Able Surface Quotes & Sayings

For Feric Jaggar is essentially a monster: a narcissistic psychopath with paranoid obsessions. His total self-assurance and certainty is based on a total lack of introspective self-knowledge. In a sense, such a human being would be all surface and no interior. He would be able to manipulate the surface of social reality by projecting his own pathologies upon it, but he would never be able to share in the inner communion of interpersonal relationships. Such a creature could give a nation the iron leadership and sense of certainty to face a mortal crisis, but at what cost? Led by the likes of a Feric Jaggar, we might gain the world at the cost of our souls. No, — Norman Spinrad

How will you inspire others? Will you even know? Will it be because they see your work? Read your papers? Delight in your products? Or will it be because of that way you listen to them when they speak? How warmly you hug? How you live as you move through your days? Will it be something you say? Or some way that you say it? Or will it be the resounding peace that words cannot express? Although you might not be able to see the impact your life is having, it is there, under the surface, on another plane that we can feel but perhaps not see. — Elle Luna

You can be very religious and invoke the name of God and be able to quote lots of verses and be well versed in complicated theological systems and yet not be a person who sees. It's one thing to sing about God and recite quotes about God and invoke God's name; it's another be aware of the presence in every taste, touch, sound, and embrace.
With Jesus, what we see again and again is that it's never just a person, or just a meal, or just an event, because there's always more going on just below the surface. — Rob Bell

Life appears: a complex dampness, destined to an intricate future and charged with secret virtues, capable of challenge and creation. A kind of precarious slime, of surface mildew, in which a ferment is already working. A turbulent, spasmodic sap, a presage and expectation of a new way of being, breaking with mineral perpetuity and boldly exchanging it for the doubtful privilege of being able to tremble, decay, and multiply. — Roger Caillois

She was a sentinel for a reason - she was fit, lethal, and well able to take down most men twice her size. Not including Riley. Her teeth bared at the way he'd pinned her - maybe she'd enjoyed it last night, but if the wolf tried to use that to change the balance of power in the sentinel-lieutenant relationship between them, things would get seriously ugly. Her mind filled with images of him blocking her punches, trying not to hurt her. She squelched the tiny tendril of warmth that threatened to rise to the surface — Nalini Singh

What can I do but force myself to remember? Try to imprint what I know on my soul, a thing that has no surface, no sides, no pages, no form of any kind. Carry it so deeply in the pockets of my existence that when I open my eyes and look down at my new hands with their thumbs that are able to close tightly around their fingers, I will already know. I will already see. — Garth Stein

I am not able, and I do not want, completely to abandon the worldview that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, to take pleasure in solid objects and scrapes of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us. — George Orwell

Our Mind is constantly active. Seeking stillness within the Mind that is in motion is impossible if you do not use the motion itself. When the surface of a lake is still, we will be able to see, experience, intuitively sense the ocean of our sub-conscious and to tap into the magic of super-conscious. This is impossible when the surface is agitated by waves of our thoughts, emotions, habits, fears. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Even when adults do feel their safety to be threatened, we may not be able to see this on the surface. Infants will react in a fashion as if they were endangered, if they are disturbed or dropped suddenly, startled by loud noises, flashing light — Abraham Maslow

So it is with scripture. The word of God is there, able to transform your life. But you must probe for it. You have to penetrate the surface with more than just a cursory glance. — Howard G. Hendricks

When Nureyev appeared in San Francisco not long ago there were quite a few ballet fans who flew all the way from New York to see him. The mystics would point out how fruitless it is to go to see important people when our first priority is to see ourselves. We think we know Tom, Dick and Harry, but we really know everyone, including ourselves, only on the surface level. If we could see our real Self coming down the street, we would wonder who this beautiful, radiant, magnificent creature could be. We would not be able to take our eyes off him. — Eknath Easwaran

I stole your seed, the succubus said to his mind, and he could not deny it. They had done it to him several times in the years of his torment, had taken his seed and spawned alu-demons, Wulfgar's children. It was the first time Wulfgar had been able to consciously recall the memory since his return to the surface, the first time the horror of seeing his demonic offspring had forced itself through the mental barriers he had erected. — R.A. Salvatore

