Bead Quotes & Sayings

Don't sit and wait - For the world on a plate - (It's not a stroke of luck or chance) - Just draw a bead on that sucker, and drive! — Todd Rundgren

He slowly brought his hand to his now straining cock. He began at the base and gave it a torturously slow pull until he reached the blushing head, liking the clear pearly bead that formed at the tip, before sliding back down again. God stalked toward him, grabbed Day's hand from his dick, and yanked him against his chest. "Mine," he whispered against his temple. "Fuck, — A.E. Via

No." He wouldn't lie about that. Not to her. And not because she'd rip him to pieces when she discovered the truth. "I can't give you forever."
The nibbling increased in intensity, leaving a bead of blood in the center of her mouth. "Because we're not a good match?"
Of course she would remember every insult he'd ever thrown at her. "Yes."
"Then what can you give me?"
"Here. Now." Something his body craved more with every second that passed. — Gena Showalter

What you hope for Is that at some point of the pointless journey, Indoors or out, and when you least expect it, Right in the middle of your stride, like that, So neatly that you never feel a thing, The kind assassin Sleep will draw a bead And blow your brains out. — Richard Wilbur

You think you know yourself, the world. You believe you've got a bead on everybody else's bullshit, but what about your own? — Sam Lipsyte

My knuckles go white as my grip on the porcelain tightens. Now I know what Desmond cashed that one particular bead in for. Sobriety. Forget the supernatural bounty hunters that are after him; that fucker is mine. That — Laura Thalassa

A single bead of water rolled along the length of his spine and glided down the powerful lines of his body. Mariel moistened her lips and watched its seductive descent, overwhelmed with the temptation to trace its path with the tip of her tongue. — Madeline Martin

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. — Brenda Ueland

The human attitude of which classical music is the expression is always the same; it is always based on the same kind of insight into life and strives for the same kind of victory over blind chance. Classical music as gesture signifies knowledge of the tragedy of the human condition, affirmation of human destiny, courage, cheerful serenity. — Hermann Hesse

I used to think death might be hidden somewhere on our bodies.
Tucked behind the pupil like a coin, slid beneath the thumb nail, ribbon-wrapped around a wrist bone. A sharp, dark sliver; a loose, pale pellet. Each person different. Each lifespan set. On the day of your death, it melts out through your entire body, a warm, broken bath bead. Until then, it waits-sealed and silent. — Aimee Bender

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads and as we pass through them they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in it's focus. To find oneself trapped in any one bead, no matter what it's hue, can be deadly. — Maggie Nelson

You know that every bead of sweat falling off your head, every weight you've pumped - the history of that is all in your eyes, — Gerard Butler

I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. — Howard Thurman

Every seam, every lace, every bead has been painstakingly, with love, corrected, perfected and mastered, — Zac Posen

She watched as Michael stripped and walked toward the bed, his erection standing proud. The bed dipped as he got in the other side. She rolled toward him, and he pulled her into his arms. His skin was cool against hers, making her nipples bead. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed herself against him, offering him her heat.
Offering him everything. — Sarah Mayberry

She plucked a raspberry. Sweet juice, sweet pleasure. Within the tangle of tendrils, inside a blossom, a tiny bead was kisses and blessed by the sun, from which it took in light and warmth and heaven's rain imbued with the richness of the soil of France. All of the elements of the river world helped that bead to expand and multiply into sheer casings for sweet pulp, wedge together in a knobby globe until it released its juice in her mouth — Susan Vreeland

I can't tell anybody else how to run their life or their business, but I really believe I've got a good bead on myself. — Dolly Parton

It was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life. — Virginia Woolf

Mastery is great, but even that is not enough. You have to be able to change course without a bead of sweat, or remorse. — Tom Peters

The translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there
life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them. — Sue Monk Kidd

I'm just trying to understand what's around me as much as anyone else is, really. To draw a bead on a moving target. — Dylan Moran

When I need to get away from my desk, I tend to take walks or go places. I also like to bead - working with beads to make jewellery. — Ann Leckie

Earth, withal, is a Body, like our own, with its network of Points, dispos'd along its Meridians, - much as our medicine in China has identified, upon the Human body, a like set of Lines invisible, upon which, bead wise, are strung Points, where the Flow of Chee may be beneficially strengthen'd by insertions of Gold Needles. — Thomas Pynchon

The train could be stopped with a red flag, but by ordinary it appeared out of the devastated hills with apparitionlike suddenness and wailing like a banshee, athward and past that little less-than-village like a forgotten bead from a broken string. — William Faulkner

