Betwixt Quotes & Sayings

There never was a man with such a face as yours, unless it was your father, and I suppose he is singeing his grizzled red beard by this time, unless you came straight from the old un without any father at all betwixt you; which I shouldn't wonder at, a bit. — Charles Dickens

A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True, as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun, journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium of the highest influence to all who are not on the same level. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The attempt is all the wedge that splits its knotty way betwixt the impossible and possible. — Alice Cary

The difference there is betwixt honor and honesty seems to be chiefly the motive; the mere honest man does that from duty which the man of honor does for the sake of character. — William Shenstone

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There is more betwixt the day and the night than we can ever know. — Sally Gardner

All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other. — H.P. Lovecraft

English, strictly speaking, is not my first language by the way. I haven't yet discovered what my first language is so for the time being I use English words in order to say things. I expect I will always have to do it that way; regrettably I don't think my first language can be written down at all. I'm not sure it can be made external you see. I think it has to stay where it is; simmering in the elastic gloom betwixt my flickering organs. — Claire-Louise Bennett

When I shall be dead, the principles of which I am composed will still perform their part in the universe, and will be equally useful in the grand fabric, as when they composed this individual creature. The difference to the whole will be no greater betwixt my being in a chamber and in the open air. The one change is of more importance to me than the other; but not more so to the universe. — David Hume

I am forever walking upon these shores,
Betwixt the sand and the foam,
The high tide will erase my food prints,
And the wind will blow away the foam,
But the sea and the shore will remain forever. — Kahlil Gibran

When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nordiminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it. — David Hume

[I have] been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another. — Laurence Sterne

A man of about fifty-four years of age, had begun, five or six months before, to be somewhat emaciated in his whole body ... a troublesome vomiting came on, of a fluid which resembl'd water, tinctur'd with soot ... Death took place ... In the stomach ... was an ulcerated cancerous tumour ... Betwixt the stomach and the spleen were two glandular bodies, of the bigness of a bean, and in their colour, and substance, not much unlike that tumour which I have describ'd in the stomach. — Giovanni Battista Morgagni

All that lies betwixt the cradle and the grave is uncertain. — Seneca The Younger

Whenever you have a sorcerer betwixt your thighs, your powers tend to disappear — Kresley Cole

In a valley betwixt two hills there I stood perfectly still. In this stance I did find the most beautiful secrets of my mind — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the five following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year. — Laurence Sterne

Let us never be afraid to be still before God; we shall then carry that stillness into our work; and when we go to church on Sunday, or to the prayer-meeting on week-days, it will be with the one desire that nothing may stand betwixt us and God, and that we may never be so occupied with hearing and listening as to forget the presence of God. — Andrew Murray

I've spent so much time these last years wondering what I'm supposed to be. A wife? A lover? A celibate? An Italian? A glutton? A traveler? An artist? A Yogi? But I'm not any of these things, at least not completely. And I'm not Crazy Aunt Liz, either. I'm just a slippery antevasin - betwixt and between - a student on the ever-shifting border near the wonderful, scary forest of the new. — Elizabeth Gilbert

One may also inhabit the limen, the place in between realities, a gap 'between and betwixt' universes of sense that construe social life and persons differently, an interstice from where one can most clearly stand critically toward different structures. — Maria Lugones

Anytime that is 'betwixt and between' or transitional is the faeries' favorite time. They inhabit transitional spaces: the bottom of the garden, existing in a space between manmade cultivation and wilderness. Look for them in the space between nurture and nature, they are to be found at all boarders and boundaries, or on the edges of water where it is neither land nor lake, neither path nor pond. They come when we are half-asleep. They come at moments when we least expect them; when our rational mind balances with the fluid irrational. — Brian Froud

We may conceive an hope that the next generation will in tongue and heart and every way else become English; so as there will be no difference or distinction but the Irish sea betwixt us. — Sir John Davies

