Quotes & Sayings About A Second

one dream had him chased by a giant pumpkin wielding knives, while a later dream had him chased by a giant knife wielding pumpkins. The first had been scarier, yet curiously it was the second that jerked him from his slumber. — Drew Hayes

It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual. — Thomas Jefferson

Overweight and obesity is the second leading cause of death, killing 300,000 people a year, There is not a miracle pill that will lead to weight loss. — Richard Carmona

People who have extremely limited knowledge of The Bible or its implications may still choose to classify themselves as Christians on the basis that their parents do so - they may never even give it a second thought. This phenomenon of our nation's children inheriting religion is often overlooked because the perpetrator guilty of indoctrination is not a dictator or cult leader, but instead it is most often their own parents or close family members. — David G. McAfee

I hold that two principles are important; first that there should be a steady expansion of public services, not an irregular one related to revenue accruing in any particular year; the second that taxes should be constant over long periods (provided, that is, that they are neither burdensome nor inequitable). — John James Cowperthwaite

We could've been a still photo, the kind from a booth at the mall where two dollars went in and a strip of three shots came out. Our image wasn't the first shot, the one that was always frantic and unfocused. It wasn't the second shot either--laughing and silly. No, this was the final image--the serious shot--where the couple realized they wanted a good picture to remember the moment by and couldn't afford to screw the last one up. — Elizabeth Langston

From Ronan's room, he heard Noah's laugh. He and Ronan were throwing various objects from the second-story window to the parking low below. There was a terrific crash.
Ronan's voice rose, exasperated. Not that one, Noah. — Maggie Stiefvater

Even now, she wished she could write a note, push it across the table, and go away to her room. But she was no longer a Second Assistant Librarian of the Great Library of the Clayr. Those days were gone, vanished with everything else that had defined her previous existence and identity. — Garth Nix

The first time you view a house, you see how pretty the paint is and buy it. The second time you look to see if the basement has termites. It's the same with men. — Claudia Carroll

A person, for example, reads in adulthood a book that is important for him, and it makes him say, "How could I have lived without reading it!" and also, "What a pity I did not read it in my youth!" Well, these statements do not have much meaning, especially the second, because after he has read that book, his life becomes the life of a person who has read that book, and it is of little importance whether he read it early or late, because now his life before that reading also assumes a form shaped by that reading. — Italo Calvino

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. — John Steinbeck

I came into my teens unaware that most Americans, blacks as well as whites, were ignorant of the main facts of Negro history. And so it was the facts of other histories that I found most intriguing. I fell into a U.S. history major by chance late in my second year at Fisk University. — David Levering Lewis

Meridian


First daylight on the bittersweet-hung
sleeping porch at high summer; dew
all over the lawn, sowing diamond-
point-highlighted shadows;
the hired man's shadow revolving
along the walk, a flash of milkpails
passing; no threat in sight, no hint
anywhere in the universe, of that

apathy at the meridian, the noon
of absolute boredom; flies
crooning black lullabies in the kitchen,
milk-soured crocks, cream separator
still unwashed; what is there to life
but chores and more chores, dishwater,
fatigue, unwanted children; nothing
to stir the longueur of afternoon

except possibly thunderheads;
climbing, livid, turreted alabaster
lit up from within by splendor and terror
-- forded lightening's
split-second disaster. — Amy Clampitt

No problem, dear," Phil said with a smile. It was a nice smile. A few years ago, it might have been returned, but nope, not today. Phil kept his eyes on her for maybe a second too long, though Wendy didn't think the girl noticed. Once the waitress was out of sight, Phil lifted his bottle toward Wendy. She picked up hers and clinked bottles and decided to stop this dance. "Phil, — Harlan Coben

If I could be God for a day, I would instantly replace July and August with two Septembers so the twelve months of the new calendar year would consist of January, February, March, April, May, June, September, September, September, October, November, December. On second thought, I'd also replace December with another September, thus deleting the Mas season and ending the year with a fourth September. The Mas season, once known as Christmas until we took Christ out of it, leaving only mas, the Spanish word for more, is my least favorable month of the year because of the greed-mandated financial, emotional and spiritual stresses that the economy-dependent celebration of Mas imposes. — Lionel Fisher

