Counter Words Quotes & Sayings

The store owner had settled himself behind the counter again and was reaching for his
book. "The journey will test your sanity." He spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as though
there were nothing extraordinary about his words. "And once you start walking down
that road, there is no turning back. You will start craving the rush. One can become
addicted to madness, you know. Develop a taste for it." He looked down at the book
in his hands, frowned and turned a page. — Natasha Mostert

I think technology is such that we can reach new heights but we need some of the basics of the pre-technological age. It's counter-productive to be able to type a hundred words a minute but not know what the words mean. — Larry Gelbart

One of Francie's favorite stores was the one which sold nothing but tea, coffee, and spices. It was an exciting place of rows of lacquered bins and strange, romantic, exotics odors. There were a dozen scarlet coffee bins with adventurous words written across the front in black China ink: Brazil! Argentine! Turkish! Java! Mixed Blend! The tea was in smaller bins: beautiful bins with sloping covers. They read: Oolong! Formosa! Orange Pekoe! Black China! Flowering Almond! Jasmine! Irish Tea! The spices were in miniature bins behind the counter. Their names marches in a row across the shelves: cinnamon
cloves
ginger
all-spice
ball nutmeg
curry
peppercorns
sage
thyme
marjoram. — Betty Smith

Las Vegas is Everymans cut-rate Babylon. Not far away there is, or was, a roadside lunch counter and over it a sign proclaiming in three words that a Roman emperors orgy is now a democratic institution. Topless Pizza Lunch. — Alistair Cooke

It was said that in the markets to the south of Taghaza salt was exchanged for its weight in gold, which was an exaggeration. The misconception comes from the West African style of silent barter noted by Herodotus and subsequently by many other Europeans. In the gold-producing regions of West Africa, a pile of gold would be set out, and a salt merchant would counter with a pile of salt, each side altering their piles until an agreement was reached. No words were exchanged during this process, which might take days. The salt merchants often arrived at night to adjust their piles and leave unseen. They were extremely secretive, not wanting to reveal the location of their deposits. From this it was reported in Europe that salt was exchanged in Africa for its weight in gold. But it is probable that the final agreed-upon two piles were never of equal weight. — Mark Kurlansky

She didn't know that all her life would be spent gambling with the stark rigidity of words, words that were coin: save, spend and all the time George with his own counter had found her a way out. — H.D.

Clearing his throat, he rumbled, "Miss Darling, a word if you please."
"Sesquipedalian," she said, keeping her back towards him.
The strange response momentarily stunned him. "Pardon?"
Turning around, she leaned against the counter and grinned at him, "You asked for a word and I gave you one. It means 'many syllabled' and while it's exceedingly pretentious it is a lot of fun to say. Sesquipedalian; it tangles up the tongue and then just falls right off.
"Or perhaps you would prefer a different word?" she continued guilelessly and he was completely charmed by her. "Tittle, which is the little dot over i's and j's; or Ornithopter, an aircraft that flies by flapping its wings; Tuatha De Danan Lora or Expector Patronum?"
"Now you're just making words up," he grinned, and realized he had missed talking to her. — A.C. Warneke

Whoever sides with the revolutionary people is a revolutionary. Whoever sides with imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism is a counter-revolutionary. Whomever sides with the revolutionary people in words only but acts otherwise is a revolutionary in speech. Whoever sides with the revolutionary people in deed as well as in word is a revolutionary in the full sense. — Mao Zedong

Culture is a vulture but there's also vulture culture and cultured vultures and cultured yougurt (cherry, peach, pear, pineapple, grape, vanilla, plain, cherry vanilla, pineapple orage, cranberry, orange, mandarin orange, coffee, apricot, raspberry, blueberry, boysenberry, prune). And speaking of vulture culture there's counter-culture and under-the-counter culture, too. But whether you call it kulchur with a k and a ch and without the e it's still the same thing and you can't disguise it with pretty frills and a gallon of dog sweat. It still has two syllables and TWO-SYLLABLE WORDS SUCK so you can just forgetit, man. It's no fun at all and even fun wouldn't be fun if it was called funjure or funion or funching. But somehow fucking is still loads of fun even though there's that extra 3-letter cluster of vowels and consonants. Proof positive that there are exceptions everywhere you look. But don't look too hard, you might get eyestrain. — Richard Meltzer

The British Army and Navy sang a rousing song called "Heart of Oak"; the rebels had writ one to counter it called "The Liberty Song." Both songs blustered of freedom; but both were sung to the same tune.
And we, to avoid offense, played the tune without words. — M T Anderson

It is difficult to believe that even idiots ever succumbed to such transparent contradictions, to such gaudy processions of mere counter-words, to so vast and obvious a nonsensicalitysentence after sentence that has no apparent meaning at all
stuff quite as bad as the worst bosh of Warren Gamaliel Harding. — H.L. Mencken

