Quotes & Sayings About Feet And Family

The Bumpuses were so low down on the evolutionary totem pole that they weren't even included in Darwin's famous family tree. They had inbred and ingrown and finally emerged from the Kentucky hills like some remnant of Attila the Hung's barbarian horde. Flick said that they had webbed feet and only three toes. It might have been true. — Jean Shepherd

I've got my feet on the ground because I've got a lovely family waiting for me when I get home, even though they're not my flesh and blood. I haven't got children. That's my only regret, I suppose. — Bonnie Tyler

Neither the cat nor I missed you while you were gone. It's worse than that. We danced the visitor-gone dance, flinging our feet (and paws) with particular glee. You remember the dance - the one you do after shutting the door behind a difficult visitor (like a family member)? You hold your breath for 120 seconds then deadbolt the door, race to the bed, leap on to it and jump, twirl, bell-kick and prance, singing all the while, she's go-onnne, she's gooo-oonne. — Melissa Checker

I was weaned not on television or Wild West sagas but on stories of nationalism and patriotism. I would sit at my mother's feet by the hour and drink in these exciting tales of the freedom fighters in our family. — Sukarno

My father then presented Honour with a cheque,

"This is from our family for you, only you. Put it in a bank and if my son ever treats you badly, use this to leave the idiot," he said.

I was laughing so hard I had tears in my eyes.

The haque mehr was traditionally given to the bride on the wedding day by the groom, it was an amount that would be hers for her lifetime to keep in case things went wrong and she needed to stand on her own two feet.

Dad had done his little trickery, and in his head and everyone else's, we had done all that was required from a nikah. — Ruth Ahmed

A woman has to change her nature if she is to be a wife. She has to learn to curb her tongue, to suppress her desires, to moderate her thoughts and to spend her days putting another first. She has to put him first even when she longs to serve herself or her children. She has to put him first even if she longs to judge for herself. She has to put him first even when she knows best. To be a good wife is to be a woman with a will of iron that you yourself have forged into a bridle to curb your own abilities. To be a good wife is to enslave yourself to a lesser person. To be a good wife is to amputate your own power as surely as the parents of beggars hack off their children's feet for the greater benefit of the family. — Philippa Gregory

Our most important and powerful assignments are in the family. They are important because the family has the opportunity at the start of a child's life to put feet firmly on the path home. Parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts and uncles are made more powerful guides and rescuers by the bonds of love that are the very nature of a family. — Henry B. Eyring

He talks and talks and talks. And if he isn't talking, he's smoking his smelly cigars all over the house. I'm so sick of the smell of cigar smoke I could just roll over and die."
"The cigars are ballast, sweetheart. Sheer ballast. If he didn't hold on to a cigar, his feet would leave the ground. We'd never see our Zooey again."
There were several experienced verbal stunt pilots in the Glass family, but this last little remark perhaps Zooey alone was coordinated well enough to bring in safely over a telephone. Or so this narrator suggests. And Franny may have felt so, too. In any case, she suddenly knew that it was Zooey at the other end of the phone. — J.D. Salinger

I try to go home to Missouri every couple of months. I do that because I like my family, of course, but my mom doesn't know who Carine Roitfeld is. And as much as that horrifies me, it's a good way to keep your feet on the ground. — Derek Blasberg

I once ran away from home because I was upset with my parents! I didn't get farther than a few feet into the woods, where I hid behind a tree. Sometimes you feel like you should just go out and rebel, and then you realize it's not the right thing to do. You've got to stay true to your family. — Max Schneider

It is my view that our society can be no more stable than the foundation of individual family units upon which it rests. Our government, our institutions, our schools ... indeed, our way of life are dependent on healthy marriages and loyalty to the vulnerable little children around our feet. — James Dobson

Cool morning shadows sadly shift across the floor
Each time we say goodbye it's harder than before
Even after all the pain of parting still we find
That we must mourn the death of the dreams we leave behind
As I turn my back on all that means the most to me
The sounds and smells, the light that dances on the sea
The greatest gamble is to act on the belief
That only the slave who leaves it all is truly free
The sacrifice that we both lay before His feet
A thousand moments that belonged to us
That now will never be
By faith we hold a better dream inside our hearts
A time when our family will never have to be apart
Till then we struggle with just what it really means
And we will mourn the death of our beautiful dreams
Mourn the death of our beautiful dreams — Michael Card