Be very vigilant over thy child in the April of his understanding, lest the frost of May nip his blossoms. While he is a tender twig, straighten him; whilst he is a new vessel, season him; such as thou makest him, such commonly shall thou find him. Let his first lesson be obedience and his second shall be what thou wilt. — Francis Quarles

One second, we are surrounded by angels holding their swords. The next second, one of their arms drops and his sword thunks to the grass like a lead weight. The angel stares at his blade uncomprehendingly.
Another sword drops.
Then another.
Then a whole bunch, until all the other unsheathed swords fall, thudding on the grass like subjects bowing down to their queen.
The angels stare at the swords at their feet in utter shock.
Then everyone looks at me. Actually, it's probably more accurate to say they're looking at my sword.
"Whoa." That's about the most intelligent thing I can say right now. Did Raffe say something about an archangel sword intimidating other angel swords if she could gain their respect?
I swivel my eyes to look at the blade in my hands. Was that you, Pooky Bear? — Susan Ee

The human sensory system sends the brain about eleven million bits of information each second.9 However, anyone who has ever taken care of a few children who are all trying to talk to you at once can testify that your conscious mind cannot process anywhere near that amount. The actual amount of information we can handle has been estimated to be somewhere between sixteen and fifty bits per second. — Leonard Mlodinow

Instead of facing a crisis as I approached middle age, I discovered that a new and better life lay before me. I called the process of discovery 'halftime,' and the outcome led to my second half. — Bob Buford

She had married him because she felt sage, because she'd had enough pain to last her a lifetime, and because although he had many faults, faults she was aware of before she married him, she knew he wouldn't hurt her.
She knew because there was no passion, and the only time she had felt passion, it had come with a price. — Jane Green

Damen's palm slid over Laurent's warm nape; slowly, very slowly, making his height an offering, not a threat, Damen leaned in and kissed Laurent on the mouth. The kiss was barely a suggestion of itself, with no yielding of the rigidity in Laurent, but the first kiss became a second, after a fraction of parting in which Damen felt the flicker of Laurent's shallow breathing against his own lips. It — C.S. Pacat

I had been a writer all of my life, every waking second, and now that part of my life was over. I suppose the truth was that I had never put myself forward as a writer, I didn't like the idea of the 'professional writer'; I just wanted to write. But that was not how the world worked... — Bonnie Greer

Familiar like a forgotten song from long ago that takes you back to a moment the second you hear it. And you recognize who you were. Then. And now. And you have to figure out how to reconcile the two. — Katy Regnery

For the word "We" must never be spoken, save by one's choice and as a second thought. This word must never be placed first within man's soul, else it becomes a monster, the root of all the evils on earth, the root of man's torture by men, and of an unspeakable lie.
The word "We" is as lime poured over men, which sets and hardens to stone, and crushes all beneath it, and that which is white and that which is black are lost equally in the grey of it. It is the word by which the depraved steal the virtue of the good, by which the weak steal the might of the strong, by which the fools steal the wisdom of the sages. — Ayn Rand

We wish to continue in following up the legacy of the Second Vatican Council whose wise regulations have still to be led to their fulfilment, being careful that a push, generous perhaps, but unduly timed, does not detract from the content and meaning of the council, and on the other hand being careful and reined and timid efforts do not slow up the magnificent drive of renewal and of life. — Pope John Paul I

The mown grass is growing again nearly to our knees; we will take a second crop of hay from this field, rich and green and starred with moon daisies, buttercups and the bright, blowsy heads of poppies. — Philippa Gregory

As Eternity has reckoned There's a lifetime in a second — Piet Hein

Figure out what you do best, and build a team second to none around that ... # 1 Requirement in building first class companies. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

People need to understand that what happens in people's homes and behind closed doors, unless you were there, you really shouldn't make any analogy or any assumption, which writers do quite a bit. It's not something I ever for one second thought about. This is not my life story, and I've never told my life story, and I have no interest in telling my life story. — Charlize Theron

A second possible approach to general systems theory is through the arrangement of theoretical systems and constructs in a hierarchy of complexity, roughly corresponding to the complexity of the "individuals" of the various empirical fields ... leading towards a "system of systems." ... I suggest below a possible arrangement of "levels" of theoretical discourse ... (vi) ... the "animal" level, characterized by increased mobility, teleological behavior and self-awareness ... — Kenneth E. Boulding

