Terror Quotes - Page 14

• For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.

  Audre Lorde

  Real, Games, Differences

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• The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. (“The Medusa”)

  Thomas Ligotti

  Heart, Enlightenment, Medusa

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• His body rigid with terror as he waited for the savages to something horrible to him—bash his head with clubs, or stab him with spears, or… …or tap him on the shoulder.

  Dave Barry

  Savages, Body, Clubs

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• September 11, 2001: Citizens of the U.S., besieged by terror’s sting, rose up, weeping glory, as if on eagles’ wings.--from the poem Angel of Remembrance: Candles for September 11, 2001

  Aberjhani

  Angel, Eagles, Wings

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• A DIVINE IMAGE Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine, And Secresy the human dress. The human dress is forged iron, The human form a fiery forge, The human face a furnace sealed, The human heart its hungry gorge.

  William Blake

  Heart, Iron, Faces

  William Blake (2015). “Poems of William Blake”, p.69, The Floating Press

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• Peeta, how come I never know when you're having a nightmare?” I say. “I don't know. I don't think I cry out or thrash around or anything. I just come to, paralyzed with terror,” he says. “You should wake me,” I say, thinking about how I can interrupt his sleep two or three times on a bad night. About how long it can take to calm me down. “It's not necessary. My nightmares are usually about losing you,” he says. “I'm okay once I realize you're here.

  Suzanne Collins

  Sleep, Thinking, Night

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• An hour's terror is better than a lifetime of timidity.

  Walter de La Mare

  Lifetime, Hours, Timidity

  Walter de La Mare (2013). “The Return”, p.60, Courier Corporation

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• Demons feed on death and pain madness," Valentine said. "When I kill, it is because I must. You grew up in a falsely beautiful paradise surrounded by fragile glass walls, my daughter. Your mother created the world she wanted to live in and she brought you up in it, but she never told you it was an illusion. And all the time the demons waited with their weapons of blood and terror to smash the glass and pull you free of the lie.

  Cassandra Clare

  Beautiful, Daughter, Mother

  Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.830, Simon and Schuster

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• All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.

  Herman Melville

  Heart, Men, Your Side

  Herman Melville (2015). “Moby-Dick: World Classics”, p.327, World Classic

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• Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Cutting, Two, Envy

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1995). “Recollections: the French Revolution of 1848”, p.98, Transaction Publishers

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• One of those out-of-the-ordinary days that made sense of the slew of ordinary days. New York had a way of doing that. Every now and then the city shook its soul out. It assailed you with an image, or a day, or a crime, or a terror, or a beauty so difficult to wrap your mind around that you had to shake your head in disbelief.

  Colum McCann

  New York, Ordinary Days, Cities

  Colum McCann (2009). “Let The Great World Spin”, p.213, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Our scientific advances will be merely obscene unless they help the large part of our world's population emerge from miserable uncertainty and debilitating terror.

  Michael Moorcock

  Our World, Population, Helping

  Michael Moorcock, Allan Kausch, Iain Sinclair (2012). “London Peculiar and Other Nonfiction”, p.1, PM Press

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• The good folks mostly win, courage usually triumphs over fear, the family dog hardly ever contracts rabies: these are things I knew at twenty-five, and things I still know now, at the age of 25 x 2. But I know something else as well: there's a place in most of us where the rain is pretty much constant, the shadows are always long, and the woods are full of monsters. It is good to have a voice in which the terrors of such a place can be articulated and its geography partially described, without denying the sunshine and clarity that fill so much of our ordinary lives. (viii)

  Stephen King

  Dog, Rain, Sunshine

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• I guess I can't blame him for feeling bitter. Going from being the terror of Bulgarian nights to a janitor would kinda suck

  Kiersten White

  Night, Feelings, Blame

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• I think too many people presume to read the divine Scriptures and fall into such terrors as this,' said Patricius sternly. 'Those who presume on their learning will learn, I trust, to listen to their priests for the true interpretations.' The Merlin smiled gently. 'I cannot join you in that wish, brother. I am dedicated to the belief that it is God's will that all men should strive for wisdom in themselves, not look to it from some other. Babes, perhaps, must have their food chewed for them by a nurse, but men may drink and eat of wisdom for themselves.

  Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Brother, Fall, Men

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• We think there are limits to the dimensions of fear. Until we encounter the unknown. Then we can all feel boundless amounts of terror.

  Peter Høeg

  Fear, Thinking, Encounters

  Peter Høeg (2010). “Smilla's Sense of Snow: A Novel”, p.101, Macmillan

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• Boo," I said. He reacted as all mutts react when I confront them. He leapt from his chair and dove for the nearest exit, shaking in terror. In my dreams. He glanced at me and started looking for Clay. It never failed. Mutts only quaked when I appeared because it usually meant Clayton wasn't far behind. I was nothing but a harbinger of doom.

  Kelley Armstrong

  Dream, Clay, Mutts

  Kelley Armstrong (2009). “Bitten”, p.283, Vintage Canada

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• From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony. ... A tale may not display a great deal of structural, psychological, or narrative sophistication, though it might possess all three, but it seldom takes its eye off its primary goal, the creation of a particular emotional state in its reader. Depending on the tale, that state could be wonder, amazement, shock, terror, anger, anxiety, melancholia, or the momentary frisson of horror.

  Peter Straub

  Eye, Emotional, Goal

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• He picked up the wrench and broke the guy’s wrist with it, one, and then the other wrist, two, and turned back and did the same to the guy who had held the hammer, three, four. The two men were somebody’s weapons, consciously deployed, and no soldier left an enemy’s abandoned ordnance on the field in working order. The doctor’s wife was watching from the cabin door, all kinds of terror in her face. "What?" Reacher asked her.

  Lee Child

  Men, Doctors, Doors

  Lee Child (2015). “The Essential Jack Reacher, Volume 2, 6-Book Bundle: 61 Hours, Worth Dying For, The Affair, A Wanted Man, Never Go Back, Personal”, p.337, Delacorte Press

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• Are you scared?’ asked Mr. Ibis. ‘Not really.’ ‘Well, try to cultivate the emotions of true awe and spiritual terror, as we walk. They are the appropriate feelings for the situation at hand.

  Neil Gaiman

  Spiritual, Hands, Feelings

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• It was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible - incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. It seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Impact, Comfort, Watches

  "Housekeeping". Book by Marilynne Robinson, 1980.

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• He talks pretty big for a gutter wizard," he muttered. "You don't understand at all," said the wizard wearily. "I'm so scared of you my spine has turned to jelly, it's just that I'm suffering from an overdose of terror right now. I mean, when I've got over that then I'll have time to be decently frightened of you.

  Terry Pratchett

  Mean, Suffering, Jelly

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• By this time I was no longer very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed the limit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was practically lost, and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything

  H. G. Wells

  Despair, Limits, Miserable

  H. G. Wells (2016). “The Island of Doctor Moreau”, p.60, H. G. Wells

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• We don't go to the ocean for anything as simple as happiness, do we? We go there to feel alive. Like life, the ocean holds chance and change, grief and terror and beauty. It promises mortality, not peace.

  Eileen Wilks

  Grief, Ocean, Simple

  Eileen Wilks (2004). “Tempting Danger”, p.139, Penguin

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• And it's the funniest thing: as soon as I see it, the whistling in my ears stops and the feeling of terror drains away, and I realize this whole time I haven't been falling at all. I've been floating.

  Lauren Oliver

  Inspirational, Fall, Feelings

  Lauren Oliver (2010). “Before I Fall”, p.217, Hachette UK

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