Gen. George S. Patton Jr. fears no one. But now he sleeps flat on his back in a hospital bed. His upper body is encased in plaster, the result of a car accident twelve days ago. Room 110 is a former utility closet, just fourteen feet by sixteen feet. There are no decorations, pictures on the walls, or elaborate furnishings - just the narrow bed, white walls, and a single high window. A chair has been brought in for Patton's wife, Beatrice, who endured a long, white-knuckle flight over the North Atlantic from the family home in Boston to be at his bedside. She sits there now, crochet hook moving silently back and forth, raising her eyes every few moments to see if her husband has awakened. — Bill O'Reilly

I hope my head doesn't get very big. I'm just going to keep my feet on the ground, stick to friends and family and try to lead a normal life. — Emma Watson

Thus it is that four strangers sit in the red chairs, strip off their socks, plunge their feet into the ink-baths, and hold hands under an amphibian stare. This is the first act of anyone entering Palimpsest: Orlande will take your coats, sit you down, and make you family. She will fold you four together like Quartos. She will draw you each a card - look, for you it is the Broken Ship reversed, which signifies Perversion, a Long Journey without Enlightenment, Gout - and tie your hands together with red yarn. Wherever you go in Palimpsest, you are bound to these strangers who happened onto Orlande's salon just when you did, and you will go nowhere, eat no capon or dormouse, drink no oversweet port that they do not also taste, and they will visit no whore that you do not also feel beneath you, and until that ink washes from your feet - which, given that Orlande is a creature of the marsh and no stranger to mud, will be some time - you cannot breathe but that they breathe also. — Catherynne M Valente

What is family anyway but people who are always supposed to be there for you? Family should be rock solid, the earth beneath your feet, wind beneath your wings, and all that. — Arlaina Tibensky

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

I've got to go." He hung up suddenly as if afraid of being caught. His mom had probably come into the room. The Zeemans had four sons and a daughter. The sons were all six feet or above. The daughter was five nine. They were all over twenty-one. And they were all scared of their mother. Not literally scared, but Charlotte Zeeman wore the pants in the family. One family dinner and I knew that. I — Laurell K. Hamilton

The fans know what's happened to me over the past couple of years. I lost my family. I pretty much got devastated financially and the fans know that I've had some hard times - and that's the nature of loyal fans. They want to see the people that they love and believe in get back on their feet. — Hulk Hogan

Before the world was made, when it was only darkness and mist and waters, God was well aware of Lake Wobegon, my family, our house, and He had me all sketched out down to what size my feet would be (big), which bike I would ride (Schwinn), and the five ears of corn I'd eat for supper that night. — Garrison Keillor

For me, when I got married and when I had my daughter, those are two things that - when it does feel like work - makes me feel like I'm working for my family. I look around and just feel so blessed, because the opportunities that have been laid at my feet are second-to-none. — Cody Johnson

His wife, Genevieve, had her bare feet up on the sofa, exhausted by the responsibility of coordinating the domestic crisis of Christmas in a house with a dreamy husband, four kids, two dogs, a mare in the paddock, a rabbit, and a guinea pig, plus sundry invading mice and rats that kept finding inventive routes into their kitchen. In many ways it was a house weathering a permanent state of siege. — Graham Joyce

Kate, the mother of thirteen, is forty-nine; delicately made; her skin creamlike where the weather has not got at it. She is smaller than several of her children. Her legs and feet, like those of most women in this country, are beautifully shaped by shoelessness on the earth. Her eyes, which are watchful not at all for herself but for her family, are those of a small animal which expects another kick as a matter of course and which is too numbed to dodge it or even much care. She calls her children "my babies." They call her mama, treat her protectively as they might a deformed child, and love her carelessly and gaily. An old photograph shows her fiber and bearing as a young woman, and perhaps it is the relinquishment of that unusual spirit, under the beating and breakage of the past two decades, that has made her now the most abandoned of these people: more than any of them, she is lost in some solitary region of her own. She is only half sane. — James Agee

