Gods Has Us Held Quotes & Sayings

he blessed again the gods of his fathers for bringing Kathryn back to him. He refused to think too far ahead. He'd already learned that to live in the future was folly, especially when the present held everything for which he could ask. — Kirsten Beyer

Someone pried open his eyelid and rudely flashed a light in his eye that made his headache pound even harder. Groaning, he flinched, moving his head away. Gently, the doctor turned his head back and held it in place while he continued to test the dilation of his eye. Good thing Caillen's arms were strapped down or the man would be bleeding over the intrusion and that light would be shining out of an orifice the gods had never meant to hold it. "He's — Sherrilyn Kenyon

He fixed his dark eyes on her. 'I am Kekrops, the first and eternal king of Athens. I would welcome you to my city.' He held up the covered platter. ' Also, I brought a Bundt cake.'
Piper glanced at her friends. 'A trick?'
'Probably?' Annabeth said.
'At least he brought dessert.' Percy smiled down at the snake guys. 'Welcome aboard! — Rick Riordan

Then the woman in the bed sat up and looked about her with wild eyes; and the oldest of the old men said: 'Lady, we have come to write down the names of the immortals,' and at his words a look of great joy came into her face. Presently she, began to speak slowly, and yet eagerly, as though she knew she had but a little while to live, and, in English, with the accent of their own country; and she told them the secret names of the immortals of many lands, and of the colours, and odours, and weapons, and instruments of music and instruments of handicraft they held dearest; but most about the immortals of Ireland and of their love for the cauldron, and the whetstone, and the sword, and the spear, and the hills of the Shee, and the horns of the moon, and the Grey Wind, and the Yellow Wind, and the Black Wind, and the Red Wind. ("The Adoration of the Magi") — W.B.Yeats

It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets. — Cormac McCarthy

I don't believe in Him, and if He does exist, I don't like Him. His type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. They're not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we are all the better for that. — James Lovegrove

Right now there's a commonly-held view among scientists that we know about only four percent of all the matter in the universe. Four percent!"
"So what about the other 96 percent?"
"We astrophysicists call it 'dark matter' and 'dark energy.' Maybe we should just call it ignorance. There's so much that we don't know. It's shocking how little we know. And yet we behave like little gods who think we're in control of everything. Like kids with delusions of grandeur. Isn't that what we've made ourselves into? It's as if we're trying to make ourselves believe that four percent is all there is. That everything else, all that we don't know, doesn't exist. But it does. We know it's there; we just don't understand it. — A.J. Kazinski

Here, new information, new empirical data, led to a direct challenge to the way in which the gods were envisioned. This new doubt encouraged a new kind of punishment for doubt. Set up about 438 BCE, the law against Anaxagoras's atheism held that society must denounce those who do not believe in the divine beings or who teach doctrines about things in the sky. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

He was curiously calm. Men were supposed to go mad with grief when their children died, he knew. They were supposed to tear their hair out by the roots, to curse the gods and swear red vengeance. So why was it that he felt so little? The boy lived and died believing Robert Baratheon his sire. Jaime had seen him born, that was true, though more for Cersei than the child. But he had never held him. "How would it look?" his sister warned him when the women finally left them. "Bad enough Joff looks like you without you mooning over him." Jaime yielded with hardly a fight. The boy had been a squalling pink thing who demanded too much of Cersei's time, Cersei's love, and Cersei's breasts. Robert was welcome to him. And now he's dead. — George R R Martin

Protagoras did not know if the gods exist, but he held in any case they ought to be worshiped. Philosophy, according to him, had nothing edifying to teach, and for the survival of morals we must rely upon the thoughtlessness of the majority and their willingness to believe what they had been taught. — Bertrand Russell

My parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear, assuming that in fact, like my parents, they weren't interested in gods, and that this uninterest was 'normal.' You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again. — Salman Rushdie

Valmiki the Poet held all the moving world inside a water drop in his hand.
The gods and saints from heaven looked down on Lanka,
And Valmiki looked down at the gods in the morning of Time. — Valmiki

No one else holds or has held the place in the heart of the world which Jesus holds. Other gods have been as devoutly worshipped; no other man has been so devoutly loved. — John Knox

