Cold Heart Life Quotes & Sayings

In Shakespeare the birds sing, the bushes are clothed with green, hearts love, souls suffer, the cloud wanders, it is hot, it is cold, night falls, time passes, forests and multitudes speak, the vast eternal dream hovers over all. Sap and blood, all forms of the multiple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity, the living and the life, solitudes, cities, religions, diamonds and pearls, dung-hills and charnelhouses, the ebb and flow of beings, the steps of comers and goers, all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare. — Victor Hugo

Out of the dusk a shadow, Then a spark; Out of the cloud a silence, Then a lark; Out of the heart a rapture, Then a pain; Out of the dead, cold ashes, Life again. — John B. Tabb

Refuse to let your love grow cold. Stir up love in your life - towards your spouse and towards your family, friends, neighbours, co-workers. Reach out to others who are hurting and in need. Pray for people and bless them. Grow to the point that one of your first thoughts each morning in your heart is about how you can bless someone else that day. — Joyce Meyer

The last condescended from Academy spires Pretended at life with a cold, dead heart Face like a crypt, from a family of liars Quietly, quietly played . . . her . . . part. - Children's nursery rhyme — K.D. Castner

The day drags through though storms keep out the sun;
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on:
Even as a broken mirror, which the glass
In every fragment multiplies; and makes
A thousand images of one that was,
The same, and still the more, the more it breaks;
And thus the heart will do which not forsakes,
Living in shattered guise, and still, and cold,
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow aches,
Yet withers on till all without is old,
Showing no visible sign, for such things are untold. — George Gordon Byron

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold, and dark, and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart! and cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I'm still in love with you," he repeated walking closer to me. "I've tried to stop it. I tried to ignore it.
I tried to wish it away, but it won't leave. Whenever you're near me, I want you closer. Whenever you
laugh, I want the sound to never fade. Whenever you're sad, I want to kiss your tears away. I know all of
the reasons that I shouldn't want to be with you. I know that I can never be forgiven for what happened all
those years ago, but I also know that I still love you. You're still the fire that keeps me warm when life
becomes cold. You're still the voice that keeps the darkness at bay. You're still the reason my heart beats.
You're still the air in my lungs. You're still my greatest high. And I am still truly, madly, painfully in love
with you. And I don't think I'll ever know how to stop. — Brittainy C. Cherry

Unchecked, the dominating influences of money and of barren intellectualism would reduce the life of emotions to freezing point. And, unable to grasp the holier benefits of religion, the mysticism of the heart reacts in the art-intoxication ... In this cold, irreligious and practical age the warmth of this devotion to art has kept alive many higher aspirations of our soul, which otherwise might readily have died, as they did in the middle of the last century. — Abraham Kuyper

Water temperatures in this range do, in fact, cause physiological changes - one of which is known as the cold-shock response, a "series of reflexes that begin immediately upon sudden cooling of the skin following cold-water immersion." During this reflexive response, "blood pressure, heart rate, and the workload of the heart all increase, making the heart more susceptible to life-threatening rhythms and heart attack. Simultaneously," an online text explained, "gasping begins, followed by rapid and deep breathing. These reflexes can quickly lead to accidental inhalation of water and drowning. This rapid and seemingly uncontrollable over-breathing creates a sensation of suffocation and contributes to feelings of panic. It can also create dizziness, confusion, disorientation, and a decreased level of consciousness. — Sy Montgomery

Up and away for life! be fleet!-
The frost-king ties my fumbling feet,
Sings in my ears, my hands are stones,
Curdles the blood to the marble bones,
Tugs at the heart-strings, numbs the sense,
And hems in life with narrowing fence.
Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,-
The punctual stars will vigil keep,-
Embalmed by purifying cold;
The winds shall sing their dead-march old,
The snow is no ignoble shroud,
The moon thy mourner, and the cloud. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As time went by, I realized that the particular place I'd chose was less important than the fact that I'd chosen a place and focused my life around it. Although the island has taken on great significance for me, it's no more inherently beautiful or meaningful than any other place on earth. What makes a place special is the way it buries itself inside the heart, not whether it's flat or rugged, rich or austere. wet or arid, gentle or harsh, warm or cold, wild or tame. Every place, like every person, is elevated by the love and respect shown toward it, and by the way in which its bounty is received. — Richard Nelson

I intend to create a new work of art, all my own. A still life, of sorts. You three will be vital parts of the process. Rejoice in your good fortune." In the sterile environment of the laboratory, with the cold assistance of his personal robot guards, Erasmus proceeded to vivisect the trio of victims, oblivious to their screams. "I want to get to the heart of the matter," he quipped, "the lifeblood of it. — Brian Herbert

