Bracing Quotes & Sayings

If I "try" to play, I fail; if I force the play, I crush it; if I race, I trip. Any time I stiffen or brace myself against some error or problem, the very act of bracing would cause the problem to occur. The only road to strength is vulnerability. — Stephen Nachmanovitch

Ty was pulling his headphones out of his pocket, bracing his black-sneakered feet just above the top step. 'We're Shadowhunters,' he said. 'We don't run. — Cassandra Clare

Am I hot now?" he asked, his voice low and rumbling with arousal as his fingers slipped beneath my panties.
I arched into his touch, bracing my hands on his chest. "Baby, you don't know how to be anything else. — Samantha Young

The children of the nuclear age, I think, were weakened in their capacity to love. Hard to love, when you're bracing yourself for impact. Hard to love, when the loved one, and the lover, might at any instant become blood and flames, along with everybody else. — Martin Amis

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Nobody could catch cold by the sea; nobody wanted appetite by the sea; nobody wanted spirits; nobody wanted strength. Sea air was healing, softening, relaxing
fortifying and bracing
seemingly just as was wanted
sometimes one, sometimes the other. If the sea breeze failed, the seabath was the certain corrective; and where bathing disagreed, the sea air alone was evidently designed by nature for the cure. — Jane Austen

The smile he gave me was warm, but he was still wounded by his mother's death. There was a hollowness in his eyes: a black hole of shocked grieving that swallowed all the questions and released no answers. When he returned to his work, cutting lengths of coconut-fibre rope for the men to tie around bamboo bracing poles, his young face assumed a numb expression. I knew that expression: I sometimes caught it, by chance, in the mirror: the way we look when the part of happiness that's trusting and innocent is ripped away, and we blame ourselves, rightly or wrongly, for its loss. — Gregory David Roberts

In the harsh face of life faith can read a bracing gospel. — Robert Louis Stevenson

This victory over excessive religious influence and excessive secularism is often lost in the clatter of contemporary cultural and political strife. Looking back to the Founding is neither an exercise in nostalgia nor an attempt to deify the dead, but a bracing lesson in how to make a diverse nation survive and thrive by cherishing freedom and protecting faith. And faith and freedom are inextricably linked: It is not for priests or pastors or presidents or kings to compel belief, for to do so trespasses on each individual's God-given liberty of mind and heart. If the Lord himself chose not to force obedience from those he created, then who are men to try? There — Jon Meacham

You know what you need?" Giguhl said. I raised a brow, bracing myself for a punch line. "A to-do list. Might help you keep track of all the beings who want you dead and the satanic birdlife you've kidnapped."
I imagined a list in my head:
1. Perform voodoo ritual on evil owl.
2. Find out who sold us out to the anachronistic Caste vampires.
3. Make amends with a lesbian werewolf.
4. Rescue twin.
5. Murder grandmother.
I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. "Yeah, I'll get right on that."
Gighul heard the sarcasm. "Suit yourself, but don't come crying to me if you forget who you're supposed to kill when. — Jaye Wells

On a clear day the Oregon coast is the most beautiful place on earth - clear and crisp and clean, a rich green in the land and a bright blue in the sky, the air fat and salty and bracing, the ocean spreading like a grin. Brown pelicans rise and fall in their chorus lines in the wells of the waves, cormorants arrow, an eagle kingly queenly floats south high above the water line. — Brian Doyle

Oments of transport, and of comfort, and of a bracing vastness of possibility. That was all there for me sometimes when I plunged my mind into the Bible's puzzles; and it was always there in the music of church. I wouldn't have said it this way then. But I would feel all the cells in my body as I sang hymns that connected my little life with the grandeur of the cosmos, the Christian drama across space and time. This was my earliest experience of breath and body, mind and spirit soaring together, alive to both mystery and reality, in kinship with others both familiar and unknown. That's one way I'd define the feeling of faith now. — Krista Tippett

She wasn't fantasy anymore. But something real, something he couldn't imagine living without, and he crossed his arms, as if bracing himself from the possibility that all this might slip away. — Nicholas Sparks

