Fiercer Quotes & Sayings

He was beaten (he knew that); but he was not broken. He saw, once for all, that he stood no chance against a man with a club. He had learned the lesson, and in all his after life he never forgot it. That club was a revelation. It was his introduction to the reign of primitive law, and he met the introduction halfway. The facts of life took on a fiercer aspect; and while he faced that aspect uncowed, he faced it with all the latent cunning of his nature aroused. — Jack London

Fear was like a beast that only grew fiercer when one gave in to it. — Cornelia Funke

You have proved yourself, Emma," he said. "You could ride with Gwyn, if you chose." "The Wild Hunt doesn't allow women," she pointed out, the words torn from her mouth by the wind. "The more fool they," he said. "Women are fiercer by far than men. — Cassandra Clare

Blake, Cole, and I have been family for each other, because the ones we started with were for crap. Why they let me in, I still don't know. But because they did, I believed I was worth more than I would have otherwise." He nodded and gathered his thoughts for a moment.
"Blake's company made me want to hug trees and hear music. Cole's company made me want to try harder to be a better person. I never imagined that anyone could love either of these men enough for me to let them go."
"But I didn't know about the McHugh girls. Their love is fiercer than guns. More powerful than fistfuls of money. I can walk away because of them. Officer McHugh? I want to thank you again for letting me see this through. I know my peace of mind is far from your concern, but I appreciate it anyway."
Beckett held his glass up high. "To my brothers. They've finally gotten the lives they deserve. — Debra Anastasia

Although the progress of civilisation has undoubtedly contributed to assuage the fiercer passions of human nature, it seems to have been less favourable to the virtue of chastity, whose most dangerous enemy is the softness of the mind. The refinements of life corrupt while they polish the intercourse of the sexes. The gross appetite of love becomes most dangerous when it is elevated, or rather, indeed, disguised by sentimental passion. — Edward Gibbon

His contempt for humanity grew fiercer, and at last he came to realize that the world is made up mostly of fools and scoundrels. It became perfectly clear to him that he could entertain no hope of finding in someone else the same aspirations and antipathies; no hope of linking up with a mind which, like his own, took pleasure in a life of studious decrepitude; no hope of associating an intelligence as sharp and wayward as his own with any author or scholar. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

Three o'clock in the morning.
The highway is empty, under a malignant moon. The oil drippings make the roadway gleam like a blue-satin ribbon. The night is still but for a humming noise coming up somewhere behind a rise of ground.
Two other, fiercer, whiter moons, set close together, suddenly top the rise, shoot a fan of blinding platinum far down ahead of them. Headlights. The humming burgeons into a roar. The touring car is going so fast it sways from side to side. The road is straight. The way is long. The night is short. (Jane Brown's Body) — Cornell Woolrich

Lily had lived with the same pain for so long it felt like a part of her. The worst days, though, were when the pain was different. When it came faster, or harsher, or fiercer than she was used to. When it prickled instead of throbbed. When it attacked her right ankle instead of her left knee. When it woke her up at night instead of aching dully first thing in the morning. On those days, her standard-issue pain was replaced by something different and frightening, something that took over her body and left her without the slightest clue of when, or even if, it would release her.

Those times, her pain wasn't a part of her anymore. Those times, she was a part of it. — Robin Talley

For our Titanic purposes of faith and revolution, what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralise each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening. — G.K. Chesterton

Bright star," Magnus said, and his eyes were thoughtful, as if he were remembering something, or someone. "Those of you who are mortal, you burn so fiercely. And you fiercer than most, Will. I will not ever forget you. — Cassandra Clare

The principle cannot be denied: the fiercer the struggle against the injustice you suffer, the blinder you will be to the injustice you inflict. We tend to translate the presumed wrongness of our enemies into an unfaltering conviction of our own rightness. — Miroslav Volf

