Corner Or Quotes & Sayings

For the entire earth is but a point, and the place of your own habitation but a minute corner in it. ( ... ) Remember then to withdraw into the little field of self. Above all, never struggle or strain; but be master of yourself. — Marcus Aurelius

I rushed to the bathroom for every corner of the hospital was suffocating. I got hold of acid-bottle, which was meant for toilet cleaning. As I took it into my hands, I realized I had more filth inside me than a toilet. A toilet could be cleaned by an acid bottle, or a toilet cleaner, but there was no such product that could cleanse a criminal from inside. I felt so ashamed of myself that I couldn't even look into the eyes of my reflection in the mirror on the wall. — Mehek Bassi

Somehow I've been able to keep standing and stay in my little corner and do my little stuff and I'm not particularly affected by trends or I'm not dying to make a 3D movie or anything like that. I'm just sort of happy to still be around. — George A. Romero

From books, I winnowed the glue that held together my psyche as it struggled to stay whole. It was from stories and myths that I learned to dream, to imagine a different life, to realize potentials and probabilities other than those of the painful, poverty-mired existence I found myself in as a child. With a book I could hide in a corner, safe from the heavy hand and belt of my stepfather, and for a while not worry about where our next meal would come from, or where we would be sleeping that night, or when my mother would break and have to be sent yet again to the mental institution. Books, for me, we tiny life rafts that I clung to desperately. — J. Don Cook

The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. — Christopher Lasch

The event that will light the way for immigration in North America is the talking picture. The silent film brings nothing but entertainment - a pie in the face, a fop being dragged by a bear out of a department store - all events governed by fate and timing, not language and argument. The tramp never changes the opinion of the policeman. The truncheon swings, the tramp scuttles through a corner window and disturbs the fat lady's ablutions. These comedies are nightmares. The audience emits horrified laughter as Chaplin, blindfolded, rollerskates near the edge of the unbalconied mezzanine. No one shouts to warn him. He cannot talk or listen. North America is still without language, gestures and work and bloodlines are the only currency. — Michael Ondaatje

Do you believe in spirits? Or ghosts? ... Yes, I do. I believe in ghosts ... They're the ones who haunt us. The ones who have left us behind."
"Vivian has come back to the idea that the people who matter in our lives stay with us, haunting our ordinary moments. They're with us in the grocery store, as we turn the corner, chat with a friend. They rise up through the pavement; we absorb them through our soles."
"The things that matter stay with you, seep into your skin. — Christina Baker Kline

The statute of limitations . . . She's put it behind her. Or I hope she has. She'd have put it behind her, Eve thought, but it was always behind you. In a corner, in the dark. Squatting there behind you and chuckling in its throat. — J.D. Robb

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate
And though I oft have passed them by
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Competition is. In every business, no matter how small or how large, someone is just around the corner forever trying to steal your ideas and build his success out of your imagination, struggling after that which you have toiled endless years to secure, striving to outdo you in each and every way. If such a competitor would work as hard to originate as he does to copy, he would much more quickly gain success. — Alice Foote MacDougall

Nothing is more false than the notion that the triumph of Communism is inevitable or that the Communists are steadily pushing the free world into a corner. — Robert Kennedy

If you corner him there will be bloodshed. And I do not like bloodshed.'
Dorin arched a brow. 'Really. You don't like bloodshed.'
'No. It's messy and unsophisticated. There are better ways of doing things.'
'Such as?'
Wu brightened, flashed his yellowed crooked teeth. 'My ways. Lying, trickery, deceit, cheating, or just plain patience. He will come to us. — Ian C. Esslemont

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant. The rest been lived already, or is impossible to see. The span we live is small - small as the corner of the earth in which we live it. — Marcus Aurelius

There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, then allies would be invented. When it was utterly impossible to contrive such an interest - why, then it was the national honor that had been insulted. The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors, always fighting for a breathing space. The whole world was pervaded by a host of enemies, and it was manifestly Rome's duty to guard against their indubitably aggressive designs. They were enemies who only waited to fall on the Roman people. — Joseph Alois Schumpeter

Sunshine, I ... Starla's voice broke off as she entered the room and caught sight of him standing naked in the corner. She eyed him in an odd, detached way, as if he were an interesting piece of furniture.
Talon and modesty were strangers, but the way she stared at him made him damned uncomfortable. In spite of the sunlight, Talon grabbed the pink blanket off the bed and clutched it to his middle.
You know, Sunshine, you need to find a man like that to marry. Someone so well hung that even after three or four kids, he'd still be wall to wall.
Talon gaped.
Sunshine laughed. Starla, you're embarrassing him. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