At the beginning of all love there is a private treaty each of the lovers make with himself or herself, an agreement to set aside what is wrong with the other for the sake of what is right. Love is spring after winter. It comes to heal life's wounds, inflicted by the unloving cold. When that warmth is born in the heart the imperfections of the beloved are as nothing, less than nothing, and the secret treaty with oneself is easy to sign. The voice of doubt is stilled. Later, when love fades, the secret treaty looks like folly, but if so, it's a necessary folly, born of lovers' belief in beauty, which is to say, in the possibility of the impossible thing, true love. — Salman Rushdie

This is what reading is like to me. It's finding a spring in the midst of a barren land. Just when I think I might up and die of thirst, I stumble onto this fresh, cold water, and I'm suddenly given this new life because I can-and do-drink to my heart's content. — Beverly Lewis

My heart thrashes in time with my feet pounding across the cold, hard ground. I can't run any faster, longer, and yet I must. My life and my family's survival depends on it. — Elle A. Rose

The worst poverty can be found within the cold heart. — K.A. Hosein

Wasn't that kind of the basis of passion? I didn't know that either. The only thing I knew for sure was that this kiss had been a lot like the last one. Nice, but it didn't blow me away. My heart sank. There was something wrong with me. Everyone was always going on about how socially inept I was. Did it extend to romance as well? Was I so cold that I'd spend my life never feeling anything? — Richelle Mead

Her heart swelled up with misery, until it felt too large for her bosom. It beat with odd little jerks; her hands were cold, and a feeling of disaster oppressed her. There were pain and bewilderment in her face, the bewilderment of a pampered chhild who has always had her own way for the asking and who now, for the first time, was in contact with the unplesantness of life. — Margaret Mitchell

The last day i was home i took the rental car up old 14 behind the Sandia Mountains. as i drove north toward Santa Fe past Madrid I rolled the window down halfway and let the cold, brisk, February air come into the car. I smelled the pinon trees and the damp earth. The Gray came over me. My life flashed through my heart in one deep rush of feeling. When I made the turn around the mountain to the west, the mesas and valleys spread out before me under the orange and gold horizon. The sun hit me like a wave that flooded out the past and dissolved any idea of the future, and I felt okay and whole for about twenty minutes. — Marc Maron

. . . what matters in combat is adaptability, boldness and maintaining A cool exterior, whilst penetrating your enemy's soul with An icy cold stare
- Diary of A Combat Fiend — Soke Behzad Ahmadi

By firm immutable immortal laws Impress'd on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE,
Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife
Organic forms, and kindled into life;
How Love and Sympathy with potent charm
Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;
Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,
And bind Society in golden chains. — Erasmus Darwin

And they took the strain and off they went up the field the plough cutting clean. I can mind how I stood there and watched him my heart full of pride for him and I breathed in the smell of the earth. Nothing like the smell of new turned earth. A cold metal smell it is, but clean and good like the first breath of life. — Michael Morpurgo

But this was the only way of life that humans knew for their first 6m years on the planet. In giving it up over the past few thousand years, we have lost our vulnerability to disease and cold and wild animals, but we have also lost good ways to bring up children, look after old people, stave off diabetes and heart disease and understand the real dangers of everyday life. — Jared Diamond

Each time my mother sank to the bottom of cold despair, she would always find a break in the ice above, to breathe new air, to find new purpose. She never indulged in self-pity, nor did she point the finger of blame for her misfortunes. Her heart was clear of bitterness. I believe that if a person's strength of character is measured at the end of his or her life, it is by these qualities - qualities that allow a life to be lived, free of those restraints we place upon ourselves. But that doesn't mean we should forget. — Gemma Liviero

Rage-the biggest, truest rage of her adult life-had invaded her like a fever, but it wasn't like any fever she had known previously. It circulated like weird serum, cold on the right side of her body, then hot on the left, where her heart was. It seemed to come nowhere near her head, which remained clear. — Stephen King

So in the end, was it worth it? Jesus Christ. How irreparably changed my life has become. It's always the last day of summer and I've been left out in the cold with no door to get back in. I'll grant you I've had more than my share of poignant moments. Life passes most people by while they're making grand plans for it. Throughout my lifetime, I've left pieces of my heart here and there. And now, there's almost not enough to stay alive. But I force a smile, knowing that my ambition far exceeded my talent. There are no more white horses or pretty ladies at my door. — George Jung

If a person is cold and rigid, he feels within himself as if he were in a grave. He is not living, he cannot enjoy this life for he cannot express himself and he cannot see the light and life outside. What keeps man from developing the heart quality? His exacting attitude. He wants to make a business of love. He says, 'If you will love me, I will love you.' As soon as a man measures and weighs his favors and his services and all that he does for one whom he loves, he ceases to know what love is. Love sees the beloved and nothing else. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

