond the horizon of death. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The Way is ever without action, yet nothing is left undone. ~ Laozi

Now death is death! and yet is not one death Another death? Stabbing is not the same As shooting! Would you say a strangled man Was drown'd? The end is one, the means are many, And there the difference lies! ~ Victoria Laurie

A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

and in time, when yet very young, he became chief mate of a fine ship, without ever having been tested by those events of the sea that show in the light of day the inner worth of a man, the edge of his temper, and the fibre of his stuff; that reveal the quality of his resistance and the ~ Joseph Conrad

Some men, as they age, grow kinder. I am not one of those, for I have seen how the cosmere can mistreat the innocent - and that leaves me disinclined toward kindness. Some men, as they age, grow wiser. I am not one of those, for wisdom and I have always been at cross-purposes, and I have yet to learn the tongue in which she speaks. Some men, as they age, grow more cynical. I, fortunately, am not one of those. If I were, the very air would warp around me, sucking in all emotion, leaving only scorn.
Other men...other men, as they age, merely grow stranger. I fear that I am one of those. I am the bones of a foreign species left drying on the plain that was once, long ago, a sea. A curiosity, perhaps a reminder, that all has not always been as it is now. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Perhaps now, though, he had hit bottom. One thing about the bottom, he told himself, you can't fall any further. He tried to take comfort from this thought. Yet there knocked in his heart the suspicion that the bottom did not really exist. ~ James Baldwin

The drink was like water, indeed very like the taste of the draughts they had drunk from the Entwash near the borders of the forest, and yet there was some scent or savour in it which they could not describe: it was faint, but it reminded them of the smell of a distant wood borne from afar by a cool breeze at night. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Just one word, infused with naked desperation; half prayer, half enchantment. It felt like a freezing charm on her soul making her his prisoner, yet setting her free all at once. ~ Genevieve Dewey

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. 'I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could. ~ Lewis Carroll

I don't even like the word 'indoors'. It doesn't make sense. According to you right now, by stepping through the doorway I'd be indoors. Yet I wouldn't actually be standing in the doorway. If it's supposed to refer to being inside a building, then they shouldn't have used the word 'door,' since last time I checked, doors don't make up every square inch of a building! And I'd assume that now, since I'm not indoors, you'd say I'm 'out of doors', right? But, shouldn't out of doors just be everywhere that's not directly under a door? You know what, from now on I insist that everyone refer to being in a building as being 'under-roof'. ~ Natalie Bina

I shall do what needs doing myself, thank you," September said finally. "And I'll ask you kindly to stop telling me what I need and what will be wonderful just as soon as I agree with you! And most importantly to stop turning me into things I didn't ask to be and kissing me when I didn't ask to be kissed! You stole my First Kiss from me, Saturday. I haven't forgiven you just because I haven't had a shout about it yet. I've been busy! But I think I'm the only one who gets a say about when I get kissed or turned into a beast! Not that it wasn't nice to be a Wyvern or a Fairy. I'm not saying it wasn't nice." September could not help adding the apology. But she would absolutely not go meekly along relying on everyone else to fight and speak and wish for her. She would not have things done to her when she could do them on her own! She'd done plenty - and shouldn't Ell know that? Perhaps only her own dear red Ell would understand that she could not just let everyone else do her work for her. Her mother did not just hope some other man would come along and take up the work that needed doing in her factory. She did it herself, and so would September. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

It was depressing, very depressing. I worried about how I would make a living. I didn't want to stay on the farm. It didn't offer the challenge I wanted and yet, without a college education, I felt that I was really out of luck. ~ Clyde Tombaugh

Sexually active? Sexually active? Patrick and I hadn't even learned the fine points of kissing yet!
I marched on down. 'For your information,' I said from the doorway, as both Dad and Lester jerked to attention, 'I am about as sexually active as a bag of spinach, and if you want to keep me on the porch and not out in the park somewhere behind the bushes, you'll keep the stupid porch light off when I come home with a boy. ~ Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Oh! you shall see how well I know how to love! I can only love; I know only how to love! With moderate faculties, we can yet do much when we center them on a single object. ~ Jeanne Julie Eleonore De Lespinasse