I heard a story," Aedion drawled to Rowan, "that you killed an enemy warlord using a table."
"Please,"Aelin said. "Who the hell told you that?"
"Quinn-your uncle's Captain of the Guard. He was an admirer of Prince Rowan's. He knew all the stories."
Aelin slid her eyes to Rowan, who smirked, bracing his sparring stick on the floor. "You can't be serious," she said. "What-you squashed him to death like a pressed grape? — Sarah J. Maas

I think a philistine environment should be bracing for young artists. You have to make your own enjoyment, you've got to make your own art. — Michael Longley

What have you to trade for my silence?" ...
He opened his mouth to beckon the men, but Eleri moved like lightning. With her right arm restrained, she couldn't cut him. However, her weapon of choice caught him completely off-guard.
Her lips sealed to his, cutting off his voice in a hard kiss...
Bracing his back against the gnarled tree branches, he relaxed for more, but the kiss ended as briskly as it had begun....
Blood surging through his body, Warren grinned and lowered his face over hers. "Not the price I had in mind, but...um, shall we see what else you have to offer? — Sandra Jones

Nova Scotia is a box bass and a fiddle and German sourdough and scotch eggs. And the air, all heavy and bracing and wet. When you're driving, you wave to the old guy walking along the side of the road in the plaid flannel shirt and he waves back, because it's just what you do. This is an extraordinarily hospitable and musical place. You've got to haul wood in the winter and batten down hatches during hurricanes, and there are bagpipes and banjos and weathered old barns and whales offshore and abandoned fishing boats sleeping on the beach. — Kate Inglis

At first it was, as I have said, rather bracing and tonic. For after the dream there is not reason why you should not go back and face the fact which you have fled from (even if the fact seems to be that you have, by digging up the truth about the past, handed over Anne Stanton to Willie Stark), for any place to which you may flee will not be like the place from which you have fled, and you might as well go back, after all, to the place where you belong, for nothing was your fault or anybody's fault, for things are always as they are. And you can go back in good spirits, for you will have learned two very great truths. First, that you cannot lose what you have never had. Second, that you are never guilty of a crime which you did not commit. So there is innocence and a new start in the West after all.
If you believe that dream you dream when you go there. — Robert Penn Warren

I'm thinking waiters and waitresses are going to be bracing for more customers coming in going, not just kind of where is that beef from, but, like, where is that vanilla from and what's up with that sunflower oil? Is it organic or not and how many pesticides? — Michael Moss

A bracing wind swirls about the boy and alights gently upon his shoulder to gape frightfully at droplets of fate joined infirmly to a sweep of atmospheric and lunar forces far beyond their capabilities to resist. He takes a long, deep breath of air - cleansed through its migration - and he closes his eyes.
Scattered waves roll back in to the sea. — Ashim Shanker

Excuse me, Princess. For a moment, my heart leaped at the soft, deep voice. The voice that could either be Rowan's or Ash's, they sounded so much alike. Bracing myself, I turned, but it wasn't Ash standing there. Thankfully, it wasn't Rowan, either. It was the other brother, the oldest of the three. Sage. Dammit, he's gorgeous also. What was with this family, that all the sons were so freaking handsome it hurt to look at them? — Julie Kagawa

The rules that apply to line on dry land no longer apply. You're immersed in water, a substance which has the potential to drown you. If you're not accustomed to swimming every instinct tells you to yell in terror and grab the rail at hte side of the pool, but in fact this isn't the way to deal with the problem. You have to make the problem no longer a problem by embracing it--you have to let go of the rail and launch yourself out on the water because once you're swimming...you find the water's stimulating, bracing, even welcoming. So by embracing the chaos instead of shunning it you've opened up a whole new dimension of reality. Father Lewis Hall — Susan Howatch

Traffic's not too bad on Sheridan, and I'm cornering the car like it's the Indy 500, and we're listening to my favorite NMH song, "Holland, 1945," and then onto Lake Shore Drive, the waves of Lake Michigan crashing against the boulders by the Drive, the windows cracked to get the car to defrost, the dirty, bracing, cold air rushing in, and I love the way Chicago smells - Chicago is brackish lake water and soot and sweat and grease and I love it, and I love this song, and Tiny's saying I love this song, and he's got the visor down so he can muss up his hair a little more expertly. — John Green

