Height Quotes - Page 19

To annihilate the world by annihilation of oneself is the deluded height of desperate egoism.

Sylvia Plath

World, Desperate, Annihilation

Sylvia Plath (2011). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.163, Faber & Faber

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And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me...everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.

Knut Hamsun

Song, Air, Voice

Knut Hamsun (2015). “Hunger”, p.40, Xist Publishing

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A true Vor, Miles told himself severely, does not bury his face in his liegewoman's breasts and cry--even if he is at a convenient height for it.

Lois McMaster Bujold

Doe, Faces, Cry

Lois McMaster Bujold, Bujold (1997). “Young Miles”, Baen Books

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I'm not afraid of heights, but the idea of falling from them, well, that I'm afraid of.

Laurell K. Hamilton

Fall, Ideas, Not Afraid

Laurell K. Hamilton (2011). “Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter collection 11-15”, p.416, Penguin

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Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with someone else's depth or failure.

Alan Watts

Art, Games, Perfection

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Far over the Misty Mountains cold, To dungeons deep and caverns old, We must away, ere break of day, To seek our pale enchanted gold. The dwarves of yore made mighty spells, While hammers fell like ringing bells, In places deep, where dark things sleep, In hollow halls beneath the fells. The pines were roaring on the heights, The wind was moaning in the night, The fire was red, it flaming spread, The trees like torches blazed with light.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Sleep, Dark, Night

J. R. R. Tolkien, “Over The Misty Mountains Cold”

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There are those who do not hold that there is any innate goodness to mankind. To them I say, had you lived my life, you would not believe it. I have known the depths to which mortals are capable of descending, and I have seen the heights. I have seen how kindness and compassion may grow in the unlikeliest of places, as the mountain flower forces its way through the stern rock.

Jacqueline Carey

Kindness, Believe, Flower

Jacqueline Carey (2016). “Kushiel’s Legacy: (Kushiel's Dart, Kushiel's Chosen, Kushiel's Avatar)”, p.496, Macmillan

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Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dark, Men, Racism

"Letter from a Birmingham Jail". www.africa.upenn.edu. April 16, 1963.

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Heathcliff. The "hero" of Wuthering Heights. Although no one knows why. He's mean, moody, and possibly a bit on the pongy side. Cathy loves him, though. She shows this by viciously rejecting him and marrying someone else for a laugh. Still, that is true love on the moors for you.

Louise Rennison

Hero, Mean, Laughing

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You're afraid of heights,'I say. 'How do you survive in the Dauntless compound?' 'I ignore my fear,' he (Four) says. 'When I make decisions, I pretend it doesn't exist.

Veronica Roth

Decision, Four, Compounds

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-there was something in her, something that was...pure horror. Everything you were supposed to watch out for. Heights, fire, shards of glass, snakes, Everything that his mom tried so hard to keep him safe from.

John Ajvide Lindqvist

Mom, Fear, Fire

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Sleeping is the height of genius

Soren Kierkegaard

Sleep, Genius

Soren Kierkegaard (2004). “Either/Or: A Fragment of Life”, p.42, Penguin UK

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Why are tall guys always attracted to short women? Not just moderately short women, either... Tiny women. Polly Pockets. The tallest guys always-always-always go for the shortest girls. Always. It's like they're so infatuated with their own height that they want to be with someone who makes them feel even taller. Someone they can tower over. A little doll that will make them feel even bigger and stronger.

Rainbow Rowell

Girl, Guy, Stronger

Rainbow Rowell (2011). “Attachments”, p.128, Hachette UK

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When you sit in a chair, you are not actually sitting there, but levitating above it at a height of one angstrom (a hundred millionth of a centimetre), your electrons and its electrons implacably opposed to any closer intimacy.

Bill Bryson

Sitting, Intimacy, Chairs

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I hate being the only mortal in a gathering full of Immortals who think killing each other cleverly is the height of good manners.

Michelle Sagara

Hate, Thinking, Gathering

Michelle Sagara (2016). “Michelle Sagara Chronicles of Elantra Vol 3: Cast in Chaos\Cast in Ruin\Cast in Peril”, p.1080, MIRA

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Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.

Italo Calvino

Distance, Lying, Order

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There is such a thing as looking through a person's eyes into the heart, and learning more of the height, and breadth, and depth of another's soul in one hour than it might take you a lifetime to discover, if he or she were not disposed to reveal it, or if you had not the sense to understand it.

Anne Bronte

Heart, Eye, Soul

Anne Bronte (2016). “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Diversion Illustrated Classics)”, p.111, Diversion Books

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As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.

Sarah Dessen

Mirrors, Air, Hands

Sarah Dessen (2004). “That Summer”, p.171, Penguin

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In Greek tragedy, they fall from great heights. In noir, they fall from the curb.

Dennis Lehane

Fall, Greek, Tragedy

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In those dark times, one rose to the very heights of humanity by simply remaining human.

Elie Wiesel

Dark, Rose, Humanity

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On the heights, all paths are paved with daggers. -Old Seanchan saying

Robert Jordan

Daggers, Path

Robert Jordan, Teresa Patterson (2017). “The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time”, p.204, Tor Books

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Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

Albert Camus

Memories, Roots, Shadow

Albert Camus (1960). “The plague: translated from the French”

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there is no ascent to the heights without prior descent into darkness, no new life without some form of death.

Karen Armstrong

Darkness, New Life, Ascent

Karen Armstrong (2004). “A Short History Of Myth”, p.38, Canongate Books

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When a love-relationship is at its height there is no room left for any interest in the environment; a pair of lovers are sufficient to themselves

Sigmund Freud

Love Relationship, Rooms, Pairs

Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1961). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”

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And as he held his first true lover against him, feeling that familiar difference in their heights and smelling that wonderful cologne, part of him wanted to debate this break up until they both gave in and kept trying. But that wasn’t fair.

J.R. Ward

Differences, Feelings, Trying

J.R. Ward (2013). “Lover At Last: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.97, Penguin

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