Brass At Quotes & Sayings

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was. — Charles Dickens

I look forward all day to evening, and then I put an "engaged" on the door and get into my nice red bath robe and furry slippers and pile all the cushions behind me on the couch, and light the brass student lamp at my elbow, and read and read and read. One book isn't enough. I have four going at once. Just now, they're Tennyson's poems and "Vanity Fair" and Kipling's "Plain Tales" and - don't laugh - "Little Women." I find that I am the only girl in college who wasn't brought up on "Little Women." I haven't told anybody though (that would stamp me as queer). I just quietly went and bought it with $1.12 of my last month's allowance; and the next time somebody mentions pickled limes, I'll know what she is talking about! — Jean Webster

The British and the Western Europeans in general, as well as the North Americans, waste the space of their homes with these rooms for ludicrously vast sleeping-machines
some with four pillars and a roof, some with iron fences at each end, topped with brass balls, and some with mahogany headboards whose function I have never yet understood. I would rather follow the Turkish proverb that "he who sleeps on the floor will not fall out of bed." In sum, I despise all furniture as monstrous, heavy, space-greedy, expensive, and pretentious. — Alan W. Watts

Even souvenir seekers. One of the worst contaminants was fellow officers, especially brass grandstanding if reporters were present and eager to grab a video bite to slap on the twenty-four-hour news cycle. One more glance at the circular coffin. Okay, Amelia Sachs thought: Knuckle time ... A phrase of her father's. The man had also been cop, a beat patrolman working the Deuce - Midtown South; back then Times Square was like Deadwood in the 1800s. "Knuckle time" referred to those moments when you have to go up against your worst fears. Breadbasket ... Sachs returned to the access door and climbed through it and down into the utility room below the cellar. Then she took the evidence collection gear bag from the other officer. Sachs said, "You search the basement, Jean?" "I'll do it now," Eagleston said. "And then get everything into the RRV." They'd done a fast examination of the cellar. But it was apparent that the perp had spent minimal time there. He'd grabbed Chloe, subdued — Jeffery Deaver

The dinner bell rings, and everyone trots off, Frederick coming in last with his taffy-colored hair and wounded eyes, bootlaces trailing. Werner washes Frederick's mess tin for him; he shares homework answers, shoe polish, sweets from Dr. Hauptmann; they run next to each other during field exercises. A brass pin weighs lightly on each of their lapels; one hundred and fourteen hobnailed boots spark against pebbles on the trail. The castle with its towers and battlements looms below them like some misty vision of foregone glory. Werner's blood gallops through his ventricles, his thoughts on Hauptmann's transceiver, on solder, fuses, batteries, antennas; his boot and Frederick's touch the ground at the exact same moment. — Anthony Doerr

Dain wasn't certain what exactly was wrong with her, but he had no doubt that something was. He was Lord Beelzebub, wasn't he? She was supposed to faint, or recoil in horrified revulsion at the very least. Yet she had gazed at him as bold as brass, and it had seemed for a moment as though the creature were actually flirting with him. — Loretta Chase

Nature has many tricks wherewith she convinces man of his finity, - the ceaseless flow of the tides, the fury of storm, the shock of the earthquake, the long roll of heavens artillery, - but the most tremendous, the most stupefying of all, is the passive phase of the White Silence. All movement ceases, the sky clears, the heavens are as brass; the slightest whisper seems sacrilege, and man becomes timid, affrighted at the sound of his own voice. Sole speck of life journeying across the ghostly wastes of a dead world, he trembles at his audacity, realizes that his is a maggots life, nothing more. Strange thoughts arise unsummoned, and the mystery of all things strives for utterance. And the fear od death, of God, of the universe, comes over him, - the hope of the Resurrection and the life, the yearning for immortality, the vain striving of the imprisoned essence, - it is then, if ever, man walks alone with God.
- The White Silence — Jack London

Jet and Clay are just two different sides of my personality. No, I don't have a split personality, but the sides are sometimes distinctive. Clay? That's me, the real me, who I am at the core. Jet is Clay on coke. He's got brass balls and doesn't take shit from anyone. He's the only guy you'll ever see onstage — Jade C. Jamison

I suppose we were worn down and shivering. Three a.m. is a mean spirited hour. I suppose we were drenched, with the cold hose water trickling in at our collars and settling down at the tail of our shirts. Without doubt the heavy brass couplings felt moulded from metal-ice. Probably the open roar of the pumps drowned the petulant buzz of the raiders above, and certainly the ubiquitous fire-glow made an orange stage-set of the streets. Black water would have puddled the city alleys and I suppose our hands and faces were black as the water. Black with hacking about among the burnt-up rafters. These things were an every-night nonentity. They happened and they were not forgotten because they were not even remembered. — William Sansom

Although computers allow people to talk at the speed of light, no one talks that fast. — Perry Brass

Dust in a cloud, blinding weather,
Drums that rattle and roar!
A mother and daughter stood together
Beside their cottage door.