It is all very well to have some internal sense of oneself as an individual, but that sense must correspond to an external reality. Part of that external reality is property. The fact that something belongs to me and not to everyone increases my sense of myself as someone in particular. For Hegel that sense of individual particularity is intrinsic to the modern moral order. Indeed "the right of the subject's particularity to find satisfaction, or
to put it differently
the right of subjective freedom, is the pivotal and focal point in the difference between antiquity and the modern age." The fact that others do not take my property
that they regard it as mine
is also a way in which they recognize me as an individual. It is precisely this recognition that the slave, the bondsman, and the serf lack. That the right to own private property, to control some corner of the world, is universal in the modern state is for Hegel part of its glory. (p. 155) — Jerry Z. Muller

Love is like the little red toy wagon you get for your Christmas or your sixth birthday. It makes you deliriously happy and you just can't leave it alone. But sooner or later the wheels come off. Then you leave it in a corner and forget it. Falling in love is great. Being in love is a disaster — Mario Puzo

Lines and Squares
Whenever I walk in a London street,
I'm ever so careful to watch my feet;
And I keep in the squares,
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines of the street,
Go back to their lairs,
And I say to them, "Bears,
Just look how I'm walking in all of the squares!"
And the little bears growl to each other, "He's mine,
As soon as he's silly and steps on a line."
And some of the bigger bears try to pretend
That they came round the corner to look for a friend;
And they try to pretend that nobody cares
Whether you walk on the lines or squares.
But only the sillies believe their talk;
It's ever so portant how you walk.
And it's ever so jolly to call out, "Bears,
Just watch me walking in all the squares! — A.A. Milne

Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife. Their house was small, for the lumber to build it had to be carried by wagon many miles. There were four walls, a floor and a roof, which made one room; and this room contained a rusty looking cookstove, a cupboard for the dishes, a table, three or four chairs, and the beds. Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had a big bed in one corner, and Dorothy a little bed in another corner. There was no garret at all, and no cellar - except a small hole dug in the ground, called a cyclone cellar, where the family could go in case one of those great whirlwinds arose, mighty enough to crush any building in its path. It was reached by a trap door in the middle of the floor, from which a ladder led down into the small, dark hole. — L. Frank Baum

Sometimes our thoughts turn back toward a corner in a forest, or the end of a bank, or an orchard powdered with flowers, seen but a single time on some happy day, yet remaining in our hearts and leaving in soul and body an unappeased desire which is not to be forgotten, a feeling that we have just rubbed elbows with happiness. — Guy De Maupassant

Many of us spend our early years in unconscious flight from our true purpose, only to run smack into it at last, like a fleeing movie heroine who backs around a corner - we know what comes next - and turns abruptly to find herself face to face with her nemesis, or, more often, her deliverance. — Carey Harrison

We don't lump people by groups or special interests. And let me add, in the party of Lincoln there is no room for intolerance and not even a small corner for anti-Semitism or bigotry of any kind. Many people are welcome in our house, but not the bigots. — Ronald Reagan

Whether we had a (good) moral intuition more developed, we would be as much morally disgusted by the rapacity of those who try to benefit from, and monopolize (or secure or corner), having no consideration (regardless or irrespective of) for others ("autrui", Fr.), than we physically are by a sickening (or nauseating) smell. — African Spir

I grew up in one of the biggest high schools in the world, and that's the Disney Channel. Everybody was falling in love with each other or not liking each other, and it was exhausting and I was the shy one in the corner. And now I'm so opinionated, and I don't have time for the cattiness. I have good people around me, and I'm glad I'm at the place I'm in. I wish I was there back then. — Selena

In the far corner, a tenor began to sing, Zsadist's crystal-clear voice sailing up toward the warrior paintings on the ceiling far, far above them all. At first John didn't know what the song was ... although if he'd been asked what his name was, he would have said Santa Claus, or Luther Vandross, or Teddy Roosevelt.
Maybe even Joan Collins. — J.R. Ward

I received a letter just before I left office from a man. I don't know why he chose to write it, but I'm glad he did. He wrote that you can go to live in France, but you can't become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Italy, but you can't become a German, an Italian. He went through Turkey, Greece, Japan and other countries. But he said anyone, from any corner of the world, can come to live in the United States and become an American. — Ronald Reagan

