Sullen Quotes - Page 4

• ... every available inch of his face busts into a smile - whoa. Has he blown into our school on a gust of wind from another world? The guy looks unabashedly jack-o'-lantern happy, which couldn't be more foreign to the sullen demeanor most of us strove to perfect.

  Jandy Nelson

  School, Wind, Perfect

  Jandy Nelson (2010). “The Sky Is Everywhere”, p.15, Penguin

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• I do get bottled up in interviews. You're thinking about what you're saying, and suddenly you get all tangled. So people think I'm sullen, or that I don't have much to say. But my friends will tell you: a lot of times I talk too much.

  Matt Dillon

  Thinking, People, Tangled

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• What would it mean in practice to eliminate all the 'negative people' from one's life [as demanded by motivational speaker J.P. Maroney]? It might be a good idea to separate from a chronically carping spouse, but it is not so easy to abandon the whiny toddler, the colicky infant, or the sullen teenager.

  Barbara Ehrenreich

  Teenager, Mean, Practice

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• She sits before me, sullen but hopeful, characterless, about to dissolve into tears. I squeeze her hand back, moved, no, touched by her ignorance of evil. She has one more test to pass. Do you own a briefcase?” I ask her, swallowing.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Ignorance, Hands, Evil

  Bret Easton Ellis (2014). “American Psycho: Picador Classic”, p.303, Pan Macmillan

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• They dream of men with gentle hands, eloquent with tenderness, fingers that brushed along a cheek, that outlined open lips in the lovers' braille. Hands that sculpted sweetness from sullen flesh, that traced breast and ignited hips, opening, kneading. Flesh becomes bread in the heat of those hands, braided and rising.

  Janet Fitch

  Dream, Men, Hands

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

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• Sullen monosyllabism, a sure sign of sleep deprivation.

  Jim Butcher

  Sleep, Deprivation, Sleep Deprivation

  Jim Butcher (2003). “Death Masks: Book five of The Dresden Files”, p.149, Penguin Group

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• The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons -- it was systemic and it was complete.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Moon, Orange, Planets

  Gary Shteyngart (2010). “Super Sad True Love Story: A Novel”, p.158, Random House

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• Um," Doc said in a mild voice, "medically speaking, I'm not sure that was the most helpful thing for his condition." "But I feel better," Jared answered, sullen. Doc smiled the tiniest smile. "Well, maybe a few more minutes of unconsciousness won't kill him.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Feel Better, Voice, Helpful

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• Who did you pass on the road?" the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some more hay. "Nobody," said the Messenger. "Quite right," said the King; "this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you." "I do my best," the Messenger said in a sullen tone. "I'm sure nobody walks much faster than I do!" "He can't do that," said the King, "or else he'd have been here first.

  Lewis Carroll

  Kings, Hands, Hay

  'Through the Looking-Glass' (1872) ch. 7

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• All sounds are sharper in winter; the air transmits better. At night I hear more distinctly the steady roar of the North Mountain. In summer it is a sort of complacent purr, as the breezes stroke down its sides; but in winter always the same low, sullen growl.

  John Burroughs

  Summer, Winter, Night

  John Burroughs (2012). “In the Catskills Selections from the Writings of John Burroughs”, p.17, tredition

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• I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

  John Donne

  Death, Exercise, Swimming

  John Donne (1839). “The Works of John Donne: Sermons. Letters. Poems”, p.321

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• Magnus had often thought of getting a pet, but he had never considered acquiring a sullen teenage vampire. Once Raphael was gone, he thought, he was getting a cat. And he would always throw his cat a birthday party.

