Down And Dusted Quotes & Sayings

The city defeated him. It refused to be bent into shape; it stayed a willful, sprawling, sinful place. It even told him as much. When he walked through the gutted wreck of old Saint Paul's, he tripped and fell over a piece of rubble
a tombstone. When he got to his feet and dusted himself down he saw that it read, in Latin, 'Resurgam'
'I Will Rise Again. — Jonathan Barnes

Steerforth, laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it. A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets! There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty. Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and put my hat into shape, which somebody produced from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for I hadn't had it on before. Steerforth then said, 'You are all right, Copperfield, are you not?' and I told him, 'Neverberrer. — Charles Dickens

Click.
The salamander flared, etching the room with searing white light and dark shadows.
Otto screamed. He fell to the floor, clutching at his throat. He sprang to his feet, goggle-eyed and gasping, and staggered, knock-kneed and wobbly-legged, the length of the room and back again. He sank down behind a desk , scattering paperwork with a wildly flailing hand.
"Aarghaarghaaaargh ... "
There was a shocked silence.
Otto stood up, adjusted his cravat, and dusted himself off. Only then did he look up at the row of shocked faces.
"Vel?" he said sternly. "Vat are you all looking at? It is just a normal reaction, zat is all. I am vorking on it. Light in all its forms is mine passion. Light is my canvas, shadows are my brush."
But strong light hurts you!" said Sacharissa. "It hurts vampires!"
"Yes. It iss a bit of a bugger, but zere you go. — Terry Pratchett

The blizzard seemed to be dying down, and it was now possible to enjoy the sight of the buildings and embankments and bridges smothered in the diamond-dusted whiteness. There's always something soothing in the snow, thought Gabriel, a promise of happiness and absolution, of a new start on a clean sheet. Snow redesigned the streets with hints of another architecture, even more magnificent, more fanciful than it already was, all spires and pinnacles on pale palaces of pearl and opal. All that New Venice should have been reappeared through its partial disappearance. It was as if the city were dreaming about itself and crystallizing both that dream and the ethereal unreality of it. He wallowed in the impression, badly needing it right now, knowing it would not last as he hobbled nearer to his destination. — Jean-Christophe Valtat

pulled into a dark tunnel. I found myself hurtling down an almost vertical dirt path, skipping over rocks and dirt patches like Indiana Jones until I hit bottom with a thud. Six years as a private investigator and I'd never fallen down a tree before. I caught my breath, got to my feet and dusted myself off. Good thing I never dress up for work. My old jeans and boots were none the worse for wear. I was wondering how I'd get back up to the surface when I noticed the flicker of golden sconces on — Linsey Lanier

I love Samui in the wee small hours. I especially love it on nights like this when the white moon stares down from the blackness like the pockmarked eye of a blind god. At such times, when the island's bright signs have paled to grey and the broom of sleep has swept the revellers to their beds, my mind's cynical crust cracks open a little, and some fanciful poetry leaks in. Then the dark hills appear to me as slumbering prehistoric leviathans, the clouds assume the air of restless ghosts, and the moon-dusted sea murmurs in some long forgotten tongue of the divine. — John Dolan

Tell me what to do to change your mind. — Lisa Desrochers

Any piece of furniture, I don't care how beautiful it is, has got to be lived with, and kicked about, and rubbed down, and mistreated ... , and repolished, and knocked around and dusted and sat on or slept in or eaten off of before it develops its real character, Selina said. — Edna Ferber

Kings of a bakery? The very suggestion was laughable. How easy it was to assume that elsewhere was infinitely better than where you stood. Sometimes at night, she dreamed of the TEXAS, U.S.A. magazine advertisement, envisioning a land with row upon row of fat loaves laden with jeweled fruits; bread cubes sodden with thick lamb stew; sugar-dusted sweet breads, ginger-spiced cookies, and fat wedges of chocolate cake soaked in Kirschwasser. She'd awake with cold drool down her chin. Regardless of the family's lack of resources, one of Papa's famous Black Forest cakes had miraculously prevailed. Dressed in a layer of bittersweet chocolate shavings — Sarah McCoy

