Surface Quotes - Page 5

• Never trust a shiny surface. They hide a multitude of flaws.

  Melissa de la Cruz

  Flaws, Never Trust, Multitudes

  Melissa de la Cruz (2010). “Masquerade: Number 2 in series”, p.190, Hachette UK

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, 'This is my Country.'

  Benjamin Franklin

  Love, Country, Knowledge

  Benjamin Franklin's letter to David Hartley (December 4, 1789) as quoted in "The Writings of Benjamin Franklin," Volume 10 (p. 72) edited by Albert H. Smyth, 1907.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands.

  Pablo Picasso

  War, Cutting, Hands

  9 Copy quote

• So many humans. So many colours. They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-coloured clouds, beating, like black hearts. And then. There is death. Making his way through all of it. On the surface: unflappable, unwavering. Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.

  Markus Zusak

  Memories, Heart, Clouds

  8 Copy quote

• Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

  Annie Dillard

  Tunnels, Views, Darkness

  "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek". Book by Annie Dillard, books.google.ru. January 1, 2011.

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Adversity will surface in some form in every life. How we prepare for it, how we meet it, makes the difference. We can be broken by adversity, or we can become stronger. The final result is up to the individual'.

  Marvin J. Ashton

  Adversity, Differences, Broken

  Marvin J. Ashton (1982). “Ye Are My Friends”, Shadow Mountain

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

  Jonathan Swift

  Race, Gulliver, Earth

  Gulliver's Travels "A Voyage to Brobdingnag" ch. 6 (1726)

  47 Copy quote

  Show source

• All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.

  Shirley Jackson

  Powerful, Jewels, Land

  Shirley Jackson (2010). “Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.

  Jose Ortega y Gasset

  Spring, Heart, Love Is

  5 Copy quote

• Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.

  Haruki Murakami

  Rain, Heart, Rivers

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Nov 04, 2015

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.

  Sherwood Smith

  Memories, Reality, Sight

  Sherwood Smith (1997). “Crown Duel”, p.182, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough. Time gets strange there from too much sky, too many miles from crack to crease in the flat surface of the land.

  Katherine Dunn

  Men, Texas, Years

  Katherine Dunn (2011). “Geek Love: A Novel”, p.199, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tup and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank into sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.

  Sylvia Plath

  Lying, Flower, Sleep

  Sylvia Plath (2008). “The Bell Jar”, p.110, Faber & Faber

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Imagine how they would have mocked you if you proclaimed, 'Not only is the world a sphere, but there is an invisible, mystical force that holds everything to its surface'!

  Dan Brown

  World, Spheres, Imagine

  Dan Brown (2017). “Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon Series”, p.1348, Random House

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater,you realize that you've been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.

  Dave Barry

  Beach, Ocean, Sea

  219 Copy quote

• There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what the rupture, they will never see the surface. There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love.

  Colum McCann

  Thinking, Rocks, Earth

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let the Great World Spin: A Novel”, p.156, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's all about time, dimwit time, inferior time, people checking watches and other devices, other reminders. This is time draining out of our lives. Cities were built to measure time, to remove time from nature. There's an endless counting down, he said. When you strip away surfaces, when you see into it, what's left is terror. This is the thing that literature was meant to cure. The epic poem, the bedtime story.

  Don DeLillo

  Epic, Cities, People

  Don DeLillo (2010). “Point Omega”, p.36, Pan Macmillan

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Men, Glasses, Unyielding

  H. P. Lovecraft (2016). “The Outsider, Pickman’s Model, The Rats in the Walls, The Silver Key”, p.10, H. P. Lovecraft

  41 Copy quote

  Show source

• We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dust, Witch, Clean

  7 Copy quote

• There was a deep silence, only scraped on its surfaces by the faint quiver of empty seed-plumes, and broken grass-blades trembling in small air-movements they could not feel. 'Not a bird!' said Sam mournfully. 'No, no birds,' said Gollum. 'Nice birds!' He licked his teeth. 'No birds here. There are snakeses, wormses, things in the pools. Lots of things, lots of nasty things. No birds,' he ended sadly. Sam looked at him with distaste.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Nice, Air, Broken

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.428, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• But then, Cap'n Crunch in a flake form would be suicidal madness; it would last about as long, when immersed in milk, as snowflakes sifting down into a deep fryer. No, the cereal engineers at General Mills had to find a shape that would minimize surface area, and, as some sort of compromise between the sphere that is dictated by Euclidean geometry and whatever sunken treasure related shapes that the cereal aestheticians were probably clamoring for, they came up with this hard-to-pin-down striated pillow formation.

  Neal Stephenson

  Suicidal, Cereal, Long

  "Cryptonomicon". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1999.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm tired of my life, my clothes, the things I say. I'm hacking away at the surface, as at some kind of gray ice, trying to break through to what is underneath or I am dead. I can feel the surface trembling—it seems ready to give but it never does. I am uninterested in current events. How can I justify this? How can I explain it? I don't want to have the same vocabulary I've always had. I want something richer, broader, more penetrating and powerful.

  James Salter

  Powerful, Tired, Ice

  James Salter, Robert Phelps (2010). “Memorable Days: The Selected Letters of James Salter and Robert Phelps”, p.25, Counterpoint Press

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• Maybe a mother wasn't what she seemed to be on the surface.

  Jodi Picoult

  Mother

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “Handle with Care: A Novel”, p.383, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is true that the subliminal in man is the largest part of his nature and has in it the secret of the unseeen dynamisms which explain his surface activities. But the lower vital subconscious which is all that this psycho-analysis of Freud seems to know, - and of that it knows only a few ill-lit corners, - is no more than a restricted and very inferior portion of the subliminal whole... to begin by opening up the lower subconscious, risking to raise up all that is foul or obscure in it, is to go out of one's way to invite trouble.

  Sri Aurobindo

  Men, Opening Up, Secret

  "The Perennial Quest for a Psychology with a Soul: An Inquiry Into the Relevance of Sri Aurobindo's Metaphysical Yoga Psychology in the Context of Ken Wilber's Integral Psychology". Book by Joseph Virtue, 2002.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I love all things, not because they are passionate or sweet-smelling but because, I don't know, because this ocean is yours, and mine: these buttons and wheels and little forgotten treasures, fans upon whose feathers love has scattered its blossoms, glasses, knives and scissors -- all bear the trace of someone's fingers on their handle or surface, the trace of a distant hand lost in the depths of forgetfulness.

  Pablo Neruda

  Sweet, Ocean, Glasses

  24 Copy quote