Cobb was in a Klan group back in the 60's, and told me stories about how they used to throw live 'coons, possums, porcupines, or ganders into Black houses at night in attempts to run them out of Johnston and Harnett County. Cobb said that late one night, he and three or four other local rednecks snuck up on the house of one Black family, peered through the window and saw a huge Black woman sitting in front of a TV watching Gunsmoke, with a gang of children all around her.
The window was open and Cobb threw a live possum in her lap. Cobb said she squalled about the loudest and longest he'd ever heard, and jumped about four feet up in the air. Cobb then ran and jumped into a nearby ditch to observe what would happen next, and it wasn't long before they saw the Black woman bust out of the back door and run across a cotton field with a trail of children behind. Cobb said she was as wide as three rows of cotton, but fast and agile. She outran all the young'uns. — Frazier Glenn Miller

But we've all ended up giving body and soul to Africa, one way or another. Even Adah, who's becoming an expert in tropical epidemiology and strange new viruses. Each of us got our heart buried in six feet of African dirt; we are all co-conspirators here. I mean, all of us, not just my family. So what do you do now? You get to find your own way to dig out a heart and shake it off and hold it up to the light again. — Barbara Kingsolver

If people stumble, we help them get back on their feet; if they veer off course, we urge them back. On this journey we are all brothers and sisters in the same family - the family of God. — Billy Graham

"Joy" is based, albeit loosely, on the life of Joy Mangano, an entrepreneur, inventor and QVC shopping network star with the mega-selling Miracle Mop. Jennifer Lawrence is excellent as Joy, but the film starts off on the wrong foot with woeful depictions of her background as the only sane person in her dysfunctional family. — Kenneth Turan

Do you think that was kind? Do you think it was godlike? What would you think of a physician, if a woman came to him distressed and said, "Doctor, come to my daughter, she is very ill. She has lost her reason, and she is all I have!" What would you think of the doctor who would not reply at all at first, and then, when she fell at his feet and worshiped him, answered that he did not spend his time doctoring dogs? Would you like him as a family physician? — Helen H. Gardener

I'm fully aware that I am a lucky, lucky man. This Oscar belongs to all of those people around the world battling ALS. It belongs to one exceptional family, and I will be it's custodian and I promise you that I will polish him, and wait on him hand and foot. — Eddie Redmayne

The look you get when you're reading in your van, and your feet are up and you sit so still, and your face is alight, and I don't know where you are; you could be anywhere, so far away, off in a part of your mind I'll never get to . . . It drives me crazy. The way you just came here, just got up, changed your entire life . . . I mean, my family's been here for four generations. It would never have occurred to me to do what you did, just to start over and do something different. Amazing. — Jenny Colgan

My condolences
I'll shed a tear with your family
I'll open a bottle up, pour a little bit out in your memory
I'll be at the wake dressed in all black
I'll call out your name, but you won't call back
I'll hand a flower to your mother when I say goodbye
Cause baby you're dead to me
I need to kill you
That's the only way to get you out of my head
Oh I need to kill you
To silence all the sweet little things you said
I really want to kill you
Wipe you off the face of my earth
And bury your bracelet
Bury your bracelet
Six feet under the dirt — Melanie Martinez

Last was man. One by one God judged them all; Those who were his He saved for his pleasure,
Those who were Satan's he stomped them as they sprawled,
Tossed - t' burn with their family together.
I was last. Alone I stood. Before God of all.
I wasn't his. No! I still wasn't his.
It's all I want'd! Still I lost him - still I'd fall! Still I lost. No, I'd never be his!
Angels grabbed my hands and feet and flung me with th' damned,
To lie and let th' fire burn and through our lungs expand. — Jonas Perez

Heavenly Father has assigned us to a great variety of stations to strengthen and, when needed, to lead travelers to safety. Our most important and powerful assignments are in the family. They are important because the family has the opportunity at the start of a child's life to put feet firmly on the path home. — Henry B. Eyring