The eyes closed. Cammed each night out of that safe furrow the bulk of this city's waking each sunrise again set virtuously to plowing, what rich soils had he turned, what concentric planets uncovered? What voices overheard, flinders of luminescent gods glimpsed among the wallpaper's stained foliage, candlestubs lit to rotate in the air over him, prefiguring the cigarette he or a friend must fall asleep someday smoking, thus to end among the flaming, secret salts held all those years by the insatiable stuffing of a mattress that could keep vestiges of every nightmare sweat, helpless overflowing bladder, viciously, tearfully consummated wet dream, like the memory bank to a computer of the lost? She was overcome all at once by a need to touch him, as if she could not believe in him, or would not remember him, without it. — Thomas Pynchon

The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jedda, in Babylon. — Cormac McCarthy

Oh. Wow.'
'What?'
He held my hand up between us. 'Look.'
I squinted at my hands. 'I don't see anything.' Sighing, he flipped my hand over, and my jaw hit the ground. A faint blue line marked the center of my palm with a smaller line through it. It would've looked like a cross, except the horizontal line was slanted.
'Oh. My. Gods.' I jerked my hand away, scrambling back. 'I have a rune on my hand. It's an Apollyon rune, isn't it.'
Seth rested his hands on his knees. 'I think so. I have one like that.'
'But why is it still there? Why is it there at all?' I flipped my palm over several times, shook it, but the faint blue tattoo was still there. 'You can see it, right? Like right now, you can see it?'
'Yes. It hasn't faded.' Seth leaned forward, catching my hand. 'Stop shaking it like it's a damn Etch-A-Sketch. That doesn't make them disappear. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

When I look at the multitude of the gods of the past held in esteem by great civilisations now cast aside as pagan idols, I wonder wether tomorrow the gods we hold in high esteem won't suffer the same fate. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

The cabins they passed among seemed solemn in their abandonment, cramped by the watercourse and the overhanging brow of the cloudy mountain. Some of its people might yet be living, and Ada wondered how often they remembered this lonesome place, now still as a held breath. Whatever word they had called it would soon be numbered among the names of things which have not been passed down to us and are exiled from our memories. She doubted that its people, even in the last days, had ever looked ahead and imagined loss so total and so soon. they had not foreseen a near time when theirs would be another world filled with other people whose mouths would speak other words, whose sleep would be eased or troubled with other dreams, whose prayers would be offered up to other gods. — Charles Frazier

Now he understood what it was to be a man: that it was to be weak as well as strong, to be foolish sometimes and wise sometimes, to know love as well as to kill. And he had learned that there were other paths for him, other gods who called in the deep places of the earth, in the lap of wavelets on the shore, in the breath of the wind. He had learned that there were other kinds of courage. He knew, with deep certainty, that the islands held a new path for him. He need only move forward and find it. — Juliet Marillier

It seems - and who so astonished as they? - that they had held back material facts; that they were guilty of both suppressio veri and suggestio falsi (well-known gods against whom they often offended); further, that they were malignant in their dispositions, untrustworthy in their characters, pernicious and revolutionary in their influences, abandoned to the devils of wilfulness, pride, and a most intolerable conceit. Ninthly, and lastly, they were to have a care and to be very careful. — Rudyard Kipling

The poets, therefore, however much they adorned the gods in their poems, and amplified their exploits with the highest praises, yet very frequently confess that all things are held together and governed by one spirit or mind. — Lactantius

In the heat of unprecedented technological breakthroughs it is easy to think that we are invincible, like gods who would rule the world. But none of us need be reminded that the future of our planet is being held hostage by our own cleverness, with nuclear physics, chemistry, agribusiness, mineral exploration, and bioengineering threatening our biosphere in ways we could never have imagined even twenty years ago. — Hal Zina Bennett

The dark ages are obscure but they were not weird. Magicians there were, to be sure, and miracles. In the flickering firelight of the winter hearth, mead songs were sung of dragons and ring-givers, of fell deeds and famine, of portents and vengeful gods. Strange omens in the sky were thought to foretell evil times. But in a world where the fates seemed to govern by whimsy and caprice, belief in sympathetic magic, superstition and making offerings to spirits was not much more irrational than believing in paper money: trust is an expedient currency. There were charms to ward of dwarfs, water-elf disease and swarms of bees; farmers recited spells against cattle thieves and women knew of potions to make men more - or less - virile. Soothsayers, poets and those who remembered the genealogies of kings were held in high regard. The past was an immense source of wonder and inspiration, of fear and foretelling. — Max Adams