All of the designers I have met up to this point have been very nice, although upon being introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, he looks me up and down and dismisses me with the not super-kind, "What can you write that hasn't been written already?"
He's absolutely right, I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with right now is that Lagerfeld's powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like dandruff but isn't ... seated on a tiny velvet chair, with his large doughy rump dominating the miniature piece of furniture like a loose, flabby, ass-flavored muffin over-risen from its pan, he resembles a Daumier caricature of some corpulent, overfed, inhumane oligarch drawn sitting on a commode, stuffing his greedy throat with the corpses of dead children, while from his other end he shits out huge, malodorous piles of tainted money. How's that for new and groundbreaking, Mr. L.?
— David Rakoff

Whenever I have faced a setback I have dusted myself down and got on with the rest of my life because I believed in myself. — Philip Green

It had been a little over a year since the last murder; moreover it had been a year since I had run as quickly as legally possible from whom I had been. It had taken almost that long to become a legal adult, get the money straightened out and get my name changed. Who was Abigail? Who was Vera? I felt as though I was neither person. I felt like I wasn't a person at all anymore. — Cassandra Giovanni

Even I got turned down by girls, and when it happened, I dusted off my ego and moved on. — Richelle Mead

It is only rather recently that science has begun to make peace with its magical roots. Until a few decades ago, it was common for histories of science either to commence decorously with Copernicus's heliocentric theory or to laud the rationalism of Aristotelian antiquity and then to leap across the Middle Ages as an age of ignorance and superstition. One could, with care and diligence, find occasional things to praise in the works of Avicenna, William of Ockham, Albertus Magnus, and Roger Bacon, but these sparse gems had to be thoroughly dusted down and scraped clean of unsightly accretions before being inserted into the corners of a frame fashioned in a much later period. — Philip Ball

On the windless days, when the maples have put forth their deep canopies, and the sky is wearing its new blue immensities, and the wind has dusted itself not an hour ago in some spicy field and hardly touches us as it passes by, what is it we do? We lie down and rest upon the generous earth. Very likely we fall asleep. — Mary Oliver

Change requires leaving our comfort zones and plunging headfirst into uncomfortable situations. It's true this causes some pain and discomfort for a moment, but it's the quickest path to generating long-term fulfillment. — Yehuda Berg

It is only for a week or two that a broken chair or a door off its hinges is recognised for such. Soon, imperceptibly, it changes its character, and becomes the chair which is always left in the corner, the door which does not shut. A pin, fastening a torn valance, rusts itself into the texture of the stuff, is irremovable; the cracked dessert place and the stewpan with a hole in it, set aside until the man who rivets and solders should chance to come that way, become part of the dresser, are taken down and dusted and put back, and when the man arrives no one remembers them as things in need of repair. Five large keys rest inside the best soup-tureen, scrupulously preserved though no one knows what it was they once opened, and the pastry-cutter is there too, little missed, for the teacup without a handle has taken its place. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It's about insects. It will make you feel better. — David McCullough

IN the morning we went up to the village and bought a wire rat-trap and fetched it down, and unstopped the best rat-hole, and in about an hour we had fifteen of the bulliest kind of ones; and then we took it and put it in a safe place under Aunt Sally's bed. But while we was gone for spiders little Thomas Franklin Benjamin Jefferson Elexander Phelps found it there, and opened the door of it to see if the rats would come out, and they did; and Aunt Sally she come in, and when we got back she was a- standing on top of the bed raising Cain, and the rats was doing what they could to keep off the dull times for her. So she took and dusted us both with the hickry, and we was as much as two hours catching another fifteen or sixteen, drat that meddlesome cub, and they warn't the likeliest, nuther, because the first haul was the pick of the flock. I never see a likelier lot of rats than what that first haul was. — Mark Twain

Real investment risk is measured not by the percent that a stock may decline in price in relation to the general market in a given period, but by the danger of a loss of quality and earnings power through economic changes or deterioration in management. — Benjamin Graham

Like a drop of ink in water, the urge rushed to the surface and then slowly spread out and thinned until I was made slightly darker by it. — Brielle A. Marino

For 'Game of Thrones,' I realized immediately that it was about the characters. — Alex Graves

No patience. No kisses. No hugs. Just a tweezers and some rubbing alcohol, and a stinging sensation that never goes away. — A.S. King