I was blessed, because I come from a family where they knock you down before you float away. I have a lot of brothers who just make sure we have our feet on the ground, and my mom is a rock star. She is an amazing mother. — Kellan Lutz

I stared, like always. A tree in the Petrified Forest. I looked down at my hands and feet and ordered them to move, only they wouldn't. — Tracy Bilen

Another of them died last night. His body was in the bazaar this morning. It lay, with a collecting bowl at its feet, on the charpoy that is reserved for those who die without money or family to bury them. He looked desiccated and his skin had the sheen and color of the dates we eat to break our fast. There are new bodies on that charpoy every week. — Louise Brown

I made up my mind right then what I really wanted in my life. It was comfort of a home and a family. But more than that, I wanted love. I wanted love to surround me. I wanted to swim in it. I wanted to hold it in my hand like heated sand and pour it through my fingers so it covered my feet. I wanted to taste it, I wanted to smell it. I wanted to wrap myself up in it like a blanket and stay safe and warm inside of it forever. And I wanted to give it. I wanted to drown people in it. I wanted to love with all my heart and be loved just as much in return. — Melodie Ramone

I would have chosen you over anything," Zane hissed. He pulled back, breaking Ty's hold, bunched the front of Ty's shirt in both hands, and jerked Ty forward until they were nose-to-nose, until Ty's feet weren't solidly on the floor. "My job, my family, my wife. I would have given my life for you! But you! You can't even given me the truth! — Abigail Roux

Plain Kate greased her boots and bandaged her feet, and soon she would walk like a Roamer born. She helped Drina with the water and the wood, and in the long, wet evenings she carved objarka burji.
Plain Kate carved fast and learned slowly. She was bewildered most of the time, but Daj called her mira again, and when she asked Drina what it meant, the girl replied, "It means she likes you. It means your family."
Family.
It could have kept her walking for a hundred miles. And she did walk far. — Erin Bow

What do your parents do? Do they travel a lot?"
My brow wrinkled. "No, they don't." I was tired of the interrogation. "Do yours?"
He blinked. "What?"
"Do your parents travel a lot? Are they still married? How many in your family? How old are you? What classes do you have? Boxers or briefs? What's your GPA? Do you always go around knocking strange girls off their feet and then hammering them with a barrage of personal questions?" I finished with a cocky smile.
Tristan hid a grin behind his fist. Mr. Exotic levelled me a steady stare, a sly smile gaining momentum. "Do you always end up straddling the guys that do?"
Tristan choked. My smile froze. Crap.
"And as for boxers or briefs." One hand went to his belt buckle. "I'd be happy to ... "
Double crap. I jabbed a thumb over my shoulder towards my house "I've gotta go. — A&E Kirk

I live precariously through my characters - so I want them to be loved passionately, live vibrantly, love unconditionally. Make friends they would die for - Explore unimaginable possibilities from all warps of life. And to never forget those that held their hands when life got scary. Wiped their tears away after a broken heart. Helped them back on their feet when others let them down. I want my characters to have family and friends - just like mine — Patti Roberts

Every time Gat said these things, so casual and truthful, so oblivious - my veins opened. My wrists split. I bled down my palms. I went light-headed. I'd stagger from the table or collapse in quite shameful agony, hoping no-one in the family would notice ... Gat almost always saw, though. When blood dripped on my bare feet or poured over the book I was reading, he was kind. He wrapped my wrists in a soft white gauze and asked me questions about what had happened ... as if talking about something could make it better. As if wounds needed attention. — E. Lockhart

Let me tell you something," Marc said. "I'm done with you. I've lost everything because of you." He got to his feet and waved his arms around in the air. "I have no family, no friends-"
"You have us," Sera said in a quiet voice.
"-no life." Marc looked at Sera and shook his head. "I don't want you. I want my old life back. — Jen Meyers