It is comforting, however, and a source of profound relief to think that man is only a recent invention, a figure not yet two centuries old, a new wrinkle in our knowledge, and that he will disappear again as soon as that knowledge has discovered a new form. ~ Michel Foucault

Doubtless there are things in nature which have not yet been seen. If an artist discovers them, he opens the way for his successors. ~ Paul Cezanne

{On to contributions to evolutionary biology of 18th century French scientist, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon}

He was not an evolutionary biologist, yet he was the father of evolutionism. He was the first person to discuss a large number of evolutionary problems, problems that before Buffon had not been raised by anybody.... he brought them to the attention of the scientific world.

Except for Aristotle and Darwin, no other student of organisms [whole animals and plants] has had as far-reaching an influence.

He brought the idea of evolution into the realm of science. He developed a concept of the "unity of type", a precursor of comparative anatomy. More than anyone else, he was responsible for the acceptance of a long-time scale for the history of the earth. He was one of the first to imply that you get inheritance from your parents, in a description based on similarities between elephants and mammoths. And yet, he hindered evolution by his frequent endorsement of the immutability of species. He provided a criterion of species, fertility among members of a species, that was thought impregnable. ~ Ernst W. Mayr

Nor can thy shame give physic to my grief;
Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss:
The offender's sorrow lends but weak relief
To him that bears the strong offence's cross. ~ William Shakespeare

I will greet this day with love in my heart. And how will I do this? Henceforth will I look on all things with love and be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness as it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul. ~ Og Mandino

The poetry was so ahead of its time no one has deciphered it yet ~ Harper Lee

Lady Rose, you grow lovelier every time I see you."
Had it been a stranger who spoke she might have been flustered, but since it was Archer, Grey's younger brother, she merely grinned in response and offered her hand. "And your eyesight grows poorer every time you see me, sir."
He bowed over her fingers. "If I am blind it is only by your beauty."
She laughed at that, enjoying the good-natured sparkle in his bright blue eyes. He was so much more easy-natured than Grey, so much more full of life and flirtation. And yet, the family resemblance could not be denied even if Archer's features were a little thinner, a little sharper.
How would Grey feel if she found a replacement for him in his own brother? It was too low, even in jest.
"Careful with your flattery, sir," she warned teasingly. "I am trolling for a husband you know."
Archer's dark brows shot up in mock horror. "Never say!" Then he leaned closer to whisper. "Is my brother actually fool enough to let you get away?"
Rose's heart lurched at the note of seriousness in his voice. When she raised her gaze to his she saw only concern and genuine affection there. "He's packing my bags as we speak."
He laughed then, a deep, rich sound that drew the attention of everyone on the terrace, including his older brother.
"Will you by chance be at the Devane musicale next week, Lord Archer?"
"I will," he remarked, suddenly sober. "As much as it pains me to enter that viper's pit. I'm ac ~ Kathryn Smith

We've taken disturbances and fluctuations and averaged them together to give us comfortable statistics. Our training has been to look for big numbers, important trends, major variances. Yet it is the slight variations - soft-spoken, even whispered at first - that we need to encourage. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

To Judeans the cross was perhaps the most hated symbol of Roman rule. The deadly silhouette had scarred too many hilltops, signifying the most ignoble of deaths, a lingering torment that carried shame for all who witnessed it. And yet here it was, portraying a hope that transcended their worries and fears. Merely looking at this bit of carved wood lifted Linux beyond himself, carried upon a promise as strong as it was eternal. ~ Davis Bunn