'Mother, the heavens are bright like brass,
The dust is shaken high,
With labouring breath the soldiers pass,
Their lips are cracked and dry.'

'Mother, I'll throw them apples down,
I'll bring them pails of water.'
The mother turned with an angry frown
Holding back her daughter.

'But mother, see, they faint with thirst,
They march away to die,'
'Ah, sweet, had I but known at first
Their throats are always dry.'

'There is no water can supply them
In western streams that flow,
There is no fruit can satisfy them
On orchard trees that grow.'

'Once in my youth I gave, poor fool,
A soldier apples and water,
So may I die before you cool
Your father's drouth, my daughter. — Robert Graves

It may, at first sight, be matter of surprise to the thoughtless few that Mr Brass, being a professional gentleman, should not have legally indicted some party or parties, active in the promotion of the nuisance, but they will be good enough to remember, that as Doctors seldom take their own prescriptions, and Divines do not always practise what they preach, so lawyers are shy of meddling with the Law on their own account: knowing it to be an edged tool of uncertain application, very expensive in the working, and rather remarkable for its properties of close shaving, than for its always shaving the right person. — Charles Dickens

We're about to run our heads against the same unyielding barrier, and once again, the brass seem to have concluded that our approach isn't working because we're not running at the wall fast enough. — Marko Kloos

Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning, indicating a sound body and a mind free from care; but his master, being unable to sleep himself awakened him, saying, I am amazed, Sancho, at the torpor of thy soul; it seems as if thou wert made of marble or brass, insensible of emotion or sentiment! ... — Miguel De Cervantes

The resulting fractious, at times even dysfunctional, relationship between the top brass and civilian political leaders is one of Washington's dirty little secrets - recognized by all of the inside players, concealed from an electorate that might ask discomfiting questions about who is actually in charge. — Andrew J. Bacevich

At This Moment Of Time

Some who are uncertain compel me. They fear
The Ace of Spades. They fear
Loves offered suddenly, turning from the mantelpiece,
Sweet with decision. And they distrust
The fireworks by the lakeside, first the spuft,
Then the colored lights, rising.
Tentative, hesitant, doubtful, they consume
Greedily Caesar at the prow returning,
Locked in the stone of his act and office.
While the brass band brightly bursts over the water
They stand in the crowd lining the shore
Aware of the water beneath Him. They know it. Their eyes
Are haunted by water

Disturb me, compel me. It is not true
That "no man is happy," but that is not
The sense which guides you. If we are
Unfinished (we are, unless hope is a bad dream),
You are exact. You tug my sleeve
Before I speak, with a shadow's friendship,
And I remember that we who move
Are moved by clouds that darken midnight — Delmore Schwartz

The old women were gone. They seemed to have ascended into the darkness like the waxy smoke from the candles after he capped them with the brass bell at the end of the snuffer. For a moment, staring into the darkness, he imagined the rafters full of smoky old women with hair sprouting from their chins. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Whispering in Italian, and Polish, and Latin about dead husbands and dead children. Like angels grown old but not allowed to die. He could smell them: the odor of candles. — Pete Hamill

One sometime feels that it is only with a front of brass and a lip of scorn that one can get through the day at all. — Oscar Wilde

He got a good glass for six hundred dollars.
His new job gave him leisure for stargazing.
Often he bid me come and have a look
Up the brass barrel, velvet black inside,
At a star quaking in the other end.
I recollect a night of broken clouds
And underfoot snow melted down to ice,
And melting further in the wind to mud.
Bradford and I had out the telescope.
We spread our two legs as it spread its three,
Pointed our thoughts the way we pointed it,
And standing at our leisure till the day broke,
Said some of the best things we ever said.
That telescope was christened the Star-Splitter,
Because it didn't do a thing but split
A star in two or three the way you split
A globule of quicksilver in your hand
With one stroke of your finger in the middle.
It's a star-splitter if there ever was one,
And ought to do some good if splitting stars
'Sa thing to be compared with splitting wood. — Robert Frost

Set flush in the wall behind the desk was a steel door. It was knobless, and along one edge were three brass keyholes spaced a few inches apart. Rube brought out a key ring, selected a key, then walked around the desk, inserted the key in the topmost lock, and turned it. From his watch pocket he took a single key, pushed it into the middle keyhole, and turned. The guard stood waiting beside him, and now the guard inserted a key in the bottom keyhole, turned it and pulled the door open with the key. Rube removed his two keys and gestured me in through the open door before him. He followed, and the door swung solidly shut behind us. I heard the multiple click of the locks engaging, and we were standing in a space hardly larger than a big closet, dimly lighted by an overhead bulb in a wire cage. Then I saw that we were at the top of a circular metal staircase. — Jack Finney