But, oh, how precious those things were! To look at the sky, breathe the cold wind, have fingers nipped by chill and skin stung red and heart stirred to life, gods, he had been dead until Tristen arrived and asked him the first vexing question, and posed him the first insoluble puzzle, and marveled at hailstones and mourned over falling leaves. What miracles there were all around ... — C.J. Cherryh

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

His [Death] voice is cold at first, John. It seems unfeeling. But if you listen without fear, you find that when he speaks, the most ordinary words become poetry. When he stands close to you, your life becomes a song, a praise. When he touches you, your smallest talents become gold; the most ordinary loves break your heart with their beauty. — Martine Leavitt

He spread out his hood more than ever, and Rikki-tikki saw the spectacle-mark on the back of it that looks exactly like the eye part of a hook-and-eye fastening. He was afraid for the minute, but it is impossible for a mongoose to stay frightened for any length of time, and though Rikki-tikki had never met a live cobra before, his mother had fed him on dead ones, and he knew that all a grown mongoose's business in life was to fight and eat snakes. Nag knew that too and, at the bottom of his cold heart, he was afraid. — Rudyard Kipling

The beauty that emerges from woundedness is a beauty infused with feeling; a beauty different from the beauty of landscape and the cold perfect form. This is a beauty that has suffered its way through the ache of desolation until the words or music emerged to equal the hunger and desperation at its heart. It must also be said that not all woundedness succeeds in finding its way through to beauty of form. Most woundedness remains hidden, lost inside forgotten silence. Indeed, in every life there is some wound that continues to weep secretly, even after years of attempted healing. Where woundedness can be refined into beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place. — John O'Donohue

It was a lesson she was still learning. When she had first started nursing, she had taken every death personally, like she was losing her father all over again. Every patient lost under her care was a little piece of death she would carry around with her until the end of her own life. But the alternative seemed so unfeeling. Tina and the other nurses could crack jokes and banter back and forth about contestants on American Idol before the body of a deceased patient was even cold. It was a coping mechanism, she knew, but not necessarily one she thought she would ever adopt. There had to be something in between. Olive had been called a bleeding heart before, but her heart no longer had the same plasticity and tenderness - it was scarred and worn beyond repair — Andrea Lochen

Love gives life to the lifeless. Love lights a flame in the heart that is cold. Love brings hope to the hopeless and gladdens the hearts of the sorrowful. In the world of existence there is indeed no greater power than the power of love — Abdu'l- Baha

If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act. — Don DeLillo

You will find that success in life comes far easier when you maintain a cool head and a warm heart, rather than a hot head and cold feet. — Robert Griffin III

Expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise.
become a stranger
To need of pity
Or, if compassion be freely
Given out
Take only enough
Stop short of urge to plead
Then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
Than your own small heart
Or greater than a star;
Tame wild disappointment
With caress unmoved and cold
Make of it a parka
For your soul.

Discover the reason why
So tiny human midget
Exists at all
So scared unwise
But expect nothing. Live frugally
On surprise. — Alice Walker

Leaves will fall, cold will creep in
A circle of life that ends where it begins
It may take a thousand years and a thousand poems penned
But my hair will someday gray and my back will bend
Then my shadow will join my body in the earth once again.
I know not the way, or even the when
Or who chooses that day we're called away to ascend
But you bathed me in your bravery and forgave me my sins
You made a home in your heart for mine to live in
And in return, my friend, this poem is my oath that a river of love will run through it until the very end. — Ryan Winfield

This living hand, now warm and capable
Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
And in the icy silence of the tomb,
So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood,
So in my veins red life might stream again,
And thou be conscience-calm'd. See, here it is
I hold it towards you. — John Keats

He recalls that the room went 'icy cold' as his patient Catherine strangely began to channel messages from Dr Weiss's own deceased family members; things she could not have possibly known. "She didn't know anything about me," Dr Weiss says. "I didn't even have diplomas in my office. This was before the internet, and she's telling me "You're Father's here and your son." Dr Weiss remembers his shock that a stranger shared so many facts about his life, including that his Father had tragically died from a heart condition. "She tells me my daughter is named after my Father..which she is, and it is an unusual name. She said, "Your Father is here; he died from his heart." And she went into other medical details. "I'm thinking, "What is this? How does she know this?" My Father never had an obituary. — Tessy Rawlins

Magic is life,' and that's not quite right. You think that the study of magic, the understanding of it, gives you some sort of better grasp of life. Unfortunately, even I worked out that this isn't quite true; it's a bit skewed, see? We understand this. Magic is not life. Life is magic. Even the boring, plodding, painful, cold, cruel parts, even the mundane automatic reflexes, heart pumping, lungs breathing, stomach digesting, even the uninteresting dull processes of walking, swinging the knees and seeing with eyes, this is magic. This is what makes magic. — Kate Griffin

