Bends Over Quotes & Sayings

That saints will aid if men will call; For the blue sky bends over all! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Science has grown frightfully audacious in these days
swift-footed, ponderous, careering over her iron ways with unslacking pace. This rampant dragon, on which I am mounted, see how he bends his once stiff neck to his rider, champing his checked bit and pawing the dust, impatient to leap around the globe. Genius is prescient, foresees its own might. Man is striving through these iron-ribbed, steam-sped hippogriffs, to recover his lost ubiquity and omnipotence, and threatens soon to grasp in his ample palm, and fix with flaming eye-ball, the elemental forces! — Amos Bronson Alcott

The heaven of stars bends over me in silence, a harp through which the wind of time still whispers music some hand has hushed but left there trembling-- where time has made such music! — John Hall Wheelock

We bow to the inevitable. We're not wheat, we're buckwheat! When a storm comes along it flattens ripe wheat because it's dry and can't bend with the wind. But ripe buckwheat's got sap in it and it bends. And when the wind has passed, it springs up almost as straight and strong as before. We aren't a stiff-necked tribe. We're mighty limber when a hard wind's blowing, because we know it pays to be limber. When trouble comes we bow to the inevitable without any mouthing, and we work and we smile and we bide our time. And we play along with lesser folks and we take what we can get from them. And when we're strong enough, we kick the folks whose necks we've climbed over. That, my child, is the secret of the survival. — Margaret Mitchell

He bends over to untie his shoes. "So, have you been ostracized from your little crowd of devotees?"
"No," I say automatically. Then I add, "Maybe. But they aren't my devotees."
"Please. They're like the Cult of Four."
I can't help but laugh. "Jealous? Wish you had a Cult of Psychopaths to call your very own? — Veronica Roth

I'd like to hear five recordings of Louis Armstrong playing and singing "What Did I Do to Be so Black and Blue"-all at the same time. Sometimes now I listen to Louis while I have my favorite dessert of vanilla ice cream and sloe gin. I pour the red liquid over the white mound, watching it glisten and the vapor rising as Louis bends that military instrument into a beam of lyrical sound. — Ralph Ellison

When I am dead, and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain drenched hair,
Tho you should lean above me broken hearted,
I shall not care.
For I shall have peace.
As leafey trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough.
And I shall be more silent and cold hearted
Than you are now — Sara Teasdale

I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW THIS, but lots of guys have a thing for Ariel. You know, from The Little Mermaid? I've never been into her myself, but I can understand the attraction: she fills out her shells nicely, she's a redhead, and she spends most of the movie unable to speak.
In light of this, I'm not too disturbed about the semi I'm sporting while watching Beauty and the Beast - part of the homework Erin gave me. I like Belle. She's hot. Well ... for a cartoon, anyway. She reminds me of Kate. She's resourceful. Smart. And she doesn't take any shit from the Beast or that douchebag with the freakishly large arms.
I stare at the television as Belle bends over to feed a bird. Then I lean forward, hoping for a nice cleavage shot ...
I'm going to hell, aren't I? — Emma Chase

There are cancers so insidious in their nature that their very pulsation is invisible. Such cancers leave the ivory whiteness of the skin untouched, and marble not the firm, fair flesh, with their blue tints; the physician who bends over the patient's chest hears not, through he listens, the insatiable teeth of the disease grinding its onward progress through the muscles, as the blood flows freely on; the knife has never been able to destroy, and rarely even, temporarily, to discern the rage of these mortal scourges; their home is in the mind, which they corrupt; they fill the whole heart until it breaks. Such, madame, are the cancers, fatal to queens; are you, too, free from their scourge? — Alexandre Dumas

Each night I am nailed into place
and forget who I am.
Daddy?
That's another kind of prison.
It's not the prince at all,
but my father
drunkeningly bends over my bed,
circling the abyss like a shark,
my father thick upon me
like some sleeping jellyfish.
What voyage is this, little girl?
This coming out of prison?
God help -
this life after death? — Anne Sexton

I stare at the television as Belle bends over to feed a bird. Then I lean forward, hoping for a nice cleavage shot ...
I'm going to hell, aren't I?
I can't help it. I'm desperate. Frustrated.
Horny — Emma Chase

Beneath Jamie's attempt to live a rational life where all was clearly marked and set in order, there was a wellspring of eccentric behaviour waiting to be tapped, which Jamie seemed instinctively at pains to keep from spilling over. It looked to be a daily battle. And the more fight he put up, the more impressive the results when the guy either temporarily cracked, or permanently bent. No one bends further than someone made of completely straight lines. — Will Elliott

Then Paul bends over me, cradles me in his arms, as if he's sheltering me from the whole world. I close my eyes, and despite everything, I think I've never felt so safe. — Claudia Gray