At Pappachi's funeral, Mammachi cried and her contact lenses slid around in her eyes. Ammu told the twins that Mammachi was crying more because she was used to him than because she loved him. She was used to having him slouching around the pickle factory, and was used to being beaten from time to time. Ammu said that human beings were creatures of habit, and it was amazing the kinds of things they could get used to. You only had to look around you, Ammu said, to see that beatings with brass vases were the least of them. — Arundhati Roy

I liked the taste of beer, its live, white lather, its brass-bright depths, the sudden world through the wet-brown walls of the glass, the tilted rush to the lips and the slow swallowing down to the lapping belly, the salt on the tongue, the foam at the corners. — Dylan Thomas

Aquinas said if you have knowledge you don't need faith, and I think he was on to something, but for now all I can do is find the Church of Inadvertent Joy, and if and when I do, I'll stumble in and drop fifty cents in the brass-plated poor box, ignite a beeswax candle and confess myself at the crossroads. Having professed my faithlessness, I will be blessed, and the psoriasis or eczema that's thickened my feet and shattered the skin of my hands will instantly melt, for confession is good for the sole and fine for the fingers. Aquinas also said evil is a privation, ergo hell is a place that's a void. The heavenly need for placement being motivation for all maps, including a face. — Vanessa Place

Less than a decade after the explosion of the first atom bomb the megamachine had expanded to a point where it began to dominate key areas of the whole economy of the United States: its system of control reached beyond the airfields, the rocket sites, the bomb factories, the universities, to a hundred other related areas, tying the once separate and independent enterprises to a central organization whose irrational and humanly subversive policies ensured the still further expansion of the megamachine. Financial subventions, research grants, educational subsidies, all worked unceasingly for the 'Life, Prosperity, Health' of the new rulers, headed by Goliaths in brass armor bellowing threats of defiance and destruction at the entire world. In a short time, the original military-industrial-scientific elite became the supreme Pentagon of Power, for it incorporated likewise both the bureaucratic and the educational establishments. — Lewis Mumford

Memory in these incomparable streets, in mosaics of pain and sweetness, was clear to me now, a unity at last. I remembered small and unimportant things from the past: the whispers of roommates during thunderstorms, the smell of brass polish on my fingertips, the first swim at Folly Beach in April, lightning over the Atlantic, shelling oysters at Bowen's Island during a rare Carolina snowstorm, pigeons strutting across the graveyard at St. Philip's, lawyers moving out of their offices to lunch on Broad Street, the darkness of reveille on cold winter mornings, regattas, the flash of bagpipers' tartans passing in review, blue herons on the marshes, the pressure of the chinstrap on my shako, brotherhood, shad roe at Henry's, camellias floating above water in a porcelain bowl, the scowl of Mark Santoro, and brotherhood again. — Pat Conroy

One thing that in my reporting that I found and was amazed to find was that, as far as I could determine, neither high-level White House officials in the Bush administration nor even the top brass at the CIA even knew the history of water boarding when they approved it. — Scott Shane

Their song reminds me of a child's neighborhood rallying cry - ee-ock-ee - with a heartfelt warble at the end. But it is their call that is especially endearing. The towhee has the brass and grace to call, simply and clearly, "tweet". I know of no other bird that stoops to literal tweeting. — Annie Dillard

Never look encouragingly at the brass, except with a brief glance to give an important cue. — Richard Strauss

Detective Inspector Carver took a picture from the breast pocket of his suit. He handed it to me. 'This is what you did, Michael. Take a good look. See if it jogs your memory.'
I gawped at the mutilated corpse of a naked young girl lying on a blood-soaked double bed. Her hands were bound to the brass headboard with duct tape. Blood covered her upper body, and her long blonde hair was streaked a murderous shade of red. One eye stared at the ceiling as if searching for salvation, the other, a bloody unrecognisable pulp, bore no relation to its sightless counterpart.
'Carla Marie Coombs. Twenty-one years of age. Do you recognise her, Michael? — Mark Tilbury

At the age of three I began to look around my grandfather's library. My first knowledge of astronomy came from reading and looking at pictures at that time. By the time I was six I remember him buying books for me ... I think I was eight, he bought me a three-inch telescope on a brass mounting ... So, as far back as I can remember, I had an early interest in science in general, astronomy in particular. — Jesse L. Greenstein

You don't sound too excited about this," Tucker comments twenty minutes later. He holds the door to the community center open for me.