That night Mr. Hale laid his head down on the pillow on which it never more should stir with life. The servant who entered his room in the morning, received no answer to his speech; drew near the bed, and saw the calm, beautiful face lying white and cold under the ineffaceable seal of death. The attitude was exquisitely easy; there had been no pain - no struggle. The action of the heart must have ceased as he lay down. — Elizabeth Gaskell

The mysteries of a universe made of drops of fire and clods of mud do not concern us in the least. The fate of humanity condemned ultimately to perish from cold is not worth troubling about. If you take it to heart it becomes an unendurable tragedy. If you believe in improvement you must weep, for the attained perfection must end in cold, darkness and silence. In a dispassionate view the ardour for reform, improvement for virtue, and knowledge, and even for beauty is only a vain sticking up for appearances as though one were anxious about the cut of one's clothes in a community of blind men. — Joseph Conrad

In an ideal world we would all learn in childhood to love ourselves. We would grow, being secure in our worth and value, spreading love wherever we went, letting our light shine. If we did not learn self-love in our youth, there is still hope. The light of love is always in us, no matter how cold the flame. It is always present, waiting for the spark to ignite, waiting for the heart to awaken and call us back to the first memory of being the life force inside a dark place waiting to be born - waiting to see the light. — Bell Hooks

That impulse, too, may have been the impulse which leads a child to pick up one pebble on a path strewn with them, promising it a life of warmth and security upon the nursery mantelpiece, delighting in the sense of power and benignity which such an action confers, and believing that the heart of the stone leaps with joy when it sees itself chosen from a million like it, to enjoy this bliss instead of a life of cold and wet upon the high road. "It might so easily have been any other of the millions of stones, but it was I, I, I! — Virginia Woolf

The scar on my chest, the beating of my heart, and the mountains that fostered my appreciation for the cold, hard, natural world - these were the few things that mattered. — Daniel Wallock

When Love Was New

When love was new
and life was young,
and once we walked
in gracious sun,
I never dreamt of darker days,
or feared that fate had cruel ways.

When life was strong
and love was free,
and time was once
eternity -
we never planned for more or less,
nor stopped to think we should digress.

When love was young
and life was new,
and everything
was once our due,
I never doubted what I owned,
nor knew the cost was merely loaned.

Now love is tried
and life is old,
and still my feet
drag down the road -
not knowing where it all has gone,
nor how much more it still goes on.

But life grows new
and love gets old,
and this tired heart
stays off the cold -
not caring it compares with fools,
nor wise enough to fear the rules.
-Drea Damara — Drea Damara

I am alone. My heart beats only for myself. The strikers mean nothing to me. I have nothing in common with the mob, nor with individuals. I am a cold person. In the war I did not feel I was part of my company. We all lay in the same mud and waited for the same death. But I could think only about my own life and death. I would step over corpses and it oftened saddened me that I could feel no pain. — Joseph Roth

Bleak as the scene was, though, there was growing joy in Inman's heart. He was nearing home; he could feel it in the touch of thin air on skin, in his longing to see the lead of hearth smoke from the houses of people he had known all his life. People he would not be called upon to hate or fear. He rose and took a wide stance on the rock and stood and pinched down his eyes to sharpen the view across the vast propect to one far mountain. It stood apart from the sky only as the stroke of a poorly inked pen, a line thin and quick and gestural. But the shape slowly grew plain and unmistakable. It was to Cold Mountain he looked. He had achieved a vista of what for him was homeland. — Charles Frazier

Oh!
and I speak out of later knowledge
Heaven forefend me from the most of the average run of male humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don't smoke, drink, or swear, or do much of anything else that is brase, and resentful, and stinging, because in their feeble fibres there has never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring. One doesn't meet these in saloons, nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the adventure-paths, nor loving as God's own mad lovers. They are too busy keeping their feet dry, conserving their heart-beats, and making unlovely life-successes of their spirit-mediocrity. — Jack London

He's probably never ridden a horse in his life. He's likely never experienced that moment of euphoria when you and an animal move completely as one, the indescribable sensation of grace and power running through your bones and settling forever in your heart. He probably won't have felt a pony's warm breath on his neck on a cold winter's morning, or run his hand proudly across the soft sheen of a well-groomed coat. And he's surely never rested his head against a pony's warm neck, wrapped his arms around it and closed his eyes, and held on tightly to the one thing in his life that would stay solid and constant and true. So he couldn't understand, not really, but I did. — Kate Lattey

Alone and lost, appeared this saint,

With pretty gray eyes, darkness can't taint.

He stole her from cold, from blustering storm,

Kind and gentle, he took her from harm.

Fearful of dark, he created her light,

A jar of gold, chasing demons of night.

Telling stories of love, he brought to her life,

A moment by his side: no pain, no strife.

He gifted her poems, a gesture on whim,

With every word read, she could see only him.