From my chair I had a clear view of Hobie's Noah's Ark: paired elephants, zebras, carven beasts marching two by two, clear down to tiny hen and rooster and the bunnies and mice bringing up the rear. And the memory was located there, beyond words, a coded message from that first afternoon: rain streaming down the skylights, the homely file of creatures lined on the kitchen counter waiting to be saved. Noah: the great conservator, the great caretaker. "And - " he'd gotten up to make some coffee - "I — Donna Tartt

It is unlikely that someone could proclaim "truths" that are counter to physical laws for very long (for example, that it is healthy for children to run around in bathing suits in winter and in fur coats in summer) without appearing ridiculous. But it is perfectly normal to speak of the necessity of striking and humiliating children and robbing them of their autonomy, at the same time using such high-sounding words as chastising, upbringing, and guiding onto the right path. — Alice Miller

I love you."
The words come out almost in a panic, as if there's no time. As if he's about to walk into Eden again, and I've got to say it before he disappears behind the door.
"I love you too."
Jimmy' response startles me back to the room, the tobacco tin forgotten in my hand. I close it and set it on the counter, afraid of whatever drug it is inside that has me hallucinating.
"I must be losing my mind," I say, shaking my head. "I thought I just heard you say that you loved me."
"I did," Jimmy replies.
"You did?"
"Of course. You said it to me first. It woulda been rude to leave ya hangin' there, wouldn't it? — Ryan Winfield

I've never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same.'
'But the Magdalen?'
'Ah, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered. — Leo Tolstoy

There was a zone she had not explored. She could use the same counter, the same sort of password that she used with all these people, but she had passed over in the twinkling of an eye into another forest. This forest was reality. There, the very speaking of the words, conjured up answering sigil, house and barn and terrace and castle and river and little plum tree. A whole world was open. She looked in through a wide doorway. — H.D.

Miss Taylor says kids that are colored can't go to my school cause they're not smart enough." I come round the counter then. Lift her chin up and smooth back her funny-looking hair. "You think I'm dumb?" "No," she whispers hard, like she means it so much. She look sorry she said it. "What that tell you about Miss Taylor, then?" She blink, like she listening good. "Means Miss Taylor ain't right all the time," I say. She hug me around my neck, say, "You're righter than Miss Taylor." I tear up then. My cup is spilling over. Those is new words to me. — Kathyrn Stockett

I don't really read too much. It really is counter to my energy. I can't sit down and concentrate on words. — Charlie Bewley

Perhaps one cannot, what is more one must not, understand what happened, because to understand [the Holocaust] is almost to justify ... no normal human being will ever be able to identify with Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, and endless others. This dismays us, and at the same time gives us a sense of relief, because perhaps it is desirable that their words (and also, unfortunately, their deeds) cannot be comprehensible to us. They are non-human words and deeds, really counter-human ... — Primo Levi

The spirit, if it could be seen with mortal eyes, would appear in bodily shape like a full-grown person with individual endowments that make it a counter-part of the body in which it [resides,] "that which is temporal in the likeness of that which is spiritual." (D&C 77:2.) It was that which came from God and entered at birth into the infant body prepared by its mortal parents. The spirit was of the "Lord from heaven." The physical body was "of the earth, earthy," (2 Cor. 15:47) or in other words, composed of the elements of which the things in the physical world are composed. — Harold B. Lee

Suddenly, the spark became a flame and his mouth was on her, her words swallowed as his hands found her waist and pushed, her feet stumbling, her back - that damn dress - hitting the counter. She tasted of sweet fucking rebellion, her tongue softening, accepting. Then both of her hands were on his chest, and her adorable, tiny knee came up hard between his legs. — Alessandra Torre

The trusted quality and power of the believed sponsor of your words will have a big impact on the power released in and through your words. You should have sufficient sponsorship to counter the kind of words you do not want to influence your life, thoughts and mission. Contrary words and convincing voices will encounter you on the route to your destiny and they need to be countered with strong conviction and authority. — Archibald Marwizi

Pain can easily produce the sense of being abandoned. The presence of someone who loves and cares can most persuasively counter that fear. God's words were important to Job, but most important to him was the assurance that God was with him through it all, revealing Himself to Job at the most critical moment. And Job said, "My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you" (Job 42:5). — Ravi Zacharias

Load poems like guns -
war's geography calls you
to arms.
The enemy has no signs,
counter-signs,
colors
signals
symbols!
Load poems like guns -
each moment is loaded
with bombs
bullets
blasts
death-sounds -
death and war
don't follow rules
you can make your pages into white flags
a thousand times
but swallow your words, say no more.
Load your poems -
your body -
your thoughts -
like guns.
The schoolhouses of war rise up
within you.
Maybe you are next. — Farzana Marie

Art, its completeness, its formedness, its finishedness, had no power to console. Words on the other hand, were a lifeline. They left their hushed rhythm behind, a counter to the slow in and out of Emmeline's breathing. — Diane Setterfield