"And you are?" A yellow sign decorated with balloons greets us. "This process is so hard that I have to learn how to breathe? That's not normal."

"You watch any of those YouTube videos?"

"God no. I didn't want to psych myself out. Did you?"

"A few."

"And?"

He gives me a thumbs-down. "I don't recommend them. I'm wondering why we use brass balls to describe someone who's really strong, because after the second video, my balls tried to climb inside my body. Plus, my YouTube history is officially fucked."

"Ha. Exactly why I didn't watch any." I wag a warning finger at him. "Stay by my head during the birth or you'll never want to have sex with me again. — Elle Kennedy

Basically that you can do anything. If you pool your resources,and just give up the idea that you're going to act like a normal person or sleep, if you want it hard enough and do it well enough, it happens. A lot of really talented people either sort of get crushed under the wheel of the movie studio system or desperately try and get their next gig in TV. I understand why, because we've all got to put food on the table and the brass ring is out there, we'd all like to be making the Emmy-winning shows and the blockbusters and all that, but at the same time you could be doing stuff yourself. — Joss Whedon

I stared straight ahead like a gangsta, never acknowledging the cast of Hannah Montana sitting next to me, and fantasized that they were staring at me out of the corners of their eyes thinking, Who is that woman with The Suit? Is she playing with his hair? Oh my God, she's such a badass. He looks like some rich business executive, but Rocker Chick has her arm around him like he's her fucking bitch. I'll bet she has tattoos. And rides a motorcycle. And keeps a pair of brass knuckles in her vagina. — B.B. Easton

The piercing fanfare of the brass against the brutal boom and rattle of the drums surged through the air. At the head of the Ferris band marched the drum majorette. A crimson and white shako crowned her long dark hair which flew out behind her and across her radiant face flushed with excitement. Her blue eyes flashed and her smile registered triumph at having been chosen. — Clark Zlotchew

Heaven would be a comfy armchair ... .You'd get a great, private phonograph, and all of eternity to listen to your life's melody. You could isolate your one life out of the cacophonous galaxy - the a cappella version - or you could play it back with its accompaniment, embedded in the brass and strings of mothers, fathers, sisters, windfalls and failures, percussion cities of strangers. You could play it forward or backward, back and back, and listen to the future of your past. You could lift the needle at whim, defeating Time. — Karen Russell

I wanted to be able to talk about my work at the dinner table and hold my head up on Sundays when my wife and I led our children into the Brentwood Presbyterian Church, where I was an elder. I did have a wild side, and I showed it every time I walked through the front door and my littlest child, Carrie Beth, made me dance to Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's hit song "Tijuana Sauerkraut. — Dick Van Dyke

I think at seventeen now I believe the only real monsters might be the type of liar where there's simply no way to tell. The ones who give nothing away ... That they walk among us. Teach our children. Inscrutable. Brass-faced. — David Foster Wallace

Yvette is a woman who looks like a church bell. Her copper body curves with purpose, angles on a chair as if from a tower overlooking a village by the sea. Her bones are strong everywhere, in her cheeks, her shoulders, her hands. They are made from something more durable like iron or brass. When she smiles, it is as if a bell has been struck, as if music has entered the world the way God intended: at noon by the sea. — Daisy Hernandez

Fred at six years old thought her the nicest girl in the world, making her his wife with a brass ring which he had cut from an umbrella. — George Eliot

His troops routed the militia and gained possession of the American guns, one of which was a brass howitzer that carried the inscription "taken at the surrender of York town 1781. — Donald R. Hickey

I was brought up on choirs and brass bands. They formed the music of my childhood. When I heard the Treorchy Male Choir at the Royal Variety Performance it brought back such happy memories. You have your own eminent place in the history of British music. You stand for excellence in a great tradition and your work for charity is both an example and an inspiration. — Michael Parkinson

Let's see, he had told me one night at our hotel's bar, I've been beaten to death with brass knuckles by Robert Mitchum, knifed in the back by Ernest Borgnine, shot in the head by Frank Sinatra, strangled by James Coburn, — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me. Like tall
And painless guillotines they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed - you call
It wonderful; I call it crass. — John Updike

Although there was a point with the Tijuana Brass where we were playing for such huge crowds that I kind of lost contact. At one point, the only connection I had with the audience was with people out there lighting cigarettes. — Herb Alpert

I somehow cling to the strange fancy, that, in all men hiddenly reside certain wondrous, occult properties - as in some plants and minerals - which by some happy but very rare accident (as bronze was discovered by the melting of the iron and brass at the burning of Corinth) may change to be called forth here on earth. — Herman Melville