I'm lying on Cash's chest, tracing his tattoo.
"What does this mean?" I whisper.
"It's the Chinese symbol for awesome," he teases lightly.
I giggle. "If it's not, which I imagine it isn't, then it should be."
"Are you paying me a compliment? I just want to be sure, so I don't miss it."
I slap his ribs. "You make it sound like I'm mean and horrible because I don't throw myself at your feet."
"You don't have to throw yourself at my feet. Although if you want to, I'm sure I can think of something for you to do while you're down there."
I look up at him and he's waggling his eyebrows again.
"I'm sure you could." Shaking my head, I settle back onto his chest and resume tracing the ink shapes. "Seriously, what do they mean?"
Cash is quiet for so long I begin to think he's not going to answer me. But then he finally speaks.
"It's a collage of things that remind me of my family. — M. Leighton

LONDON. TRINITY TERM one week old. Implacable June weather. Fiona Maye, a High Court judge, at home on Sunday evening, supine on a chaise longue, staring past her stockinged feet toward the end of the room, toward a partial view of recessed bookshelves by the fireplace and, to one side, by a tall window, a tiny Renoir lithograph of a bather, bought by her thirty years ago for fifty pounds. Probably a fake. Below it, centered on a round walnut table, a blue vase. No memory of how she came by it. Nor when she last put flowers in it. The fireplace not lit in a year. Blackened raindrops falling irregularly into the grate with a ticking sound against balled-up yellowing newsprint. A Bokhara rug spread on wide polished floorboards. Looming at the edge of vision, a baby grand piano bearing silver-framed family photos on its deep black shine. On the floor by the chaise longue, within her reach, the draft of a judgment. — Ian McEwan

Christ! Garreth!" Lachlain shot to his feet, weak and stumbling. Dragging Emma to his side, half carrying her, he lurched out of the room and down the stairs. Regin and Annika followed, demanding to know what was happening.
Inside the half-basement, they found Wroth alongside Garreth, grappling to hold up the ceiling.
The vampire's voice was incongruously calm when he asked, "What kind of idiot would find this a worthy plan?"
In an astounded tone, Lachlain said to Emma, "Your family's adding in-laws like him?"
The vampire's gaze fell to Lachlain's hand clutching Emma's, and he raised an eyebrow. "Indeed. — Kresley Cole

There was a momentary lull in the shooting and spellslinging, and the kid started scrambling to his feet. I grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. In my family that's not silence; it's reloading. — Lisa Shearin

I would say that there exists a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family; and there is no decency or sense in honoring one thing, or a few things, and then closing the list. The pine tree, the leopard, the Platte River, and ourselves-we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together, we are each other's destiny. — Mary Oliver

Marry me, Kiara," he blurts out in front of everyone.
"Why?" she asks, challenging him.
"Because I love you," he says, walking up to her and bending down on one knee while he takes her hand in his, "and I want to go to sleep with you every night and wake up seein' your face every mornin', I want you to be the mother of my children, I want to fix cars with you and eat your crappy tofu tacos that you think are Mexican. I want to climb mountains with you and be challenged by you, I want to argue with you just so we can have crazy hot makeup sex. Marry me, because without you I'd be six feet under ... and because I love your family like they're my own ... and because you're my best friend and I want to grow old with you." He starts tearing up, and it's shocking because I've never seen him cry. "Marry me, Kiara Westford, because when I got shot the only thing I was thinkin' about was comin' back here and makin' you my wife. Say yes, chica. — Simone Elkeles

stood a bit over five feet, and all who knew her knew what a force she was. In a household of three men and one woman, she more than held her own. She was the most vivacious of the family, a tireless, all-season — David McCullough

He had one uniform practice, and a very bad one it was, during the time of family worship, and just three or four seconds before the conclusion of the prayer, he started to his feet, and ran barking round the apartment like a crazed beast. — James Hogg

Then Gavin got into his car, and Nick hiked through the snow toward his SUV.
"Oh,mo," I mumbled through toothpaste. I couldn't let him get away.Not now.
I swished,spat,and ran for the front door,pausing only to shove my feet into galoshes owned by some unknown member of Liz's family.Her stepdad,I decided as I tried to run down the snowy front steps. The galoshes were so big,it was like wading in a Tennessee river. — Jennifer Echols