The only difference between the narrator of contemporary affairs and the ordinary historian is that moral judgments about the present provoke fiercer reactions and have more immediately practical implications than moral judgments about the past. — Geoffrey Barraclough

He had in his Bronx apartment a lodger less learned than himself, and much fiercer in piety. One day when we were studying the laws of repentance together, the lodger burst from his room. "What!" he said. "The atheists guzzles his whiskey and eats pork and wallows with women all his life long, and then repents the day before he dies and stands guiltless? While I spend a lifetime trying to please God?" My grandfather pointed to the book. "So it is written," he said gently. - "Written!" the lodger roared. "There are books and there are books." And he slammed back into his room.
The lodger's outrage seemed highly logical. My grandfather pointed out afterward that cancelling the past does not turn it into a record of achievement. It leaves it blank, a waste of spilled years. A man had better return, he said, while time remains to write a life worth scanning. And since no man knows his death day, the time to get a grip on his life is the first hour when the impulse strikes him. — Herman Wouk

But the compulsive overachievement of today's elite college students - the sense that they need to keep running as fast as they can - is not the only thing that keeps them from forming the deeper relationships that might relieve their anguish. Something more insidious is operating, too: a resistance to vulnerability, a fear of looking like the only one who isn't capable of handling the pressure. These are young people who have always succeeded at everything, in part by projecting the confidence that they always will. Now, as they get to college, the stakes are higher and the competition fiercer. Everybody thinks that they are the only one who's suffering, so nobody says anything, so everybody suffers. Everyone feels like a fraud; everybody thinks that everybody else is smarter than they are. — William Deresiewicz

But in Republics there is a stronger vitality, a fiercer hatred, a keener thirst for revenge. The memory of their former freedom will not let them rest; so that the safest course is either to destroy them, or to go and live in them. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Never did anyone ever stay longer than ten years because the resistance grows fiercer as your presence grows longer [in Afghanistan]. I don't think we are going to be any exception. What made us exempt from history? — Gwynne Dyer

He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The sky, indeed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively so lurid, that the water almost seemed of fiercer flame than the sunset it mirrored. It looked like a stream of literal fire winding under the vast caverns of a subterranean country. — G.K. Chesterton

The fact that she had once convinced herself to kiss a person like Ryan now nauseated her, and made her hate him with the fiercer intensity of putrefied lust. They — Lindsey Lee Johnson

But breaking was beautiful. It hurt, and it was an uphill climb back to sanity, but you came back stronger, fiercer, and more solid than you were before. Tate had obviously been through it, I had, and eventually so would K.C., I thought. — Penelope Douglas

The flakier your mission, the fiercer you have to be on the business side. — Ira Glass

I am forced to say that I have many fiercer critics than myself. — Irwin Shaw

Anti-Americanism may indeed have grown fiercer than it was during the cold war. It is a common phenomenon that when the angels fail to deliver, the demons become more fearsome. — Ian Buruma

Life can be short and it's meant to be cherished and treasured - every second, every moment. Now, I'll love harder. I'll love fiercer. And I will not be afraid. — M.L. Rodriguez

Piercing his giant cock had only served to make it look fiercer. Like it could beat me in an arm wrestle. Like he could club me with it and leave a bruise. — Jaden Wilkes

If Nature here wishes to make a mountain, she runs a range for five hundred miles; if a plain, she levels eighty; if a rock, she tilts five thousand feet of strata on end; our skies are higher and more intensely blue; our waves larger than others; our rivers fiercer. There is nothing measured, small nor petty in South Africa. — Olive Schreiner

Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there's an explosion - that's Plot. — Leigh Brackett

Not sharp revenge, nor hell itself can find, A fiercer torment than a guilty mind, Which day and night doth dreadfully accuse, Condemns the wretch, and still the charge renews. — John Dryden

The kiss is sweeter than sin and fiercer than temptation. I am not gentle, I am not kind; I am rough and wild and savage. — S. Jae-Jones

Mother could be fiercer than the Warrior when her children are in danger. — George R R Martin