He smiled then, a slow smile that sent the blood racing through her veins. Lora felt the throbbing inside her intensify until she was sure she would not be able to stand it another second as he slowly, oh, so slowly, lowered his head. His target was her left breast. Lora felt his hot mouth close on the straining nipple, felt him tug the crest of her breast into his mouth to rub it with the rough wet surface of his tongue, and cried out in a frenzy of need.
And in that instant he took her.
She climaxed at once as he squeezed inside, enormous and hard and fiery hot and filling her to bursting. — Karen Robards

Isn't that strange? To be able to feel so much tenderness for a person, and I did, and powerful attraction, sometimes, and yet feel no love. It seems cruel, almost monstrous. I mean I can love a bug. I have watched a spider weaving her web in the evening, in the young alder branches along the river, and I have loved her. Truly. Or a small moth trying to beat her way off the water of a dark pool, her soaked wings stuck to the surface as if by glue. And gently slid a leaf beneath her and lifted her to the ground, praying that her wings would dry without damage. I've done that. And yet I could not love my wife. — Peter Heller

Concentration is a cornerstone of mindfulness practice. Your mindfulness will only be as robust as the capacity of your mind to be calm and stable. Without calmness, the mirror of mindfulness will have an agitated and choppy surface and will not be able to reflect things with any accuracy. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Man's life is a line that nature commands him to describe upon the surface of the earth, without his ever being able to swerve from it, even for an instant. He is born without his own consent; his organization does in nowise depend upon himself; his ideas come to him involuntarily; his habits are in the power of those who cause him to contract them; he is unceasingly modified by causes, whether visible or concealed, over which he has no control, which necessarily regulate his mode of existence, give the hue to his way of thinking, and determine his manner of acting. He is good or bad, happy or miserable, wise or foolish, reasonable or irrational, without his will being for any thing in these various states. — Paul Henri Thiry D'Holbach

This time he was underwater, running, feet sinking deeper and deeper into the seabed. The surface was within reach if he raised his arms, but he couldn't get his head out of the water. He had to breathe. The compulsion to inhale was huge. But he couldn't, musn't. Still he ran, getting nowhere, each frantic step burying his feet in the wet sand until he was no longer able to lift them. Finally, with one great gulp, he opened his mouth, his lungs to the flood of seawater. — Flip By Martyn Bedford

All of our media is made of language: our films, our music, our images, and of course our words. How different this is from analog production, where, if you were somehow able to peel back the emulsion from, say, a photograph, you wouldn't find a speck of language lurking below the surface. — Kenneth Goldsmith

To those who see the magical surface of things, you are invisible.'
Good grief. Will you still be able to see me?'
He met her eyes in a way that made her shiver pleasantly. 'I see you in a great many ways. It would be hard to blind me in all of them. — Emma Bull

I'm just here,existing at the surface of the water,not quite drowning but not quite able to breathe. — Jessica Sorensen

Children may not understand all that's happening below the surface of a story. It doesn't matter. Because even though they may not be able to define or verbalize it, they sense there's something more than meets the eye; on an almost subliminal level, they're aware of a richness of texture, or meaning and emotion
a richness that, in a great book, is inexhaustible. And the child may well come back to it again and again, perhaps long after he's stopped being a child. — Lloyd Alexander

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.) — Margaret Atwood

Properly told, stories are able to operate on two levels. On the surface, they deal with particulars involving a range of facts related to a given time and place, a local culture and a social group
and it is these specifics that tend to bore us whenever they lie outside of our own experience. But then, a layer beneath the particulars, the universals are hidden: the psychological, social and political themes that transcend the stories' temporal and geographical settings and are founded on unvarying fundamentals of human nature. — Alain De Botton

Trust your faith, Peter," I yelled. "If you doubt you won't be able to do it." Then Peter stepped with both feet onto the surface of the water, and for a split second he stood there. And we were all amazed. "Hey, I'm - " Then he sank like a stone. He came up sputtering. We were all doubled over giggling, and even Joshua had sunk up to his ankles, he was laughing so hard. "I can't believe you fell for that," said Joshua. He ran across the water and helped us pull Peter into the boat. "Peter, you're as dumb as a box of rocks. But what amazing faith you have. I'm going to build my church on this box of rocks." "You would have Peter build your church?" asked Philip. "Because he tried to walk on the water." "Would you have tried it?" asked Joshua. "Of course not," said Philip. "I can't swim. — Christopher Moore