Deciding to chant the mantra a certain number of times daily will help foster the japa habit. We should always keep a rosary with us for doing japa. A rosary can be made of 108, 54, 27 or 18 beads of rudraksha, tulsi, crystal, sandalwood, gems, etc, with one 'guru bead'. We should resolve to chant a certain number of rosaries (rounds) daily. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Just tell me, Percy, do you still have the birthday gift I gave you last summer?" I nodded and pulled out my camp necklace. It had a bead for every summer I'd been at Camp Half-Blood, but since last year I'd also kept a sand dollar on the cord. My father had given it to me for my fifteenth birthday. He'd told me I would know when to "spend it," but so far I hadn't figured out what he meant. All I knew that it didn't fit the vending machines in the school cafeteria. — Rick Riordan

Among mathematicians, even in those days, the reputation of being a good Glass Bead Game player meant a great deal; it was equivalent to being a very good mathematician. — Hermann Hesse

Get you gone, you dwarf,
You minimus of hindering knotgrass made,
You bead, you acorn! — William Shakespeare

Congress has never since effectively asserted itself to stop a president with a bead on war. It was true of George Herbert Walker Bush. It was true of Bill Clinton. And by September 11, 2001, even if there had been real resistance to Vice President Cheney and President George W. Bush starting the next war (or two), there were no institutional barriers strong enough to have realistically stopped them. By 9/11, the war-making authority in the United States had become, for all intents and purposes, uncontested and unilateral: one man's decision to make. It wasn't supposed to be like this. — Rachel Maddow

It's a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you are lying on your death bead, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes. — Joe Abercrombie

A bead of liquid appears at her hairline and slides down her face. When it hits her cheek, I can't tell if the drop is from the beer or from her eyes. My hand moves, the need to touch her more powerful than thought. Before I know what I'm doing, I wipe away the wetness. — Katie McGarry

Pleasure, that immortal essence, the beauteous bead sparkling in the cup, effervesces soon and subsides. — Amos Bronson Alcott

The man wrote his message.
Are you really a boy, like Xash says? the god asked Arin. You've been mine for twenty years. I raised you.
The Valorian signed the scrap of paper.
Cared for you.
The message was rolled, sealed, and pushed into a tiny leather tube.
Watched over you when you thought you were alone.
The captain tied the tube to a hawk's leg. The bird was too large to be a kestrel. It didn't have a kestrel's markings. It cocked its head, turning its glass-bead eyes on Arin.
No, not a boy. A man made in my image ... one who knows he can't afford to be seen as weak.
The hawk launched into the sky.
You're mine, Arin. You know what you must do.
Arin cut the Valorian's throat. — Marie Rutkoski

Every vertebrae on his back was a prayer bead under my hands. — Amy Lane

He pressed the blade of his sword into the ground. As he pulled his arm over his head for a stretch, a bead of sweat trickled down his neck and over a row of muscles on his stomach. I swallowed hard. The window's edge dug into my skin but I refused to move an inch. The tiny droplet disappeared into the waistband of his shorts. I had seen plenty of guys in gym class with their shirts off, but none of them looked like...that. He was physical perfection - a living work of art.

I sat on my knees with my chin relaxed on my crossed arms, unable to look away.

"Enjoying the view?" he said, eyes suddenly on me. His chiseled face wore an overly confident grin. Clearly he was used to being admired.

My cheeks burned.

I stood, pretending to check out the scenery. "Not much to see."

He raised an eyebrow, letting me know he knew I was full of crap. — Stacey O'Neale

Because, Seaweed Brain, it's the first time we really talked, you and me. I told you about my family, and ... " She took out her camp necklace, strung with her dad's college ring and a colorful clay bead for each year at Camp Half-Blood. Now there was something else on the leather cord: a red coral pendant Percy had given her when they had started dating. He'd brought it from his father's palace at the bottom of the sea. "And," Annabeth continued, "it reminds me how long we've known each other. We were twelve, Percy. Can you believe that?" "No," he admitted. "So ... you knew you liked me from that moment?" She smirked. "I hated you at first. You annoyed me. Then I tolerated you for a few years. Then - " "Okay, fine. — Rick Riordan

The cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed separating each glucose bead of caviar from its fellows, capping it in white and gold. — Evelyn Waugh

Each day adds a bead
to the ever peevish episodes of frailty,
I try running at an unkempt speed,
returning back like waves into a cruel sea; — Ashfaq Saraf