Never trust the occultist who tells you that he is the head of a tradition, because if he were, in the first place, he would not tell the fact to the uninitiated, and in the second place he would in all probability be living in great seclusion and inaccessible to all but his immediate subordinates. If a man is a great artist he does not need to inform us of the fact; we shall know him by his pictures that are hung in the galleries of the nation, and we shall, moreover, find that he guards himself from casual acquaintances because of the inroads on his time to which his fame renders him liable. The more eminent a person, the harder he is to approach, not out of any spirit of pride and exclusiveness, but because so many people want to see him that discrimination has to be used in admitting them. — Dion Fortune

Old Age, a second child, by nature curst
With more and greater evils than the first,
Weak, sickly, full of pains: in ev'ry breath
Railing at life, and yet afraid of death. — Charles Churchill

Mr Zhu says what makes him a diaosi is that he is the son of factory workers. He is not fu er dai - second-generation rich - or guan er dai - the son of powerful government officials (it does not escape a diaosi's notice that those two categories often overlap). — Anonymous

You know that split second? The one where you decide if you're going to just smile and continue looking around, or chance an encounter with a stranger? It's a dangerous moment. It changes absolutely everything. — Andrea Randall

For a second
a second that lasts infinite seconds
he turns his face away from the wind to meet my eye. He smiles, he smiles without worrying about the gap in his teeth, he smiles in a way that I know: he is free. — Kate Ellison

Unlike Ronan, Adam's Aglionby jumper was second-hand, but he'd taken great care to be certain it was impeccable. He was slim and tall, with dusty hair unevenly cropped above a fine-boned, tanned face. He was a sepia photograph. — Maggie Stiefvater

Don't break my heart," he heard her whisper, making him stop for just a second to look her in the eyes.
"I won't. Don't break mine," he responded, making her smile as she pulled him back to her. She wanted his lips on hers again. — Kat Green

When the zone calls, you must listen.
You never know how long being in the zone lasts.
It is a cardinal rule - you must take advantage of every second that you are in the zone. — JohnA Passaro

I know we've only known each other four weeks and three days, but to me it seems like nine weeks and five days. The first day seemed like a week and the second day seemed like five days. And the third day seemed like a week again and the fourth day seemed like eight days. And the fifth day you went to see your mother and that seemed just like a day, and then you came back and later on the sixth day, in the evening, when we saw each other, that started seeming like two days, so in the evening it seemed like two days spilling over into the next day and that started seeming like four days, so at the end of the sixth day on into the seventh day, it seemed like a total of five days. And the sixth day seemed like a week and a half. I have it written down, but I can show it to you tomorrow if you want to see it. — Steve Martin

Trying to attract another underserved audience group - females - brought Super Princess Peach, a game where Peach finally avoids being princess-napped. Bowser kidnaps Mario and Luigi instead, and it's up to her for once to save them. The second-wave feminism lasts as long as it takes Peach to acquire a magical talking parasol. Peach's powers manifest through her emotional states. When she is calm she can heal herself, when she is happy she can fly, when glum she can water plants with her tears, and when angry she literally catches on fire. Using emotions as part of basic game play is a daring concept, and feel free to sub in "insulting" or "outrageous" or "awesome" for "daring." The concept might have been taken more seriously if not for touches like the pink umbrella, and Peach having unlimited lives - core gamers hate being unable to die. — Jeff Ryan

For a second, I'm afraid he's dying. I have to remind myself that I don't care. — Suzanne Collins

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

I expected Dracula to come jumping out any second. If he did I'd have held up a cross, cause he's allergic to bullshit. — Richard Pryor

Live in the moment. Day by day! Tomorrow isnt promised so if you thought about it ... even just for a second ... DO IT! — B.M. Hardin

The issue for us is trusting God enough to trust also His timing. If we can truly believe He has our welfare at heart, may we not let His plans unfold as He thinks best? The same is true with the second coming and with all those matters wherein our faith needs to include faith in the Lord's timing for us personally, not just in His overall plans and purposes. — Neal A. Maxwell