She counted the days until he returned home,

The boy with his light, the girl not alone.

Invisible to all, a shade wandering in dark,

He brought back her faith, with his pure kind heart.

- Elsie — Tillie Cole

I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more /the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort /to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires /and expires, too soon, too soon /before life itself — Joseph Conrad

Practically all girls are capable of pulling off the
Lady Love stunt before marriage but alas, only too
many of them think a wedding ring gives them the
right to flop down on the do-nothing stool, get fat
and eat onions... When a man see his beauteous
pride slouching around the house in a soiled house-
coat with cold cream on her face, he feels he got
cheated at the altar.
Too often after the first baby, [women] cease
being wives and are only mothers... giving all their
tenderness to Junior and letting poor husband go
heart-hungry. — Carol Shields

I never thought I was cut out for a life of crime. I even felt guilty when I accidentally stole a Subbuteo catalogue, thinking it was free. But everyone has an inner rebel, and mine has finally found a natural outlet. My crime of choice is that, with a heart as cold as ice and no care for what society thinks, I steal wireless computer network time. — Julian Baggini

And there, with an aching void in his young heart, and all outside so cold, and bare, and strange, Paul sat as if he had taken life unfurnished, and the upholsterer were never coming. — Charles Dickens

This was a family that consumed attractive, talented people. Its aim was to preserve beauty and genius through the centuries. For all eternity. To bottle the spark of magic that flares up in the soul of an artist, to preserve in wax the pain that is born in the heart of an actor, to dry and store the subtle, shifting images that hover above the head of a writer.

Madness. They didn't realize it was impossible. As the years pass by, feelings and emotions are blunted. And thousands of years of life kill all feelings. The soul becomes cold. It can't burn anymore. The farys took away from humans the one thing that I sought and valued in them most of all - their bright, vital feelings. — Lena Meydan

It had been a shitty night, so it was fitting that it should end with rain.
He closed his eyes and lay where he was, ready for it to stop. The rain, the cold, the pain, the aches, the blood choking the back of his throat, the metallic taste on his tongue. He wanted an off switch to his life; to get it over with. There wasn't much point fighting; he didn't have anything to fight for. He had his family and Levi, but something in his heart said that wasn't enough anymore.
He didn't want to be alone. — Elaine White

Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
and both will defeat the darkness
like twin drums beating in the forest
against the heavy wall of wet leaves.
Night crossing: black coal of dream
that cuts the thread of earthly orbs
with the punctuality of a headlong train
that pulls cold stone and shadow endlessly.
Love, because of it, tie me to a purer movement,
to the grip on life that beats in your breast,
with the wings of a submerged swan,
So that our dream might reply
to the sky's questioning stars
with one key, one door closed to shadow. — Pablo Neruda

For her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart. — Gustave Flaubert

I'll come back," she promised. "I'll always come back to you."
"I know," he said with cold, calm arrogance. "If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't let you go."
"Believe it. It's true." She took a step back. Then another. "Always."
"Eleanor, if you have any mercy in that dark heart of yours, when you leave right now, you will
walk and not run."
...
crawl and she didn't fly.
She ran. Down the hall she ran as if the hounds of hell nipped at her heels. She ran as if God
himself had ordered her to. She ran as if her life depended on it and in that moment she might
have sworn that it did.
She didn't know why she ran. She didn't know who or what waited for her in the White Room.
She only knew she had to get there as fast as she could and whoever it was, he was worth
running to. — Tiffany Reisz

Her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart. — Gustave Flaubert

The winter is cold, is cold.
All's spent in keeping warm.
Has joy been frozen, too?
I blow upon my hands
Stiff from the biting wind.
My heart beats slow, beats slow.
What has become of joy?

If joy's gone from my heart
Then it is closed to You
Who made it, gave it life...

Elusive, evasive, peace comes
Only when it's not sought.

Help me forget the cold
That grips the grasping world... — Madeleine L'Engle

Someone sits in a mountain vale A robe of clouds, rainbows for tassels The fragrant forest is the place to live The road has been long and difficult With a heart full of doubt and regret A life has passed and nothing has been accomplished Others call it failure I stand alone devoted to this Cold Mountain life — Hanshan

Blue as the evening sky, blue as cranesbill flowers, blue as the lips of drowned men and the heart of a blaze burning with too hot a flame. Yes, sometimes it was hot in this world, too. Hot and cold, light and dark, terrible and beautiful, it was everything all at once. It wasn't true that you felt nothing in the land of Death. You felt and heard and smelled and saw, but your heart remained strangely calm, as if it were resting before the dance began again.
Peace. Was that the word? — Cornelia Funke

Standing in the center of the crowd, his solitude was enormous. He felt that in all the vast and frozen space in which he lived his life - every hand needy, every heart wanting something from him - everybody had a reason to be and a place to land. Everybody but him. For him there was nothing. In all the cold and bitter world, there was not a single place for him to sit down. — Robert Goolrick