I really try hard to keep a good bead on the pulse of the team. Am I pushing the right buttons? When do I need to be harder on them? When do I need to have a little more fun with them? It's all about timing. The more I can do that the better chance we have for these guys to be hitting on all cylinders and reach their potential. — Pete Lembo

I love a bit of a sequin and a bead. I do, even though I usually wear trousers, when I put a frock on. I like a bead or a sequin. — Jacki Weaver

Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves. The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death. As I looked at the dead moth, this minute wayside triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist filled me with wonder. Just as life had been strange a few minutes before, so death was now as strange. — Virginia Woolf

The career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who headed the Manhattan Project, draws such questions to a focus that resembles the bead of a laser-gunsight on a victim's breastbone. It was Oppenheimer whom the public lionized as the brains behind the bomb; who agonized about the devastation his brilliance had helped to unleash; who hoped that the very destructiveness of the new "gadget," as the bombmakers called their invention, might make war obsolete; and whose sometime Communist fellow-traveling and opposition to the development of the hydrogen bomb - a weapon a thousand times more powerful than the bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki - brought about his political disgrace and downfall, which of course have marked him in the eyes of some as all the more heroic, a visionary persecuted by warmongering McCarthyite troglodytes. His legacy, of course, is far more complicated. — Algis Valiunas

Women want a family life that glitters and is stable. They don't want some lump spouse watching ice hockey in the late hours of his eighteenth beer. They want a family that is so much fun and is so smart that they look forward to Thanksgiving rather than regarding it with a shudder. That's the glitter part. The stable part is, obviously, they don't want to be one bead on a long necklace of wives. They want, just like men, fun, love, fame, money and power. And equal pay for equal work. — Carolyn See

For the next hour and a half he tried all the magic he could think of. He cast spells of remembering, spells of finding, spells of awakening, spells to concentrate the mind, spells to dispel nightmares and evil thoughts, spells to find patterns in chaos, spells to find a path when one was lost, spells of demystification, spells of discernment, spells to increase intelligence, spells to cure sickness and spells to repair a limb that is shattered. Some of the spells were long and complicated. Some were a single word. Some had to be said out loud. Some had only to be thought. Some had no words at all but consisted of a single gesture. Some were spells that Strange and Norrell had employed in some form or other every day for the last five years. Some had probably not been used for centuries. Some used a mirror; two used a tiny bead of blood from the magician's finger; and one used a candle and a piece of ribbon. But they all had this in common: they had no effect upon the King whatsoever. — Susanna Clarke

I love to use a lot of spices when I cook, so we actually cast a real peppercorn in gold and then just made a bead out of it for necklaces and earrings. — Padma Lakshmi

Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses , crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high heeled shoes- not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly's, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue. — Ian McEwan

The dew-bead Gem of earth and sky begotten. — George Eliot

As a water bead on a lotus leaf, as water on a red lily, does not adhere, so the sage does not adhere to the seen, the heard, or the sensed. — Gautama Buddha

She has that something, like the thread in a crystal-bead necklace. She holds it all together. — Amish Tripathi

Because they don't want to be perfect, because only God is perfect, Indian people sew flaws into their powwow regalia. My family always sewed one yellow bead somewhere on our regalia. But we always hid it so that you had to search really hard to find it. — Sherman Alexie

We did make use, from time to time, of candles, neckties, scarves, shoelaces, a little water-color paintbrush, her hairbrush, butter, whipped cream, strawberry jam, Johnson's Baby Oil, my Swedish hand vibrator, a fascinating bead necklace she had, miscellaneous common household items, and every molecule of flesh that was exposed to air or could be located with strenuous search. — Spider Robinson

He cradled her neck, urging her closer. A bead of sweat trailed down his back. She dug her fingers into his waist, giving him all the invitation he needed to explore her mouth. She tasted salty and sweet. The breath of her sigh danced over his tongue. She untangled their hands and swiveled onto his lap, wrapping her bare legs around him, linking her feet behind his back.