Douady and Hubbard used a brilliant chain of new mathematics to prove that every floating molecule does indeed hang on a filigree that binds it to all the rest, a delicate web springing from tiny outcroppings on the main set, a "devil's polymer," in Mandelbrot's phrase. The mathematicians proved that any segment-no matter where, and no matter how small-would, when blown up by the computer microscope, reveal new molecules, each resembling the main set and yet not quite the same. Every new molecule would be surrounded by its own spirals and flame-like projections, and those, inevitably, would reveal molecules tinier still, always similar, never identical, fulfilling some mandate of infinite variety, a miracle of miniaturization in which every new detail was sure to be a universe of its own, diverse and entire. ~ James Gleick

And the touch of her own mask, at first cool and clammy leather, but quickly like a second skin, and the play it gives her, herself a stage, her every breath a performance, and yet (herein lies the magic) also and entirely true. Every game, every lie flirting and cruel - and the house is full of them, games and lies - is real as knives, for the masquerade has come to define the night. The false face of everyday, that hides reality beneath flesh and skin, is itself hidden beneath the fantasy that, because it is a product and reflection of the mind, is an honest facade. Sadie has lived a wary, defensive life, always urged by that self-preserving instinct to stay small, hidden, safe. She did not know she had an imp inside her until she wore it on her face.

("One Of The Hungry Ones") ~ Holly Phillips

There is scarcely a single joy or sorrow within the experience of our fellow-creatures which we have not tasted; yet the belief, in the good and beautiful has never forsaken us. It has been medicine to us in sickness, richness in poverty, and the best part of all that ever delighted us in health and success. ~ Leigh Hunt

I haven't found one place in the world yet where I could disappear. ~ Robert Pattinson

I strongly wish for what I faintly hope; like the daydreams of melancholy men, I think and think in things impossible, yet love to wander in that golden maze. ~ John Dryden

In evangelical circles we typically think of preaching as teaching and exhorting. Of course, Scripture informs, instructs, explains, asserts, and commands. Yet for the Reformers, the preaching of the Word is more than a preacher's thoughts, encouragements, advice, and impassioned pleas. Through the lips of a sinful preacher, the triune God is actually judging, justifying, reconciling, renewing, and conforming sinners to Christ's image. God created the world by the words of his mouth and by his speech also brings a new creation into being. In other words, through the proclamation of his Word, God is not just speaking about what might happen if we bring it about but is actually speaking it into being. Hence, Calvin calls preaching the sacramental word: the word as a means of grace. Faith comes by hearing the Word - specifically, the gospel (Rom. 10:17). Thus, the church is the creation of the Word (creatura verbi). ~ Michael S. Horton

Very early morning. The sun was not yet risen, and the whole of Crescent Bay was hidden under a white sea-mist. The big bush-covered hills at the back were smothered. You could not see where they ended and the paddocks and bungalows began. ~ Katherine Mansfield

Her little hands, Crumb. Her little paws, like a child's. She has no guile in her. And she never speaks. And if she does I hate to bend my head to hear what she says. And in the pause I can hear my heart. Her little bits of embroidery, her scraps of silk, her halcyon sleeves, she cut out of the cloth some admirer gave her once, some poor boy struck with love for her...and yet she has never succumbed. Her little sleeves, her seed pearl necklace...she has nothing...she expects nothing...' A tear at last sneaks from Henry's eye, meanders down his cheek and vanishes into the mottled grey and ginger of his beard. ~ Hilary Mantel

Naught is possessed, neither gold, nor land nor love, nor life, nor peace, nor even sorrow nor death, nor yet salvation. Say of nothing: It is mine. Say only: It is with me. ~ D.H. Lawrence

My pack rose up like a mantle behind me, towering several inches above my head, and gripped me like a vice all the way down to my tailbone. It felt pretty awful, and yet perhaps this was how it felt to be a backpacker.
I didn't know.
I only knew that it was time to go, so I opened the door and stepped into the light. ~ Cheryl Strayed

I had no hope. Yet expectation lived on in me, the last thing she had left behind. What further consummations, mockeries, torments did I still anticipate? I had no idea as I abided in the unshaken belief that the time of cruel wonders was not yet over. ~ Stanislaw Lem