We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return to at evening. — G.K. Chesterton

There is not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object. — John Keats

Lora ... Her name was a tormented whisper as he kissed her harder, fiercer than before, as if he was starving for the taste of her mouth. She twisted in his arms, not trying to get away but to work her arms free ... She managed to push them up through his crushing hold and lock them around his neck. He groaned deep in his throat, and she groaned too in protest as his mouth suddenly left hers. He was looking down at her, his breathing heavy, a wild glitter in his eyes. Lora lifted one hand from the corded nape of his neck and lightly stroked the rough, wet edges of his hair. — Karen Robards

On un-being in an imaginary real 'lationship:

When you relive, the past, unkind,
you cannot see - you're simply blind.
Emotions - ages take to settle,
and love is fiercer than a kettle.

And in the desert, late at night
Your friends, you get to bite
The laws - they force you to a fight
The stone to glass turns - what a sight

At times I sit, and sit, and think.
What could be better than a drink?
The answer, I think, is a link...
To just one woman - just her wink.

It hurts when it hurts,
but the aching will pass.
At some point, it deserts,
all the hearts, of bent glass. — Will Advise

The indifference of children towards meat is one proof that the taste for meat is unnatural; their preference is for vegetable foods ... Beware of changing this natural taste and making children flesh-eaters, if not for their health's sake, for the sake of their character; for how can one explain away the fact that great meat-eaters are usually fiercer and more cruel than other men; this has been recognised at all times and in all places. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If anything, the spirit that drove him now was fiercer, but there was no denying the diminishing powers of his body. He — Donna Leon

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather around us, that they may see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer perhaps even a fiercer life because of our quiet. William Butler Yeats — Jack Kornfield

The strongest and the fiercest spirit That fought in heaven, now fiercer by despair. — John Milton

The second beating seemed to me a just and reasonable punishment. To get one beating, and then to get another and far fiercer one on top of it, for being so unwise as to show that the first had not hurt - that was quite natural. The gods are jealous, and when you have good fortune you should conceal it. The other is that I accepted the broken riding crop as my own crime. I can still recall my feeling as I saw the handle lying on the carpet - the feeling of having done an ill-bred clumsy thing, and ruined an expensive object. I had broken it: so Sim told me, and so I believed. This acceptance of guilt lay unnoticed in my memory for twenty or thirty years. — George Orwell

What we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise,
but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it.
We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a
surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent — G.K. Chesterton

Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath. — J.R.R. Tolkien

In a way, I think this album is stronger than the last one - in terms of not hiding behind anything. So in a way, I see this album as fiercer than the last. I just find it interesting hearing what people think. If that's people's interpretation, then that's valid and interesting. It's hard to try and neatly place a record like that. — Sarah Blasko

There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist. — Erica Jong

I certainly think that it is better to be impetuous than cautious, for fortune is a woman, and it is necessary, if you wish to master her, to conquer her by force; and it can be seen that she let's herself be overcome by these rather than by those who proceed coldly. And therefore, like a woman, she is a friend to the young, because they are less cautious, fiercer, and master her with greater audacity — Niccolo Machiavelli

The new faith sought to break the human bond with magic nature, to disenchant the world of plants and animals by directing our attention to a single God in the sky. Yet Jehovah couldn't very well pretend the tree of knowledge didn't exist, not when generations of plant-worshiping pagans knew better. So the pagan tree is allowed to grow even in Eden, though ringed around now with a strong taboo. Yes, there is spiritual knowledge in nature, the new God is acknowledging, and its temptations are fierce, but I am fiercer still. Yield to it, and you will be punished. So unfolds the drug war's first battle. — Michael Pollan

The more woman aims for personal identity and autonomy ... the fiercer will be her struggle with nature - that is, with the intractable physical laws of her own body. And the more nature will punish her: 'Do not dare to be free! For your body does not belong to you.' — Camille Paglia