Mon dieu. It was too much - and not nearly enough. — Brynn Kelly

Rike gave him a look as if he'd gone mad. Fat Burlow covered a chuckle. "I have spoken about that, Makin," I said. "I will break the cycle." I drew my sword and laid it across my knees. "You know how to break the cycle of hatred?" I asked. "Love," said Gomst, all quiet-like. "The way to break the cycle is to kill every single one of the bastards that fucked you over," I said. "Every last one of them. Kill them all. Kill their mothers, kill their brothers, kill their children, kill their dog." I ran my thumb along the blade of my sword and watched the blood bead crimson on the wound. "People think I hate the Count, but in truth I'm a great advocate of his methods. He has only two failings. Firstly, he goes far, but not far enough. Secondly, he isn't me. He taught me valuable lessons though. And when we meet, I will thank him for it, with a quick death. — Mark Lawrence

Oh come now," Bast reproached, his smile falling away. "That's just insulting."
"By earth and stone, I abjure you!" Kote dipped his fingers into the cup by his side and flicked droplets
casually in Bast's direction. "Glamour be banished!"
"With cider?" Bast managed to look amused and annoyed at the same time as he daubed a bead of liquid
from the front of his shirt. "This better not stain. — Patrick Rothfuss

He grinned, but a bead of sweat ran down his temple. Then with your permission. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Cause they say home is where your heart is set in stone, it's where you go when're you're alone, its were you go to rest your bones. It's not just where you lay your head, it's not just where you make your bead. As long as we're together does it matter where we go? — Gabrielle Aplin

I held that last gown of plain undyed wool in my hands, feeling like it was a rope I was clinging to, and then in a burst of defiance I left it on my bead, and pulled myself in the green-and-russet gown.
I couldn't fasten the buttons in the back, so I took the long veil from the headdress, wound it twice around my waist and made a knot, just barely good enough to keep the whole thing from falling off me, and marched downstairs to the kitchens. I didn't even try to keep myself clean this time. — Naomi Novik

There was an invisible necklace of nows, stretching out in front of her along the crazy, twisting road, each bead a golden second. — Frances Hardinge

You know that for sure because Godzilla was killed by an ordinary missile. He spends most of that film dodging them but then the Army finally gets a bead on him and they shoot a missile at him and he blows up and dies, and that's not what Godzilla is. Godzilla is supposed to be a thing that you can't possibly kill, no matter how hard you try. — Brad Warner

I used to think the 109th bead was an emergency spare. Like the extra button on a fancy sweater, or the youngest son in a royal family. — Elizabeth Gilbert

From the most ancient days of China to the myths of the Greeks we find the concept of an ideal, heavenly life for men under the hegemony of music. The Glass Bead Game is intimately bound up with this cult of music ("in eternal transmutations the secret power of song greets us here below," says Novalis). — Hermann Hesse

They say the Pharaohs built the pyramids Do you think one Pharaoh dropped one bead of sweat? We built the pyramids for the Pharaohs and we're building for them yet. — Anna Louise Strong

A sutra is, so to speak, the bare thread of an exposition, the absolute minimum that is necessary to hold it together, unadorned by a single "bead" of elaboration. Only essential words are used. Often, there is no complete sentence-structure. There was a good reason for this method. Sutras were composed at a period when there were no books. The entire work had to be memorized, and so it had to be expressed as tersely as possible. Patanjali's Sutras, like all others, were intended to be expanded and explained. The ancient teachers would repeat an aphorism by heart and then proceed to amplify it with their own comments, for the benefit of their pupils. In some instances these comments, also, were memorized, transcribed at a later date, and thus preserved for us. — Swami Prabhavananda

I cup the bead in my hand and smile as I drift toward sleep, wondering what my rainy days are going to look like now. As good as my snowy ones, I think. I'm going to need a bigger umbrella. — Laini Taylor

You earn your future, Malta Vestrit." The bead-maker cocked her head at her. "What does tomorrow owe you?" "Tomorrow owes me?" Malta repeated in confusion.
"Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that." Amber looked out to sea again. "And no less. Sometimes folk wish tomorrow did not pay them off so completely. — Robin Hobb

Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding," Joseph exclaimed. "If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?"
The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said: "There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun. — Hermann Hesse

Hennick's iliac artery and vein, as well as the artery and vein of the new kidney, were spliced together with neat embroidery stitches. Then the surgeon took a deep breath, stretched his arms like a stage conjurer, and said to me: "You're about to witness the most wonderful sight in the history of medicine." He removed the arterial and venous clamps in sequence, and Hennick's blood began to pump into the withered kidney. Each beat of his heart, visible in the pumping of the arteries, caused the kidney to swell. It was like watching a process of reanimation: a refutation of death. As the kidney grew, its defeated, dimpled surface began to fill out to a lucent pink. The surgeon held up the ureter of the new kidney (the tube that carries urine to the bladder) and I watched as a bead of urine began to grow at its cut end. — Gavin Francis

