Shadow Quotes - Page 30

• When we think of friends, and call their faces out of the shadows, and their voices out of the echoes that faint along the corridors of memory, and do it without knowing why save that we love to do it, we content ourselves that that friendship is a Reality, and not a Fancy--that it is builded upon a rock, and not upon the sands that dissolve away with the ebbing tides and carry their monuments with them.

  Mark Twain

  Memories, Reality, Thinking

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• Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.

  Lorrie Moore

  Sadness, Sentimental, Arrangements

  Lorrie Moore (2010). “The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore”, p.147, Faber & Faber

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• This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven. At night the owls made of it an echoing throat; by day it stood voiceless and cast its long shadow.

  Mervyn Peake

  Night, Ivy, Long

  Mervyn Peake (2007). “Titus Groan”, p.12, The Overlook Press

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• The bright dawn flooded the room, and swept the fantastic shadows into dusky corners, where they lay shuddering.

  Oscar Wilde

  Dawn, Rooms, Fantastic

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.66, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor.

  Neil Gaiman

  Regret, Lying, Dark

  "American Gods". Book by Neil Gaiman, 2001.

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• This is reality, whether you like it or not--all those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath. This is the truth.

  Willa Cather

  Summer, Lying, Reality

  Willa Cather (2013). “The Essential Willa Cather Collection”, p.463, eBookIt.com

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• I wanted to walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of the world, which could not be very far away. The light and air abot me told me that the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would only be sun and sky, and one would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed over our heads making slow shadows on the grass.

  Willa Cather

  Light, Air, Sky

  Zane Grey, Max Brand, Owen Wister, James Fenimore Cooper, B. M. Bower (2017). “60 WESTERNS: Cowboy Adventures, Yukon & Oregon Trail Tales, Famous Outlaws, Gold Rush Adventures & much more: Riders of the Purple Sage, The Night Horseman, The Last of the Mohicans, Rimrock Trail, The Hidden Children, The Law of the Land, Heart of the West, A Texas Cow-Boy, The Prairie…”, p.6441, e-artnow

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• The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Love, Life, Truth

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• I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

  Pablo Neruda

  Love, Pregnancy, I Hate You

  Pablo Neruda, “Sonnet XVII”

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• Perhaps there are other bits of my life that would take on content, take on shadow, if only I read more and thought less about money.

  Martin Amis

  Bits, Ifs

  FaceBook post by Martin Amis from Aug 28, 2012

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• ...and the night was comfortably warm as the soft filtered light continued to push the darkness into the shadows as they held each other and kissed and pushed each others darkness into the corner, believing in each others light, each others dream.

  Hubert Selby, Jr.

  Dream, Believe, Night

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• You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.

  Philip K. Dick

  Science, Identity, Matter

  Philip K. Dick (2008). “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?: The inspiration for the films Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049”, p.179, Ballantine Books

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• Beginnings are sudden, but also insidious. They creep up on you sideways, they keep to the shadows, they lurk unrecognized. Then, later, they spring.

  Margaret Atwood

  Spring, Sideways, Creeps

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.190, Anchor

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• Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.

  Yann Martel

  Life, Beautiful, Jealous

  Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.21, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamped, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtailed of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them,-- Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to spy my shadow in the sun.

  William Shakespeare

  Dog, Glasses, Breathing

  'Richard III' (1591) act 1, sc. 1, l. 9

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• All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.

  Kiran Desai

  Ocean, Moving, Color

  Kiran Desai (2007). “The Inheritance of Loss”, p.1, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber'd here While these visions did appear.

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, Halloween, Thinking

  'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (1595-6) act 5, sc. 2, l. 54

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• Cut off as I am, it is inevitable that I should sometimes feel like a shadow walking in a shadowy world. When this happens I ask to be taken to New York City. Always I return home weary but I have the comforting certainty that mankind is real flesh and I myself am not a dream.

  Helen Keller

  Dream, New York, Real

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• It's so beautiful at this hour. The sun is low, the shadows are long, the air is cold and clean. You won't be awake for another five hours, but I can't help feeling that we're sharing this clear and beautiful morning.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Beautiful, Morning, Air

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.305, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The shadow by my finger cast Divides the future from the past: Before it, sleeps the unborn hour, In darkness, and beyond thy power. Behind its unreturning line, The vanished hour, no longer thine: One hour alone is in thy hands,- The NOW on which the shadow stands.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Sleep, Past, Hands

  Henry Van Dyke (1920). “The Poems of Henry Van Dyke”

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• The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine... And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote:"... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment.

  Harlan Ellison

  Revenge, Hate, Passion

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• Love like a shadow flies when substance love pursues Pursuing that that flies, and flying what pursues.

  William Shakespeare

  Flying, Substance, Pursue

  William Shakespeare, Joseph Dennie (1805). “The plays of William Shakespeare ...: With the corrections and illustrations of various commentators”, p.71

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• He is life's liberating force. He is release of limbs and communion through dance. He is laughter, and music in flutes. He is repose from all cares -- he is sleep! When his blood bursts from the grape and flows across tables laid in his honor to fuse with our blood, he gently, gradually, wraps us in shadows of ivy-cool sleep.

  Euripides

  Laughter, Sleep, Blood

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• Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose

  George Lucas

  Letting Go, Attachment, Greed

  George Lucas (2005). “Revenge of the Sith: Illustrated Screenplay: Star Wars: Episode III”, p.54, Del Rey

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• My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

  Diane Setterfield

  Running, Wall, Lying

  Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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