Jesus is building his Church, not only by constitutions and codes, but by shaping hearts and minds to his way of life. We are a family, not a firm, scattered and yet gathered. Biblical equality is not the endgame; it is one of the means to God's big ending: all things redeemed, all things restored. Jesus feminism is only one thread in God's beautiful woven story of redemption. Begin here: right at the feet of Jesus. Look to Love, and yes, our Jesus - he will guide you in your steps, one after another, in these small ways until you come at last to love the whole world. — Sarah Bessey

When Mama prayed, lives were changed. Not much more than five foot tall, but mountains big and small crumbled all away. — Randy Travis

Each generation was a rehearsal of the one before, so that that family gradually formed the repetitive pattern of a Greek fret, interrupted only once in two centuries by a nine-year-old boy who had taken a look at his prospects, tied a string around his neck with a brick to the other end, and jumped from a footbridge into two feet of water. Courage aside, he had that family's tenacity of purpose, and drowned, a break in the pattern quickly obliterated by the calcimine of silence. — William Gaddis

His green-flecked brown eyes twinkle, and we laugh together, easy and light. He opens the door for me, and I say goodbye, floating over to where my family waits in our Winnebago. And I can't tell you if my feet actually touch the ground, because at this very moment, this Bird, well, she flies. — Alecia Whitaker

Who would have thought that a tap-dancing penguin would outpoint James Bond at the box office? And deserve to? Not that there's anything wrong with 'Casino Royale.' But 'Happy Feet' - written and directed by George Miller - is a complete charmer, even if, in the way of most family fare, it can't resist straying into the Inspirational. — Robert Gottlieb

Jesus said his Father's House has many rooms. In this metaphor I like to imagine the Presbyterians hanging out in the library, the Baptists running the kitchen, the Anglicans setting the table, the Anabaptists washing feet with the hose in the backyard, the Lutherans making liturgy for the laundry, the Methodists stocking the fire in the hearth, the Catholics keeping the family history, the Pentecostals throwing open all the windows and doors to let more people in. — Rachel Held Evans

George gives me a smile, the same dazzling sweet smile as his big brother, although, at this point, with green teeth. "I might marry you," he allows. "Do you want a big family?"
I start to cough and feel a hand pat my back.
"George, it's usually better to discuss this kind of thing with your pants on." Jase drops boxer shorts at George's feet, then sets Patsy on the ground next to him.
She's wearing a pink sunsuit and has one of those little ponytails that make one sprout of hair stick straight up on top all chubby arms and bowed legs. She's, what, one now?
"Dat?" she demands, pointing to me a bit belligerently.
"Dat is Samantha," Jase says. "Apparently soon to be your sister-in-law." He cocks an eyebrow. "You and George move fast."
"We talked astronauts," I explain ... — Huntley Fitzpatrick

I realised that I had a choice to either feel angry about not having arms and legs, or thankful for having my family, friends and my little foot. — Nick Vujicic

I know when people think of New York, they think of theater, restaurants, cultural landmarks and shopping," I told him. "But beyond the iconic skyline and the news from Wall Street, New York is a collection of villages. In our neighborhoods, we attend school, play Kick the Can, handball and ride our bikes. I grew up knowing the names and faces of the baker, the shoe repair family, the Knish man and the Good Humor man who sold me and the other kids in my neighborhood half a popsicle for a nickel. My father took me to the playground where he pushed me on the swing, helped balance me on the seesaw and watched as I hung upside down by my feet on the monkey bars. Yes," I told the interviewer, "people actually grow up in New York. — Gina Greenlee

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it shows?"
Before Jude could answer, Brenna was up, pacing, knocking the heels of her hands against the sides of her, moaning out curses. "I'll have to move away, leave my family. I can go to the west counties. I have some people, on my mother's side, in Galway. No, no, that's not far enough. I'll have to leave the country entirely. I'll go to Chicago and stay with your granny until I get on me feet. She'll take me in, won't she? — Nora Roberts

Sharp knives seemed to cut her delicate feet, yet she hardly felt them, so deep was the pain in her heart. She could not forget that this was the last night she would ever see the one for whom she had left her home and family, had given up her beautiful voice, and had day by day endured unending torment, of which he knew nothing at all. An eternal night awaited her. — Hans Christian Andersen