The bud of a rose grows in darkness. It knows nothing of the sun, yet it pushes at the darkness that confines it until at last the walls give way and the rose bursts forth, spreading its petals into the light. I love him. ~ Donna Woolfolk Cross

I think of the flower in the bud: huddled, compressed, dark. Yet somehow it feels the night, knows moon from sun. It waits ... waits. ~ Jerry Spinelli

The first truth about mortals is that none of us wants to die, but all of us are going to. It's in the name – mortals – the dying ones. If you don't understand that bit, you won't understand the rest of it. Here you are, some 5-hundred years old and you haven't yet figured out something that a 3 year old human is starting to understand. You see, as soon as we can even think, our brains are wrapping themselves around that One Truth, that one offensive, undeniable, irrevocable Truth. The rest of our existence grows up in the shadow of a dead leaning tree, which will at one point in the not unimaginable future fall and crush all that has grown up beneath it…



…Rescue them for what? Why from dying! Does that mean they won't die? No, it just means they won't die today. At best, we're talking about delaying the inevitable death sentence laid on our friends. Now how does this particular truth strike you, Mister Immortal…?



…And why? Why not merely stand now and fall sooner rather than later? Because there is something precious and sacred about rearguard action. It's an active retreat that's been repeated valiantly and ceaselessly from the beginning of mortal time. It just seems wrong to give up. It seems invalid and invalorous. More importantly, it's indecent to simply lie down and be overrun…



…Instead we rage against it and sing our defiance through bloodied teeth. Somehow, in our pointless battle, we find moment ~ J. Robert King

The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. ~ Christopher Lasch

Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience. ~ Henry Home, Lord Kames

My cousin was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, and it's just a really tragic disease, and as of yet there is no cure, so I feel I want to get it as much publicity to do it as I can. ~ Nick Robinson

The home phone is relatively cheap, incredibly reliable, and - if you buy the right phone - will work for years without replacement. Oh, and far as I can tell, a home phone won't give you brain cancer. In a perfect world, the hard line should have become a platform for building out an entire app ecosystem for the home. And yet ... it didn't. ~ John Battelle

But did you know that during the past quarter century, no presidential election has been won by more than ten million ballots cast? Yet every federal election during the same time period had at least one hundred million people of voting age who did not bother to vote! ~ Andy Andrews

The tower, which was not supposed to be there, plunges into the earth in a place just before the black pine forest begins to give way to swamp and then the reeds and wind-gnarled trees of the marsh flats. Beyond the marsh flats and the natural canals lies the ocean and, a little farther down the coast, a derelict lighthouse. All of this part of the country had been abandoned for decades, for reasons that are not easy to relate. Our expedition was the first to enter Area X for more than two years, and much of our predecessors' equipment had rusted, their tents and sheds little more than husks. Looking out over that untroubled landscape, I do not believe any of us could yet see the threat. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

I'm not jaded yet. I'm still at the point where, if someone comes up to me with great energy, I'm happy to meet them. ~ David Walton

It is not yet a feeling that points her in a direction. It is just the feeling of a vacuum, a void waiting to be filled. ~ Eleanor Catton

We're all working hard, but so far away from what we actually want to be doing. We're all peering in at the window of a party we aren't invited to yet, a party we wouldn't know how to dress for, or what kind of conversation to make, even if we came as someone's guest. ~ Lauren Graham

And yet Nothing here is certain; ~ Mark Strand

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart; -
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around -
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air -
Comes a still voice -
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine etern ~ William Cullen Bryant

The equal and sustainable right of access to the Earth's bounty seems one of the most transcendent truths a human being can contemplate. Yet, this right is missing from the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The fact that this single principle is violated on an ongoing basis is quite possibly the root cause of many, if not most, other human rights violations. ~ Martin Adams

I am more interested in the insecure transparency in you than the pretentious character. Naked is surreal, it may make you feel vulnerable for a while yet it will take us on a journey worth remembering. ~ Suchet Chaturvedi