There have been times when only a hair's-breadth has intervened betwixt myself and the seething devil-ridden world of madness; for the hideous knowledge, the horror- blackened memories which I have carried so long, were never meant to be borne by the human intellect. — Clark Ashton Smith

The harvest of this world is to the resolute, and he that is infirm of purpose is ground betwixt the upper and the nether millstone — Eric Rucker Eddison

It is the difference betwixt lust and love that this is fixed, that volatile. Love grows, lust wastes by enjoyment. — William Penn

A relation is formed betwixt every man and the fruits of his own labour, the very thing we call property, which he himself is sensible of, and of which every other is equally sensible. Yours and mine are terms in all languages, familiar among savages, and understood even by children. This is a fact, which every human creature can testify. — Henry Home, Lord Kames

You will be a Betwixt-and-Between, — J.M. Barrie

Come, Adam, a wise man does not step betwixt the beast & his meat. — David Mitchell

Betwixt the stirrup and the ground Mercy I asked, mercy I found. — William Camden

Here saw I a great oneing betwixt Christ and us, to mine understanding: for when He was in pain, we were in pain. — Julian Of Norwich

Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,/Above, beneath, betwixt, between. — Neil Gaiman

There is speaking well, speaking easily, speaking justly and speaking seasonably: It is offending against the last, to speak of entertainments before the indigent; of sound limbs and health before the infirm; of houses and lands before one who has not so much as a dwelling; in a word, to speak of your prosperity before the miserable; this conversation is cruel, and the comparison which naturally arises in them betwixt their condition and yours is excruciating. — Jean De La Bruyere

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes. — Michel De Montaigne

Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men,
the Good and the Bad.
But the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue. — David Hume

But," thought Durtal, "seeing that there are so many more things betwixt heaven and earth than are dreamed of in anybody's philosophy, why not believe in the Trinity? Why reject the divinity of Christ? It is no strain on one to admit the Credo quia absurdum of Saint Augustine and Tertullian and say that if the supernatural were comprehensible it would not be supernatural, and that precisely because it passes the faculties of man it is divine. "And - oh, — Joris-Karl Huysmans

There are various tough problems yet to solve, and we must shift to live, betwixt spirit and matter, such a human life as we can. — Henry David Thoreau

Tis not for golden eloquence I pray,
A godlike tongue to move a stony heart
Methinks it were full well to be apart
In solitary uplands far away,
Betwixt the blossoms of a rosy spray,
Dreaming upon the wonderful sweet face
Of Nature, in a wild and pathless place. — Frederick Tennyson

A wise man does not step betwixt the beast and his meat — David Mitchell

We need only reflect on what has been prov'd at large, that we are never sensible of any connexion betwixt causes and effects, and that 'tis only by our experience of their constant conjunction, we can arrive at any knowledge of this relation. — David Hume

This is a magazine-reading country. When one comes back from abroad, the two displays of American abundance that dazzle one are the supermarkets and the newsstands. There are no British equivalents of our Midcult magazines like The Atlantic and the Saturday Review, or of our mass magazines like Life and The Saturday Evening Post and Look, or of our betwixt-&-between magazines like Esquire and The New Yorker (which also encroach on the Little Magazine area). There are, however, several big-circulation women's magazines, I suppose because the women's magazine is such an ancient and essential form of journalism that even the English dig it. - 1960 — Dwight Macdonald

Men of broader intellect know that there is no sharp distinction betwixt the real and the unreal; that all things appear as they do only by virtue of the delicate individual physical and mental media through which we are made — H.P. Lovecraft

The Smile -
There is a Smile of Love
And there is a Smile of Deceit
And there is a Smile of Smiles
In which these two Smiles meet
And there is a Frown of Hate
And there is a Frown of disdain
And there is a Frown of Frowns
Which you strive to forget in vain
For it sticks in the Hearts deep Core
And it sticks in the deep Back bone
And no Smile that ever was smild
But only one Smile alone
That betwixt the Cradle & Grave
It only once Smild can be
But when it once is Smild
Theres an end to all Misery. — William Blake