So my life and the life of my family has been completely disrupted in absolutely every way. But it's been worth it. It's uncovered a vast cesspool of illegitimate economic and political power in which the Church is immersed right up to its ears, and I intend to dive in headfirst and pull it out of there dripping wet for all the world to see
no matter how long it takes, no matter whose feet get stepped on in the process, no matter how much it costs, no matter how great the personal sacrifice. — Madalyn Murray O'Hair

To many an upright poor person, it seems needless to invent a god who will wash the feet of beggars and exalt those who do not care to labor. What is this but a denial of thrift and a sickly obsession with the victim? The so-called common people are quite able to penetrate this ruse ("The good lord must indeed love the poor, since he made so many of them"). Many decent people are made uneasy by the constant injunction to give alms and to dwell among those who have lost their self-respect. They can also see the hook sticking out of the bait: abandon this useless life, leave your family, and follow the prophet who says that the world is soon to pass away. Such an injunction coupled with an implicit or explicit "or else" is repulsive to many conservatives who believe in self-reliance and personal integrity, and who distrust "charity," just as it was repulsive to the early socialists who did not think that poverty was an ideal or romantic or ennobled state. — Christopher Hitchens

Johanna sat by the fire every night and worked on her tapestry. Dumfries waited until she was settled in her chair and then draped himself across her feet. It became a ritual for Alex to squeeze himself up next to her and fall asleep during her stories about fierce warriors and fair maidens. Johanna's tales all had a unique twist, for none of the heroines she told stories about ever needed to be rescued by their knights in shining armor. More often than not, the fair maidens rescued their knights.
Gabriel couldn't take issue with his wife. She was telling Alex the truth. It was a fact that maidens could rescue mighty, arrogant warriors. Johanna had certainly rescued him from a bleak, cold existence. She'd given him a family and a home. She was his love, his joy, his companion.
She was his saving grace. — Julie Garwood

Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side ... — Italo Calvino

(Family rumor has it that he was originally cloistered off - that is relieved of his duties as a secular priest in Astoria - to free him of a persistent temptation to administer the sacramental wafer to his parishioners' lips by standing back two or three feet and trajecting it in a lovely arc over his left shoulder.) — J.D. Salinger

Sun and moon have no light left, earth is dark;
Our women's world is sunk so deep, who can help us?
Jewelry sold to pay this trip across the seas,
Cut off from my family I leave my native land.
Unbinding my feet I clean out a thousand years of poison,
With heated heart arouse all women's spirits.
Alas, this delicate kerchief here
Is half stained with blood, and half with tears. — Qiu Jin

Walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the same street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of wheels. — Geoff Nicholson

While our life remains more chaotic than not, we continue to land on our blistered feet, drag each other out of the quicksand, beg for forgiveness as we wander out of the doghouse, and dig for the humor beneath our grief. So our family, four-pawed members included, continues to bound forward celebrating our canine connection and sharing hope with all who need healing. — Donnie Kanter Winokur

The error of Socrates must be attributed to the false notion of unity from which he starts. Unity there should be, both of the family and of the state, but in some respects only. For there is a point at which a state may attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or at which, without actually ceasing to exist, it will become an inferior state, like harmony passing into unison, or rhythm which has been reduced to a single foot. The state, as I was saying, is a plurality which should be united and made into a community by education — Aristotle.

It was Durga Pujo, the city's most anticipated days. The stores, the sidewalks, were overflowing. At the ends of certain alleys, or in gaps among buildings, she saw the pandals. Durga armed with her weapons, flanked by her four children, depicted and worshiped in so many versions. Made of plaster, made of clay. She was resplendent, formidable. A lion helped to conquer the demon at her feet. She was a daughter visiting her family, visiting the city, transforming it for a time. — Jhumpa Lahiri

At the age of four, what prompted me to wake, dress and wander down the corridor of our family home and out into the street at dawn, I cannot say. A mystery to myself, I obeyed rules and directives of which I was unaware. All I knew was the feel of wet grass under my feet, the crisp air filling my lungs and the play of dappled light through the trees, strewing clothing as I made my way down the street. Thoughts of direction and safety never enter the mind of a child locked in an Autistic fog - for them there is only the sensing. — Rachael Lee Harris