The first time I worked with colors was by making these mosaics of Pantone swatches. They end up being very large pictures, and I photographed with a very large camera - an 8x10 camera. So you can see the surface of every single swatch - like in this picture of Chuck Close. And you have to walk very far to be able to see it. — Vik Muniz

...we hope with the assistance of Almighty God to be able to live to see the bare surface of the earth once more. — Patrick Breen

IBM was granted a U.S. patent in 2012 on "Securing premises using surface-based computing technology." That's intellectual-property-lawyer-speak for a touch-sensitive floor covering, somewhat like a giant smartphone screen. The potential uses are plentiful. It would be able to identify the objects on it. In basic form, it could know to turn on lights in a room or open doors when a person enters. More important, however, it might identify individuals by their weight or the way they stand and walk. It could tell if someone fell and did not get back up, an important feature for the elderly. Retailers could learn the flow of traffic through their stores. When the floor is datafied, there is no ceiling to its possible uses. — Viktor Mayer-Schonberger

Observance of customs and laws can very easily be a cloak for a lie so subtle that our fellow human beings are unable to detect it. It may help us to escape all criticism, we may even be able to deceive ourselves in the belief of our obvious righteousness. But deep down, below the surface of the average man's conscience, he hears a voice whispering, 'There is something not right,' no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code. — C. G. Jung

We must be able to look under the surface rather than over-analyze it and delude ourselves into thinking we're seeing beneath it. — Brianna Wiest

I believe I'm a caterpillar buried deep down under the ground. The entire earth is above me, crushing me and I begin to bore through the soil, making a passage to the surface so that I can penetrate the crust and issue into the light. It's hard work boring through the entire earth, but I'm able to be patient because I have a strong premonition that as soon as I do issue into the light I shall become a butterfly. — Nikos Kazantzakis

As you become more rooted inside
as you drink from this silent stream of life that runs beneath the surface of everything
as you live from that depth of your own being more and more, then you'll be able to rise taller and stronger in this world; more than you may have ever thought possible. — Derek Rydall

The rosy enthusiasms and hopes of 1925," Alain Locke said ten years later, "were. . . cruelly
deceptive mirages." The ghetto was revealed in the thirties as "a nasty, sordid corner into which
black folk are herded - a Harlem that the social worker knew all along but had not been able to
dramatize. . .
There is no cure or saving magic in poetry and art
for. . . precarious marginal
employment, high mortality rates, civic neglect," Locke concluded. It was this Harlem, the
neighborhood not visible "from the raucous interior of a smokefilled, jazzdrunken cabaret," the
Harlem hidden by the "bright surface. . . of. . . night clubs, cabaret tours and. . . arty magazines,"
that was devastated by the Depression. — Gilbert Osofsky

Because he was closer to her here than in the office, and less shy than in the car, he could see clearly now what he'd only been able to guess at before: the texture of her skin was what had made him want to pull off her clothes the moment he'd seen her. It was like the surface of a flawless apricot or nectarine; it glowed; it needed to be taken and eaten. A small edge of white lace could be glimpsed just inside the V-neck of her dress, moving with each breath and quivering when she laughed, and that frivolous, unconscious touch of flirtation made him heavy with lust. — Richard Yates

When he at least reached the door the handle had cease to vibrate. Lowering himself suddenly to his knees he placed his head and the vagaries of his left eye (which was for ever trying to dash up and down the vertical surface of the door), he was able by dint of concentration to observe, within three inches of his keyholed eye, an eye which was not his, being not only of a different colour to his own iron marble, but being, which is more convincing, on the other side of the door. — Mervyn Peake

We've forgotten what it's like not to be able to reach the light switch. We've forgotten a lot of the monsters that seemed to livein our room at night. Nevertheless, those memories are still there, somewhere inside us, and can sometimes be brought to the surface by events, sights, sounds, or smells. Children, though, can never have grown-up feelings until they've been allowed to do the growing. — Fred Rogers

The naked man had lost hope now; he would never be able to return to the earth's surface;he would never leave the bottom of this shaft, and he would go mad there drinking blood and eating human flesh, without ever being able to die. Up there, against the sky, there were good angels with ropes, and bad angels with grenades and rifles, and a big old man with a white beard who waved his arms but could not save him. — Italo Calvino

