Best Surface Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 21

“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.”

“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.”

Doe Reality Seems Remember Sound Water Memories Emotion Clear Shapes Sight Sticks Smell Surface Twists Thrust Ponds Warp Sight And Sound Crown Duel

Book:Crown Duel

Source: Crown Duel

“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.”

Men Years Enough Dies Too Much Sky Land Strange Thousand Ten Surface Miles Flats Cracks Texas Thousand Years Enough Time Soon Enough

Book:Geek Love: A Novel

Source: Geek Love: A Novel

“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.”

Said Would Be Wanted Lying Dies Easy Water Sleep Clear Seeing Flower Philosopher Warm Surface Veins Baths Wrists Poppies Gaudy Clear Water Wanted To Die Roman Philosophers

Book:the bell jar

Source: the bell jar

“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'!”

Ifs World Force Imagine Surface Invisible Spheres Mystical

Book:Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon Series

Source: Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon Series

“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.”

“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.”

Thinking Matter Enough Earth Rocks No Matter What Surface Fear Of Love Rupture

Book:Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

Source: Let the Great World Spin: A Novel

“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.”

Source: Point Omega

“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.”

Knows Men Stills Known Century Cold Fingers Glasses Stranger Surface Touched Outsiders Polished Abomination Gilded Unyielding

Book:The Outsider, Pickman’s Model, The Rats in the Walls, The Silver Key

Source: The Outsider, Pickman’s Model, The Rats in the Walls, The Silver Key

“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.”

Divine Clean Surface Disappear Dust Witch Transformed Wet Sponges Specks

Author:Paulo Coelho

“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.”

Feels Said Silence Nice Air Movement Broken Bird Empty Surface Seeds Teeth Grass Pool Nasty Blades Trembling Quiver Distaste

Book:The Lord of the Rings: One Volume

Source: The Lord of the Rings: One Volume

“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.”

“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.”

Source: Memorable Days: The Selected Letters of James Salter and Robert Phelps

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

Mother Surface

Book:Handle with Care: A Novel

Source: Handle with Care: A Novel

“Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.”

Knows Dark Surface Apparitions

Book:To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

“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.”

“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.”

Knows Littles Hands Lost Fans Mines Sweet Bears Ocean All Things Fingers Depth Forgotten Glasses Passionate Surface Treasure Handle Wheels Knives Buttons Feathers Forgetfulness Scissors

Author:Pablo Neruda

“Yesterday i carved your name into the surface of an ice cube then held it against my chest til it melted into my aching pores today i cried so hard the neighbors knocked on my door and asked if I wanted to borrow some sugar.”

Ifs Hard Today Wanted Names Doors Surface Neighbor Yesterday Ice Chests Sugar Cried Cubes

Author:Andrea Gibson

“This is what terrorism is occupied with as well: making real, palpable violence surface in opposition to the invisible violence of security.”

Wells Real Violence Security Terrorism Surface Invisible Opposition Simulacrum

Book:Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

“I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-colored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power to walk on water.”

Thinking Soul Eye Water Walks Forget Surface My Soul Fallen Lestat Iridescent

Book:The Vampire Chronicles Collection: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned

Source: The Vampire Chronicles Collection: Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, The Queen of the Damned

“I mean, maybe under the surface, somewhere that's hard to see, I've known it had to end for a long time. I just never thought I'd be the one to end it.”

Mean Long Ends Hard Known Long Time Surface

Author:Susane Colasanti

“Zombies will try to scale any surface no matter how unfeasable or even impossible. In all but the easiest situations, these attempts have met with failure. Even in the case of ladders, when simple hand-over-hand coordination is required, only one in four zombies will succeed.”

Trying Matter Hands Simple Situation Cases Four Impossible Mets Succeed Surface Scales Zombie Ladders Coordination

Book:The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

Source: The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead

“On our honeymoon we talked and talked. We stayed in a beachfront villa, and we drank rum and lemonade and talked so much that I never even noticed what color the sea was. Whenever I need to stop and remind myself how much I once loved Andrew, I only need to think about this. That the ocean covers seven tenths of the earth's surface, and yet my husband could make me not notice it.”

Thinking Needs Earth Sea Color Husband Ocean Seven Surface My Husband Drank Andrew Honeymoon Lemonade Rum Villa

Book:Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set: Little Bee, Incendiary, Gold

Source: Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set: Little Bee, Incendiary, Gold

“If at the one moment in your life when the chance of something transcendental is offered to you, if you have this chance to move beyond the surface of things, to understand - and you say, No, maybe not... What then? How do you explain the rest of your life to yourself? How do you pass the time until you die? Do you substitute for that an interest in what - eating? Do you spend the next sixty years trying to be fascinated by the act of breathing?”