For hours after Andrew had died on his way into life, she felt powerfully that he had come from unreachable realms with knowledge she needed urgently to learn. Yet there he lay, swaddled in her arms, looking entirely at peace and not at all like a failed emissary. His face was closed; she could read nothing in his blank, perfect features except her own loss. She had given birth to death, and she felt its claim on her. She held Andrew until he was cold and his chill entered her body and heart. — Kate Maloy

God, Abby, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, he said as he stared out the bay window onto the lake. The serene morning calm of the water was laughing at his riptide of emotions. In all his life, he'd never been as tortured as he was now. Rip his limbs apart, whip his back raw, waterboard him, anything but this. Because this ... this was far worse. It was her pain. Her torture that was destroying his sanity. He had no control over it. He couldn't stop it.
He hated that he wasn't strong enough to withstand this. Most of all, he hated that he cared so much about her.
Cause he knew.
He knew one certainty in all this.
She had managed to touch a piece of his ice-cold heart. And it wasn't letting him go. — Cindy Paterson

I realized at that moment - observing his form move further away without once turning back - that I'd already begun to rebuild the imaginary wall between us. I was shielding my heart with stone cold feelings again, the only way I knew to protect it. I still planned to try my hand at prayer. If God would grant me this one request, if I could keep my only friend, I would give anything in return, even the treasured books trapped beneath my arm. I'd tasted enough of a dismal life to know that a real, true friend was of greater worth than the collection of every imagined fairytale in the world. — Richelle E. Goodrich

She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth. — Albert Camus

Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal. — Charles Dickens

Do you love her" Wulfgar asked suddenly, and the drow was off his guard.
"Of course I do," Drizzt responded truthfully. "As I love you, and Bruenor, and Regis."
"I would not interfere-" Wulfgar started to say, but he was stopped by Drizzt's chuckle.
"The choice is neither mine nor yours," the drow explained, "but Catti-brie's. Remember, what you had, my friend, and remember what you, in your foolishness, nearly lost."
Wulfgar looked long and hard at his dear friend, determined to heed that wise advice. Catti-brie's life was Catti-brie's to decide and whatever, or whomever, she chose, Wulfgar would always be among friends.
The winter would be long and cold, thick with snow and mercifully uneventful. Things would not be the same between the friends, could never be after all they had experienced, but they would be together again, in heart and in soul. Let no man, and no fiend, ever try to separate them again! — R.A. Salvatore

I sail through life with great trust in my heart. Whoever stains and breaks that trust will be in a cold water best left behind.
I felt the cold breeze of monetary means through the low ethics of money driven minds.
I securely docked in a shore I call home without the cloaks of dead winter I saw on people who have used me. — Angelica Hopes

Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!
Ye shall grow a part
Of the laughing Sea;
Of the moaning heart
Of the glittered wave
Of the sun-gleam's dart
In the ocean-grave.
Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!
For that I love
Thy heart of stone!
From the heights above
To the depths below,
Where dread things move,
There is naught can show
A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!
Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone! — Voltairine De Cleyre

You will not wonder at his weird pilgrimage,-who who in the swift whifl of living, amid its cold paradox and marvelous vision, have fronted life and aked its riddle face to face. And if you find that riddle hard to read, remember that yonder black boy finds it just a little harder; if it is difficult for you to find and face your duty, it is a shade more difficult for him; if your heart sickens in the blood and dust of battle, remember that to him the dust is thicker and the battle fiercer. — W.E.B. Du Bois

I fall asleep
Call it deep while all is well be-
Cause my life seems like a freestyle mean-
While asleep on the couch I dream it's a written piece and now
The symphony's sounding
Shouting out to these feet whose leaps feel foul but quite loud
But how
I'm allowed to live my dreams
My Chimeran team brings the Siberian breed
Riding reality free 'til these tires they freeze
In mires in dire need of wires, fire and heat but
I love a dark, hard cold heart in the wintery breeze — Criss Jami

The seamen had whitewashed the smoky ceilings of the ward, and that dear homely smell carried the vividness of thatch and lumpy walls and stew given from the goodness of a stranger's heart. But that was all there was of comfort, and the salt air had turned from cold to warm in the passing of a life, an afternoon. — Peter Carey

He finally pulled it all back into his heart, sucking in the painful tide of his misery. In the Glade, Chuck had become a symbol for him - a beacon that somehow they could make everything right again in the world. Sleep in beds. Get kissed goodnight. Have bacon and eggs for breakfast, go to a real school. Be happy.
But now Chuck was gone. And his limp body, to which Thomas still clung, seemed a cold talisman - that not only would those dreams of a hopeful future never come to pass, but that life had never been that way in the first place. That even in escape, dreary days lay ahead. A life of sorrow.
His returning memories were sketchy at best. But not much good floated in the muck.
Thomas reeled in the pain, locked it somewhere deep inside him. He did it for Teresa. For Newt and Minho. Whatever darkness awaited them, they'd be together, and that was all that mattered right then. — James Dashner

Soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife. Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. But as we go our sordid sep'rate ways, We shall ne'er forget thee, thou golden college days. Hearts full of youth, Hearts full of truth, Six parts gin to one part vermouth. — Tom Lehrer

And what is love, Angel? What is love! he yelled. Is it a pressure inside that makes me want to scream when you do this? he palmed his chest roughly, Is it my body in constant chaos when you're around me? Is it murder in cold blood when I even think of you being with anybody but me! he roared. Or maybe it's not being able to think or speak when your life is in danger, or wanting to spend every second - of every - fucking day with you, wanting to never leave your side. Is that love? Is it, Isadore? He drew closer and hit his fist repeatedly against his chest. Is it pain so hard and heavy that I can't fucking breathe unless I smell you, touch you, taste you? His body heaved as his bright green gaze seared her heart. Because if it is, Angel...he held his lips together and shook his head slowly, then I am....slain with an eternal and violent love for you. — Lucian Bane

You're cold, Virginia. How have you let yourself become so cold? — Kathryn Wesley

This is for all the people I'll never meet. This is for the person I might have kissed had I taken a different subway line on Saturday and the person I might have been if that boy hadn't broken my mother's teenage heart. This is for the people I would have loved if last winter hasn't been so cold and for the city I would have called home if I had written haikus on napkins and carried pens in dress pockets and in the knots of my hair. This is for who I was, who I am, who I might be. This is for you. — Chuck Pulaski

She knew that kindness kills. All her life she'd suspected this and so she'd only ever been cold and cruel. She'd faced kindness with cutting remarks. She'd curled her lips at smiling faces. She'd twisted every thoughtful, considerate act into an assault. Everyone who was nice to her, who was compassionate and loving, she rebuffed.
Because she'd loved them. Loved them with all her heart, and wouldn't see them hurt. Because she'd known all her life that the surest way to hurt someone, to maim and cripple them, was to be kind. If people were exposed, they die. Best to teach them to be armored, even if it meant she herself was forever alone. Sealed off from human touch. — Louise Penny

PATER PROFUNDUS. [Far below] The chasm at my feet, dark, yawning, Rests on a chasm deeper still, A thousand streams, their waters joining, In a cascade terrific fall; The tree's own life, its strength from nature, Its trunk lifts skywards straight and tall - All, all, show love's almighty power That shapes all things, cares for them all. The storm breaks round me, fiercely howling, The woods, ravines, all seem to quake, 12240 And yet, swelled by the deluge falling, The torrent plunges down the rock To water lovingly the valley; The lightning burns the overcast And clears the air, now smelling freshly, Of all its foulness, dankness, mist - All love proclaim! the creating power By which the whole world is embraced. Oh kindle, too, in me your fire, Whose thoughts, disordered, cold, depressed, 12250 Inside the cage of dull sense languish, Tormented, helpless, hard beset! Dear God, relieve my spirit's anguish, My needy heart illuminate! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Friendship is a priceless gift, that cannot be bought or sold, but it's value is far greater than a mountain made of gold. For gold is cold and lifeless, it can neither see nor hear. And in time of trouble it is powerless to cheer. It has no ears to listen, no heart to understand, it cannot bring you comfort or reach out a helping hand. So when you ask God for a gift, be thankful if he sends, not diamonds, pearls, or riches, but the love of real true friends. Thank you my friends for being in my life! — Natalie

But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart. — Gustave Flaubert

Instead, he uttered another complaint. "You're allowing a dusty old book to control your destiny!" A book controlling me? Heat shot to my temples. I shifted in my saddle to face him fully. "Understand this, Your Majesty, there's been a lot of effort to control my life, but it hasn't come from books! Look a little further back! A kingdom that betrothed me to an unknown prince controlled my destiny. A Komizar who commandeered my voice controlled my destiny. And a young king who would force protection on me thought he would control my destiny. Make no mistake about it, Rafe. I am choosing my destiny now - not a book, nor a man or a kingdom. If my goals and heart coincide with something in an old dusty book, so be it. I choose to serve this goal, just as you are free to choose yours!" I lowered my voice and added with cold certainty, "I promise you, King Jaxon, if Morrighan falls, Dalbreck will be next, and then every other kingdom on the continent until the Komizar has consumed them all. — Mary E. Pearson

One bitter time of mourning, I remember, When day, and night, my sad heart did complain, My life, I said, was one cold, bleak December, And all its pleasures, were but whited pain ... — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