  Cassandra Clare

  Teenage, Party, Cat

  Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Maureen Johnson (2014). “The Bane Chronicles”, p.276, Simon and Schuster

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• To him, who still would gaze upon the glory of the summer sun, there comes, when that sun will from him part, a sullen hopelessness of heart.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Summer, Heart, Sun

  Edgar Allan Poe (2008). “Edgar Allan Poe's Annotated Poems”, p.84, Bottletree Books LLC

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• The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns;
  The low'ring eye, the petulance, the frown,
  And sullen sadness, that o'ershade, distort,
  And mar the face of beauty, when no cause
  For such immeasurable woe appears;
  These Flora banishes, and gives the fair
  Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own.

  William Cowper

  Sweet, Sadness, Eye

  William Cowper, James Sambrook (2016). “William Cowper: The Task and Selected Other Poems”, p.72, Routledge

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• Shorten my days thou canst with sullen sorrow,
  And pluck nights from me, but not lend a morrow;
  Thou canst help time to furrow me with age,
  But stop no wrinkle in his pilgrimage.

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Grief, Night

  William Shakespeare (2016). “The New Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works”, p.865, Oxford University Press

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• The president of a TV network generously agreed to take his company's aptitude test, a test required of all the personnel. He did badly. As a result he was in a sullen mood for the rest of the day. When he got home that night, his wife asked why he looked so grouchy. I took the company's aptitude test this morning. What did it show? asked the wife. It showed, boomed the executive, that such tests are idiotic. That's what it showed.

  Joey Bishop

  Morning, Home, Night

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• The human genome will not help us to understand the spiritual side of humankind, or to know who God is or what love is. The well-heeled couple who decide they want to use genetics to have a child that is a gifted musician may end up with a sullen adolescent who smokes marijuana and doesn't talk to them.

  Francis Collins

  Spiritual, Couple, Children

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• From somber, serious sullen saints, save us, O Lord.

  Teresa Giudice

  Serious, Saint, Lord

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• Movies are our cheap and easy expression, the sullen art of displaced persons.

  Pauline Kael

  Movie, Art, Expression

  Pauline Kael (1994). “For keeps”, E P Dutton

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• Few and precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter: To what shall their rarity be likened? What prices shall count their worth? Perfect, and much to be desired, and giving joy with riches, No lovely thing on earth can picture their fair beauty. They be chance pearls, flung among the rocks by the sullen waters of Oblivion.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Wisdom, Rocks, Giving

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1838). “Proverbial Philosophy: A Book of Thoughts and Arguments, Originally Treated”, p.9

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• Too many have no idea of the subjection of their temper to the influence of religion, and yet what is changed, if the temper is not? If a man is as passionate, malicious, resentful, sullen, moody, or morose after his conversion as before it, what is he converted from or to?

  John Angell James

  Men, Ideas, Passionate

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• Oft, on a plat of rising ground, I hear the far-off curfew sound Over some wide-watered shore, Swinging low with sullen roar.

  John Milton

  Sound, Rising, Curfew

  'Il Penseroso' (1645) l. 73

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• When the Gauls laid waste Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes, and seated in stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death without resistance or supplication. Such conduct was in them applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indians it was reviled as both obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstances! How different is virtue, clothed in purple and enthroned in state, from virtue, naked and destitute, and perishing obscurely in a wilderness.

  Washington Irving

  Rome, Purple, Waste

  Washington Irving (1983). “History, Tales, and Sketches”, p.1011, Library of America

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• Marylou was watching Dean as she had watched him clear across the country and back, out of the corner of her eye--with a sullen, sad air, as though she wanted to cut off his head and hide it in her closet, an envious and rueful love of him so amazingly himself, all raging and sniffy and crazy-wayed, a smile of tender dotage but also sinister envy that frightened me about her, a love she knew would never bear fruit because when she looked at his hangjawed bony face with its male self-containment and absentmindedness she knew he was too mad.

  Jack Kerouac

  Country, Crazy, Eye

  Jack Kerouac (1957). “On the Road”, Viking Press

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• I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river Is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable.

  T. S. Eliot

  Strong, Thinking, Rivers

  Four Quartets "The Dry Salvages" pt. 1 (1941)

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