There was a rustle near his ear, and he turned his head to see the crow. It stood on the grass a foot away, a blotch of wind-ruffled black feathers, regarding him with a bead-bright eye. Deciding that he posed no threat, it swiveled its neck with casual ease and jabbed its thick sharp bill into Jack Randall's eye. — Diana Gabaldon

You're worth ever bead of sweat and every groan of frustration. You're worth the work, you're worth the wait, you're worth everything I have to give you." I moved closer, so our foreheads were pressed together, our eyes aligned. "So make me work for it. Make me work hard for it. I will. You won't hear one complaint from me working myself to the bone for you. Not one. — Nicole Williams

There was only one way I could see managing this. I got out, ran around the car, opened his door, and straddled him with one leg outside and one foot on the console. Beeeeeep! My ass was on the horn. Beeeep, beeeep, beeeep, beepbeepbeepbeepbeep! A bead of sweat streaked down the side of Ranger's face. Babe. — Janet Evanovich

Before Amy and I got serious, got engaged, got married, I would get glimpses of Go's thoughts in a sentence here or there. It's funny, I can't quite get a bead on her, like who she really is. And: You just seem kind of not yourself with her. And: There's a difference between really loving someone and loving the idea of her. And finally: The important thing is she makes you really happy. Back — Gillian Flynn

And they didn't like to pay with trust and love, but rather with money and goods. They betrayed each other and expected being betrayed themselves. — Hermann Hesse

Thy voice I seem in ev'ry hymn to hear, with ev'ry bead I drop too soft a tear ... — Alexander Pope

Remember the time Pamela stuffed a bead up her nose and we had to take her to the emergency room to get it out? That bead cost us a fortune. — Debbie Macomber

Slavery, that was a kind of alchemy for such White folk, or so they reckoned. They calculated a way of turning each bead of a Black man's sweat into gold and each moan of despair from a Black woman's throat into the sweet clear sound of a silver coin ringing on the money-changer's table. There was buying and selling of souls in that place. Yet there was nary a one of them who understood the whole price they paid for owning other folk. — Orson Scott Card

Blue bead on the wick,
there's that in me that
burns and chills, blackening
my heart with its soot,
I think sometimes not Apollo heard me
but a different god. — Denise Levertov

In a dung heap, even a plastic bead can gleam like a sapphire. — Stephen Fry

These rules, the sign language and grammar of the Game, constitute a kind of highly developed secret language drawing upon several sciences and arts, but especially mathematics and music (and/or musicology), and capable of expressing and establishing interrelationships between the content and conclusions of nearly all scholarly disciplines. The Glass Bead Game is thus a mode of playing with the total contents and values of our culture; it plays with them as, say, in the great age of the arts a painter might have played with the colours on his palette. — Hermann Hesse

A bead of sweat began to form on Crowley's forehead, and trickled down into one eye. He flicked it away. Then, with care — Terry Pratchett

I tell you what, I don't like a hostile red skin any more than you do. And when they are hostile, I've fought 'em, hard as any man. But I never yet drew a bead on a squaw or papoose, and I despise the man who would. — Kit Carson

The dead did not call to me from the underworlds, but spoke to me from the rustling pine needles. They did not gaze down upon me from the skyworlds, but smiled up at me from a bead of dew trembling precariously upon a blade of grass. They told me I have never been alone. Not for one instant. Every soul is a thread in the fabric of the world. All I must do to see my relatives is gaze into the shining water that sleeps, — Kathleen O'Neal Gear

A bead of cold sweat dangled on my fingertip before dripping onto the doorbell. What if I got electrocuted from my wet fingers? I would die literally inches from my first high school party. And everyone would be like, oh, poor thing was so nervous, what a tragedy. Death by sweat. — Lindsey Leavitt

You never realize how much your mother loves you till you explore the attic - and find every letter you ever sent her, every finger painting, clay pot, bead necklace, Easter chicken, cardboard Santa Claus, paperlace Mother's Day card and school report since day one. — Pam Brown

Inexplicably, I felt drops of icy sweat dripping up my back. I am aware that icy and sweat are contradictory by their very nature and should not be able to coexist in the same freakish bead of ICK WHAT IS THAT falling up my back. I am also aware things are not supposed to fall up. For that matter, criminals aren't supposed to get it on with crimefighters. Yet here we were: Catwoman, Batman, icy, sweat, dripping, up. Sometimes life is like that. — Chris Dee