In its enervating plains, far removed from the invigorating sea-breeze and the bracing cold of the mountain ranges, the keen eye, undaunted heart, and relentless arm of the successive hardy northern immigrants slowly but surely tend to change to the placid look, folded hands and brooding mind of the Eastern Sage, who, content to dream his dream of life, wearily turns from the conflict and dire struggle for existence, — R.W. Frazer

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be?
it is the same the angels breathe. — Mark Twain

War has dug itself into economic systems, where it offers a livelihood to millions ... It has lodged in our souls as a kind of religion, a quick tonic for political malaise and a bracing antidote to the moral torpor of consumerist, market-driven cultures. — Barbara Ehrenreich

What's your name?" she asked.
He laughed. "Nev."
She sat up suddenly, bracing her elbows on the bed. "Short for Neville?"
It was the world's dorkiest name. Nearly as bad as Rupert. "I never thought I'd be penetrated by a Neville." she said wonderingly. "Maybe a Colin, or a Simon but -"
"Shut up. — Ruthie Knox

I love drinking now and then. It defecates the standing pool of thought. A man perpetually in the paroxysm and fears of inebriety is like a half-drowned stupid wretch condemned to labor unceasingly in water; but a now-and-then tribute to Bacchus is like the cold bath, bracing and invigorating. — Robert Burns

Next time what I'd do is look at
the earth before saying anything. I'd stop
just before going into a house
and be an emperor for a minute
and listen better to the wind
or to the air being still.

When anyone talked to me, whether
blame or praise or just passing time,
I'd watch the face, how the mouth
has to work, and see any strain, any
sign of what lifted the voice.

And for all, I'd know more -- the earth
bracing itself and soaring, the air
finding every leaf and feather over
forest and water, and for every person
the body glowing inside the clothes
like a light. — William Stafford

Happy was my adopted country, not my native land. I was still bracing to be expelled without warning. — Kimberly McCreight

To many men ... the miasma of peace seems more suffocating than the bracing air of war. — George Steiner

His hand slid up my spine, bringing me closer, pinning my hands between us as I watched his neck bend.
I had a feeling I knew where this was going.
"Max," I warned, my body bracing.
"Quiet," he ordered softly. "Got a point to make, honey."
"Max!" I snapped.
"Let's see how good this could be," he muttered, his eyes on my mouth and I knew, I just knew, he was going to kiss me.
"Max, don't you-"
But his fingers had sifted into my hair against my scalp cupping my head, holding me steady and his mouth came down on mine, cutting off my words. — Kristen Ashley

Sometimes I think I am made of air, like a balloon. Filled with so much emptiness that I just know one day I'm going to explode. I'm bracing myself for it. For the nothingness colliding hard and fast against me, in a way that I won't be able to stop it or protect myself from it.
What terrifies me the most is the fact that maybe I won't want to stop it. That I won't want to protect myself. That I've surrendered, accepted this and conformed to it — Tammy Faith

The last time he'd been this close to her, he'd been on a job. Although she'd captured his attention and held it at that time, he hadn't allowed himself to give much thought to his budding fascination with her then. He could now. Too bad bracing himself wasn't enough. The full force of the impact on him up close and personal was - damn, he felt like he'd been shot in the gut at point-blank range. — Shara Azod

Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps, till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself. — William Croswell Doane

Meanwhile, Blakeborough placed himself behind them like a guard. The investigator in Dom went to work analyzing the man's attire--expensive but not ostentatious, studied but not affected--and Blakeborough's wary stance, closed manner, and stiff expression. Was that just his usual response to strangers or a sign that he was bracing for trouble about his brother? Which could mean he was well aware of Barlow's scheme.
But the man in Dom noticed none of that. It just wanted to march over and punch bloody Blakeborough in his perfect, unscarred face for being too rich, too eligible, and too thoroughly engaged to Jane. The man in him wanted to throttle the earl for standing guard over Jane when she should be Dom's responsibility. Dom's to protect. Dom's to marry.
The man in him had to shut up, unfortunately. Or this investigation wouldn't progress very far. — Sabrina Jeffries