And you know, this thought crossed my mind at the time: maybe chance is a pretty common thing after all. Those kinds of coincidences are happening all around us, all the time, but most of them don't attract our attention and we just let them go by. It's like fireworks in the daytime. You might hear a faint sound, but even if you look up at the sky you can't see a thing. But if we're really hoping something may come true it may become visible, like a message rising to the surface. Then we're able to make it out clearly, decipher what it means. And seeing it before us we're surprised and wonder at how strange things like this can happen. Even though there's nothing strange about it. — Haruki Murakami

There are definitely parts of Asia, Central America that when you look at them from space, you're always looking through a haze of pollution. As far as the atmosphere is concerned, and being able to see the surface, you know, I would say definitely those areas that I mentioned look kind of sick. — Scott Kelly

In a photograph, if I am able to evoke not alone a feeling of the reality of the surface physical world but also a feeling of the reality of existence that lies mysteriously and invisibly beneath its surface, I feel I have succeeded. At their best, photographs as symbols not only serve to help illuminate some of the darkness of the unknown, they also serve to lessen the fears that too often accompany the journeys from the known to the unknown. — Wynn Bullock

One of the most popular games to watch on eSports is 'League of Legends,' a game that blends role-playing, managing resources and shouting at your friends. Again, if I had another thousand words, I might be able to scratch the surface of this game, but all you need to know is that gamers love to play it, and even more of them love to watch it. — Rob Manuel

Many statements about God are confidently made by theologians on grounds that today at least sound specious. Thomas Aquinas claimed to prove that God cannot make another God, or commit suicide, or make a man without a soul, or even make a triangle whose interior angles do not equal 180 degrees. But Bolyai and Lobachevsky were able to accomplish this last feat (on a curved surface) in the nineteenth century, and they were not even approximately gods. — Carl Sagan

The key to faking deaths is a fine appreciation of arterial spray patterns. I have found that blood bags work very well at simulating spray with a strategically poked hole; apply pressure to the bottom of the bag, practice a bit, and before long you will be able to write stories of carnage and odes to gore.
A small fan brush-the sort that one dude used to paint happy little trees-can paint a picture of blunt force spatters if you flick the surface properly. You could even talk to yourself, as that painter did, while you flick blood around: And maybe over here we have a nice stab wound. And, I don't know, maybe there's a few more back over here. Multiple stab wounds. It doesn't matter, whatever you feel like. — Kevin Hearne

The more that you need a relationship, the less you are able to be in a relationship. The more that something on the surface can answer you, the less that you will be really answered when you're in it. — John De Ruiter

In light of religious teachings on sex, unrestricted people often feel they are fundamentally flawed. They are sinful and rebellious against god for having strong urges that go against the church's teachings. If the religious belief is deep enough, a person will not be able to look at his behavior rationally. The result can be a destructive cycle beginning with some religiously prohibited sexual behavior followed by repentance and prayer for a few weeks. Soon biological urges surface again, and he goes back to the behavior, followed by repentance once more. The process keeps him focused on guilt, not on rational ways to enjoy and express sexuality. Every time he goes through the cycle, it makes him feel less worthwhile. At the same time, the only way he can get relief is by going back to his religion. — Darrel Ray

I've always been able to see the savageness beneath the veneer of society. It's not so very far beneath the surface, no matter where you go. — Lily King

Archaism, in the linguistic order, is not, in any event, synonymous with simplicity of structure, very much to the contrary. Languages generally grow poorer with the passing oftime by gradually losing the richness of their vocabulary, the ease with which they can diversify various aspects of one and the same idea, and their power of synthesis, which is the ability to express many things with few words. In order to make up for this impoverishment, modern languages have become more complicated on the rhetorical level; while perhaps gaining in surface precision, they have not done as as regards content. Language historians are astonished by the fact that Arabic was able to retain a morphology attested to as early as the Code of Hammurabi, for the nineteenth to the eighteenth century before the Christian era, and to retain a phonetic system which preserves, with the exception of a single sound, the extremly rich sound-range disclosed by the most ancient Semitic alphabets discovered, [...] — Titus Burckhardt