Yet, like the sea and the gallows, London refuses nobody. ~ Peter Ackroyd

Gastronomers of the year 1825, who find sateity in the lap of abundance, and dream of some newly-made dishes, you will not enjoy the discoveries which science has in store for the year 1900, such as foods drawn from the mineral kingdom, liqueurs produced by the pressure of a hundred atmospheres; you will never see the importations which travelers yet unborn will bring to you from that half of the globe which has still to be discovered or explored. How I pity you! ~ Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

One evening, after he'd read a piece about yet another savagery in Bosnia, I saw there were tears in his eyes. 'Don't it ever stop?' he said. 'I can mind Father telling that there'd be no more wars, not after his one. It shames me. It shames all of us. What's the good in reading, if that's all there is to read about? ~ Michael Morpurgo

Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord, take me once more into your redeeming embrace. ~ Pope Francis

I lay on her bed with my arms wrapped around her, wondering how on earth we'd managed to end up like this. I'm not sure what'd been on my mind when I came to see her, but this wasn't it! Strange the way things turn out. When I'd come into her room I'd been burning up with desire to smash her and everything around her. And yet here she was, asleep and still holding on to my arms like I was a life-raft or something. There's not a single millimetre between her body and mine. I could move my hands and, and, anything I liked. Caress or strangle. Kill or cure. Her or me. Me or her. ~ Malorie Blackman

The future doesn't exist. It hasn't happened yet. The past doesn't exist. It has already happened. ~ John Daido Loori

Yet I knew this was one of those experiences for me that made you grow as a person. This was one of those times that made you put things in perspective and appreciate everything you had. ~ Keary Taylor

Mothering Oxymoron: Reminding the kids to not talk with food in their mouths, yet I have food in my mouth while trying to correct them in the moment. ~ Mommy Moo Moo

All prayer is responding to God. In all cases God is the initiator - "hearing" always precedes asking. God comes to us first or we would never reach out to him.92 Yet all prayers are not alike or equally effective in relating to God. The clearer our understanding of who God is, the better our prayers. Instinctive prayer is like an emergency flare in reaction to a general sense of God's reality. Prayer as a spiritual gift is a genuine, personal conversation in reply to God's specific, verbal revelation. ~ Timothy J. Keller

My obsession is with the macabre. I didn't write any of the stories which follow for money, although some of them were sold to magazines before they appeared here and I never once returned a cheque uncashed. I may be obsessional but I'm not crazy. Yet I repeat: I didn't write them for money; I wrote them because it occurred to me to write them. I have a marketable obsession. There are madmen and madwomen in padded cells the world over who are not so lucky. ~ Stephen King

Be ye innocent as doves yet wise as serphants new testament quoted by Elvis Presley and applied to karate ~ Elvis Presley

From a multidimensional perspective our relationships with other people are simulations of our relationship with ourselves, yet also our relationship with ourselves is a simulation of our relationship with other people, and our relationship with ourselves and other people are also simulations of our relationship with our doubles existing in parallel universes, and all these relationships are simulations of our relationship with God, and ...
yes, it is all rather complicated, yet what matters in the end is that Love prevails. ~ Franco Santoro

There is no sorrow I have thought about more than that - to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail. ~ George Eliot

The scholarship on music and poetry in Mexico - and Latin America more generally - has yet to receive substantial historical attention. ~ Stephen Neufeld

Love : so many people read about it in books and research on it in libraries yet so few discover the real feeling of it! ~ Avijeet Das

[Hermogenes] despises God's law in his painting, maintains repeated marriages [almost certainly a reference to remarrying after divorce or perhaps even widowhood, which Tertullian, who became a Montanist, opposed], alleges the law of God in defense of lust [likely same reference], and yet despises it in respect of his art. ~ Tertullian

Some of the worst writing around suffers from inert verbs and the unintended use of the passive voice. Yet the passive voice remains an important arrow in the rhetorical quiver. After all, it exists for a reason. ~ Constance Hale

She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, "Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die - die, sweetly die - into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit."
And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek.
~ J. Sheridan Le Fanu