After that really, I spent the majority of the spring going to tons and tons of regional festivals throughout America. Every corner of the country, I took the movie to twenty film festivals or something to that extent. I've lost track. Probably done Q&As 40-50 times at this point. It's always hard to watch something I've made, but I've got a little more objectivity and kind of see the film as not just an extension of myself. — James Ponsoldt

Don't you want to know my name?" he asked, grabbing the ketchup bottle without taking his eyes off of me.
"Sure. What's your name?"
"You don't sound genuinely interested."
"I'm not begging if that's what you're waiting for."
Throwing his head back, he let out a deep rolling laugh before focusing his dark gaze on me again. "I wouldn't mind seeing you beg," he said then added when I frowned, "Cooper."
"Anyone ever call you Coop the Poop or Poopy Coopy?" I asked, messing with him because his iron stare made me nervous.
"No," he muttered.
"Not to your face anyway."
A smile lifted the corner of his mouth and his gaze softened. "No, not to my face."
"I guess there are benefits to being scary. — Bijou Hunter

I suppose you'll want to see the aliens now," he said. "Do you want me to sit in a corner and rust, or just fall apart where I'm standing? — Douglas Adams

to investigate the faltering and uneven spread of globalising capital in one small corner of the world, attempting to appreciate the meanings this has for everyday lives, whether via neoliberal techniques of control and governance, shifts in the relative access of different groups to resources, or complex and localised power plays. The wider context: of national contestations over natural resources, the shape of economic development and the relationship between Bangladesh and foreign interests is ever present. — Katy Gardner

Whether your characters journey daily to a distant moon or just down the street to the corner bar, what matters to the reader is the singular event that distinguishes one such voyage from all the others and makes for a story worth telling. — Peter Selgin

He thumbed quickly through the ledger and said, "When people see a cripple walking down the street, leaning on his cane, what do they feel?" Wylan looked away. People always did when Kaz talked about his limp, as if he didn't know what he was or how the world saw him. "They feel pity. Now, what do they think when they see me coming?"
Wylan's mouth quirked up at the corner. "They think they'd better cross the street."
Kaz tossed the ledger back in the safe. "You're not weak because you can't read. You're weak because you're afraid of people seeing your weakness. You're letting shame decide who you are. — Leigh Bardugo

Maholtz asked me, "Why do you hate me?"
I said, Everyone hates you.
"I know," he said. "I know that," he said, "but they hate me cause I scared them or had what they wanted. You weren't ever scarend of me. You never wanted what I had. Except for the sap. And then you took it, and now I don't have it, so why do you hate me?"
Maybe it's your accent.
"I'm from Pinttsburgh," he said.
Maybe you shouldn't be.
"I can't help where I'm from."
We turned at Main Hall. Feld was talking to Forrest Kenilworth and Cody. The chair sat dripping in front of the door.
So maybe it's your face. The way you look at girls like you're scheming to corner them.
"I was borng this way, though. I can't help how my face loonks."
So maybe it's all the banced thing that you say.
"They just come out of me. I'm hated, I feel it. I say those things without thinking, from hurnt. I can't help that either. It's not my faulnt."
I guess, then, I hate you for being so helpless. — Adam Levin

Memory is a wilful dog. It won't be summoned or dismissed but it cannot survive without you. It can sustain you or feed on you. It visits when it is hungry, not when you are. It has a schedule all of its own that you can never know. It can capture, corner you or liberate you. It can leave you howling and it can make you smile. — Elliot Perlman

I feel like half the battle is not giving up and staying positive. If you don't have anyone in your corner or anyone in your ear, being positive helps you believe that you can get through it. — LaMarcus Aldridge

There is no corner too quiet, or too far away, for a woman to make sorrow in it. — Amelia Barr

You know, you're not so bad when you try to be nice."
"It's not easy." He looked down as he brought the end of the towel around his hip. "Damn thing's pink."
The corner of her mouth twitched. "You're man enough to carry it off. Or are you afraid you aren't pretty in pink?"
"Baby, I'm so pretty in pink, I'm worried you won't be able to help yourself. — Carolyn Jewel

Every new generation of LGBT Americans needs to be inspired by leaders who come out - whether in Congress, the nonprofit sector, the NFL, or corner offices of Fortune 100 companies, — Anthony Romero