Women are fiercer by far than men. — Cassandra Clare

I lay for a long time in silence, staring at the ceiling. Was my life always to be like this? I wondered. Was it going to go, forever, in an instant, from sunshine to shadow? From pandemonium to loneliness? From fierce anger to a fiercer kind of love? — Alan Bradley

We
softened. and broke. and kneeled over in pain. and sang. and threw ourselves against the walls. against each other. and hid. and caved. and opened. and tossed ourselves into work. and danced. and shrank. and closed. and ate. and bled. and held on. and ignored. and accepted. and lied. and laughed. and created. and undid. and drank. and drugged. and loved something. someone. somewhere. ourselves. fiercer. and hated. something. someone. somewhere. fiercer. and swam. and rejected. and yearned. and distanced. and clawed. and touched. and some of us will disown you. because you hurt too much. some of us will have to say your name for a year. before we are able to sleep. — Nayyirah Waheed

The powers of this world are very strong. Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current. Go well, Lyra; bless you, child, bless you. Keep your own counsel. — Philip Pullman

Who ... what are they?"
"My pride and glory," Alex said fondly. "Betty and Lucy Coltrane. Best damned bouncers in the business. Though of course I'd never tell them that. Fiercer than pit bulls and cheaper to run. Married to each other. They had a dog once, but they ate it. — Simon R. Green

In her own fumbling way, she'd reminded him he was just a man, fallible, needful, a member of the supremely imperfect human race ... and shamefully undeserving of what she had to offer.
Looking at Billie, touching her, tasting her, had filled him with a wanting fiercer than any he'd known. For the first time, he was faced with something he couldn't truly have, because of what he'd become. — Shelby Reed

The more doubtful the political outlook the fiercer will be the dogmas which men create and contend for. — John Buchan

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

Clary knew she'd never be able to pull off that sort of elegance in a million years, and she didn't care. Isabelle was Isabelle, and Clary was grateful she existed, making the world a little fiercer with every one of her smiles. — Cassandra Clare

The harder the world, the fiercer the honour. — Steven Erikson

Men and women are moved by tides much fiercer than you can imagine, and they sweep us all up into the current. — Philip Pullman

I have so many [on-set Glee BFFs]. I love Kevin (McHale). I love Amber (Riley); Amber and I are essentially the same person, even though one's fiercer than the other - don't tell her it's me. I love Chris Colfer, he's a gem. Melissa (Benoist) and Blake (Jenner), I love them. We're such a tight-knight family because we spend so much time together. — Alex Newell

She threw herself across her bed, weeping into a pillow. She knew just what she wanted -- the desire was a fierce ache inside her. But fiercer still was the knowledge that it was beyond the reach of a female. — Libbie Hawker

It may seem like the dragons tormenting you are bigger and fiercer than those lurking in your neighbor's yard, but this is an illusion. We all face mighty dragons at home in some form. — Richelle E. Goodrich

There is no fiercer enemy than a word. A word that can be written down in pages and punctuated by quotation marks and commas and spelled out in contracts and poems and sighs, in old whispers and song lyrics, in promises and vows. — Alice Hoffman

The storm was fierce. But I wasn't afraid. I knew my father's love was fiercer than any storm. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

There is something in natural affection which will lead it on to eternal love more easily than natural appetite could be led on. But there's also something in it which makes it easier to stop at the natural level and mistake it for the heavenly. Brass is mistaken for gold more easily than clay is. And if it finally refuses conversion its corruption will be worse than the corruption of what ye call the lower passions. It is a stronger angel, and therefor, when it falls, a fiercer devil. — C.S. Lewis

Was my life always to be like this? I wondered.Was it going to go, forever, in an instant, from sunshine to shadow? From pandemonium to loneliness? From fierce anger to a fiercer kind of love?
Something was missing. I was sure of it. Something was missing, but I couldn't for the life of me think what it was. — Alan Bradley