But the most common species of love is that which first arises from beauty, and afterwards diffuses itself into kindness and into the bodily appetite. Kindness or esteem, and the appetite to generation, are too remote to unite easily together. The one is, perhaps, the most refined passion of the soul; the other the most gross and vulgar. The love of beauty is placed in a just medium betwixt them, and partakes of both their natures: From whence it proceeds, that it is so singularly fitted to produce both. — David Hume

Right as rain, hah. Who says that? Who says that and means it? But betwixt some fucker wanting to slice off my arm for kicks and some other fucker promising the moon on a string, I was going with the second fella. — Alexis Hall

Betwixt the life of feeling and the life of faith the Christian has to choose every day. Happy is he who, once for all, has made the firm choice, and every morning renews the choice, not to seek or listen for feeling, but only to walk by faith, according to the will of God. — Andrew Murray

The turnaround is when you have a solo in betwixt the verses. You stoppin' to have a solo. — David Edwards

On the one hand, we have the mass; on the other, its historic goal, located outside of existing society. On one hand we have the day-to-day struggle; on the other, the socialist revolution ... It follows that this movement can best advance by tacking betwixt and between the two dangers ... One is the loss of its mass character, the other the abandonment of its goal. One is the danger of sinking back to the condition of a sect; the other, the danger of becoming a movement of bourgeois social reform. — Rosa Luxemburg

As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from
where she was born, who her parents were. When I asked she'd say, "God made me." When I asked if she was white, she'd say, "I'm light-skinned," and change the subject. She raised twelve black children and sent us all to college and in most cases graduate school. Her children became doctors, professors, chemists, teachers
yet none of us even knew her maiden name until we were grown. It took me fourteen years to unearth her remarkable story
the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, she married a black man in 1942
and she revealed it more as a favor to me than out of any desire to revisit her past. Here is her life as she told it to me, and betwixt and between the pages of her life you will find mine as well. — James McBride

The king can drink the best of wine -So can I;And has enough when he would dine -So have I;And can not order rain or shine -Nor can I.Then where's the difference - let me see -Betwixt my lord the king and me? — Charles Mackay

Anthropologist Victor Turner writes that we are most free to explore identity in places outside of our normal routines, places that are in some way "betwixt and between." Turner calls them liminal, from the Latin word for "threshold. — Sherry Turkle

He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband. — Michel De Montaigne

Betwixt me and the dreadful outer brink
Of obvious death, where I, who thought to sink,
Was caught up into love, and taught the whole
Of life in a new rhythm. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

There is a plain distinction to be made betwixt pleasure and happiness. For tho' there can be no happiness without pleasure
yet the converse of the proposition will not hold true.
We are so made, that from the common gratifications of our appetites, and the impressions of a thousand objects, we snatch the one, like a transient gleam, without being suffered to taste the other. — Laurence Sterne

There is small disproportion betwixt a fool who useth not wit because he hath it not and him that useth it not when it should avail him. — Elizabeth I

Time, whose millioned accidents creep in betwixt vows, and change decrees of kings, tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharpest intents, divert strong minds to the course of altering things. — William Shakespeare

The bitter clamour of two eager tongues, Can arbitrate this cause betwixt us twain; — William Shakespeare

If you're betwixt and between, trust the one with red hair. — O.R. Melling

The body which is matter says not 'I'. Eternal Awareness rises not nor sets. Betwixt the two, bound by the body, rises the thought of 'I'. This is the knot of matter and Awareness. This is bondage, jiva, subtle body, ego. This is samsara, this is the mind. — Ramana Maharshi