The potential for loss of soul
to one degree or another
is the affliction of a society that as a collective has lost its sense of the holy, of a culture that values everything else above the spiritual. We live in such a spiritually impoverished culture
and in such a time. Loss of soul, to one degree or another, is a constant teasing possibility. We are invited at every corner to hedge on the truth, indulge outselves, act as if our words and actions have no ultimate consequence, make an absolute of the material world, and treat the spiritual world as if it were some kind of frothy, angelic fantasy. In such a world the soul struggles for survival; in such a world a man can lose his own soul and have the whole culture support him, and in such a world, conversely, the light of a single, great soul that lives in integrity can truly illumine the world. — Daphne Rose Kingma

He knew that her body was his to engage in all the acrobatics he had learned in the books he kept hidden in a corner of his library, but with Clara even the most abominable contortions were like the thrashings of a newborn; it was impossible to spice them up with the salt of evil or the pepper of submission. — Isabel Allende

Awkward conversations. They're the heart of the drug trade. The driving force that keeps criminals out of jail is paranoia. You can think you know people, but the truth is, you never know who they're talking to. The life of an outlaw: Around every corner lies a cop. In every basement waits a bust. Every friend is the guy who sells you out to keep his own ass out of jail. Sure, it was rare, but you just never knew.
The result was a series of shorthand and euphemisms so obscure even the pros often weren't sure what they were talking about. Sales became pickups. Pot, ganja, bud, or weed became lettuce, green, happy, herb, smoke... the list went on, and changed from dealer to dealer. — Daniel Younger

From his youth on , he had been accustomed to people's passing him and taking no notice of him whatever , not out contempt -as hehad once believed - But because they were quite unaware of his existence. There was no space surrounding him, no waves broke from him into the atmosphere, as with other people; he had no shadow, so to speak, to cast across another's face. Only if he ran right into someone in a crowd or in a street-corner collision would there be a brief moment of discernment; and th person en countered would bounce off and stare at him for a few seconds as if gazing at a creature that ought not even exist, a creature that, although undeniably there, in some way or other was not present- and would take to his heels and have forgotten him, Grenouille, a moment later ....... — Patrick Suskind

For guys and girls equally . . . there's just so many people. And there's someone around the corner or uptown or downtown who you might like just a fraction better than the person who's across from you right now. — Aziz Ansari

My necessities were books. I read a book at school, another to and from school, yet another at the beach, which was the closest escape from my father's dying. Though when I walked alone it was far. Though I wasn't allowed to walk alone when younger - so young that my concern wasn't the danger to myself but to the books I'd bring, because they weren't mine, they were everyone's, entrusted to me in return for exemplary behavior, and if I lost even a single book, or let even its corner get nicked by a jitney, the city would come, the city itself, and lock me up in that grim brick jail that, in every feature, resembled the library. — Joshua Cohen

To me, the simplest gift that a husband or a wife can do for their partner is to remind them of their precious visions, goals and dreams. What a gift that is to have a voice of reason right in your corner when you sometimes need a little nudge to get back on track. To have a team player to cheer you on and to support your efforts is indeed a massive present from the universe. Whomever has such a gift should surely treasure and protect it for all its worth. It's worth is invaluable to the world. — Sereda Aleta Dailey

A subterranean murmur. It may sound like one of the many separate voices that make up the sounds of a creek. Or it may come in code, oblique and sneaky, creeping in from around the corner. — Anne Lamott

Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor is it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape - political, economic, social, even geographical - is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event. — Fernand Braudel

The thing is, once a person's got their base, people they know they can trust in their corner, it makes dealing with everything else easier. It doesn't matter if you've got one or ten you can rely on. If they're there, you can face the rest of the crowd a lot easier. You don't have to be defensive with the world at large because you know at the end of the day, your real friends aren't far away." And — Rhenna Morgan

So-called real life has only once interfered with me, and it had been a far cry from what the words, lines, books had prepared me for. Fate had to do with blind seers, oracles, choruses announcing death, not with panting next to the refrigerator, fumbling with condoms, waiting in a Honda parked round the corner and surreptitious encounters in a Lisbon hotel. Only the written word exists, everything one must do oneself is without form, subject to contingency without rhyme or reason. It takes too long. And if it ends badly the metre isn't right, and there's no way to cross things out. — Cees Nooteboom