To call the place an anthill would be like calling the Versailles Palace a single-family home. Earthen ramparts rose almost to the tops of the surrounding trees
a hundred feet at least. The circumference could have accommodated a Roman hippodrome. A steady stream of soldiers and drones swarmed in and out of the mound. Some carried fallen trees. One, inexplicably, was dragging a 1967 Chevy Impala. — Rick Riordan

Everything was fine with the Zen Lunatics, the nut wagon was too far away to hear us. But there was a wisdom in it all, as you'll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels. You'll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way and the Zen Lunatics have long joined dust, laughter on their dust lips. — Jack Kerouac

If we stop to ponder the paths of our feet, would we:

Allow our children to participate in sports or activities that will ultimately consume our family time, dictate our schedules, and cause us to miss church on a regular basis? — Lori Hatcher

He laughs. And in his laugh I hear bliss. I hear feet dancing, the rush of skirts twirling. The sound of children.
Is that the first sign of love?
You hear in the person you're destined to love the sound of those yet to be born. — Alyson Richman

I was a meek child who bloomed into something untamed and out of place. Just as I never mastered the skill of walking on my own two feet, I never acquired southern social etiquette. Whenever I was at a family gathering, tension surrounded me. Everyone always wondered, "What the hell is Maggie going to say next?" My mother cleverly masked her true feelings with her pretty, young face and consistent, bright smile. I, as her daughter, was a representation of her. And she was carrying a time bomb in a nursery. In a world where it was impolite to air one's dirty laundry, I wore my most ragged, period-stained panties as a trendy accessory. — Maggie Young

She opens the book. Each sheet has one or two antique photographs stuck with corner tabs. The images are neither black and white nor gray, but hold that brownish gold of time and exposure to air.

"This man is your great grandfather. Look at that face, Pedro. It is a mean mean face." He's standing in front of a wood pile, holding an axe. "I think he was only a teenager there, a long time before he met my mother. But look how handsome he was. And how mean."

It's funny the way she smiles when she talks about him. Saying he's mean has a perverse joy for her, as if she can stick her tongue out at him and his hands are tied so he can't slap her for doing it. She's right, though. There's no lingering smile, no potential for mirth in the burlap of his skin. I notice snow on the ground at his feet, but he's wearing a thin, unbuttoned shirt, showing no sign of cold. — Laurie Perez

I argue that synagogue leaders have it backwards. Engaging individuals is what will lead them to affiliate with a synagogue as the institution that serves them, that meets their needs and those of their family. If synagogues continue to focus on the needs of the institution rather than on the needs of the individual, they will lose their dues-paying members and eventually become financially unviable. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel suggested to folks in the 1960s that they pray with their feet - and those prayers took them to places like the civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama. As a result of the actions of Rabbi Heschel and the influence of American political culture, American Jews - like most Americans - have been taught to vote with — Kerry M. Olitzky

Yes", she said her voice dripping with sarcasm. "That's exactly what I'm saying, in fact let's try sex again." She leaped to her feet and torn open her jeans. "Maybe my magic vagina will cure you of all the traumatic acts my family has inflected on you. — Larissa Ione

That lazy servant next door was sloppy with the Tso family's nightstool and stunk up the street with their nightsoil," Mama says. "And Cook!" She allows herself a low hiss of disapproval. "Cook has served us shrimp so old that the smell has made me lose my appetite."
We don't contradict her, but the odor suffocating us comes not from spilled nightsoil or day-old shrimp but from her. Since we don't have our servants to keep the air moving in the room, the smell that rises from the blood and pus that seep through the bandages holding Mama's feet in their tiny shape clings to the back of my throat. — Lisa See

Fair enough." She lowered her knees, stared down as she buttoned her shirt again. "Ty, I'm really
sorry. I'd never do anything to upset Eli, or to cause trouble between the two of you."
"I know." He pushed to his feet and after a brief hesitation held out his hand to help her up.
"I want to make love with you."
His already jangled system suffered. "I think what we both want's pretty clear. I just don't know
what we're going to do about it. I have to go after him."
"Yes. — Nora Roberts