I imagine God creating humans was much like cavemen creating fire ... First it sparkles brightly, full of life and beauty. But then it grows, stronger and fiercer until it becomes dangerous and uncontrollable ... Then its creator can only stand on the hill and wait for his creation to die. — Ben Mitchell

An old Russian proverb . . . "Where hangs the smoke of hate burns a fiercer fire called fear."
The trick . . . was to keep that fire alive, but to know at the same time it might consume you also. Then the truck was to make the fear invisible in the smokes of hatred. Having accomplished that, you would own men's souls and your power would be absolute, so long as you never allowed men to see that their hate was but fear, and so long as you, afraid, knowing it, hence more shrewd and cautious than the rest, did not become a corpse at the hands of the hating fearful.
There, in a nutshell, was the recipe for dictatorship. Over the proletariat. Over the godly believers. Over the heathen. Over all men, even those who imagined they were free and yet could be made to hate.
Frighten; then furnish the whipping boys. Then seize. — Philip Wylie

Only certain portions of the line had to undergo carnage in the French style, but knowledge of it was all-pervasive. Everything the 19th River Guard knew came from quiet meetings in the communications trenches, conversations with sleepless, bitter infantrymen who had been transferred up from the fiercer fighting in the south. If some of the River Guard were on the edge, many of the regular infantry had gone over it long before. Especially disturbing to the naval contingent were reports from down below that Italian troops now were shot quite casually for disciplinary reasons, and that the Italian generals, like their French counterparts, were executing men in decimations for crimes they had not committed. Men with families were pulled from the ranks along with equally mystified adolescents and put to death for acts attributed to others whom they had never seen. — Mark Helprin

Many owe their greatness to their enemies. Flattery is fiercer than hatred, for hatred corrects the faults flattery had disguised. — Baltasar Gracian

As far as we could see, the miles of copper red grass were drenched in sunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of day — Willa Cather

The thing about a marine is that they can be the nicest men and women you will ever meet, but when it comes to their duty there are none fiercer. — Joshua Mcnutt

Hang on," Sadie said. She stomped right up to the throne. Ammit growled at her, but Sadie growled back, which confused the monster into silence.
"What are you?" she demanded. "My dad? Osiris? Are you even alive?"
Dad looked at Anubis. "What did I tell you about her? Fiercer than Ammit, I said."
"You didn't need to tell me." Anubis's face was grave."I've learned to fear that sharp tongue."
Sadie looked outraged. "excuse me? — Rick Riordan

In this life our sorrows are either not very long or not very great because nature either overcomes them by habits or puts an end to them by sinking under their weight. But in hell the torments cannot be overcome by habit, for while they are of terrible intensity they are at the same time of continual variety, each pain, so to speak, taking fire from another and re-endowing that which has enkindled it with a still fiercer flame. — James Joyce

The dragon turned on the children and unicorns, his mouth open. For a brief moment, they could see his eyes change from blue to a deep red, like coals in a fire. It was almost as if another, fiercer dragon looked at them through Zebedia's eyes. — Bronwen Webb

How shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many
proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many
magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the
Christians; so many sages philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their
deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their
own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then
ever before from applause. — Tertullian

This world is too peaceful, too acquiescent, too tame. It is a circumcised world. Nay! - a castrated world! It must be made fiercer, before it can become grander and better and - more natural. — Arthur Desmond

A monster lies in wait in me,
A stew of wounds and misery,
But fiercer still in life and limb,
The me that lies in wait in him. — Clive Barker

I was carrying a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me. The thing fed on its own heat and flamed the fiercer. There was no time, in all my waking time, that I didn't want a drink. I began to anticipate the completion of my daily thousand words by taking a drink when only five hundred words were written. It was not long until I prefaced the beginning of the thousand words with a drink. — Jack London

Let the winds blow! a fiercer gale
Is wild within me! what may quell
That sullen tempest? I must sail
Whither, O whither, who can tell! — Edmund Clarence Stedman