Centre Back Quotes & Sayings

It feels really good to give back. I'm opening the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Wellness Centre in Australia. — Olivia Newton-John

Ig had always liked to listen to his father, to watch him while he played. It was almost wrong to say his father played. It often seemed the other way around: that the horn was playing him. The way his cheeks swole out, then caved in as if he were being inhaled into it, the way the golden keys seemed to grab his fingers like little magnets snatching at iron filings, causing them to leap and dance in unexpected, startling fits. The way he shut his eyes and bent his head and twisted back and forth at the hips, as if his torso were in auger, screwing its way deeper and deeper into the centre of his being, pulling the music up from somewhere in the pit of his belly. — Joe Hill

We know great Nature's pow'r, Mother of things, whose vast unbounded sway From the deep centre all around extends Wide to the flaming barriers of the world. We feel her power; we strive not to repress (Vainly repress'd, or to deformity) Her lawful growth: ours be the task alone To check her rude excrescencies, to prune Her wanton overgrowth, and where she strays In uncouth shapes, to lead her gently back, With prudent hand, to form and better use. — John Armstrong

Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:
Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide
Return and back into your Sun subsid — Farid Al-Din Attar

Wideacre faces due south and the sun shines all day on the yellow stone until it is warm and powdery to the touch. The sun travels from gable end to gable end so the front of the house is never in shadow. When I was a small child collecting petals in the rose garden, or loitering at the back of the house in the stable yard, it seemed that Wideacre was the very centre of the world with the sun defining our boundaries in the east at dawn, until it sank over our hills in the west, in the red and pink evening. — Philippa Gregory

Few of us have chosen our clubs, they have simply been presented to us; and so as they slip from Second Division to the Third, or sell their best players, or buy players who you know can't play, or bash the ball the seven hundreth time towards a nine foot centre-forward, we simply curse, go home, worry for a fortnight and then come back to suffer all over again. — Nick Hornby

While we destroyed the Centre Party, we have not only brought thousands of priests back into the Church, but to millions of respectable people we have restored their faith in their religion and in their priests. The union of the Evangelical Church in a single Church for the whole Reich, the Concordat with the Catholic Church, these are but milestones on the road which leads to the establishment of a useful relation and a useful co operation between the Reich and the two Confessions. — Adolf Hitler

The iron arc of the avoiding journey Curves back upon my weakness at the end; Whether the faint light spark against my face Or in the dark my sight hide from my sight, Centre and circumference are both my weakness. — Stephen Spender

In Christianity and the body of Christ there is no room for celebrities, the message of the cross doesn't centre around anyone. It is Christ & Him alone. God can do without any of our church celebrities. We've got to let God stand out in all we do. Our celebrities have included pastors, worship leaders, singers, instrumentalist, the rich in the church, etc. Let's get back on track. God will use our social influence not to make us famous and pompou.s — Bernard Kelvin Clive

Thoughts will lead you in circles. Silence will bring you back to your centre. — Rasheed Ogunlaru

My world falls apart, crumbles, "The centre cannot hold." There is no integrating force, only the naked fear, the urge of self-preservation. I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralysed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought. I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know who I am, where I am going - and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions. I long for a noble escape from freedom - I am weak, tired, in revolt from the strong constructive humanitarian faith which presupposes a healthy, active intellect and will. There is nowhere to go. — Sylvia Plath

Nagler-Rolz helicopter (unspecified type) Two types of ultra-light helicopter were designed by Bruno Nagler. Each of these could be strapped to a man's back. The first, for which no designation has been reported, has a single rotor, and a small engine enclosed in a fairing is mounted on an extension of the rotor on the opposite side of the hub. The motor drives a shaft which is housed inside the blade and, in turn, through bevel gearing, drives two small propellers in opposite directions. The propellers are located at the centre of pressure, one at the leading-edge and one at the trailing-edge of the blade. Nagler-Rolz NR — Walter Meyer

Become aware of yourself. Everything will come to you, Chinmay, when you are in that most wonderful place on earth, the centre of your being. If you learn just one thing from this book, let it be that once you are aware of yourself, depression cannot hold you back any more than a tiger can be trapped in a spider's web. — Indu Muralidharan

Now journeys were not simple matters for Grace; nothing is simple if your mind is a fetch-and-carry wanderer from sliced perilous outer world to secret safe inner world; if when night comes your thought creeps out like a furred animal concealed in the dark, to fine, seize, and kill its food and drag it back to the secret house in the secret world, only to discover that the secret world has disappeared or has so enlarged that it's a public nightmare; if then strange beasts walk upside down like flies on the ceiling; crimson wings flap, the curtains fly; a sad man wearing a blue waistcoat with green buttons sits in the centre of the room, crying because he has swallowed the mirror and it hurts and he burps in flashes of glass and light; if crakes move and cry; the world is flipped, unrolled down in the vast marble stair; a stained threadbare carpet; the hollow silver dancing shoes, hunting-horns ... — Janet Frame