In front of the inn was a beautiful mountain stream where one could catch lots of firm, colorful fish. Noisy birds were always skimming over the surface of the stream, their calls piercing, and it wasn't unusual to spot wild boar or monkeys roaming around nearby. The mountains were a treasure trove of edible wild plants. In this isolated environment, young Haida was able to indulge himself in reading and contemplation. He no longer cared what was happening in the real world. — Haruki Murakami

If only, I feel now, if only I could be someone able to see all this as if he had no other relation with it than that of seeing it, someone able to observe everything as if he were an adult traveler newly arrived today on the surface of life! If only one had not learned, from birth onwards, to give certain accepted meanings to everything, but instead was able to see the meaning inherent in each thing rather than that imposed on it from without. If only one could know the human reality of the woman selling fish and go beyond just labeling her a fishwife and the known fact that she exists and sells fish. If only one could see the policeman as God sees him. If only one could notice everything for the first time, not apocalyptically, as if they were revelations of the Mystery, but directly as the flowerings of Reality. — Fernando Pessoa

When we are in love, our love is too big a thing for us to be able altogether to contain it within ourselves. It radiates towards the loved one, finds there a surface which arrests it, forcing it to return to its starting-point, and it is this repercussion of our own feeling which we call the other's feelings and which charms us more then than on its outward journey because we do not recognise it as having originated in ourselves. — Marcel Proust

It is a glorious thing, to be able to write with pen on paper instead of nail or hook into oak, to feel one's words flowing so smoothly from instrument to surface, without the barriers of friction or poor leverage, and yet its own subtle tactile pleasures as the nib scratches tiny channels into the sheet. And here, unlike in his cabin, here he feels no division between his mind and his hand, no errors in translation or static in the transmission: the words appearing on the page are the ones he has intended to put there, the images match the scenes in his mind, the sensations the very ones that warm his chest, prickle his scalp, push against his eyes. — Doug Dorst

I had a day when I was busy in the world, where the activity created a turmoil on the surface of my consciousness like waves on the surface of the ocean, which made it difficult to see through the waves to the inner silence.
It reminded me that we need to develop both the capacity to use the mind when engaged in activity and social relations, and to be able to let go of the activity and to come in contact with the deep inner silence.
The relationship between being active in the world and in social relations and the inner silence is like the relationship between the waves on the surface of the ocean and the deep inner silence on the bottom of the ocean. — Swami Dhyan Giten

When you have armed militants, aided and abetted by a major country like Russia, able to use surface-to-air missiles to bring down a commercial airline, that is a form of terrorism. — Hillary Clinton

I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I'm with friends is having a good time. I can't bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don't seem to be able to get any closer, and that's the problem. — Anne Frank

Lies, fictions and untrue suppositions can create new human truths which build technology, art, language, everything that is distinctly of Man. The word "stone" for instance is not a stone, it is an oral pattern of vocal, dental and labial sounds or a scriptive arrangement of ink on a white surface, but man pretends that it is actually the thing it refers to. Every time he wishes to tell another man about a stone he can use the word instead of the thing itself. The word bodies forth the object in the mind of the listener and both speaker and listener are able to imagine a stone without seeing one. All the qualities of stone can be metaphorically and metonymically expressed. "I was stoned, stony broke, stone blind, stone cold sober, stonily silent," oh, whatever occurs. More than that, a man can look at a stone and call it a weapon, a paperweight, a doorstep, a jewel, an idol. He can give it function, he can possess it. — Stephen Fry

You have to get rid of borders, limits, and classifications; then light comes. We see everything on the screen of our ideas. We must get rid of that screen to be able to see what is behind. X's ideas are limited, that is why he remains on the surface. Y got rid of the limits, so she always goes to the depths. We should always meet people and new subjects with no set frame of mind. We have to live like that even after long acquaintance. We must get rid of every set idea to approach everything and everyone with love. — B.K.S. Iyengar

Her fingers clenched against his shoulder blades. "You don't know what you're asking."
"Do I not?" He threaded his hands gently around her neck. "I'm asking you to make love with me."
That word again. She opened her eyes. "Gareth," she whispered. "Please. Don't. This is hard enough - "
She stopped speaking as his gaze pierced her.
Incredible. Last night had seemed so intimate. And yet it
had been so dark that she had not been able to see anything other than flashes of light, reflecting off the surface
of his skin. Now she could look into his eyes. They were golden-brown. They were not cutting or dismissive. And
even though she could see the desire smolder inside them, there was something else in them that turned her belly to liquid. — Courtney Milan