One of these, bearing the name of Crampton, is an adorable blonde with a shrill voice, a long slender body imprisoned in a shiny brass corset, and supple catlike movements; a smart golden blonde whose extraordinary grace can be quite terrifying when she stiffens her muscles of steel, sends the sweat pouring down her steaming flanks, sets her elegant wheels spinning in their wide circles, and hurtles away, full of life, at the head of an express or a boat-train.
The other, Engerth by name, is a strapping saturnine brunette given to uttering raucous, guttural cries, with a thickset figure encased in armor-plating of cast iron; a monstrous creature with her disheveled mane of black smoke and her six wheels coupled together low down, she gives an indication of her fantastic strength when, with an effort that shakes the very earth, she slowly and deliberately drags along her heavy train of goods-wagons. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Be this our wall of brass, to be conscious of having done no evil, and to grow pale at no accusation. — Horace

She walked with measured steps, draped in striped and fringed cloths, treading the earth proudly, with a slight jingle and flash of barbarous ornaments. She carried her head high; her hair was done in the shape of a helmet; she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step. She must have had the value of several elephant tusks upon her. She was savage and superb, wild-eyed and magnificent; there was something ominous and stately in her deliberate progress. And in the hush that had fallen suddenly upon the whole sorrowful land, the immense wilderness, the colossal body of the pensive, as though it had been looking at the image of its own tenebrous and passionate soul. — Joseph Conrad

He was handsome enough - dark eyes and a nice chin, though his hair was thinning. He wore a dark overcoat and a dark suit, a white shirt and a tie, and there was the worn shine of a brass belt buckle as he reached for his wallet. "Reminds me of some days we had overseas," he said, taking a bill from his billfold. She frowned, reflexively. "Where were you?" He shook his head, smiled at her. Something in his manner seemed to indicate that they knew each other, that they'd had such conversations before. "In another life," he — Alice McDermott

Come inside."
Shelby tilted her head just enough to rest it briefly on his shoulder as they walked to the door. "I'm relying on your word that I'll walk out again in one piece at the end of the weekend."
He only grinned. "I told you my stand on playing the mediator."
"Thanks a lot." She glanced up at the door, noting the heavy brass crest that served as a door knocker. The MacGregor lion stared coolly at her with its Gaelic motto over its crowned head. "Your father isn't one to hide his light under a bushel,is he?"
"Let's just say he has a strong sense of family pride." Alan lifted the knocker, then let it fall heavily against the thick door. Shelby imagined the sound would vibrate into every nook and cranny in the house. "The Clan MacGregor," Alan began in a low rolling burr, "is one of the few permitted to use the crown in their crest.Good blood. Strong stock. — Nora Roberts

The heavens are not filled with hostility. The sky does not express a frown. When I look up I do not contemplate a face of brass, but the face of infinite good will. Yet when I was a child, many a picture has made me think of God as suspicious, inhumanly watchful, always looking round the corner to catch me at the fall. That "eye," placed in the sky of many a picture, and placed there to represent God, filled my heart with chilling fear ... Heaven overflows with good will toward us! Our God not only wishes good, he wills it! — John Henry Jowett

If anybody comes on office business, take their messages, and say that the gentleman who attends to that matter isn't in at present, will you?' said Miss Brass. 'I will, ma'am,' replied Dick. 'I shan't be very long,' said Miss Brass, retiring. 'I'm sorry to hear it, ma'am,' rejoined Dick when she had shut the door. 'I hope you may be unexpectedly detained, ma'am. If you could manage to be run over, ma'am, but not seriously, so much the better. — Charles Dickens

The tools of their trade were simple, effective things: iron knuckles, saps and the like. But the iconic tool of the scuttler arsenal was a woven leather belt with a heavy iron or brass buckle used to decrease intelligence one wallop at a time. — S.C. Barrus

The pony having thoroughly satisfied himself as to the nature and properties of the fireplug, looked into the air after his old enemies the flies, and as there happened to be one of them tickling his ear at that moment he shook his head and whisked his tail, after which he appeared full of thought but quite comfortable and collected. The old gentleman having exhausted his powers of persuasion, alighted to lead him; whereupon the pony, perhaps because he held this to be a sufficient concession, perhaps because he happened to catch sight of the other brass plate, or perhaps because he was in a spiteful humour, darted off with the old lady and stopped at the right house, leaving the old gentleman to come panting on behind — Charles Dickens

