Talismans Quotes - Page 2

It was actually books that started to make those pockets of freedom, which I hadn't otherwise experienced. I do see them as talismans, as sacred objects. I see them as something that will protect me, I suppose, that will save me from things that I feel are threatening. I still think that; it doesn't change. It doesn't change, having money, being successful. So from the very first, if I was hurt in some way, then I would take a book -- which was very difficult for me to buy when I was little -- and I would go up into the hills, and that is how I would assuage my hurt.

Jeanette Winterson

Hurt, Book, Successful

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The essay form has superceded the novel as the vehicle that best suggests the prevailing apocalyptic gestalt, and as the talisman that is most able to repel the onset of paralysing dread.

Adam Parfrey

Gestalt, Able, Form

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Woman dwell always in the palace of unpalatable truth and never by any chance is there a magic talisman to save them from their destiny. Speech is their ultimate need. We men exist for them only in so far as we can be described.

William McFee

Destiny, Men, Magic

William McFee (1921). “Harbours of Memory”

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He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him.

Cormac McCarthy

Taken, Heart, Simple

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In ancient days, Deltora was divided into seven tribes. The tribesfought on their borders but otherwise stayed in their own place. Each had a gem from deep within the Earth, a talisman with special powers.

Emily Rodda

Special, Borders, Earth

Emily Rodda (2012). “Deltora Quest #1: The Forests of Silence”, p.13, Scholastic Inc.

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Britney Spears became my talisman. I became obsessed with wearing Britney T-shirts. I felt it would bring me luck. And it did.

Madonna Ciccone

Luck, T Shirt, Shirts

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...the Bible itself is less read than preached, less interpreted than brandished. Increasingly, pastors may drape a limply bound Book over the edges of the pulpit as they depart from it. Members of the congregation carry Bibles to church services; the paster announces a long passage text for his sermon and waits for people to find it, then reads only the first verse of it before he takes off. The Book has become a talisman.

Harold Bloom

Book, Past, Church Service

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My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

Dani Shapiro

Beach, Rose, Wish

Dani Shapiro (2013). “Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life”, p.60, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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When we begin to love and respect Great Mother Nature's gift to us of gayness, we'll discover that the bondage of our childhood and adolescence in the trials and tribulations of neitherness was actually an apprenticeship for teaching her children new cutting edges of consciousness and social change. In stunning paradox, our neitherness is our talisman, our fairie wand, our gift we bring to the hetero world to....transform their pain into healings; ...transform their tears to laughter: ...transform their hand-me-downs to visions of loveliness.

Harry Hay

Mother, Pain, Laughter

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It is to labor, and to labor only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable value. Labor is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage: that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities, and the ocean with ships; that has given us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism.

John Ramsay McCulloch

Ocean, Men, Cities

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The source of each accordant strain
Lies deeper than the Poet's brain.
First from the people's heart must spring
The passions which he learns to sing;
They are the wind, the harp is he,
To voice their fitful melody,--
The language of their varying fate,
Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,--
The talisman which holds inwrought
The touchstone of the listener's thought;
That penetrates each vain disguise,
And brings his secret to his eyes.

Bayard Taylor

Lying, Hate, Spring

Bayard Taylor (1866). “The Poems”, p.111

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Books are not seldom talismans and spells.

William Cowper

Book, Spells

William Cowper (1856). “The task, Table talk, and other poems: With critical observations of various authors on his genius and character, and notes, critical and illustrative”, p.297

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The plants that produce visions can function- for those of us who have inherited the New World Order of barren materialism, cut off from our spiritual heritage by a spiteful culture that gives us nothing but ashes- as the talismans of recognition that awaken our minds to reality.

Daniel Pinchbeck

Spiritual, Cutting, Reality

Daniel Pinchbeck (2002). “Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism”, p.125, Three Rivers Press

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Too often, in novels that are speculative, God is a kind of kryptonite, and that's about all that it is, and it goes back to Dracula, where someone dumps a crucifix in Count Dracula's face, and he pulls away and runs back into his house. That's not religion. That's some kind of juju, like a talisman.

Stephen King

Running, Kryptonite, House

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Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit there from.

Bahá'u'lláh

Educational, Men, Baha

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There is nothing for her beyond those gates," Gavriel said. "Do you think to bring her along like a talisman to remind you of your humanity? Or do you think sharing your damnation will lighten the burden of it?

Holly Black

Thinking, Humanity, Damnation

Holly Black (2013). “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown”, p.50, Hachette UK

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