Courage is in the air in bracing whiffs
Better than all the stalemate an's and ifs. — Robert Frost

There is nothing so absolutely bracing for the soul as the frequent turning of one's back on duties. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is not above sudden, disturbing, movements. Since its inception, capitalism has known slumps and recessions, bubble and froth; no one has yet dis-invented the business cycle, and probably no one will; and what Schumpeter famously called the 'gales of creative destruction' still roar mightily from time to time. To lament these things is ultimately to lament the bracing blast of freedom itself. — Margaret Thatcher

As he followed Wood, Jury thought: one disappearance, two auto accident victims, one in a mental institution, one drowned. One murdered. Rackmoor, for all its bracing sea air, didn't seem the healthiest place in the British Isles. — Martha Grimes

Wickedly funny to read and morally bracing as only good satire can be. — William Styron

Danger has a bracing effect. — Sun Tzu

Enlightenment, if left unclouded by pathetic fancy, leads to a very special and bracing sort of nihilism - positivist, rationalist ... merciless. — David Bentley Hart

She had dearly missed the northern world during her time in the South Seas. She had missed the change of seasons, and the hard, bright, bracing sunlight of winter. She had missed the rigors of a cold climate, and the rigors of the mind, as well. She was simply not made for the tropics
neither in complexion or disposition. There were those who loved Tahiti because it felt to them like Eden
like the beginning of history; she wished to live within humanity's most recent moment, at the cusp of invention and progress. She did not wish to inhabit a land of spirits and ghosts; she desired a world of telegraphs, trains, improvements, theories, and science, where things changed by the day. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Raffe: "Have you named her yet" "she likes powerful names"
Penryn:I bite my lip
Raffe:he looks like hes bracing himself for the worst "what is it?"
Penryn: "Pooky Bear"
Raffe:"I am pooky Bear, from an ancient line of archangel swords — Susan Ee

So she steeled herself. "I have never told anyone this story. No one in the world knows it. But it's mine," she said, blinking past the burning in her eyes, "and it's time for me to tell it."
Rowan leaned back on the rock, bracing his palms behind him.
"Once upon a time," she said to him, to the world, to herself, "in a land long since burned to ash, there lived a young princess who loved her kingdom . . . very much."
And then she told him of the princess whose heart had burned with wildfire, of the mighty kingdom in the north, of its downfall and of the sacrifice of Lady Marion. — Sarah J. Maas

Do you try to pick up all the mortal girls you almost kill?"
"Just the ones who don't scream and run," he said. And then he startled me further by touching my face, just under one eye. I tensed just a little, as I always did when someone noticed my eyes. Bracing myself for the if only.
But there was no revulsion in his gaze and nothing but fascination in his touch. "And the ones with pretty eyes," he added. — N.K. Jemisin

Marie," he whispered against my hair.
"Yes?" I closed my eyes, bracing.
"You're holding me too tight."
"Oh, sorry." I loosened my arms, having to use a mental crowbar in the process. — Penny Reid

Yet there was something gratifyingly real about being called a bitch, a whore, a blond tramp. Where so much was a dreamy haze, anything promising to be real was bracing. — Joyce Carol Oates

During the Age of Glass, everyone believed some part of him or her to be extremely fragile. For some it was a hand, for others a femur, yet others believed it was their noses that were made of glass. The Age of Glass followed the Stone Age as an evolutionary corrective, introducing into human relations a new sense of fragility that fostered compassion. This period lasted a relatively short time in the history of love-about a century-until a doctor named Ignacio da Silva hit on the treatment of inviting people to recline on a couch and giving them a bracing smack on the body part in question, proving to them the truth. The anatomical illusion that had seemed so real slowly disappeared and-like so much we no longer need but can't give up-became vestigial. But from time to time, for reasons that can't always be understood, it surfaces again, suggesting that the Age of Glass, like the Age of Silence, never entirely ended. — Nicole Krauss

Routine is a ground to stand on, a wall to retreat to; we cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against it. — Henry David Thoreau