Never look at the brass - it only encourages them. — Richard Strauss

This was different. It had synths droning and sending saltwater waves under my feet. It had drumbeats bursting like fireworks, rumbling the furniture out of place, and then a crazy, irregular, disharmonious, spiral crescendo of pure electric noise, like a typhoon dragging our bodies into it. It featured brass orchestras and choirs of mermaids and a piano in Iceland, all of them right there, visible, touchable, in Axton House. It shook us, fucked us, suspended us far above the reach of Help bouncing on his hind legs. It spoke of magenta sunsets and plastic patio chairs growing moss under summer storms rolling on caterpillar tracks. It sprinkled a bokeh of car lights rushing through night highways and slapped our faces like the wind at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. It pictured Niamh playing guitar, washed up naked on a beach in Fiji. — Edgar Cantero

The acne-pitted kid manning the controls flips the switch, and the carousel begins to wheeze to a stop. Sophie leans forward, caressing the plaster mane. Fitz and Delia appear again, standing up in the stirrups for a last stretch at the brass ring. They're batting at each other's hands and laughing. There's an S-curved steel bar at the top of the carousel that makes one of their horses rise as the other falls. It looks like they're moving separately, but they're not. — Jodi Picoult

Throe accepted the soup and went over to where Xcor had been sitting. Sinking down to the floor, he put the brass box on the far side of himself and began to eat.
Xcor joined him on the stain of the blood he had shed during the day, and in silence, they completed their reunion. But it was not over, at least not on Xcor's part.
His regret stayed with him, the heaviness of the burden of his actions altering him forever, like an injury that had scarred over and healed wrong.
Or rather, in this case ... healed right. — J.R. Ward

There never seems to be any trouble brewing around a bar until a woman puts that high heel over the brass rail. Don't ask me why, but somehow women at bars seem to create trouble among men. — Humphrey Bogart

My father died very suddenly at sixty-three. Just dropped dead. For a long time afterward, I'd ask myself, Why didn't I ask him to play golf more? Why didn't I spend more time with him? But when you're off trying to get the brass ring, you forget and overlook those little things. It gives you a certain amount of regret later on, but there's nothing you can do about it. So you just forge on. — Clint Eastwood

Quinn had never stayed at a hotel that used real keys. Most had plastic keycards--like credit cards that you slide through a sensor--though her aunt Deirdre had told her about a tiny hotel in Paris she'd once stayed at that still had brass keys attached to enormous key chains shaped like the Eiffel Tower. — Marina Cohen

Although your staff may be exposed to the message "work longer and harder" while they're at the office, they're getting a very different message at home. The message at home is, "Life is passing you by. Your laundry is piling up in the closet, your babies are uncuddled, your spouse is starting to look elsewhere. There is only one time around on this merry-go-round called life, only one shot at the brass ring. And if you use your life up on C++ . . . — Tom DeMarco

Remember that that "rude awakening" which your parents and well-meaning relatives threatened you with as a kid is better than no awakening at all. — Perry Brass

She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena's love of music, Pran's asthma, Maan's generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small unrung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar's great-grandchildren. Indeed, for all the Minsisster of Revenue's impatience with her, she was his regret.
And it was right that she should continue to be so, for he should have treated her better while she lived, the poor, ignorant, grieving fool. — Vikram Seth

stoodAloof from streets, encompass'd with a wood.Dryden.2. Applied to persons, it often insinuates caution and circumspection. Turn on the bloody hounds with heads of steel,And make the cowards stand aloof at bay.Shak.Henry VI. Going northwards, aloof, as long as they had any doubt of being pursued, at last when they were out of reach, they turned and crossed the ocean to Spain.Bacon. The king would not, by any means, enter the city, until he had aloof seen the cross set up upon the greater tower of Granada, whereby it became Christian ground.Bacon'sHen. VII. Two pots stood by a river, one of brass, the other of clay. The water carried them away; the earthen vessel kept aloof from t'other.L'Estrange'sFables. The strong may fight aloof; Ancaeus try'dHis force too — Samuel Johnson

He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy. — Virginia Woolf

Only a writer "with Bennett's craft and brass could manage to praise and insult his readers at the same time. — Harold Holzer

Never had anyone said, Listen. Life is short. Pretend your body is still in its twenties. Jump for the brass ring. Swing for those bleachers. Dive into the deep end of the pool. Act like a fool if you must, but at least *live*. — Cathie Pelletier

When Khrushchev asked whether his brass hats would guarantee that keeping the missiles in Cuba would not bring about nuclear war, they looked at him, he later told Norman Cousins of the Saturday Review, an informal emissary between Kennedy and Khrushchev, "as though I were out of my mind or, what was worse, a traitor. So I said to myself, 'To hell with these maniacs.'"6 — Robert F. Kennedy

There may be a point in your life in which you are drowning so fast and fighting it so furiously that you don't have the strength left to call out for help. At that point don't expect one of your friends to jump into the water, if you've spent most of your life instructing them to mind their own business. — Perry Brass