Society bends over backward to be accommodating to religious sensibilities but not to other kinds of sensibilities. If I say something offensive to religious people, I'll be universally censured, including by many atheists. — Richard Dawkins

I'm not Prince Charming. I'm the bad guy that sneaks into the castle when Prince Charming is off singing songs in the woods. I'm the one with the big cock that bends needy Cinderella over. And I'm the one that makes her scream until her throat's raw and she can't sing a note. — Kenya Wright

There is a theory that men do not need Paganism because they have endless avenues of societal power available. Why use spells when one can get a bank loan with little trouble? The world already bends over backward to accommodate men, so why perfect the art of magickally shaping it? — Thomm Quackenbush

She'll have to get over it, then. Are you going to let her drop out of Dauntless for a stupid reason like not being able to walk? Zeke is quiet for a few seconds. His eyes shift over my face, and he squints, as if weighing and measuring me. Then he turns and bends and wraps his arms around me. it's been so long since someone hugged me that I stiffen. Then I relax, and let the gesture force warmth over my body ... — Veronica Roth

A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her. He steals softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses
fancying she has stirred: he withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen. All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty
warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest. How hurried was their first glance! But how they fix! How he starts! How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger! How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly! He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter
by any movement he can make. He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.
I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin. — Charlotte Bronte

Still on my knees, I droop against Morpheus's thighs - a solid support. The cool leather of his pants cushions my cheek. I close my eyes. Yes ... I've been here before, held safely against him.
At first, I think I'm imagining it when he bends over to scoop me into his arms. But when the scent of licorice and warm skin surrounds me, I know it's real.
"You left," I accuse him, fighting to stay awake. "I was hurt ... and you left me."
"A mistake I vow on my life-magic to never make again." Even though he's cradling me close, his response sounds far away. But distance doesn't matter; he gave his word. I'll be holding him to it. — A.G. Howard

Are you waiting for someone to come and get you? I whisper. I sound small and thirsty. He doesn't answer. Instead, he bends his head and kisses me, just once, then let's me go.
When Connor would kiss Angelie in the halls last spring, he did it like he was trying to suck the chocolate off the outside of a Klondike bar.
It could last for hours. This is more like seeing a star fall - thrilling and soundless and then over. — Brenna Yovanoff

Death is a mighty mediator. There all the flames of rage are extinguished, hatred is appeased, and angelic pity, like a weeping sister, bends with gentle and close embrace over the funeral urn. — Friedrich Schiller

It wasn't what lay at the end of her road that frightened Ammu as much as the nature of the road itself. No milestones marked its progress. No trees grew along it. No dappled shadows shaded it. No mists rolled over it. No birds circled it. No twists, no turns or hairpin bends obscured even momentarily, her clear view of the end. This filled Ammu with an awful dread, because she was not the kind of woman who wanted her future told. She dreaded it too much. So if she were granted one small wish perhaps it would have been Not to Know, Not to know what each day hed in store for her. Not to know where she might be, next month, next year. Ten years on. Not to know which way her road might turn and what lay beyond the bend. — Arundhati Roy

Not only is [a mother] entrusted with the guardianship of the intellect and character of the world's statesmen and philosophers, but her gentle presence, as she bends over the cradle, and the silent influence of her daily life are shaping the entire moral character of the coming generation. — C.E. Sargent

She bends over, whispering in my ear. "Have you ever been with a guy?"
"Yes," I say, even though that quick fumble with Luca Parry in the factory closet doesn't count for much. He was all grabby hands, sloppy mouth, and slimy tongue. It's an experience I'm in no hurry to repeat. Ugh. A severe shiver travels up my spine with the memory. — Siobhan Davis

As the sun starts to rise, I watch as Raffaele bends over Enzo's body, the two of us mourning the prince we both loved. — Marie Lu

But what a painful difference between the two! The father bends over his returning son. The elder son stands stiffly erect, a posture accentuated by the long staff reaching from his hand to the floor. The father's mantle is wide and welcoming; the son's hangs flat over his body. The father's hands are spread out and touch the homecomer in a gesture of blessing; the son's are clasped together and held close to his chest. There is light on both faces, but the light from the father's face flows through his whole body - especially his hands - and engulfs the younger son in a great halo of luminous warmth; whereas the light on the face of the elder son is cold and constricted. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

No one stands taller in the climb to success than when he bends over to help up someone else. — John C. Maxwell