Luisa was on her knees on the bed, naked, my 9mm in her hands and aimed right at me. I automatically had my gun pointed back at her. The sexiest Mexican standoff I'd ever been involved in. "What are you doing?" I asked, taking a cautious step toward her, not lowering my gun for a second. "Leaving," she answered, her eyes hard. She was distracting as all hell, her tits and pussy and that gun. I don't think I'd ever been so turned on so quick and in such an untimely situation. "It doesn't look like it." "I'm going to ask you nicely to let me leave, and if you don't, I'll shoot you." A grin broke out across my face. My god, she couldn't be more perfect. "If you shot me, you'd kill me," I said, taking another step. "Then who would make you come all the time? — Karina Halle

Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one. — Dan Bern

Basically, there's a good friend of mine who works at EMI Publishing, a publishing company. He had asked me - he was like, you know, do you know this girl, Amy Winehouse? She's in New York for a day. She's kind of meeting people to maybe work with on her second album. — Mark Ronson

Were the offer made true, I would engage to run again, from beginning to end, the same career of life. All I would ask should be the privilege of an author, to correct, in a second edition, certain errors of the first. — Benjamin Franklin

Close your eyes, Matt, and focus on third eye, the second chakra of your being. Open third eye and you will feel energy of other river as it flows. And energy of Goddess.
He closed his eyes. He could sense the energy of the woman next to him and the power of desire. He felt warmth and a sense of belonging here. But that was all. — Joe Niemczura

If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and examined it at leisure. — H.G.Wells

A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon. — Victor Hugo

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book ... or you take a trip ... and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death. Some never awaken. — Anais Nin

Underwear is the female second skin. — Chloe Thurlow

If I must choose between healthy and tasty, I go for the second: having only one life to waste, it might as well be a pleasurable one. — Yotam Ottolenghi

In Shara's estimation, lists form one half of the heart of intelligence, the second half being patience. Most espionage work, after all, is a matter of collecting data and categorizing it: who belongs to which group, and why; where are they now, and how are we sure, and do we have someone else in the region; and now that we have cataloged those groups, what threat level should they be categorized under; and so on, and so on, and so on. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Well, Nero," Genghis said, "I just wanted to give you this rose-a small gift of congratulations for the wonderful concert you gave us last night!"
"Oh, thank you," Nero said, taking the rose out of Genghis's hand and giving it a good smell. "I was wonderful, wasn't I?"
"You were perfection!" Genghis said. "The first time you played your sonata, I was deeply moved. The second time, I had tears in my eyes. The third time, I was sobbing. The fourth time, I had an uncontrollable emotional attack. The fifth time-" The Baudelaires did not hear about the fifth time because Nero's door swung shut behind them. — Lemony Snicket

My second album was written while I was on the road promoting the first record. I tried to take my personal experiences and elevate them to universal experiences, so that I wasn't writing songs about living on a tour bus or being on a TV set for the first time. — Kate Voegele

Chance is a second master. — Pliny The Elder

Dutton, the home of Winnie the Pooh, would find a second identity as a home for gay fiction. — Christopher Bram

One day, Buckley came home from the second grade with a story he'd written: Once upon a time there was a kid named Billy. He liked to explore. He saw a hole and went inside but he never came out. The End. — Alice Sebold

Playing video games was all fine and well. When you were killed in a game, you just started again. In this Shadowrealm, though, there were no second chances, and a lot more ways to die. — Michael Scott

A pretty handsome jerk, I might add, but a huge, colossal megajerk nonetheless. Kenzie gave me a quick glance to see how I was taking this. I shrugged.
Not going to argue with that.
And then a second later:
She thought I was handsome? — Julie Kagawa

Everything we do - our whole life, Greenie - revolves around the Maze. Every lovin' second of every lovin' day we spend in honor of the Maze, tryin' to solve somethin' that's not shown us it has a bloody solution, — James Dashner

I didn't say, "I'll call you." I didn't hug her because of the wet clothes. Just a quick kiss. Then I turned and left. I made my way quietly down the hallway to the stairwell. I could tell she thought she wasn't going to see me again. I had to admit she might be right. The knowledge was as damp and dispiriting as my sodden clothes. I came to the first floor and looked out at the entranceway of the building. For a second I pictured the way she had hugged me here. It already seemed like a long time ago. I felt an unpleasant mixture of gratitude and longing, streaked with guilt and regret. And in a flash of insight, cutting with cold clarity through the fog of my fatigue, I realized what I hadn't been able to articulate earlier, not even to myself, when she'd asked me what I was afraid of. It had been this, the moment after, when I would come face to face with knowing that it would all end badly, if not this morning, then the next one. Or the one after that. — Barry Eisler