Taken thus by surprise, it was several moments before she was able to decide whether to make herself known to him, or to await a formal introduction. The strict propriety in which she had been reared urged her to adopt the latter course; then she remembered that she was not a young girl any longer, but a guardian-aunt ... To flinch before what would certainly be an extremely disagreeable interview would be the act, she told herself, of a pudding-heart. Bracing herself resolutely, she got up from the writing-table, and turned, saying, in a cool, pleasant tone: 'Mr Calverleigh?'
He had picked up a newspaper from the table in the centre of the room, and was glancing through it, but he lowered it, and looked enquiringly across at her. His eyes, which were deep-set and of a light grey made the more striking by the swarthiness of his complexion, held an expression of faint surprise; he said: 'Yes? — Georgette Heyer

Labour is good for a man, bracing up his energies to conquest, And without it life is dull, the man perceiving himself useless. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

You believed in me,' he said slowly. 'You trusted me.'
'Of course I did. That, and I love you more than life itself.'
She saw her words enter him like cupid's arrow. He closed his eyes swiftly, as if bracing against an onslaught of emotion. He mouthed something that might have been 'Hallelujah.'
Then he opened them again, as if he couldn't bear not to see her in the aftermath of those words.
'Say it again.'
'I love you.' Those magical powerful words that she never dreamed she'd be able to say to anyone.
And look, look what it did to Jonathan Redmond's face when she said them. What a humbling power she held.
He recovered, and smiled a slow satisfied smile. 'Of course you love me. How could you help it? — Julie Anne Long

At first the shifts in gravity from room to room were disturbing, but I soon adapted, subconsciously bracing myself for the drag of Lusus and Hebron and Sol Draconi Septem, unconsciously anticipating the less than l-standard-g freedom of the majority of the rooms. In — Dan Simmons

There came an awful day when I picked up the phone and knew at once, as one does with some old friends even before they speak, that it was Edward. He sounded as if he were calling from the bottom of a well. I still thank my stars that I didn't say what I nearly said, because the good professor's phone pals were used to cheering or teasing him out of bouts of pessimism and insecurity when he would sometimes say ridiculous things like: 'I hope you don't mind being disturbed by some mere wog and upstart.' The remedy for this was not to indulge it but to reply with bracing and satirical stuff which would soon get the gurgling laugh back into his throat. But I'm glad I didn't say, 'What, Edward, splashing about again in the waters of self-pity?' because this time he was calling to tell me that he had contracted a rare strain of leukemia. Not at all untypically, he used the occasion to remind me that it was very important always to make and keep regular appointments with one's physician. — Christopher Hitchens

The air has that bracing autumnal bite so that all you want to do is bob for apples or hang a witch or something. — Sarah Vowell

I think it rather fine, this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it is to be the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire. — Arnold Bennett

I like to pretend that I'm covering my tracks, bracing for any contingency. Ready for the worst, and all that jazz. I always feel better if there's a plan in place. And in this case, the plan was, Leave the blind guy in charge of the juvenile delinquents and everything will be just fine. Probably. — Cherie Priest

Much of what we call evil can often be converted into a bracing and tonic good by a simple change of the sufferer's inner attitude from one of fear to one of fight — William James

The great flaw of all these administrative techniques is that, in the name of equality and democracy, they function as a vast "antipolitics machine", sweeping vast realms of legitimate public debate out of the public sphere and into the arms of technical, administrative committees. They stand in the way of potentially bracing and instructive debates about social policy, the meaning of intelligence, the selection of elites, the value of equity and diversity, and the purpose of economic growth and development. They are, in short, the means by which technical and administrative elites attempt to convince a skeptical public--while excluding the public from debate--that they play no favorites, take no obscure discretionary action, and have no biases but are merely taking transparent technical calculations. — James C. Scott

None of us can be proof against the influences that proceed from the persons he associates with. Wherefore, in books and men, let us look out for the best society, that which yields a bracing and wholesome influence. We all know the person for whose company we are the better, though the talk is only about fishing or embroidery. — Charlotte M. Mason