I go through a loop in which I notice all the ways I am - for just an example - self-centered and careerist and not true to standards and values that transcend my own petty interests, and feel like I'm not one of the good ones; but then I countenance the fact that here at least I am worrying about it; so then I feel better about myself (I mean, at least this stuff is on my mind, at least I'm dissatisfied with my level of integrity and commitment); but this soon becomes a vehicle for feeling superior to (imagined) Others ... It has to do with God and gods and a basic sense of trust in the universe v. fear that the universe must be held at bay and micromanaged into giving me some smidgen of some gratification I feel I simply can't live without. It's all very confusing. I think I'm very honest and candid, but I'm also proud of how honest and candid I am - so where does that put me. — D.T. Max

The opinions held by most people about the gods are not true conceptions of them but fallacious notions, according to which awful penalties are meted out to the evil and the greatest of blessings to the good. — Epicurus

Zia," I said, "that's a goddess. She defeated Bast. What chance do you have?"
Zia held up her staff and the carved lion's head burst into flames - a small red fireball so bright, it lit the entire room. "I am a scribe in the House of LIfe, Sadie Kane. I am trained to fight gods. — Rick Riordan

And will you love me for a day? A year? A lifetime?" She knew the answer but wanted to hear him say it in that beautiful, shattered voice.
"Beyond that," he whispered, eyes shining with the tempest of emotion he'd held in check until now. "Beyond the reign of false gods and meddlesome priests. Beyond al Zafira when her bright stars fade. — Grace Draven

His (the Christian God) type of gods aren't gods who echo how mortals behave. They're gods who are held up as example of perfection to be emulated. There's not gods of the people. They're remote and inaccessible, and they demand blind, unthinking obedience from their followers. They're dictators. We Aesir and Vanir, by contrast, are mirrors. Other gods rule. We reflect and magnify. We are you, only more so. We share your flaws and foibles. We are as humanlike as we are divine, and I think we're all the better for that. — James Lovegrove

The value of a human being depends on the quality of information held in his or her brain. Depending on whether that information is positive or negative, destructive or constructive, loving or hateful, the direction and destiny of the person's life will be determined. But the most important point, which we must never forget, is that no piece of information is more important than the soul. Even the gods and religions that make up our faith traditions are merely information that has been received into our brains from birth. That information did not create our souls. — Ilchi Lee

Opening paragraph for The Last Gods of Indochine:

"It was hard to believe the human body could contain so much water, and yet, there it all was. Phrai twisted the cloth and watched it plop in dull patters on the ground, the pocked earth sponging up sound as well. Sweat had been seeping out his employer for weeks, and he had been at the dying man's side all the while, pouring fresh water back into his mouth with the devotion of a nun. Phrai imagined nearly half the man had been absorbed and squeezed from these rags, creating small pools just outside the hut. In another part of the world, that half of him would evaporate out of existence, but here it could not; the thick air held eternity at bay. — Samuel Ferrer

Aelin ran for Manon, leaping over the fallen stones, her ankle wrenching on loose debris.
The island rocked with her every step, and the sunlight was scalding, as if Mala were holding that island aloft with every last bit of strength the goddess could summon in this land.
Then Aelin was upon Manon Blackbeak, and the witch lifted hate-filled eyes to her. Aelin hauled off stone after stone from her body, the island beneath them buckling.
"You're too good a fighter to kill," Aelin breathed, hooking an arm under Manon's shoulders and hauling her up. The rock swayed to the left-but held. Oh, gods. "If I die because of you, I'll beat the shit out of you in hell."
She could have sworn the witch let out a broken laugh as she got to her feet, nearly dead weight in Aelin's arms. — Sarah J. Maas

I'm going to take you home, strip you down, and fuck you - " "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" Kevin said. He was back to pushing away from Jagger. "I think you forgot something there. Actually, I think you forgot several things!" Jagger cocked his head. Kevin held up one finger. "Kissing. There has to be lots of kissing." Then a second finger, and one more for each point he ticked off. "And foreplay. What is it about men thinking foreplay doesn't exist? I want some groping and rubbing and more sucking! Then - No, before the foreplay starts, but it can be during foreplay, too - a shower. Gods, a nice, hot shower." Kevin's eyes gleamed. "The two of us, naked, soapy, rubbing all over each other. But no soap for lube, that burns." Another finger went up. "Food. I might even need that before all else, except maybe the kissing. If it's garlicky food, then - — Bailey Bradford