Why did you come back? 'Tis not safe." "I came back to finish what we last started." Did he mean their near embrace in the barn? Before Pa came in? His mouth was warm against her ear, his fingers stroking her hair, which frayed at the touch of his callused hand. "I came back to ask you to be my wife." The words, so long wished for, were every bit as sweet as she'd hoped they'd be. But here in this shadowed corner, with Pa so ill ... "Do you love me? Or do you feel pity for me, alone, almost fatherless?" "Not pity, Morrow. Love. The love between a man and a woman." Her lips parted in a sort of wonder. "Have you ever been in love?" "Not till now ... not till you." "Then how can you be ... sure?" "I know my mind, my heart. — Laura Frantz

He had got a good start on another book, Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. I stood until he finished a paragraph, shut the book on a finger, and looked the question. "Twenty grand," I told him. "The DA wanted fifty, so I'm stepping high. One of the dicks was pretty good, he nearly backed me into a corner on the overalls, but I got loose. No mention of Saul or Fred or Orrie, so they haven't hit on them and now they probably won't. I signed two different statements ten hours apart, but they're welcome to them. The status quo has lost no hide. If there's nothing urgent I'll go up and attend to my hide. I had a one-hour nap with a dick standing by. As for eating, what's lunch? — Rex Stout

Our eyes meet. Am I mistaken or does the corner of her mouth tuck in ever so slightly and the petal of her lower lip curl out ever so richly? She is smiling-at me! My mind hits upon half a dozen schemes to circumvent the terrible moment of separation. No doubt she is a Texan. They are nearly always bad judges of men, these splendid Amazons. Most men are afraid of them and so they fall victim to the first little Mickey Rooney that comes along. In a better world I should be able to speak to her: come, darling, you can see that I love you. If you are planning to meet some little Mickey, think better of it. What a tragedy it is that I do not know her, will probably never see her again. What good times we could have! — Walker Percy

She paused, frowning as she sifted through her memories. "I think it was my mother who said it, that Kathleen married Frank Dunn just so she could leave Haverhill. I remember thinking at the time that that must have been a powerful desire she had, to see more of the world."
Or a powerful desire to get away from her small of corner of it, Chad was thinking. — Johanna Lindsey

Maybe I had been making a greater monster of him than he really was, or maybe I was still under his influence, for I was certain that he wanted me to believe he was no more than a harmless man who happened to use vampirism to get what he desired. Some remnant of his mesmerism was still upon me. I had never been able to shake the feeling that he was tucked away in a corner of my mind, that he could read my thoughts, know what I was thinking. He had done something to me, but what that was, I had never been able to discover. All I knew was that the feeling had been with me since the morning I woke up and found myself in Venice. — Melika Dannese Lux

The dilemma I was faced with was one every parent faces sooner or later: you want to defend your child, of course; you stand up for your child, but you mustn't do it all too vehemently, and above all not too eloquently - you mustn't drive anyone into a corner. The educators, the teachers, will let you have your say, but afterwards they'll take revenge on your child. You may come up with better arguments - it's not too hard to come up with better arguments than the educators, the teachers - but in the end, your child to going to pay for it. Their frustration at being shown up is something they'll take out on the student. — Herman Koch

Confidence is necessary to charisma. No one's going to like the kid quietly sitting in the corner, because there's no reason to. They haven't done anything memorable or exciting. People love a trendsetter or a rebel. These — Virginia Patel

When you think you can stand no more of the wolf's snuffing under the door and keening softly on cold nights, throw discretion into the laundry bag, put candles on the table, and for your own good if not the pleasure of an admiring audience make one or another of the recipes in this chapter. And buy yourself a bottle of wine, or make a few cocktails, or have a long open-hearted discussion of cheeses with the man on the corner who is an alien but still loyal if bewildered. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

Clovenhoof looked at the man critically. He wasn't what Clovenhoof regarded as a proper plumber. This young man's jeans were secured with a belt above the bum-crack line, there wasn't a cigarette poking out of the corner of his mouth or tucked behind his ear and, when he spoke to Clovenhoof, he didn't address him as 'guv'nor'. — Heide Goody

Chavez will hit the canvas. He will be sitting in his corner, or with the doctor or referee stopping the fight. There's no other outcome. — Sergio Martinez

And in that very moment, away behind in some far corner of the city, a cock crowed. Shrill and clear he crowed reckoning nothing of wizardry or war, welcoming only the morning that in the sky far above the shadows of death was coming with the dawn. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Don't be led away to think this part of the world important and that unimportant. Every corner of the world is important. No man knows whether this part or that is most so, but every man may do some honest work in his own corner. — Thomas Hughes

