Burning Ships Quotes & Sayings

She looks at Sam. 'Close your ears if you don't want to know what I suspect to be the sex of your child,' she says, and he blocks his ears.
'It's Sam's?' Jonesey asks, surprised, just as he gets a message.
'Where have you been, Jonesey?' Bernadette says. 'In La La Land?'
'Contrary to popular belief, I think it has no penis,' Georgie whispers to them while Lucia covers Sam's ears.
Jonesey looks up from his text messaging, shocked. 'Poor little guy. — Melina Marchetta

Libraries are like houses of worship: Whether or not you use them yourself, it's important to know that they are there. In many ways they define a society and the values of that society. Librarians to me are the keepers of the flame of knowledge. When I was growing up, the librarian in my local library looked like a meek little old lady, but after you spent some time with her, you realized she was Athena with a sword, a wise and wonderful repository of wisdom. — Jane Stanton Hitchcock

The wind swoops over the tenements on Orchard Street, where some of those starry-eyed dreams have died and yet other dreams are being born into squalor and poverty, an uphill climb. It gives a slap to the laundry stretched on lines between tenements, over dirty, broken streets where, even at this hour, hungry children scour the bins for food. The wind has existed forever. It has seen much in this country of dreams and soap ads, old horrors and bloodshed. It has played mute witness to its burning witches, and has walked along a Trail of Tears; it has seen the slave ships release their human cargo, blinking and afraid, into the ports, their only possession a grief they can never lose. — Libba Bray

And so their spirits soared
as they took positions own the passageways of battle
all night long, and the watchfires blazed among them.
Hundreds strong, as stars in the night sky glittering
round the moon's brilliance blaze in all their glory
when the air falls to a sudden, windless calm ...
all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffs
and the steep ravines and down from the high heavens bursts
the boundless bright air and all the stars shine clear
and the shepherd's heart exults - so many fires burned
between the ships and the Xanthus' whirling rapids
set by the men of Troy, bright against their walls.
A thousand fires were burning there on the plain
and beside each fire sat fifty fighting men
poised in the leaping blaze, and champing oats
and glistening barley, stationed by their chariots,
stallions waited for Dawn to mount her glowing throne. — Homer

Everything was black in the harbor, but there were still some fires burning on the ships. — Barney Ross

Miranda opened her eyes in time to see the sunrise. A wash of violent color, pink and streaks of brilliant orange, the container ships on the horizon suspended between the blaze of the sky and the water aflame, the seascape bleeding into confused visions of Station Eleven, its extravagant sunsets the its indigo sea. The lights of the fleet fading into morning, the ocean burning into sky. — Emily St. John Mandel

It seems to me, that you people spend a great deal of time talking about honour, but strip away the high sounding words and you are no different from any other race. Family? Has Priam not killed wayward sons? When a king dies do his sons not go to war with one another to succeed him? Men speak of how you reacted to your father's death. They say it was amazing, for you did not order your little brother's execution. Your race thrives on blood and death, Helikaon. Your ships raid the coasts of other nations, stealing slaves, burning and plundering. Warriors brag of how many men they have killed, and women they have raped. Almost all of your kings either seized their thrones with swords and murder, or are children of men who seized power with swords and murder. So put all this talk of honour to one side. — David Gemmell

All around, the sea was full of ships. Some were burning, some were sinking, some had been smashed to splinters. — George R R Martin

So long as we learn it doesn't matter who teaches us, does it? — E.R. Braithwaite

I am sick of this way of life. The weariness and sadness of old age make it intolerable. I have walked with death in hand, and death's own hand is warmer than my own. I don't wish to live any longer. — W. Somerset Maugham

Ultimately we may still ask, why can't humans design a perfect society? — Robert Shea