I am no faint-heart when it comes to the unpleasant truth. Indeed I have always taken a bracing sort of pleasure in facing it. — Jude Morgan

This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders. — Sarah Orne Jewett

I feel sorry for the man who has never known the bracing thrill of taking a stand and sticking to it fearlessly. Moral courage has rewards that timidity can never imagine. Like a shot of adrenaline, it floods the spirit with vitality — Billy Graham

Revisiting the Revolutionary War is a bracing reminder that the fate of a continent, and the shape of the modern world, turned on the free choices of remarkably few Americans defying an empire. — George Will

The fact that you couldn't see Alfred Hitchcock's first film The Mountain Eagle, or that you couldn't see so many of F.W. Murnau's masterpieces, or that you couldn't see so many of Oscar Micheaux's really intriguing race melodramas, made with fierce independent spirit against all odds in '20s and '30s America. That stuff haunted me. They really did bring to life a sense of 20th Century history: cultural history, pop history, gender politics and race politics, socio economic history, all that stuff. It was bracing and instructive. — Guy Maddin

Therefore it is to a practical mysticism that the practical man is here invited: to a training of his latent faculties, a bracing and brightening of his languid consciousness, an emancipation from the fetters of appearance, a turning of his attention to new levels of the world. Thus he may become aware of the universe which the spiritual artist is always trying to disclose to the race. This amount of mystical perception - this "ordinary contemplation," as the specialists call it - is possible to all men: without it, they are not wholly conscious, nor wholly alive. It is a natural human activity, no more involving the great powers and sublime experiences of the mystical saints and philosophers than the ordinary enjoyment of music involves the special creative powers of the great musician. — Evelyn Underhill

Cam leaned over her, bracing his forearms on either side of her, kissing her sulky mouth. "Just for tonight," he whispered. "Wear my ring, Amelia, and let me pleasure you." He kissed her throat, his hips shunting gently against her. She gasped at the feel of him, hard and swollen behind the black silk. His mouth traveled slowly up to her ear. "I'll enter you, fill you, and then I'll hold you still and quiet in my arms. I won't move. I won't let you move, either. I'll wait until I feel you throbbing around me ... I'll follow that rhythm deep in your body, that sweet pulse ... I won't stop until you weep and shiver and cry out for more. And I'll give it to you, as long and hard as you want. Take my ring, love." His mouth descended to hers in a smoldering kiss. "Take me. — Lisa Kleypas

A library is a place to go for a reality check, a bracing dose of literature, or a "true reflection of our history," whether it's a brick-and-mortar building constructed a century ago or a fanciful arrangement of computer codes. The librarian is the organizer, the animating spirit behind it, and the navigator. Her job is to create order out of the confusion of the past, even as she enables us to blast into the future. — Marilyn Johnson

Ash," I murmured, which made him flinch, bracing himself. My heart pounded, but I ignored my doubts and hurried on. "I ... will ... " Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and whispered, "Will you be my knight? — Julie Kagawa

I was a book editor for nine years. I'm familiar with the opposite experience, bracing myself for the likelihood that no one would want to publish my book. — Karen Thompson Walker

I grabbed the oh-shit handle with one hand and whooped, bracing the other hand on the dashboard. I couldn't help myself. Everything was going to hell, George was dead, and I was on my way to commit either treason or suicide, but who the hell cared? I was off-roading across a river in a government SUV. Sometimes, you just gotta kick back and enjoy what's going on around you. — Mira Grant

Harry did not really listen. A warmth was spreading through him that had nothing to do with the sunlight; a tight obstruction in his chest seemed to be dissolving. He knew that Ron and Hermione were more shocked than they were letting on, but the mere fact that they were still there on either side of him, speaking bracing words of comfort, not shrinking from him as though he were contaminated or dangerous, was worth more than he could ever tell them. — J.K. Rowling

I jammed my hand in my jacket pocket, bracing myself fo the next hit, and fel something. Something grainy and samll, sticking to the tips of my fingers: the sand from Commons Park.
Oh Cass, I thought. I miss you so, so much. — Sarah Dessen