The humanist philosopher who bends over his brothers like an elder brother who is conscious of his responsibilities; the humanist who loves men as they are, the one who loves them as they ought to be, the one who wants to save them with their consent, and the one who will save them in spite of themselves, the one who wants to create myths, and the one who is satisfied with the old myths, the one who loves man for his death, the one who loves man for his life, the happy humanist who always knows what to say to make people laugh, the gloomy humanist whom you usually meet at wakes. They all hate one another : as individuals, of course, not as men. — Jean-Paul Sartre

His other hand finds my cheek, and he wipes away my tears with his thumb. The chocolate scent overwhelms me as he bends over and whispers in my ear, "No, Cassie. No, no, no."
I throw my arm around his neck and press his dry cheek against my wet one. I'm shaking like an epileptic, and for the first time I can feel the weight of the quilts on the top of my toes because the blinding dark sharpens your other senses.
I'm a bubbling stew of random thoughts and feelings. I'm worried my hair might smell. I want some chocolate. This guy holding me - well, it's more like I was holding him - has seen me in all my naked glory. What did he think about my body? What did I think about my body? Does God really care about promises? Do I really care about God? Are miracles something like the Red Sea parting or more like Evan Walker finding me locked in a block of ice in a wilderness of white?
"Cassie, it's going to be okay," he whispers into my ear, chocolate breath. — Rick Yancey

Who are you?" I ask, opening the door the rest of the way and crossing my arms over my chest.
His eyes move to my arms and then back up, and his smile gets wider. "Aye."
"What?" I frown when he chuckles.
"Name's Aye."
"Like when a pirate says yes?" I inquire. Then I growl, "What's so funny?" when he bends over, holding his stomach and laughing.

~ Myla — Aurora Rose Reynolds

I think I liked you better when you didn't speak," Pete says. Then he grins. I flip him the bird, and he flies at me, jumping on my back. He bounces up and down and leans over my shoulder so I can see his lips. "My feet are cold," he says, batting his golden lashes at me. "You should carry me the rest of the way." He's latched onto me like a koala. And he's fucking heavy. It's like carrying a load of bricks. But I hitch him up higher and start walking. Sam turns his back to Kit and bends down. "You look tired, Kit," he says. "Want a ride?" He waggles his eyebrows at her. She laughs and jumps onto his back. "I'm not sure I got the good end of this deal," I croak as we all walk along together. — Tammy Falkner

What could be more absurd? Yet it is nature's folly, not ours. When she set about her chief masterpiece, the making of man, she should have thought of one thing only. Instead, turning her head, looking over her shoulder, into each one of us she let creep instincts and desires which are utterly at variance with his main being, so that we are streaked, variegated, all of a mixture; the colours have run. Is the true self this which stands on the pavement in January, or that which bends over the balcony in June? Am I here, or am I there? Or is the true self neither this nor that, neither here nor there, but something so varied and wandering that it is only when we give the rein to its wishes and let it take its way unimpeded that we are indeed ourselves? — Virginia Woolf

IT IS SO EASY TO GIVE IN
I have been thinking about the man who gives in.
Have you heard about him? In this story
A twenty-eight-foot pine meets a small wind
And the pine bends all the way over to the ground.
I was persuaded," the pine says. "It was convincing."
A mouse visits a cat, and the cat agrees
To drown all her children. "What could I do?"
The cat said. "The mouse needed that."
It's strange. I've heard that some people conspire
In their own ruin. A fool says, "You don't
Deserve to live." The man says, "I'll string this rope
Over that branch, maybe you can find a box."
The Great One with her necklace of skulls says,
I need twenty thousand corpses." "Tell you what,"
The General says, "we have an extra battalion
Over there on the hill. We don't need all these men. — Robert Bly

Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, "Grow, grow." - The Talmud — Sapphire.

In Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don't need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days' time it will be the very thing he needs. Sometimes he stops, half-glances over his shoulder. He feels someone has come into the room behind him; but when he allows himself to look, there is nothing to see. It is my destiny, he feels, forming in the shadows of the room. It is the guardian angel I had, long ago when I was a child. It is Camille Desmoulins, looking over my shoulder, laughing at my grammar. He pauses for a moment. He thinks, there are no living ghosts. He takes hold of himself. Bends his head over his task. His pen scratches. His strange letterforms incise the paper. His handwriting is minute. He gets a lot of words to the page. — Hilary Mantel

Raffe throws me a dirty look. He bends over and swipes his arm behind my knees, lifting me up in his embrace.
'I can go with one of the locusts.' I stiffen in his arms and try to lean as far away from him as I can.
'The hell you will.' He runs a couple of steps before spreading his wings. — Susan Ee

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. — Sylvia Plath

If a community bends over backward to be publicly liberal, it can give itself the bonus of private snobbery. — Penelope Ashe