Ifs Trying Years Moments Moving Dies Next Interest Chance Eating Surface Breathing Substitutes Fascinated Sixty Rest Of Your Life Transcendental

Author:Sebastian Faulks

“Place unopened pouch in warm water for 5-10 minutes. Unopened pouch may be laid on a warm surface. Lay unopened pouch in direct sunlight. Not much chance of that down here. Place unopened pouch inside you shirt, allow you body temperature to warm your MRE. I was surprised they left out: Place unopened pouch on ground and pee on it.”

May Body Left Water Chance Minutes Direct Lays Warm Surface Shirts Sunlight Temperature Left Out Body Temperature

Author:S.A. Bodeen

“She was battered and beaten up, and not smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.”

Eye Faces Cutting Blood Skins Series Lips Surface Wounds Noses Rising Her Eyes Beaten Battered Liesel

Book:The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition

Source: The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition

“Friendship is a simple thing, and yet complicated; friendship is on the surface, something natural, something taken for granted, and yet underneath one could find worlds.”

World Natural Simple Taken Complicated Surface Granted Simple Things Taken For Granted

Author:Jamaica Kincaid

“Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.”

Love Heartbreak Surface Lovely Intimacy Carrie Catastrophe Initials

Book:The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims

Source: The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love; Committed; The Last American Man; Stern Men & Pilgrims

“When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.”

“God is not attracted to mountaintops or church steeples. God is drawn to suffering, and the dark places it surfaces, which is why sharing pain freely feels very much like love, and may be the same thing. (207)”

Feels May Pain Suffering Church Dark Surface Like Love Dark Places Steeples

Author:Keith Ablow

“I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story.”

Trying Years Stories Moving Realizing Dark My Own Surface Thirty Leap Riding Blades Thirty Years Loops Skimming Moving To Fast

Book:The Things They Carried

Source: The Things They Carried

“The witchlight made his skin paler, his eyes more intently blue. They were the color of the water in the North Atlantic, where the ice drifted on its blue-black surface like the snow clinging to the dark glass pane of a window.”

Made Eye Black Water Dark Color Window Skins Blue Glasses Surface Snow Ice His Eyes Clinging Will Herondale Dark Glasses

Book:Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature...yes, that's it: just thinking about trees and their indifferent majesty and our love for them teaches us how ridiculous we are - vile parasites squirming on the surface of the earth - and at the same time how deserving of life we can be, when we can honor this beauty that owes us nothing.”

Thinking Firsts Feelings Earth Humanity Wonder Teach Tree Honor Surface Nostalgia Ridiculous Indifferent Our Love Majesty Deserving Parasites Sense Of Wonder Insignificance

Author:Muriel Barbery

“I trailed off.Patch leaned lazily against the counter. Dark hair flipped out from under his ball cap. A smile tugged at his mouth. My thoughts dissolved and just like that, a new thought broke the surface of my mind. I wanted to kiss him. Right now.”

Mind Wanted Dark Hair Right Now Kissing Mouths Balls Surface Broke My Thoughts Patches Caps New Thought Of My Mind Flipped Dark Hair

Book:The Complete Hush, Hush Saga: includes Hush, Hush; Crescendo; Silence and Finale

Source: The Complete Hush, Hush Saga: includes Hush, Hush; Crescendo; Silence and Finale

“and then he could not see her come into a room without a sense of the flowing of robes, of the flowering of blossoms, of the purple waves of the sea, of all things that are lovely and mutable on the surface but still and passionate in their heart.”

Heart Stills Rooms Sea All Things Passionate Wave Surface Lovely Purple Robes Flowering

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)

“Often secret desires as well as abilities surface in our dreams.”

Wells Dream Desire Ability Secret Surface Our Dreams Secret Desire

Book:Hunted: A House of Night Novel

Source: Hunted: A House of Night Novel

“They'd had fun, for sure. They laughed and enjoyed being together. But if she was painfully honest with herself, something was missing. Something in the way Tim looked at her. She remembered her mom's word. "I saw the way he looked at you...he adores you." Maybe that was it. Tim looked at her on a surface level. He smiled and seemed happy to see her. But When Cody looked at her, there were no layers left, nothing her didn't reveal, nothing he couldn't see. He didn't really look at her so much as he looked into her. To the deepest, most real places in her heart and soul.”

Ifs Way Looks Heart Real Soul Together Left Fun Levels Saws Honest Missing Mom Surface Enjoyed Remembered Laughed Layers Adore Heart And Soul Being Together Missing Something Had Fun Adore You

Book:Take Two

Source: Take Two

“Nothing stands for content-free corporate bullshit quite like PowerPoint. And that's just scratching the surface.”