I passed the friendship centre and nodded to an old couple on the porch. Kookum smiled back and nodded, a cotton kerchief on her head. Moshum's eyes squinted, too, but never looked straight at me, just glanced my presence once, and that was enough. Old school. I knew that when they stood up to hobble home, he would lead a few feet ahead, and she would follow. They grew up in the bush and still walked the same way, as if the wide road was nothing more than a narrow path through the muskeg and spruce. — Joseph Boyden

Two hundred miles from the surface of the earth there is no gravity. The laws of motion are suspended. You could turn somersaults slowly slowly, weight into weightlessness, nowhere to fall. As you lay on your back paddling in space you might notice your feet had fled your head. You are stretching slowly slowly, getting longer, your joints are slipping away from their usual places. There is no connection between your shoulder and your arm. You will break up bone by bone, fractured from who you are, drifting away now, the centre cannot hold. — Jeanette Winterson

They both fought to catch their breath, though Megan's oxygen deprivation had nothing to do with the game.
"You okay?" Finn asked.
"Yeah, you?" she replied. Every inch of her body was throbbing to touch him again.
"Yeah," he replied with a huge grin. He pushed himself around and got on all fours in front of her, pausing there with his face inches from hers. "I'm glad you stayed," he whispered, his breath warm on her face.
Megan somehow managed to reply. "Me too."
Then Finn pushed himself up and headed back toward the centre of the yard. For a moment, Megan couldn't move. Then Doug walked over and offered his arm. Megan grasped it thankfully and he yanked up to her shaky legs.
"Who's all in a twist now?" he asked with a smirk.
Megan laughed and shoved him from behind as they headed back to the line. — Kate Brian

unless you take the view that footballers should be picked on their form as players, and not for personal considerations.' 'Ah!' said Mr Bowles, 'but that's what Vicar would call a counsel of perfection. People talk a lot about the team spirit and let the best side win, but if you was to sit in this bar and listen to what goes on, it's all spite and jealousy, or else it's how to scrape up enough money to entice away some other team's centre-forward, or it's complaints about favouritism or wrong decisions, or something that leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. The game's not what it was when I was a lad. Too much commercialism, and enough back-biting to stock an old maids' tea-party. — Dorothy L. Sayers

On how to make the game more exciting - Eliminate the referees, raise the basket four feet, double the size of the basketball, limit the height of the players to 5 feet 9 inches, bring back the centre jump, allow taxi drivers in for free and allow the players to carry guns. — Al McGuire

The whole calamity would be in one of those police reports that D. B. Sinclair and his "concerned citizens" filed carefully under "T" for "Things" at the back of a locked filing cabinet in the vehicle-licensing centre a day before a bonfire got accidentally out of control. — Kate Griffin

It represented a monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. This thing, which seemed instinct with a fearsome and unnatural malignancy, was of a somewhat bloated corpulence, and squatted evilly on a rectangular block or pedestal covered with undecipherable characters. The tips of the wings touched the back edge of the block, the seat occupied the centre, whilst the long, curved claws of the doubled-up, crouching hind legs gripped the front edge and extended a quarter of the way down toward the bottom of the pedestal. The cephalopod head was bent forward, so that the ends of the facial feelers brushed the backs of huge fore paws which clasped the croucher's elevated knees. — H.P. Lovecraft

There are things I need to ask her. Not what happened, back then in the time I lost, because now I know that. I need to ask her why.
If she remembers. Perhaps she's forgotten the bad things, what she said to me, what she did. Or she does remember them, but in a minor way, as if remembering a game, or a single prank, a single trivial secret, of the kind girls tell and then forget.
She will have her own version. I am not the centre of her story, because she herself is that. But I could give her something you can never have, except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is part of herself I could give back to her.
We are like the twins in old fables, each of whom has been given half a key. — Margaret Atwood

A hand of smoke took his hand, started him downward, if it was downward, showed him a centre, if it was a centre, put it in his stomach, where the vodka was softly making crystal bubbles, some sort of infinitely beautiful and desperate illusion which some time back he had called immortality. — Julio Cortazar

Shortly after I turned 13, Child Welfare took me into care. I was sent to a residential centre where girls with behavioural problems were 'evaluated'. My time there comes back to me now only in flashes of smells, images and sounds. — Liz Murray

Malthus's school was in the centre of the town of Adrianople, and was not one of those monkish schools where education is miserably limited to the bread and water of the Holy Scriptures. Bread is good and water is good, but the bodily malnutrition that may be observed in prisoners or poor peasants who are reduced to this diet has its counterpart in the spiritual malnutrition of certain clerics. These can recite the genealogy of King David of the Jews as far back as Deucalion's Flood, and behind the Flood to Adam, without a mistake, or can repeat whole chapters of the Epistles of Saint Paul as fluently as if they were poems written in metre; but in all other respects are as ignorant as fish or birds. — Robert Graves