For these creatures(humans) are for the most part malevolent and murderous by nature, able to tolerate others only insofar as they resemble themselves, capable of slaughtering each other because of a slight difference in skin colour or appearance. Also, they cannot tolerate those who do not think as they do. Although they know perfectly well, theoretically, that the surface of the inhabited globe is divided into thousands of areas each with it system of religious or scientific belief, and although they know that it is entirely by chance that any individual among them was born into this area or that area, this or that area of belief, this theoretical knowledge does not prevent them from hating foreigners in their own particular small area, and if not harming them, isolating them in every way possible. — Doris Lessing

In the United States, the average is two children per family, while in Africa it is five children per family. On the surface, the statistic seems to indicate that Africans are having way too many kids and are taxing the Earth's resources, while American kids are born into families who are able to take care of them. However, the average American child consumes roughly the same resources as fifteen African children. So when an American family says they only have two children, they are actually consuming the resources of an African family of thirty children! — Sharon Gannon

I've never wanted to kiss anyone more than I have wanted to kiss you in my entire existence. And it isn't just because I can't kiss you. It's because you're beautiful. You're a survivor and you wear your scars unashamed. There's a confidence about you that has never had the opportunity to come out, but I can see it lying below the surface. One day, I hope that you'll be able to drop your walls that restrict you from happiness and live free. I would love to see it, but even if I don't, I'll be happy just knowing it will happen. — K. Webster

Either the material order is the whole of being, wherein all transcendence is an illusion, or it is the phenomenal surface - mysterious, beautiful, terrible, harsh, and haunting - of a world of living spirits ... One should ... be able to recognize that it is only the latter view that has ever had the power - over centuries and in every realm of human accomplishment - to summon desire beyond the boring limits marked by mortality, to endow the will with constancy and purpose, and to shape imagination towards ends that should not be possible within the narrow economies of the flesh. — David Bentley Hart

Although Travels with Charley is replete with whimsical vignettes, charming dialogue, and lyrical descriptions of the natural landscape that often rise to the level of poetry, there is beneath its surface a sense of disenchantment that turns, eventually, into barely suppressed anger. Steinbeck seems never quite able to bring himself to say that he was truly and often disgusted by what he saw on his journey, but the reader is left with that impression. One puts down this book aware of how remarkably prophetic it really was, and how America continues to wrestle with the problems raised in its pages. — John Steinbeck

If there was one thing Tully had always done well, it was to ignore unpleasantness. For most of her life she'd been able to box up bad memories or disappointments and store them deep in the back of her mind, in a place so dark they couldn't be seen. Sure, she dreamed about the bad times, and woke occasionally in a cold sweat with memories on the oily surface of consciousness, but when daylight came, she pushed those thoughts back into their hiding place and found it easy to forget. — Kristin Hannah

I howl at the roof like a hotted-up bomb doing donuts, full of screeches. I howl like an air-raid siren, my arms stretched out wide. Howls are like songs. They can't be summoned; they just happen. They come from a place that I barely understand. And then something else climbs to the surface, something black and jagged, something from the deep. Imagine all your worse feelings surfacing. Imagine coughing up razor blades. Imagine not being able to stop the pain from coming out, and not knowing when it's going to end. — Leanne Hall

The mermaid is an archetypal image that represents a woman who is at ease in the great waters of life, the waters of emotion and sexuality. She shows us how to embrace our instinctive sexuality and sensuality so that we can affirm the essence of our feminine nature, the wisdom of our bodies, and the playfulness of our spirits. She symbolizes our connection with our deepest instinctive feelings, our wild and untamed animal nature that exists below the surface of outward personalities. She is able to respond to her mysterious sexual impulses without abandoning her more human, conscious side. What happened to the girls who dreamed of being mermaids? — Anita Johnston

We will eventually build space science labs and hotels, prodding the capability for missions beyond the orbit of the Earth. Our space-hotel guests will be able to take breath-taking excursions, flying a couple of hundred feet above the Moon's surface in small two-man spaceships. In time, we will launch missions to Mars and beyond. — Richard Branson