I did not imagine that the second half of my life would be spent on efforts to avert a mortal danger to humanity created by science. — Joseph Rotblat

I had great femme mentors, I had good role models of gentle men, I found ways to be a butch that did not require being an ass in public, ways of masculinity that were not misogyny - which is what I see more often than I used to these days, this way of butches distancing themselves from any and all things feminine by embodying the worst excesses of men, from relatively harmless ones like spitting on the street and wearing too much cheap cologne to behaving as though women were an entirely separate species of second-class citizen, the objects of jokes and derision. — S. Bear Bergman

When we encounter unexpected obstacles in finding out something which we wish to know, there are two possible courses to take. It may be that the right course is to treat the obstacle as a spur to further efforts; but there is a second possibility - that we have been trying to find something which does not exist. You will remember that that was how the relativity theory accounted for the apparent concealment of our velocity through the aether. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

And for a second she weakens, and the way she used to look at him flashes across her face, and then it's gone, replaced by near hate. It's the saddest thing he's ever seen. It's a tragedy. — Luke Smitherd

I remind myself that if there was anything in the air that would react with my body, it would've reacted with the scanner. What I really want right now is a second scanner to scan this scanner. — Hugh Howey

It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent. — George Alec Effinger

And there he was. Standing not five feet away from me. It took me a second to realize, and then I was airborn and throwing myself at him. — Chelsea M. Cameron

What use to me are your nature, your Pavlovsk Park, your sunrises and sunsets, your blue sky and your all-satisfied faces, when the whole of this feast, which has no end, began by considering me alone superfluous? What is there for me in all this beauty, when at each minute, each second, I'm now compelled to be aware that even this tiny housefly buzzing around me in the sunbeam now, even it is a participant in all this feast and chorus, knows its place, loves it and is happy, while I alone am an outcast, — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The law which attempts a man's life [capital punishment] is impractical, unjust, inadmissible. It has never repressed crime
for a second crime is every day committed at the foot of the scaffold. — Marquis De Sade

Man is not an end but a beginning. We are at the beginning of the second week. We are children of the eighth day. — Thornton Wilder

The most dangerous of devotions, in my opinion, is the one endemic to Christianity: I was not born to be of this world. With a second life waiting, suffering can be endured
especially in other people. The natural environment can be used up. Enemies of the faith can be savaged and suicidal martyrdom praised. — E. O. Wilson

Your actions are catalysts to another's actions. One could last a second, another could last to the end of mankind. Share kindness, plant the seed, help humanity overcome their greed. — Stanley Victor Paskavich

I hate to say anything that may hurt UCLA, but I can't be quiet when I see what the NCAA is doing to Jerry Tarkanian only because he has a reputation for giving a second chance to many black athletes other coaches have branded as troublemakers. The NCAA is working night and day trying to get Jerry, but no one from the NCAA ever questioned me during my four years at UCLA! — Bill Walton

Each of us is born with two contradictory sets of instructions: a conservative tendency, made up of instincts for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and saving energy, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk-the curiosity that leads to creativity belongs to this set. But whereas the first tendency requires little encouragement or support from outside to motivate behaviour, the second can wilt if not cultivated. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

My specialty as a collector is books that almost have value. When I love a book, I don't buy the first edition, because those have become incredibly expensive. But I might buy a beat-up copy of the second edition, third printing, which looks almost exactly the same as the first edition except that a couple of typos have been fixed. — Lev Grossman

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That's it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I'd give a kidney to and best guy friends I'd ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That's being a girl. That's being a person. It's the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I'm happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome. — Alexandra Petri

We may be able to predict when it shall rain but the exact second when the first rain drop shall hit the ground is always uncertain all. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Was it better to get as much out of the moment as possible, knowing it could slip out from under you in a second? Was the actual experience better than the inevitable conclusion? — Rebecca Donovan