Some make their worlds without knowing it. Their universes are just sesame seeds and three-day weekends and dial tones and skinned knees and physics and driftwood and emerald earrings and books dropped in bathtubs and holes in guitars and plastic and empathy and hardwood and heavy water and high black stockings and the history of the Vikings and brass and obsolescence and burnt hair and collapsed souffles and the impossibility of not falling in love in an art museum with the person standing next to you looking at the same painting and all the other things that just happen and are. — Jonathan Safran Foer

She made a slow turn as she loosened her ponytail and shook her head; her hair streamed down her back like a glossy black waterfall. She finished her spin. Her focus landed on me, and the air caught in my throat. My Wolf stirred.
Clare.
Her body went rigid; her sultry gaze hardened as she stared at me.
Clare Walker. I'd know those moonlit eyes anywhere.
She ran and grabbed hold of the stage right pole. Her feet left the floor as she wrapped her legs around the brass and spun.
What in god's name is she doing working in a fucking strip club? — Elizabeth Morgan

As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was, was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive, stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same manner when the chief waiter was a boy - if he ever was a boy, which appeared improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw myself reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps, without a flaw in their trimming or cleaning; and at the comfortable green curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes; and at the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of decanters, burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old port wine below; and both England and the law appeared to me to be very difficult indeed to be taken by storm. — Charles Dickens

Doctor Sharak did not hear from her yesterday. He requested that I rectify that today. I came here at his request, but two hours later, my gut tells me something is wrong. I'm the one you need to satisfy now, which is bad news for you and whoever you work for. I've got five generations of Starfleet brass in my family tree and, unlike Doctor Sharak, I actually know how this game is played. — Kirsten Beyer

[a] girl one day flared out and told the principal "the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry]." He said he didn't know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate's coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc. — Anna Julia Cooper

No matter what Sandra says," he told her, "I want you to remember this." Lily stared up at him. "What?" she asked as he pulled her close. She could feel the brass buttons on his paneled shirt pressing against her bosom. Instead of answering, Caleb bent his head and kissed her, his mouth gentle at first, then fierce. She struggled for a moment before giving herself up to the hurricane of sensation his lips and tongue created within her. She couldn't breathe when he let her go; it was as though he had been her air supply. He smiled at her disgruntled expression and kissed her forehead lightly. "I'll see you at dinner, Lily-flower," he said. And then he was putting on his hat and walking away. Lily — Linda Lael Miller

As well as myself there was a young Norwegian couple who worked on an oil-rig, Paul, an engineer from Dublin whom I had taken to at once and a Swiss pot-holer, a rather surly fellow who was used to carrying out unbelievable dives on his own. — L.K. Brass

If you have walked into a museum recently - whether you did so to attend an art exhibition or to escape from the police - you may have noticed a type of painting known as a triptych. A triptych has three panels, with something different painted on each of the panels. For instance, my friend Professor Reed made a triptych for me, and he painted fire on one panel, a typewriter on another, and the face of a beautiful, intelligent woman on the third. The triptych is entitled What Happened to Beatrice and I cannot look upon it without weeping.
I am a writer, and not a painter, but if I were to try and paint a triptych entitled The Baudelaire Orphans' Miserable Experiences at Prufrock Prep, I would paint Mr. Remora on one panel, Mrs. Brass on another, and a box of staples on the third, and the results would make me so sad that between the Beatrice triptych and the Baudelaire triptych I would scarcely stop weeping all da — Lemony Snicket

The old women in black at early Mass in winter
are a problem for him. He could tell by their eyes
they have seen Christ. They make the kernel
of his being and the clarity around it
seem meager, as though he needs girders
to hold up his unusable soul. But he chooses
against the Lord. He will not abandon his life.
Not his childhood, not the ninety-two bridges
across the two rivers of his youth. Nor the mills
along the banks where he became a young man
as he worked. The mills are eaten away, and eaten
again by the sun and its rusting. He needs them
even though they are gone, to measure against.
The silver is worn down to the brass underneath
and is the better for it. He will gauge
by the smell of concrete sidewalks after night rain.
He is like an old ferry dragged on to the shore,
a home in its smashed grandeur, with the giant beams
and joists. Like a wooden ocean out of control.
A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt. — Jack Gilbert

There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefor, when it falls, a fiercer devil. — C.S. Lewis

Green little vaulter, in the sunny grass, Catching your heart up at the feel of June, Sole noise that's heard amidst the lazy noon, When ev'n the bees lag at the summoning brass. — Leigh Hunt

