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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“It was nice seeing you again," Pascal continued. He stood up, walked around the table, and gave me a little kiss on my left cheek. He stayed there for a bit, and my face burned so much I was sure his lips would singe from the molten heat of my blushing. Then he walked out the door. I couldn't move. I still sensed Pascal's stubble on my cheek, the smell of meat and toast from his skin. "What the hell was that?" I said to myself, my lips moving, but not a sound coming out. I ran over the entire interaction in my mind. Partly to make sure that I hadn't accidentally cheated on Elliott. And partly to relive Pascal's singular magic.”

“It was nice that this type of peer pressure wasn’t going to get me arrested. I’d become so used to getting manipulated and talked into things, it took me a while to realize this was different. They weren’t pressing their ways on me at all. They were just grateful to live in God’s promises in the present and to be free from the binding ways of their own pasts. They cut time out each morning so they could slow down, be intentional, study an impactful life lesson, rest in God, and put on the right attitude before setting out on their day.”

“It was nice to be out, despite the wind, and I decided to walk instead of taking the bus, enjoying what remained of the sun. There were plenty of other people with the same idea. It felt good to be part of a throng, and I took gentle pleasure in mingling. I dropped twenty pence into the paper cup of a man sitting on the pavement with a very attractive dog. I bought a fudge doughnut from Greggs and ate it as I walked. I smiled at a spectacularly ugly baby who was shaking his fist at me from a garish pushchair. Noticing details, that was good. Tiny slivers of life---they all added up and helped you to feel that you too could be a fragment, a little piece of humanity who usefully filled a space, however minuscule.”

“It was nicer that way. knowing that something called rights existed. The right to health care, to good and to schooling for our children . . . For us things were good; for others they were bad. Especially for the landowners, who are the ones who suffered most when we demanded our rights. They spend more and earn less. Besides, once we learned about the existence of rights we also learned not to bow our heads when the bosses scolds us. We learned to look them in the face.”

“It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts. The most obvious part was a hollow, echoing quiet, made by things that were lacking. If there had been a wind it would have sighed through the trees, set the inn’s sign creaking on its hooks, and brushed the silence down the road like trailing autumn leaves. If there had been a crowd, even a handful of men inside the inn, they would have filled the silence with conversation and laughter, the clatter and clamor one expects from a drinking house during the dark hours of night. If there had been music...but no, of course there was no music. In fact there were none of these things, and so the silence remained. Inside the Waystone a pair of men huddled at one corner of the bar. They drank with quiet determination, avoiding serious discussions of troubling news. In doing this they added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one. It made an alloy of sorts, a counterpoint. The third silence was not an easy thing to notice. If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar. It was in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire. It was in the slow back and forth of a white linen cloth rubbing along the grain of the bar. And it was in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight. The man had true-red hair, red as flame. His eyes were dark and distant, and he moved with the subtle certainty that comes from knowing many things. The Waystone was his, just as the third silence was his. This was appropriate, as it was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.”

“It was night time, Inspector Thompson wrote. Those in the plane were transfixed with delight to look down from the windows and see the amazing spectacle of a whole city lighted up. Washington represented something immensely precious. Freedom, hope, strength. We had not seen an illuminated city for two years. My heart filled.”

“It was nineteen fifty seven, the Little Rock nine were escorted to school by Federal troops under the order of President Eisenhower to counteract the attempt of Arkansas Governor Faubus to prevent it. Southern racial tensions produced a supreme irony: Federal troops against the National Guard. This visible strife between state and nation was one of the evidences of the racial turmoil of the times”

“It was no accident, no coincidence, that the seasons came round and round year after year. It was the Lord speaking to us all and showing us over and over again the birth, life, death, and resurrection of his only begotten Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, our Lord. It was like a best-loved story being told day after day with each sunrise and sunset, year after year with the seasons, down through the ages since time began.”

“It was no easy task advancing through No Man’s Land, especially without making a sound. Barbed wire was typically passed through dark paint to keep it from reflecting light and then loosely strung between spaced wooden posts to provide an effective high obstacle. Strung low and tight were alarm traps—wire attached to some noisemaker that alerted the guards to movement. Sometimes, the Americans made wire entanglements by wrapping barbed wire around a long, rectangular wood frame behind the lines. These could be quickly rolled out into No Man’s Land after an artillery barrage had cut a wide hole in the wire. The wire obstacles added to the chaotic and dangerous morass. Due to constant shelling, there was an irregular pattern of shell holes, thick mud, and the rotting remains of men and animals.”

“It was no easy task to tame the barbarians' language. One quick three-week-old autumn, the brothers were sitting in their cell, trying to write out the letters that men would later call Cyrillic. They were not getting anywhere. Fromm the cell you could clearly see half of October, and in it the silence was one hour's walk long and two hours' walk wide. Then Methodius called his brother's attention to four jugs standing on the window of their cell, but outside, on the other side of the bars. "If the doors were locked, how could I get to one of those jugs?" he asked. Constantine broke one of the jugs, then drew the fragments piece by piece through the bars and into the cell, where he reassembled the jug, bonding it with saliva and clay from the floor beneath his feet. This they now did with the Slavonic language: they broke it in pieces, drew it into their mouths through the bars of Cyril's letters, and bonded the fragments with their saliva and the Greek clay beneath the soles of their feet.”

“It was no longer a question of the Union as it was, that was to be reestablished; it was the Union as it should be, that is to say, washed clean from its original sin, regenerated on the baptismal font of liberty for all. … Now, we could march with a prouder step, and fight with more confidence. We were no longer merely the soldiers of a political controversy, to be decided by the fate of arms. We were now the missionaries of a great work of redemption, the armed liberators of millions of men bent beneath the brutalizing yoke of slavery. The war was ennobled; the object was higher.”