I'm blessed to come from a family with five brothers. We're all physical and athletic and like to work out, like to be outside, like to throw the ball around. We spent our entire childhoods on some kind of corner or in a field. We still do a Turkey Bowl every Thanksgiving. It gets competitive, man. Bloody. — Danny Pino

In terms of foods for me, I think I have more of the usual associations - foods from childhood that I associate with care and love, from relatives or special restaurants like the kind elderly man who dusted seasoning salt on French fries at the corner burger joint. — Aimee Bender

If I had to choose between putting a saloon or a liberal church on a corner, I'd choose the saloon every time. People who drink up the pay check in the saloon are less likely to become Pharisees, thinking that they don't need the Great Physician, than those who weekly swill the soporific doctrine of man's goodness. — Jay Adams

I hate going anywhere. I'm really excited to travel and play all these different places, but if I had it my way, I would stay inside, maybe go to the back garden or walk around the corner to the shops. That's it. — Courtney Barnett

Bring your lips closer until they're touching mine." When I did, the heat was electric. "Can you feel that?" he asked, moving his lips from one corner of my mouth to the other. "That's the chemistry between man and woman. It doesn't need to be forced. You shouldn't overthink what to do with your mouth or tongue - give in to your instincts. — Dannika Dark

He did not know how long it took, but later he looked back on this time of crying in the corner of the dark cave and thought of it as when he learned the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn't work. It wasn't just that it was wrong to do, or that it was considered incorrect. It was more than that
it didn't work. — Gary Paulsen

The common where we had walked the previous evening was a deserted tract of land, typical of Surrey, looking as if it might be miles from any habitation, while only a few deciduous trees divided it from country studded with bungalows. Some of the land showed traces of heath fires, charred roots and stones lying about on the blackened ground. Walking there was not at all like being in the country. Agriculture seemed as remote as in a London street. This waste land might have been some walled-in space in the suburbs where business men practised golfstrokes; or the corner of a cinema studio used for shooting wilderness scenes. It had neither memories of the past nor hope for the future. — Anthony Powell

Amos and Naomi were at a table in a corner. No sign of Alex. No sign of Holden. That made it easier. Not easy, but closer. He made his way toward them. Naomi saw him first, and Miller read the discomfort in her expression, covered over as quickly as it appeared. Amos turned to see what she'd been reacting to, and the corners of his mouth and eyes didn't shift into a frown or a smile. Miller scratched his arm even though it didn't itch. — James S.A. Corey

Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role? — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Emperor's Soul pg 123:
Attempts to Forge the window to a better version of itself had repeatedly failed; each time, after five minutes or so, the window had reverted to its cracked, gap-sided self.
Then Shai had found a bit of colored glass rammed into one side of the frame. The window, she realized, had once been a stained glass piece, like many in the palace. It had been broken, and whatever had shattered the window had also bent the frame, producing those gaps that let in the frigid breeze.
Rather than repairing it as it had been meant to be, someone had put ordinary glass into the window and left it to crack. A stamp from Shai in the bottom right corner had stored the window, rewriting its history so that a caring master craftsman had discovered the fallen window and remade it. That seal had taken immediately. Even after ll this time, the window had seen itself as something beautiful. — Brandon Sanderson

I trusted her not to be careless with my heart or with my feelings. I trusted her to understand and to accept what might be broken or imperfect. In some dusty corner there may be things I tossed away, forgotten, things that might once have shamed me. I trusted her with those things too. I trusted her to accept me as she found me and to love me as I was, as I loved her. — Catherine M. Wilson

And I couldn't take my eyes off Pete. He ate dinner like he always did, in three or four huge, whoofing bites, before heading back out front to his cone of warmth, his coffee, his cigarettes, and ghostly tunes piping from his little transistor radio. And most important, to whatever thoughts drowned out the voices of his own family saying "hello" and "happy holidays."
I watched him because I couldn't believe that could be anyone's comfortable horizon. A tiny porch on a dark corner near a highway. We lucked out living on a planet made thrilling by billions of years of chance, catastrophe, miracles, and disaster, and he'd rejected it. You're offered the world every morning when you open your eyes. I was beginning to see Pete as a representative of all the people who shut that out, through cynicism, religion, fear, greed, or ritual. — Patton Oswalt

I really don't see any men sitting in the corner office plotting to keep women out. All the men I know are actively trying to promote women, to get more women involved. These men have wives they care about; they have daughters they desperately care about. So I don't think it's fair to blame men - or I don't think it's accurate to blame men anymore. — Debora Spar