Surface Corporate Bullshit Powerpoint Scratching The Surface

Book:The Jennifer Morgue

Source: The Jennifer Morgue

“I have listened to many tales in my life, and told a few of my own. If this has taught me anything, it is that there are some occurrences that change the course of things, that make an alteration far beyond their own apparent magnitude. It is like the throwing of a tiny pebble into a pool, how it makes an ever-expanding circle of ripples, spreading right across the water's surface.”

Ifs Courses Water My Own Taught Surface Tiny Circles Tales Throwing Pool Expanding Magnitude Ripple Pebbles Alterations

Book:Son of the Shadows: Book Two of the Sevenwaters Trilogy

Source: Son of the Shadows: Book Two of the Sevenwaters Trilogy

“Sometimes, Edie, a person's feelings aren't rational. At least, they don't seem that way on the surface. You have to dig a little deeper to understand what lies at the base”

Way Littles Persons Sometimes Feelings Seems Lying Deeper Surface Rational

Book:The Distant Hours

Source: The Distant Hours

“Love is like a tide. When it's in, everything looks beautiful and inviting. Only when love recedes can you see the debris beneath the surface - the old bottles, the rusty prams, the sewage pipes, the bloated cats and dogs weighted down to drown. The man I had once loved so passionately I now saw as weak, gutted like a fish.”

Men Love Looks Age Beautiful Love Is Saws Dog Cat Weak Fishes Surface Bottles Tides Pipe Inviting Love Is Like Cat And Dog Beneath The Surface Debris Sewage Prams

Author:Kathy Lette

“I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.”

Thinking Want Hard Facts One Thing Obstacles Deeper Surface Chairs Slips Hostility Interrupted

Book:The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction

Source: The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction

“I’ve always liked the feeling of traveling light; there is something in me that wants to feel I could leave wherever I am, at any time, without any effort. The idea of being weighed down made me uneasy, as if I lived on the surface of a frozen lake and each new trapping of domestic life - a pot, a chair, a lamp - threatened to be the thing that sent me through the ice.”

Ifs Want Feels Made Ideas Feelings Light Effort Surface Ice Lakes Chairs Pot Threatened Frozen Lamps Uneasy Domestic Life Frozen Lake

Author:Nicole Krauss

“Knowledge can be like the skin on the surface of the water in a pond, or it can go all the way down to the mud. It can be the tiny tip of the iceberg or the whole hundred percent.”

Way Whole Water Percent Hundred Skins Surface Tiny Mud Ponds Iceberg Tip Of The Iceberg

Author:Siobhan Dowd

“As I descend the stairs, I can’t help brushing my fingers along the unblemished white marble walls. So cold and beautiful. Even in the Capitol, there’s nothing to match the magnificence of this old building. But there is no give to the surface - only my flesh yields, my warmth taken. Stone conquers people every time.”

Source: Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3)

“As I travel through life, I gather experiences that lie imprinted on the deepest strata of memory, and there they ferment, are transformed, and sometimes rise to the surface and sprout like strange plants from other worlds. What is the fertile humus of the subconscious composed of? Why are certain images converted into recurrent themes in nightmares or writing?”

World Writing Sometimes Lying Certain Memories Strange Plant Surface Theme Nightmare Transformed Subconscious Other Worlds Fertile Sprouts

Author:Isabel Allende

“He was wearing a look that she found odd and compelling - that amusement that didn’t seem to pass beyond the surface of his features, as he found everything in the world both infinitely funny and infinitely tragic all at the same time.”

World Looks Seems Found Surface Odd Features Tragic Compelling Amusement

Book:The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess

“The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. 'Behold , just now the world ... entire love. And woman must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man's disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it.”

Thinking Men World Feels Doe Film Water Perfect Rivers Depth Surface Shallow Disposition Caves Mobile Stormy Shallow Water

Author:Friedrich Nietzsche

“It was funny to hear her voice aloud. Her thoughts and perceptions usually existed so deep inside her, they rarely made it to the surface without a deliberate effort.”

Made Voice Effort Perception Surface Made It Deliberate Deep Inside

Book:The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Complete Collection

Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Complete Collection

“Literature presents you with alternate mappings of the human experience. You see that the experiences of other people and other cultures are as rich, coherent, and troubled as your own experiences. They are as beset with suffering as yours. Literature is a kind of legitimate voyeurism through the keyhole of language where you really come to know other people's lives--their anguish, their loves, their passions. Often you discover that once you dive into those lives and get below the surface, the veneer, there is a real closeness.”

People Knows Humans Kind Real Suffering Culture Passion Literature Language Rich Surface Anguish Human Experience Closeness Other Cultures Veneer Mapping Below The Surface Keyholes

Author:Chaim Potok

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Surface Quotes