Something about this made Reynie uneasy. Had he done so badly? Was this meant to test his courage? He did as he was told, closing his eyes and bracing himself as best he could.
"Why are you flinching?" the pencil woman asked.
"I don't know. I thought maybe you were going to slap me."
"Don't be ridiculous. I could slap you perfectly well with your eyes open. I'm only going to blindfold you. — Trenton Lee Stewart

Mrs. Convoy leaned into the desk, flattening her knuckles on it like a linebacker bracing against the hard earth, and with eyeballs floating above her bifocals asked why I felt it necessary to sit in my own waiting room during peak hours. I told her, she said, "And how is the 'complete experience'?" I told her, she said, "And do you think the 'complete experience' might be enhanced by a dentist who tends to his patients in a timely manner?" I told her, she said, "We will not get a reputation for being a drill-and-bill shop just because you tend to patients in a timely manner. Jesus Mary and Joseph," she said. "Sometimes I think we all work for Toots the Clown. — Joshua Ferris

Later that day, Kestrel sat with Arin in the music room. She played her tiles: a pair of wolves and three mice.
Arin turned his over with a resigned sigh. He didn't have a bad set, but it wasn't good enough, and beneath his usual level of skill. He stiffened in his chair as if physically bracing himself for her question.
Kestrel studied his tiles. She was certain he could have done better than a pair of wasps. She thought of the tiles he had shown earlier in the game, and the careless way in which he had discarded others. If she didn't know how little he liked to lose against her, she would have suspected him of throwing the game.
She said, "You seem distracted."
"Is that your question? Are you asking me why I am distracted?"
"So you admit that you are distracted."
"You are a fiend," he said, echoing Ronan's words during the match at Faris's garden party. Then, apparently annoyed at his own words, he said, "Ask your question. — Marie Rutkoski

Hunt immediately adjusted his hold, bracing her easily. "I thought you looked pale," he remarked, gently stroking back a lock of hair that had fallen over her damp face. "What's the matter, sweetheart? Is it just your stomach, or do you hurt somewhere else? — Lisa Kleypas

It is the human things that make life good, the unexpected kindness, the friendly note, the bracing word, the neighbour's extra loaf of bread she leaves at our back door. — Stevie Ray Vaughan

While waiting for Brenna to prepare the drink he did as directed and worked through their conversation. It would've gone faster had he not kept getting distracted by the sight of her moving with feminine efficiency mere meters away. The sway of her hips were-"Don't I ever want to lick a woman all up?"
She squeaked, then swivelled to face him, bracing her hands on the counter behind her. "Not quite how I would've put it." Her tone was higher than normal.
"But yeah."
"You," he said quietly, no longer able to lie, "You tempt me."
"Oh." Her breasts rose up as she took a deep, shuddering breath. "You've never let on."
Yes, he had. If she ever saw the way he watched her when she wasn't looking, she'd be in no doubt as to the strength of his unacceptable reaction to her. — Nalini Singh

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche commenting on the music of Georges Bizet: His music has the tang of sunny climates, their bracing air, their clearness. It voices a sensibility hitherto unknown to us. — Georges Bizet

My body melts into his hard one until his strong arm, coiled around my small waist, is all that hols me upright. I don't know if I'm bad for him, or him for me. All I know is that this is as inevitable as an incoming tsunami, and I'm just bracing for the swim of my life. — Katy Evans

It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins. — P.G. Wodehouse

You damn fool!" one of the men grated in angry concern as they both squatted down on their haunches and peered anxiously at her. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
Bracing herself on her forearms, Lauren lifted her chagrined gaze from the man's shoes to his face. "Auditioning for the circus," she told him dryly, "And for an encore, I usually fall off a bridge."
A rich chuckle sounded from the other man as he took her firmly by the shoulders and helped her to her feet. "What's your name?" he asked, and when Lauren had told him,he added worriedly, "Can you walk?"
"For miles," Laruen assured him unsteadily. Every muscle in her body was protesting, and her left ankle was throbbing painfully.
"Then I guess you can make it as far as the building so we can have a look at the damage," he said with a smile in his voice. — Judith McNaught