There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion. — Alan Watts

I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heat of the known awaits just around the corner. — Alex Webb

She was plain and far from skinny or petite. As for parties ... she'd rather be alone in a corner somewhere reading. She hated being nice to people she didn't like because her father wanted contributions. She hated being fake. All she wanted was to be herself. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Since most startups operate at a break-neck pace, with a concept to prove or a product to launch within a rapidly shortening runway of financing, company culture often gets shoved aside. This is a big, big mistake: Nobody serious about their business should put culture in the corner. — Leah Busque

The difference lies in the fact that in Istanbul the remains of a glorious past civilization are everywhere visible. No matter how ill-kept, no matter how neglected or hemmed in they are by concrete monstrosities, the great mosques and other monuments of the city, as well as the lesser detritus of empire in every side street and corner - the little arches, fountains, and neighborhood mosques - inflict heartache on all who live among them. These — Orhan Pamuk

Maybe she's helping him because his hands are full," Lydia suggested.
The girl kissed a trace of chocolate from the corner of his mouth.
"Or not. — Diana Peterfreund

Fear that I was very different from everyone else. Fear that deep down inside I was a shallow fraud, that after the revolution or after Jesus came down to straighten everything out, everyone from hippies to hard-hats would unfold and blossom into the beautiful people they were while I would remain a gnarled little wart in the corner, oozing bile and giving off putrid smells. — Mark Vonnegut

There are very few persons who would think of inquiring into the private life of the newspaper dealer at the corner, or the druggist, or the doctor, or even a Mah Jong partner, but the moment one belongs to the theatrical profession, the public usually feels cheated unless it knows one's inmost thoughts of love. — Marie Dressler

Yoga, as a way of life and a philosophy, can be practiced by anyone with inclination to undertake it, for yoga belongs to humanity as a whole. It is not the property of any one group or any one individual, but can be followed by any and all, in any corner of the globe, regardless of class, creed or religion. — K. Pattabhi Jois

Most people would not trust a drunken prostitute like Daise. Would you have two weeks ago?'
She blinked at him. 'I don't know.' She hadn't even thought about prostitutes, drunken or not, two weeks ago. 'That could be me on the corner were things different.' She swallowed. 'Or if they go differently, it still could. I would want someone to believe me. — Anne Mallory

Most cops are not looking for understanding. They work in a world filled with a sense - real or imagined - of danger lurking around each corner and every hallway. Most cops are merely looking for respect. — Mike Barnicle

And eventually there is no one left in the world except people who don't look at other people's faces and who don't know what these pictures mean and these people are all special people like me. And they like being on their own and I hardly ever see them because they are like okapi in the jungle in the Congo, which are a kind of antelope and very shy and rare. And I can go anywhere in the world and I know that no one is going to talk to me or touch me or ask me a question. But if I don't want to go anywhere I don't have to, and I can stay at home and eat broccoli and oranges and licorice laces all the time, or I can play computer games for a whole week, or I can just sit in the corner of the room and rub £1 coin back and forward over the ripple shapes on the surface of the radiator. And I wouldn't have to go to France. — Mark Haddon

My goal is to achieve a little less injustice in Uruguay, to help the most vulnerable and to leave behind a political way of thinking, a way of looking at the future that will be passed on and used to move forward. There's nothing short-term, no victory around the corner. I will not achieve paradise or anything like that. What I want is to fight for the common good to progress. Life slips by. The way to prolong it is for others to continue your work. — Jose Mujica

Open your eyes and look for some man, or some work for the sake of men, which needs a little time, a little friendship, a little sympathy, a little sociability, a little human toil ... It is needed in every nook and corner. Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity. — Albert Schweitzer

There seems to be a different Chicago around every street corner, behind every bar, and within every apartment, two-flat, cottage, or bungalow. City of immigrants or city of heartless plutocrats, say what you will, Chicago almost defies interpretation. In many ways Chicago is like a snake that sheds its skin every thirty years or so and puts on a new coat to conform to a new reality. — Dominic A. Pacyga

Never coming back here, she thought.
With a groan, she levered herself into a sitting position and discovered a painful crick in her neck. Never ever. She launched herself off the bed and limped over to the door and put here eye to the viewer, was treated to a fish-eye view of a small, dapper, well-dressed man holding a bunch of white roses.
Okay. Man with flowers. Carey looked around the room. The windows opened on short tethers so guests couldn't throw furniture or each other out into the street, and she was too high to jump anyway. She looked around the room again, looking for possible weapons. There was a rickety-looking chair by the desk in the corner, but it would probably fall to bits even before she hit anyone with it. She looked through the viewer. The little man knocked again. Not urgently, not in an official we-have-come-to-take-you-to-the-gulag kind of way, but in the manner of a gentleman visiting his lady friend with a nice bunch of roses. — Dave Hutchinson