He always maintained that we fear something because we recognize it as fearsome through rational inferences, and that only the reason had any power; the heart had none. While I ate well and drank well, he kept demonstrating to me the advantages of reason... In striving after the positive, the poor man had argued away all life's splendour, all the sunbeams, all the faith and all the flowers, leaving nothing but the cold, positive grave. — Heinrich Heine

Falling in love is like getting hit by a truck and yet not being mortally wounded. just sick to your stomach, high one minute, low the next. Starving hungry but unable to eat. hot, cold, forever horny, full of hope and enthusiasm, with momentary depressions that wipe you out.
It is also not being able to remove the smile from your face, loving life with a mad passionate intensity, and feeling ten years younger.
Love does not appear with any warning signs. You fall into it as if pushed from a high diving board. No time to think about what's happening. It's inevitable. An event you can't control. A crazy, heart-stopping, roller-coaster ride that just has to take its course. — Jackie Collins

Instructions for freedom:
1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.
2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.
3. The day is ending, it's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.
4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. You are being here is God's response, let go and watch the stars came out, in the inside and in the outside.
5. With all your heart ask for Grace and let go.
6. With all your heart forgive him, forgive yourself and let him go.
7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering then, let go.
8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cold night, let go.
9. When the Karma of a relationship is done, only Love remains. It's safe, let go.
10. When the past has past from you at last, let go.. then, climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Won't you come with me she said, there's plenty of room in my iron bed. You're looking cold and tired and a little hmna. I know I'm not part of the life you had planned, but I think once your body feels my hand your mind will change and your heart will lose its pain. — Cowboy Junkies

I am someone who has a cold heart. If I am beside a great grief I throw barriers up so the loss cannot go too deep or too far. There is a wall instantly in place, and it will not fall. — Michael Ondaatje

I KNOW HE'S GONE. I CAN STILL FEEL THE LINGERING pain from the new scar on my leg. I might never stop feeling that; it could be with me for the rest of my life.
I have to try.
I fall to my knees in the mud next to Eight's body. The wound doesn't even look so bad. There's not as much blood as there was in New Mexico, and Eight lived through that. I should be able to heal this, right? It should work. It has to work. But this one is right on his heart, straight through. I press my hands across the puncture and will my Legacy to kick in. I did it before. I can do it again. I have to.
Nothing happens. I feel cold all over, but it's not the iciness of my Legacy.
I wish I could lie down next to Eight here in the muck and just shut out everything that's going on around me. I'm not even crying - it's like the tears have gone out of me and I just feel hollow. — Pittacus Lore

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away. — Graham Greene

Nevertheless, despite his deep concerns, in the end Owen concludes: "It is better that our affections exceed our light from the defect of our understandings, than that our light exceed our affections from the corruption of our wills."296 That's a remarkable thing for a Puritan to say. If we are going to be imbalanced, better that we be doctrinally weak and have a vital prayer life and a real sense of God on the heart than that we get all our doctrine straight and be cold and spiritually hard. — Timothy Keller

Sometimes she'd go a whole day without thinking of him or missing him. Why not? She had quite a full life, and really, he'd often been hard to deal with and hard to live with. A project, the Yankee oldtimers like her very own Dad might have said. And then sometimes a day would come, a gray one (or a sunny one) when she missed him so fiercely she felt empty, not a woman at all anymore but just a dead tree filled with cold November blow. She felt like that now, felt like hollering his name and hollering him home, and her heart turned sick with the thought of the years ahead and she wondered what good love was if it came to this, to even ten seconds of feeling like this. — Stephen King

I was lying, but I wanted to rouse him. I have an inborn urge to contradict; my whole life has been a mere chain of sad and futile opposition to the dictates of either heart or reason. The presence of an enthusiast makes me as cold as a midwinter's day, and, I believe, frequent association with a listless phlegmatic would make me an impassioned dreamer. — Mikhail Lermontov

Cause I don't wanna be a witness to this life,
I want to be charged and convicted,
ear lifted to her song like a bouquet of yes
because my heart is a parachute that has never opened in time
and I wanna fuck up that pattern,
leave a hole where the cold comes in and fill it every day with her sun,
'cause anyone who has ever sat in lotus for more than a few seconds
knows it takes a hell of a lot more muscle to stay than to go — Andrea Gibson

LULL
(November, 1939)

The winds of hatred blow
Cold, cold across the flesh
And chill the anxious heart;
Intricate phobias grow
From each malignant wish
To spoil collective life.
Now each man stands apart.

We watch opinion drift,
Think of our separate skins.
On well-upholstered bums
The generals cough and shift
Playing with painted pins.
The arbitrators wait;
The newsmen suck their thumbs.
The mind is quick to turn
Away from simple faith
To the cant and fury of
Fools who will never learn;
Reason embraces death,
While out of frightened eyes
Still stares the wish to love. — Theodore Roethke