Well did the traveler know those garden lands that lie betwixt the wood of the Cerenerian Sea, and blithely did he follow the singing river Oukranos that marked his course. The sun rose higher over gentle slopes of grove and lawn, and heightened the colors of the thousand flowers that starred each knoll and dangle. A blessed haze lies upon all this region, wherein is held a little more of the sunlight than other places hold, and a little more of the summer's humming music of birds and bees; so that men walk through it as through a faery place, and feel greater joy and wonder than they ever afterward remember. — H.P. Lovecraft

It is from the well of St. Dunstan' said he, 'In which betwixt sun and sun, he baptised five hundred heathen Danes and Britons - blessed be his name!' And applying his black beard to the pitcher, he took a draught much more moderate in quantity than his encomium seemed to warrant. — Walter Scott

His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure
all the more intense for being held tightly in
his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours. — Arthur Conan Doyle

PHI1.23 For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better: — Anonymous

We are all lumps, and of so various and inform a contexture, that every piece plays, every moment, its own game, and there is as much difference betwixt us and ourselves as betwixt us and others. — Michel De Montaigne

Aidan: "From the moment I laid eyes on her she was trouble to my concentration, my libido, and my mental health. After six weeks of pursuit, I'd trapped her between my upraised arms against a book case, somewhere betwixt Shakespeare and Voltaire. "I want the witchcraft in your lips," I'd whispered. Instead of arguing, she grabbed me by the ears. She'd been soft lips, liberal tongue and nipping teeth. I'd contributed a willing body and a vulgar groan. She'd drawn away, licked her lips and ducked underneath my arms. When she was about three yards from me, she's tilted her head up like a siren on the bow of a ship and pursed a devil-may-care smile at me before she bowed. She'd challenged me to pursue her, and I'd intended to, but when I pushed off, the bookcase fell backwards. I tumbled into a heap of literary tombs. I could still hear her laughing when the library's elevator door chimed closed. — Elizabeth Marx

I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. — Mark Twain

On your eyelids crown the god of sleep,
Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness,
Making such difference 'twixt wake and sleep
As is the difference betwixt day and night
The hour before the heavenly-harness'd team
Begins his golden progress in the east. — William Shakespeare

Great is the difference betwixt a man's being frightened at, and humbled for his sins. — Thomas Fuller

Brutes abstract not.
If it may be doubted, whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas, that way, to any degree; this, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to. — John Locke

FROM A WILD NIGHT'S BRIDE by Victoria Vane:
His gaze glued to the bed, Ned made a mechanical backward retreat to the center of the room where he had a clearer prospect of its crowning glory. His vision rose to the top of the headboard, to the heraldic shield seated betwixt the carved figures of a lion and a unicorn. His gaze slid with dread to the engraved scroll beneath. Dieu Et Mon Driot. God and my right, the motto of the king. His chest seized. The room began to spin. He looked to Phoebe, aware that the blood was draining from his face, and that his voice emerged as a strangled sound. "May the same God save me ... for I'm going to be hung, drawn, and quartered for spending last night rutting in the King of England's bed!" coming April 27, 2012 from Breathless Press — Emery Lee

Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father. 8 And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of men - 9 Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice. — Joseph Smith Jr.

But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt. — Andrew Marvell

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion. — Ernest Dowson

Admire, exult, despise, laugh, weep for here There is such matter for all feelings: Man! Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear. — Lord Byron

Love's not a decision, son. It hits a man betwixt the eyes, and there's no decidin' to it. Right or wrong, doubts or no doubts, he's standin' knee deep in cement that's about to set."