I love gas," he said, and turned on one of the burners. Blue flame popped into life and he adjusted it down to a faint glow with a delicate touch. "I like to be able to see the flame you're cookin with. You see where all the surface burner switches are? — Stephen King

By focusing on the interior of a speaker's larynx and using infrared, he was able to convert the visible vibrations of the vocal cords into sound of fair quality, but that did not satisfy him. He worked for a while on vibrations picked up from panes of glass in windows and on framed pictures, and he experimented briefly with the diaphragms in speaker systems, intercoms and telephones. He kept on into October without stopping, and finally achieved a device that would give tinny but recognizable sound from any vibrating surface - a wall, a floor, even the speaker's own cheek or forehead. — Damon Knight

On the road leading from his ranch to Samantha's, Wyat t drove his surrey up a small hill and caught his breath as the beauty of the large crescent moon dangling just out of reach over the crest A full moon would have been plump with luminescence, yet the pearly surface of the sickle still cast enough light to shadow his surroundings and seemed close enough that once he drove to the top of the hill, he'd be able to touch the bottom horn or at least toss a rope around it. He slackened the reins, slowing the horse, knowing that the higher he climbed, the sooner the illusion of closeness would disappear and he wanted to preserve for a moment the fantasy that the moon was within his grasp.
The stars, by contrast, were distant pricks of diamond light farther out than a man could dream. He sighed. Life as a rancher or as a rancher's wife was not moon and stars easy or romantic. What would put stars in Samantha's eyes? — Debra Holland

He held out the written pass. "This is what they want us to be," he said. "They want us to be nothing but a bill of sale and a letter explaining where we is and instructions for where we go and what we do. They want us empty. They want us flat as paper. They want to be able to carry our souls in their hands, and read them out loud in court. All the time, they're on the exploration of themselves, going on the inner journey into their own breast. But us, they want there to be nothing inside of. They want us to be writ on. They want us to be a surface. Look at me, I'm mahogany."
I protested, "A man is known by his deeds."
"Oh, that's sure," said Bono. "Just like a house is known by its deeds. The deeds say who owns it, who sold it, and who'll be buying a new one when it gets knocked down. — M T Anderson

It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That is was enough to trust that what I'd done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn't need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life - like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.
How wild it was, to let it be. — Cheryl Strayed

But under the surface of both sky and water there is the grim business of preying. Men and birds against fish, fish against fish. The tortuous process of life continuing by the painful transformation of one form or body into another. To creatures who do not anticipate and reflect imaginatively on this holocaust of eating and being eaten, this is perhaps not so terrible. But poor man! Skillful beyond all other animals, by being able to think in time, and abstractly knowing the future, he dies before he is dead. He shrinks from the shark's teeth before they bite him, and he dreads the alien germ long, long before its banquet begins. At — Alan W. Watts

We believe that introducing surface-to-air missiles in Syria is going to change the balance of power on the ground. It will allow the moderate opposition to be able to neutralize the helicopters and aircraft that are dropping chemicals and have been carpet-bombing them, just like surface-to-air missiles in Afghanistan were able to change the balance of power there. — Adel Al-Jubeir

And pigs may fly. And we may be able to terraform and send surface populations to Mars. And Jesus may come next week anyway, so it doesn't matter one way or the other. All these crazy things run through people's minds. — E. O. Wilson

The sprouting of a green and flourishing tree from the earth is as wonderful an event as the sudden emergence of a camel from the earth and its starting to walk on its surface. People are wonder-struck by the second type of incident, though the more wonderful incidents are always happening on the earth without their learning any lesson from it. Almighty God wants man to notice the extraordinary but hidden aspects of ordinary events. In the events happening in the chain of cause and effect, he should be able to observe the direct role of God. Those who display this high degree of insight are the ones who will be treated as having faith in God and the ones who will be blessed with the eternal grace of God. — Anonymous

We may be able to tell how many stars are in the Milky Way; we may be able to count the petals of every flower, and number the bones of every bird; but unless faith leads us to a deeper understanding, a more reverent comprehension of the significance of the universe, God can be no more pleased with our knowledge than the painter is pleased with the fly which touches his picture with its feelers, and sips the varnish from the surface, and dies without dreaming of the meaning, thought, feeling, embodied in the colors. — Henry Van Dyke