For a split second every morning, she forgets. And then the black heaviness is there, and she wonders what it is, and then she remembers. — Lisa Genova

Amphibians are dying out like crazy, and frogs and salamanders may be largely extinct by the end of the twenty-first century. Imagine an animal that begins its life in the water, but ends it on land - already, that's pretty weird. But, also, a lot of them are incredibly tiny and look wildly improbable. They have funny little toes, they stretch their throats into weird bubble shapes when they croak, and some of them are poisonous to the touch. I think kids from the twenty-second century might mythologize amphibians the way kids today mythologize dinosaurs. — Annalee Newitz

If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs. — John Clare

It only takes a split second to smile and forget, yet to someone that needed it, it can last a lifetime. — Steve Maraboli

The second, and I think this is the much more overt and I think it is the main cause, I have been increasingly demonstrating or trying to demonstrate that every possible stance a critic, a scholar, a teacher can take towards a poem is itself inevitably and necessarily poetic. — Harold Bloom

The fear among economists across the political spectrum was that we were rapidly plummeting toward a second Great Depression. So in the weeks and months that followed, we undertook a series of difficult steps to prevent that outcome. And we were forced to take those steps, largely without the help of an opposition party, which, unfortunately, after having presided over the decision-making that had led to the crisis, decided to hand it over to others to solve. — Barack Obama

She felt as though, just for a second, she had understood something vastly important, had had a glimpse of it: love, pure and simple and undemanding. — Lauren Oliver

Lucky accidents seldom happen to writers who don't work. You will find that you may rewrite and rewrite a poem and it never seems quite right. Then a much better poem may come rather fast and you wonder why you bothered with all that work on the earlier poem. Actually, the hard work you do on one poem is put in on all poems. The hard work on the first poem is responsible for the sudden ease of the second. If you just sit around waiting for the easy ones, nothing will come. Get to work. — Richard Hugo

Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see - and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! — Eugene O'Neill

Oh, man," Xavier groaned. "See what you've done
now I'm stressing."
"You can't! You're the stable one!"
Xavier laughed and I realized his distress had been feigned to illustrate a point. He wasn't worried in the slightest.
"Just relax. Go and run a bath or have a shot of brandy."
"Okay."
"That second bit was a joke. We both know you can't hold your liquor. — Alexandra Adornetto

Getting a second thing isn't always easy in this busy, competitive television market. — James Wolk

I'd give her up for you," I tell her, staring at her relentlessly until she's forced to meet my eyes again, if just for a second. "I'd give up everything for you. — Karina Halle

Time to embrace the gift of a second chance fate had given her. Time to love again. — Eve Langlais

Some consider the removal of Dr. Mohammed Morsi a coup by the army against an elected president. Others treat it as the second revolution, or the continuation of the January 25, 2011, revolution. — Ahmed Zewail

Hey,maybe I could have a talk show, since you aren't going to be my June Cleaver anymore. I could call it the O'Neal Hour. Sounds important, doesn't it?" [Butch to Vishous]
"First of all, you were going to be June Cleaver-"
"Screw that. No way I'd bottom for you."
"Whatever. And second, I don't think there's much of a market for your particular brand of psychology."
"So not true."
"Butch, you and I just beat the crap out of each other."
"You started it. And actually, it would be perfect for Spike TV. UFC meets Oprah. God, I'm brilliant."
"Keep telling yourself that. — J.R. Ward

A man can love too.'
'No; -- hardly. He can admire, and he can like, and he can fondle and be fond. He can admire and approve, and perhaps worship. He can know of a woman that she is part of himself, the most sacred part, and therefore will protect her from the very winds. But all that will not make love. It does not come to a man that to be separated from a woman is to be dislocated from his very self. A man has but one centre, and that is himself. A woman has two. Though the second may never been seen by her, may live in the arms of another, may do all for that other that man can do for woman, -- still, still, though he be half the globe asunder from her, still he is to her the half of her existence. If she really love, there is, I fancy no end of it. — Anthony Trollope

I had prepared myself for the second half of my life [to be] filled with other passions that don't include being in front of the camera. And then all of a sudden I got more work and more work and more work. And I went, "Well maybe things have shifted." And I think they have. — Sandra Bullock