Words are too awful an instrument for good and evil to be trifled with: they hold above all other external powers a dominion over thoughts. If words be not (recurring to a metaphor before used) an incarnation of the thought but only a clothing for it, then surely will they prove an ill gift; such a one as those poisoned vestments, read of in the stories of superstitious times, which had power to consume and to alienate from his right mind the victim who put them on. Language, if it do not uphold, and feed, and leave in quiet, like the power of gravitation or the air we breathe, is a counter-spirit, unremittingly and noiselessly at work to derange, to subvert, to lay waste, to vitiate, and to dissolve. — William Wordsworth

The store is also lit to the point of painfulness by a ceiling loaded with more fluorescent bulbs than a landing mothership. Shielding my headachey eyes, I make my consumer choices, then head to the counter, where the clerk is wearing sunglasses. I pay the clerk with a five-dollar bill on which I have felt-penned the words:
I AM AFRAID OF THE DARK AGES. — Douglas Coupland

And there was somewhere inside me the thought: By Jove! this is the deuce of an adventure - something you read about; and it is my first voyage as second mate - and I am only twenty - and here I am lasting it out as well as any of these men, and keeping my chaps up to the mark. I was pleased. I would not have given up the experience for worlds. I had moments of exultation. Whenever the old dismantled craft pitched heavily with her counter high in the air, she seemed to me to throw up, like an appeal, like a defiance, like a cry to the clouds without mercy, the words written on her stern: Judea, London. Do or Die. O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! To me she was not an old rattle-trap carting around the world a lot of coal for a freight - to me she was the endeavor, the test, the trial of life. I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret - as you would think of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her. — Joseph Conrad

He reached out, ran his finger down the fine, ultra-smooth flesh of her cheek and knew he had never touched anything so soft.
I dare you. The memory of her pretty pink lips forming those words had his lips quirking.
He leaned close, feathered her hair from her ear and whispered, "Never dare me."
She jackknifed in the bed. Her eyes flew open, and a scream of pure terror erupted from her lips with such a suddenness that he couldn't counter it.
He cursed, jumped for the window, grabbed the rope he'd secured beside it, and in the time it took for her screams to die he was on the ground and running.
Damn. Guess he shouldn't have warned her, he thought with a smile. But he had. And he hoped, for her sake, she remembered it. — Lora Leigh

America is the promised land, because each generation bequeathed to its children a promise, a promise that they might not come to enjoy but which they fully expected their offspring to fulfill. So the words 'all men are created equal' took a life of its own, ultimately destined to end slavery and enfranchise women. And the words 'equal protection' and 'due process' inevitably led to the end of the words 'separate but equal,' ensuring that the walls of segregation would crumble, whether at the lunch counter or at the voting booth. — Joe Biden

I don't know what's going on with you,' the man says from across the counter, 'but I'm not taking your money.' He blows into a straw and pinches both ends shut.
I shake my head and reach back for my wallet. 'No, I'll pay.'
He winds the straw tighter and tighter. 'I'm serious. It was only a milkshake. And like I said, I don't know what's going on, and I don't know how I can help, but something's clearly gone wrong in your life, so I want you to keep your money.' His eyes search mine, and I know he means it.
I don't know what to say. Even if the words would come, my throat is so tight it won't let them escape. — Jay Asher

I crouched to look at the almond bark on the bottom shelf in the counter. I wasn't quite bold enough to look at either of them when I admitted, "Well, it was love at first sight."
The girl sighed. "That is just so romantic. Do me a favor, and don't you two ever change. The world needs more love at first sight."
Sam's voice was husky. "Do you want some of those, Grace?"
Something in his voice, a catch, made me realize that my words had more of an effect on him than I'd intended. I wondered when the last time someone had told him they loved him was.
That was a really sad thing to think about. — Maggie Stiefvater

The children are in love but do not know with what. They talk in gibberish, muse themselves into an indefinable pallor, and when they are completely at a loss they invent a language that maddens them. My fish. My hook. My fox. My snare. My fire. You my water. You my current. My earth. You my if. And you my but. Either. Or. My everything ... my everything ... They push one another, go for each other with their fists and scuffle over a counter-word that doesn't exist. — Ingeborg Bachmann

There's a bar like it in every town. It's dimly-lit and the drinkers, although they talk, don't address their words to one another and they don't listen, either. They just talk the hurt inside. It's a bar for the derelict and the unlucky and all of those people who have been temporarily flagged off the racetrack of life and into the pits.
It always does a brisk trade.
On this dawn the mourners sat ranged along the counter, each in his cloud of gloom, each certain that he was the most unfortunate individual in the whole world. — Terry Pratchett

How dare you touch my cookies, you bastard!" Jason said in utter disgust before popping the cookie into his mouth and heading back to his house.
"Damn those looked good, too," Brad grumbled.
Haley sighed. "Don't worry I have a second plate on my counter." The words were barely out of her mouth when Jason abruptly changed course and headed towards her house.
"Well, there was," she said, watching Jason walk into her house like he owned it. A minute later he walked out of her house, carrying both plates and the gallon of milk she had in her fridge. He headed back to his house, but not before he glared at Brad. "You cookie thieving bastard," they heard him mutter.
Brad rolled his eyes, chuckling. "And people wonder how I lost weight rooming with him in college. — R.L. Mathewson