~Harv Coulter — Catherine Anderson

Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person; they make friendships as kings of old made leagues, who sacrificed some poor animal betwixt them, and commenced strict allies; so the ladies, after they have pulled some character to pieces, are from henceforth inviolable friends. — Alexander Pope

My friend, judge not me,
Thou seest I judge not thee;
Betwixt the stirrop and the ground,
Mercy I askt, mercy I found. — William Camden

I hate set dissertations,
and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception. — Laurence Sterne

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day On the absent face that fixed you; Unless you can love, as the angels may, With the breadth of heaven betwixt you; Unless you can dream that his faith is fast, Through behoving and unbehoving; Unless you can die when the dream is past - Oh, never call it loving! — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Ah, there are so many things betwixt heaven and earth of which only the poets have dreamed! — Friedrich Nietzsche

To rule forever," continues the Chinaman, later, "it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call ... Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,
to create thus a Distinction betwixt 'em,
'tis the first stroke.
All else will follow as if predestin'd, unto War and Devastation. — Thomas Pynchon

This "betwixt and between" period is like living in a hallway of "divine discomfort." We know at some level that we need to let go, but we're not quite ready to do so yet. As bad as it might feel, this discomfort is often necessary to eventually move us into doing what we need to do. To this end, our unease is a gift. — Betty Hill Crowson

Yet these ancient kingdoms of sand and snow are set apart from the rest of Westeros by history, culture, and tradition. Both are thinly peopled, compared to the lands betwixt. — Anonymous

And now I see with eye serene
The very pulse of the machine
A being breathing thoughtful breath
A traveler betwixt life and death
The reason firm the temperate will
Endurance Foresight Strength and skill — William Wordsworth

A gulf profound as that Serbonian bog Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, Where armies whole have sunk: the parching air Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire. Thither by harpy-footed Furies hal'd, At certain revolutions all the damn'd Are brought, and feel by turns the bitter change Of fierce extremes,-extremes by change more fierce; From beds of raging fire to starve in ice Their soft ethereal warmth, and there to pine Immovable, infix'd, and frozen round, Periods of time; thence hurried back to fire. — John Milton

This late dissension grown betwixt the peers
Burns under feigned ashes of forg'd love,
And will at last break out into a flame:
As festered members rot but by degree,
Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,
So will this base and envious discord breed. — William Shakespeare

We are the voices in the shadows,
Between the light and shade,
Betwixt life and restful death,
In the dark periphery of the unseen.

We're here,
At the edges.
We are the villainous punished,
The innocent murdered or abandoned,
Our lives ended by foul means, or unspeakable deeds.
We are your lovers long gone; your siblings forsaken.

Can you hear us?
At the edges

From the Foreword of Cautionary Tales - by Emmanuelle de Maupassant — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship. — Laurence Sterne

Wonder had gone away, and he had forgotten that all life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other. Custom had dinned into his ears — H.P. Lovecraft

Reprehension is a kind of middle thing betwixt admonition and correction: it is sharpe admonition, but a milde correction. It is rather to be used because it may be a meanes to prevent strokes and blowes, especially in ingenuous and good natured children. [Blows are] the last remedy which a parent can use: a remedy which may doe good when nothing else can. — William Gouge

The colour grey is an unemotional colour, neutral, on the fence and neither here, nor there. Tis why old people's hair turns grey . . . betwixt life and death. — Ursley Kempe

Compare with such a one the common rabble of mankind, stupid and mean-spirited, servile, instable, and continually floating with the tempest of various passions, that tosses and tumbles them to and fro, and all depending upon others, and you will find a greater distance than betwixt heaven and earth; and yet the blindness of common usage is such that we make little or no account of it; whereas if we consider a peasant and a king, a nobleman and a vassal, a magistrate and a private man, a rich man and a poor, there appears a vast disparity, though they differ no more, as a man may say, than in their breeches. — Michel De Montaigne

Nature ... has made it impossible for us to have any communication from this earth with the other great bodies of the universe, in our present state; and it is highly possible that he has likewise cut off all communication betwixt the other planets, and betwixt the different systems. ... We observe, in all of them, enough to raise our curiosity, but not to satisfy it ... It does not appear to be suitable to the wisdom that shines throughout all nature, to suppose that we should see so far, and have our curiosity so much raised ... only to be disappointed at the end ... This, therefore, naturally leads us to consider our present state as only the dawn or beginning of our existence, and as a state of preparation or probation for farther advancement. ... — Colin Maclaurin