Patent lawyers had only lately ascended to the aristocracy of the American bar. Trained not just as lawyers but as scientists or engineers, and working in small, specialized firms, they were at one time rudely dismissed by corporate lawyers as gearheads in green eyeshades, not good enough at science to be scientists, nor sufficiently talented at law to be real lawyers. Then came the intellectual property revolution of the 1990s, and these onetime outcasts found themselves ruling the last vibrant corner of the American economy. — Paul Goldstein

By threatening war against Iran, Iraq and North Korea in his now-famous "Axis of Evil" address, the president painted himself into a corner. Either Bush now goes to war against one of these regimes, or he will be humiliated and exposed as a bellicose bluff. — Pat Buchanan

I have a group of cafes and coffee shops that I go to regularly. They usually have an area where I can plug in my computer and have a corner seat where I can do a couple hours of writing or whatever, even the noise of the surrounding people walking by. Those things are the things that stimulate me into writing. — Bong Joon-ho

When death stood round the corner, taking lives like a gardener digging up potatoes, it was foolishness to care what dirty things this person or that did with his body. — W. Somerset Maugham

For you see, Captain Flint, I, too, never settle for less than what I want. Or never thought I possibly could. I'm a Redmond. If only you truly understood what this means. So I set out to reorder the world in a way I thought would make me worthy of her love. But my quest has changed me in ways I never anticipated, and I'm not the man who once loved that girl. There's much more to my journey yet. And here's a bitter irony: I've found in becoming heroic, in becoming worthy of her, I've painted myself into an untenable corner. I've more work to do to prove someone's innocence or guilt. — Julie Anne Long

With that, I hurled the slipper at him, not caring if I caused his decapitation. (I did not.) Marshaling what little dignity I yet possessed, I stomped down the corridor - challenging indeed with one shoe - and around the corner. I lay awake for hours. The prince had no right, not one, to indict me so, and if I had held the slightest hope of the book's assistance, I would have climbed at once to my wizard room for a spell with which to punish him. Death, perhaps, or humiliation. A croaking frog would be nice, particularly a frog that retained Florian's dark eyes. I should keep it in a box and poke it occasionally with a stick; that would be satisfying indeed. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice - anything just to get a paper bag. And I'd write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook. — Jay-Z

About the Wi-Fi. Are you blind? Can you read, at all?" He points to a notice in the corner of the coffee shop, which is all about the Starbucks Wi-Fi code. Then he focuses on my dark glasses. "Are you blind? Or just subnormal?" "I'm not blind," I say, my voice trembling. "I was just asking. Sorry to bother you." "Fucking moron," he mutters as he starts tapping again. Tears are welling in my eyes, and as I back away, my legs are wobbly. But my chin is high. I'm determined I'm not going to dissolve. As I get back to the table, I force a kind of rictus grin onto my face. "I did it! — Sophie Kinsella

to follow one's instincts with due regard to the policeman round the corner, had not acted very well there: it was because Cronshaw had done this that he had made such a lamentable failure of existence. It seemed that the instincts could not be trusted. Philip was puzzled, and he asked himself what rule of life was there, if that one was useless, and why people acted in one way rather than in another. They acted according to their emotions, but their emotions might be good or bad; it seemed just a chance whether they led to triumph or disaster. Life seemed an inextricable confusion. Men hurried hither and thither, urged by forces they knew not; and the purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to hurry just for hurrying's sake. — William Somerset Maugham

I'm not sure anyone's ever experienced enlightenment, been born again, been called to repentance or decided to sell their belongings on account of a system. The voice, the tale, the image, the parable that gets through to you
that wins your heart
religiously is the one that makes it past your defenses. You've been won over, and you probably didn't see it coming. You've been enlisted into a drama, whether positively or negatively, and it shouldn't be controversial to note that it happens all the time. When you really think about it, there's one waiting around every corner. It's as near as the story, song or image you can't get out of your head. Religion happens when we get pulled in, moved, called out or compelled by something outside ourselves. It could be a car commercial, a lyric, a painting, a theatrical performance or the magnetic pull of an Apple store. The calls to worship are everywhere. — David Dark