Song I try to make the step-down call of the chickadee, but do it too insistently, over and over so it loses sense, the air going equally out and back, not slower in the opening, then quickening as the tight hinge retracts, but absolutely evenly, too even, the way one breathes and regulates breath for a doctor, to present the body's equanimity. There's a bird in a tree with a hinge in its throat, a door opening to let the sweet air pass from a high, thin place down a notch. There's phlox out there, opening between one black and another black, hanging branch of an apple tree - the very tree that holds the bird that bends the air so parenthetically around itself, and its song around anything listening. — Lia Purpura

Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers 'Grow, grow'. — Midrash Rabbah

Just as the ocean wears away the rocks and bends the contour of the shoreline to it's will, so it washes over a man's mind, smoothing the sharp edges, knocking off the conceits, flattening the prejudices so that he is left with a different instrument with which to govern his life. — Frank Mulville

From seaport to seaport, papers accumulate on the captain's desk. "Paperwork has become the bane of this job," he says. "If a ship doesn't have a good copying machine, it isn't seaworthy. The more ports, the more papers. South American paperwork is worse than the paperwork anywhere else in the world but the Arab countries and Indonesia." Deliberately, he allows the pile on his desk to rise until a deep roll on a Pacific swell throws it to the deck and scatters it from bulkhead to bulkhead. This he interprets as a signal that the time has come to do paperwork. The paper carpet may be an inch deep, but he leaves it where it fell. Bending over, he picks up one sheet. He deals with it: makes an entry, writes a letter - does whatever it requires him to do. Then he bends over and picks up another sheet. This goes on for a few days until, literally, he has cleared his deck. The — John McPhee

As she bends for a Kleenex in the dark, I am thinking of other girls: the girl I loved who fell in love with a lion
she lost her head over it
we just necked a lot; of the girl who fell in love with the tightrope, got addicted to getting high wired and nothing else was enough; all the beautiful, damaged women who have come through my life and I wonder what would have happened if I'd met them sooner, what they were like before they were so badly wounded. All this time I thought I'd been kissing, but maybe I'm always doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, kissing dead girls in hopes that the heart will start again. Where there's breath, I've heard, there's hope. — Daphne Gottlieb

In front of the law there is a doorkeeper. A man from the countryside comes up to the door and asks for entry. But the doorkeeper says he can't let him in to the law right now. The man thinks about this, and then he asks if he'll be able to go in later on. "That's possible," says the doorkeeper, "but not now". The gateway to the law is open as it always is, and the doorkeeper has stepped to one side, so the man bends over to try and see in. When the doorkeeper notices this he laughs and says, "If you're tempted give it a try, try and go in even though I say you can't. Careful though: I'm powerful. And I'm only the lowliest of all the doormen. But there's a doorkeeper for each of the rooms and each of them is more powerful than the last. It's more than I can stand just to look at the third one. — Franz Kafka

The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends. — Henry David Thoreau

The disgrace of your barrenness, Madam, is not yours alone. Don't you know that shame is collective? The shame of any one of us sits on us all and bends our backs. See what you're doing to your husband's people, how you repay the ones who took you in when you came penniless and a fugitive from that godless country over there. — Salman Rushdie

The power of God has not in the least bit been diminished over the past 2000 years. Our Lord still sits on His great throne and His train still fills the temple. He still walks on the wings of the wind, He still rides on the backs of the mighty cherubim, and He still is the Triumphant Champion from Calvary. All hell still bends to His will, and sin and death have lost their hold on all who rest in the shadow of His presence. And the God who calmed storms, raised up dead men to life, and multiplied fishes and loaves to feed thousands is the same God we have today. — Eric Ludy

That's one reason I was so passionate about establishing the Magdalene community. Mary Magdalene was the name of the first person to preach about resurrection, and she experienced deep healing from old wounds. In the accounts of the resurrection stories offered in the Gospels, it seems like in each story Jesus lingers to meet Magdalene. In the account of the resurrection in the Gospel of John, two disciples run into the tomb and see the shroud that Jesus had been wrapped in. They leave scared, and Magdalene is left alone. As she stands outside the tomb, she bends over to look into the tomb. Jesus speaks to her. The bond and power of grace seem to bring her into the heart of God. I wanted to name the community in her honor and for it to be a sanctuary. I knew that in order to heal people, women needed a place to speak their truth in love without fear of being judged, in part because I needed that place. — Becca Stevens

It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There's no starting over nor undoing the steps I've taken. It isn't like I'd want to not have my little ones and Jack and that ranch, it is part of life to have to support yourself. It's just that I want everything, my insides are not just hungry, but greedy. I want to find out all the things in the world and still have a family and a ranch. Maybe part of passing that test was a marker for where I've been, but it feels more like a pointer for something I'll never reach. (November 29, 1887 entry, pg 309) — Nancy E. Turner