We learn from joy but also from grief; we learn from achievement, but just as much from failure; and what we learn from grief and failure is, after a while, to be grateful... All of us, young and old, learn more from obstacles than from the smooth path and from bracing ourselves against sudden harsh winds than from the undisturbed weather. — Faith Baldwin

He took a moment to get over the shock, and to remind himself that this had surely been difficult for her and she was probably bracing herself for a rejection.
At least he hoped she was. If she wasn't, she needed to do that straight away, because it was coming. God damn right it was coming. — Julianne MacLean

It must sound, I know, as if I had no pity for him; it wasn't true. I was angry because I was terrified. But there are times when a curse is more bracing than an endearment. — Jacqueline Carey

Ciabattari is a master of transformation as she gives these stories of loss, woe, crisis and collapse the salutary and sometimes bracing pleasures of plain good fiction.
Kirkus Reviews — Jane Ciabattari

Without silence there is no music. Not simply because the faculty of hearing deteriorates from constant exposure to noise, but because silence is both the majestic frame and the stable solution for musical (and poetic) ideas. Silence is the soda water, the bracing ether, the bridge and mode of respect for receiving instructions from the angel. — Russell Sherman

The thrust of ambition is, and always has been, great, but among the bright-eyed it had once a more adventurous and individualistic air, a much more bracing rivalry. — Louis Kronenberger

We runners talk about having fun but I don't think anybody believes us. We talk about discipline and endurance, we take care, we exercise caution, we watch our diets and monitor our pace. We are ascetics who talk, unconvincingly, of the bracing enjoyment of self-abuse. — Peter Sagal

Here, if nowhere else in the land, the sense of satiety is unknown; and it is to this mental tonic, even more than to the bracing air of the heights, that we owe the unwearied spirit which nerves us to walk more leagues upon the mountains than we could walk miles upon the plain. For in the lowlands we walk with the body only; in the highlands we walk with the mind — Henry Stephens Salt

Good luck with that, Harvath thought. In his experience, life was predominantly made up of three distinct groups: sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves. And if there was one thing he had learned from a lifetime of hunting wolves and protecting sheep, it was that sheep had two speeds - graze and stampede. Now that word was out that the virus was loose, all bets were off. Very soon, chaos was going to ensue. "What else do you have?" he asked, bracing himself for more bad news. "The pharmaceutical companies Damien's involved with appear pretty benign. One focuses on dementia medication and the other on birth control drugs. — Brad Thor

They stood by the open window of their hotel room with the rain sweeping into their faces. A bolt of lightning lit up the Grand Canal. Struck it out of the darkness in a searing eloquent flash. The expectation was that the night to come would be no less bracing, no less eloquent. — Glenn Haybittle

It is truly bracing and instructive to contemplate the End Times - at least at safe remove, in the pages of fiction - especially as the world beyond our hearths churns and convulses unknowably, yet perhaps just short of ultimate disaster. — Paul Di Filippo

He tightened his grip. I'm not good enough for you, Pidge. That doesn't mean I don't trust you, I'm just bracing for the inevitable. — Jamie McGuire

There's only so much a woman can endure in a single day without a bracing bout of giggles. — Kelly Eileen Hake

But I never finished because then Zach's lips found mine. His hands burned as they left my arms and moved through my hair, bracing the back of my neck. My head still hurt, but there was no music playing. "I remember this." I felt my hand run along his chest, his breath warm on the side of my face. I breathed him in - Zach. "I remember this." And then he kissed me again, and the kiss was all that mattered. He pulled back, traced his lips across the tender place on my head. — Ally Carter

Slowly, his eyes came up and he looked through the kitchen window and out through the Cahuenga Pass. The lights of Hollywood glimmered in the cut, a mirror reflection of the stars of all galaxies everywhere. He thought about all that was bad out there. A city with more things wrong than right. A place where the earth could open up beneath you and suck you into the blackness. A city of lost light. His city. It was all of that and, still, always still, a place to begin again. His city. The city of the second chance.
Bosch nodded and bent down. He closed his eyes, put his hands under the water and brought them up to his face. The water was cold and bracing, as he thought any baptism, the start of any second chance, should be. — Michael Connelly