The strategic aspect of General Joffre's policy was not less stultified than the administrative. The easterly and north-easterly attacks into which his four Armies of the Right and Centre were impetuously launched, were immediately stopped and hurled back with a slaughter so frightful that it has never yet been comprehended by the world. His — Winston S. Churchill

Wimbledon attracted Bill Clinton to the gallery at Centre Court Tuesday at the All England Club. NBC cameras showed his head turning back and forth with each volley. Even at a tennis match, it looks like he's denying everything. — Argus Hamilton

I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God. — Bede Griffiths

The arrow is the intention. It is what unites the strength of the bow with the centre of the target. The intention must be crystal-clear, straight and balanced. Once the arrow has gone, it will not come back, so it is better to interrupt a shot, because the movements that led up to it were not sufficiently precise and correct, than to act carelessly, simply because the bow was fully drawn and the target was waiting. But never hold back from firing the arrow if all that paralyses you is fear of making a mistake. If you have made the right movements, open your hand and release the string. Even if the arrow fails to hit the target, you will learn how to improve your aim next time. If you never take a risk, you will never know what changes you need to make. Each arrow leaves a memory in your heart, and it is the sum of those memories that will make you shoot better and better. — Paulo Coelho

I don't think there is a sound UK bank now, at least, if there is one I don't know about it. The City of London is finished, the financial centre of the world is moving east. All the money is in Asia. Why would it go back to the West? You don't need London. — Jim Rogers

Bulgaria, I reflected as I walked back to the hotel, isn't a country; it's a near-death experience. — Bill Bryson

Honestly, Evie," I huffed, flopping back to the centre of my bed and glaring at the ceiling. "Why don't you whine some more instead of actually doing anything?"
"Talking to yourself is the first sign of madness," Arianna volunteered, leaning on the frame of my open door.
"Yeah, so's seeing things no one else can, but people seem to like that about me."
"Good point. Odds are, you've been crazy for years now. I'm probably nothing more than a figment of your imagination."
"If that were true, I'd imagine you as less of a slob."
She sighed. "Isn't it sad that you hate yourself so much you can't even dream up a pleasant roommate?"
"Not as sad as the fact that you admit how bad you suck as one."
Flashing a wicked grin, she narrowed her eyes. " I'd use the term 'suck' sparingly around me. Don't want to go planting ideas in my pretty, dead head."
I threw a pillow at her. — Kiersten White

I hate asking directions. I am always afraid that the person I approach will step back and say, 'You want to go where? The centre of Brussels? Boy, are you lost. This is Lille, you dumb shit,' then stop other passers-by and say, 'You wanna hear something classic? Buddy, tell these people where you think you are,' and that I'll have to push my way through a crowd of people who are falling about and wiping tears of mirth from their eyes. So I trudged on. — Bill Bryson

But I do, little one. Your kisses last night told me everything, I needed to know. In every way that matters, no man has peeled back the many layers that make up the flower that is you, Laura, and dipped his tongue into the centre of you mouth, as I did last night. — Suzi Love

Maggie, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it. No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it. — George Eliot

On the country has gathered the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. On the city has gathered the idea of an achieved centre of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations have also developed: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation. A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times. — Raymond Williams

I gazed back up the dome of the heavens painted on the ceiling above. It was only then that I noticed somethings else in the painted sky, directly above the bed. The sun, moon and stars were positioned in swirls around some object in the centre, like angels clustered round the throne of God. But this was no throne, nor was it God. [Vincent] — Karen Maitland

Tomorrow's leaders will not lead dictating from the front, nor pushing from the back. They will lead from the centre - from the heart — Rasheed Ogunlaru

This is how a rocket works. At first it is standing still, say, in empty space, and then it shoots some gas out of the back, and the rocket goes forward. The point is that of all the stuff in the world, the centre of mass, the average of all the mass, is still right where it was before. The interesting part has moved on, and an uninteresting part that we do not care about has moved back. There — Richard Feynman

In the centre of Bond was a hurricane-room, the kind of citadel found in old-fashioned houses in the tropics. These rooms are small, strongly built cells in the heart of the house, in the middle of the ground floor and sometimes dug down into its foundations. To this cell the owner and his family retire if the storm threatens to destroy the house, and they stay there until the danger is past. Bond went to his hurricane room only when the situation was beyond his control and no other possible action could be taken. Now he retired to this citadel, closed his mind to the hell of noise and violent movement, and focused on a single stitch in the back of the seat in front of him, waiting with slackened nerves for whatever fate had decided for B. E. A. Flight No. 130. — Ian Fleming

...If you are picking a bunch of mixed flowers, and if you happen to see, over in a corner, a small, sad, neglected-looking pink or paeony that is all by itself and has obviously never had a chance in life, you have not the heart to pass it by, to leave it to mourn alone, while the night comes on. You have to go back and pick it, very carefully, and put it in the centre of the bunch among its fair companions, in the place of honour. — Beverley Nichols