Do you not believe that you deserve to die painfully?" "By the revolutionary," I said, hoping that if I asked that death as a favor it would not be granted. "Yes, that would be fitting. But ... " And here he paused. The moment passed, then two. The first brass-backed fly of the new summer buzzed against the port. I wanted to crush it, to catch and release it, to shout at Master Palaemon to speak, to flee from the room; but I could do none of these things. I sat, instead, in the old wooden chair beside his table, feeling that I was already dead but still must die. — Gene Wolfe

O'Mara sat back down and crossed his legs effortlessly. His freshly creased slacks were the color of butterscotch. His wing-tipped loafers were burgundy. He wore no socks. He had on a starched white shirt, open at the throat, and a blue blazer with brass buttons. My clothes must never fit that well, I thought. I'd be overwhelmed with sexual opportunities, and never get any work done. I promised myself to be careful. — Robert B. Parker

For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!
Act 3, Scene 2 — William Shakespeare

Oiled, with tube bones cut from bronze and sunk in gelatin, the robots lay. In coffins for the not dead and not alive, in planked boxes, the metronomes waited to be set in motion. There was a smell of lubrication and lathed brass. There was a silence of the tomb yard. Sexed but sexless, the robots. Named but unnamed, and borrowing from humans everything but humanity, the robots stared at the nailed lids of their labeled F.O.B. boxes, in a death that was not even a death, for there had never been a life. — Ray Bradbury

Even clothing its men was a complicated and time-consuming task for the British army. While the Boers were lucky to have any coat at all, Her Majesty's forces had the latest in rain gear to protect them from the South African summer downpours. The British clothier Thomas Burberry had developed a new fabric called gabardine, a chemically processed wool that could repel rain and was resistant to tears. The soldiers in the Boer War would be the first to wear jackets made from this fabric, which they called Burberrys. Fifteen years later, Burberry would design another coat for soldiers in World War I, with straps on the shoulders for their epaulets and brass D-rings on the belt for their swords and hand grenades. Because most of the men wearing it would be fighting in the trenches, it was called a trench coat. — Candice Millard

Mrs. Ramsey, who had been sitting loosely, folded her son in her arm, braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she sat, taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. — Virginia Woolf

In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing. — Mark Twain

They made figures of brass, and tried to induce souls to indwell them. In some accounts we read that they succeeded; Friar Bacon was credited with one such Homunculus; so was Albertus Magnus, and, I think, Paracelsus. He had, at least, a devil in his long sword 'which taught him all the cunning pranks of past and future mountebanks, — Aleister Crowley

Take your place, then. Look at what happened from every side and consider all the other ways it could have gone. Consider, even, an Africa unconquered altogether. Imagine those first Portuguese adventurers approaching the shore, spying on the jungle's edge through their fitted brass lenses. Imagine that by some miracle of dread or reverence they lowered their spyglasses, turned, set their riggings, sailed on. Imagine all who came after doing the same. What would that Africa be now? All I can think of is the other okapi, the one they used to believe in. A unicorn that could look you in the eye. — Barbara Kingsolver

Perhaps if you win this one I can put a word in for you.You know, extra carrots and that sort of thing, a bit of molasses in the evening.A bigger brass plaque for your box at home."
"That's bribery," Keeley murmured.
Brian turned, his eyes going warm. "That's bargaining," he corrected. "But if I can interest you in a bribe," he began and opened the box door intending to snatch Keeley inside for a much anticipated welcome back kiss.
He nearly stepped over Mo. "Sorry. Didn't see you there."
"I'm short.That's my cross to bear. — Nora Roberts

Whoo-oop! I'm the old original iron-jawed, brass-mounted, copper-bellied corpse-maker from the wilds of Arkansaw! - Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Sired by a hurricane, dam'd by an earthquake, half-brother to the cholera, nearly related to the small-pox on the mother's side! Look at me! I take nineteen alligators and a bar'l of whiskey for breakfast when I'm in robust health, and a bushel of rattlesnakes and a dead body when I'm ailing! I split the everlasting rocks with my glance, and I squench the thunder when I speak! Whoo-oop! Stand back and give me room according to my strength! Blood's my natural drink, and the wails of the dying is music to my ear! Cast your eye on me, gentlemen! - and lay low and hold your breath, for I'm bout to turn myself loose! — Mark Twain

I always knew you were tough, but you're about to try to take on the wolves, the Arrows, the Forgotten, and God knows who else, all at once. Forget brass balls. Those things are goddamn titanium! — Nalini Singh

There was a brass plate mounted on the door at eye level, so old that the lettering that had once been engraved there had been reduced to a spidery, unreadable code, the name of some long dead function or functionary, polished into oblivion. — William Gibson