Grimmer Quotes & Sayings

I have never really got used to being on this earth. Sometimes I think our presence here is due to a cosmic blunder, that we were meant for another planet altogether, with other arrangements, and other laws, and other, grimmer skies. I try to imagine it, our true place, off on the far side of the galaxy, whirling and whirling. And the ones who were meant for here, are they out there, baffled and homesick, like us? No, they would have become extinct long ago. How could they survive, these gentle earthlings, in a world that was made to contain us. — John Banville

The years between Roger Bacon's birth, in 1220, and Uthred's death, in 1370, are considered the final flowering of the Middle Ages. They were followed by a longer, grimmer period in Europe, during which the machinery for rooting out heresy defeated enlightened discourse almost completely. The early condemnation of works by William Ockham, Johannes Eckehart, the spiritual Franciscans, and Dante signaled the start of a breakdown in the integrity of Western thought. During this Great Interruption, xenophobia replaced curiosity, interest in Islam and the classics withered, and Muslim thought was anathematized or ignored. Fifty years later, it was no longer wise to learn Arabic, Hebrew, or even Greek. — Michael Wolfe

Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls? — Honore De Balzac

The study of history can be sobering and shocking, and morally troubling. One does not have to believe in original sin to do it successfully, but it probably helps. By relentlessly placing on display the pervasive crookedness of humanity's timber, history brings us back to earth, equips us to resist the powerful lure of radical expectations, and reminds us of the grimmer possibilities of human nature--possibilities that, for most people living in most times, have not been the least bit imaginary. With such realizations firmly in hand, we are far better equipped to move forward in the right way. — Wilfred M. McClay

I loved fairy tales when I was a kid. Grimm. The grimmer the better. I loved gruesome gothic tales and, in that respect, I liked Bible stories, because to me they were very gothic. — Amy Tan

Anna Deavere Smith's new one-woman show bills itself as being about health care, but the truth is that 'Let Me Down Easy' is mostly about the grimmer subject of death and dying. — Terry Teachout

In my youth and comparative inexperience I had always regarded the yearning and pangs of love as the worst torture that could afflict the human heart. At this moment, however, I began to realize that there was another and perhaps grimmer torture than that of longing and desiring: that of being loved against one's will and of being unable to defend oneself against the urgency of another's passion; of seeing another human being seared by the flame of her desire and of having to look impotently, lacking the power, the capacity, the strength to pluck her from the flames. — Stefan Zweig

face grew longer and grimmer as Berel — Herman Wouk

The goddess Nemesis, Bertol Grimmer's favourite motif after the War. The goddess of revenge. — Jo Nesbo

Of all the branches of men in the forces there is none which shows more devotion and faces grimmer perils than the submariners. — Winston Churchill

There is another, grimmer history to the filibuster, though, one that carries special relevance for me. For almost a century, the filibuster was the South's weapon of choice in its efforts to protect Jim Crow from federal interference, the legal blockade that effectively gutted the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. Decade after decade, courtly, erudite men like Senator Richard B Russell of Georgia used the filibuster to choke off any and every piece of civil rights legislation before the Senate, whether voting rights bills, or fair employment bills, or anti-lynching bills. — Barack Obama

It wasn't his fault he'd been reared in a nice, safe, civilized society that protected him from the harsh reality of an older and grimmer set of imperatives. — David Weber

Did I learn anything? No way. But all the things you want to learn from
grief turn out to be the total opposite of what you actually learn. There are no revelations, no wisdoms as a trade-off for the things you have lost. You
just get stupider, more selfish. Colder and grimmer. You forget your keys. You leave the house and panic that you won't remember where you live.
You know less than you ever did. You keep crossing thresholds of grief and you think, Maybe this one will unveil some sublime truth about life and
death and pain. But on the other side, there's just more grief. — Rob Sheffield

Gothic lines grimmer; the soft brilliance of the altar, with its multitude of candles, with the priests performing actions whose meaning was unknown to him; the silent crowd that seemed not to participate but to wait anxiously like a crowd at a station barrier waiting for the gate to open; the stench of wet clothes and the aromatic perfume of incense; the bitter cold that lowered like a threatening unseen presence; it was not a religious emotion that he got from all this, but the sense of a mystery that had its roots far back in the origins of the human race. His nerves were taut, and when on a sudden the choir to the full accompaniment of the orchestra burst with a great shout into the Adeste Fideles he was seized with an exultation over he knew not what. — W. Somerset Maugham

Hunted what?" Shea held her breath, afraid of what he might say.
"Beautiful women, little one, and I was the one who found you after all." His white teeth gleamed at her, a definite leer.
"Don't put me off like that." She had already taken advantage, sliding easily into his mind and picking out the pictures of danger and revulsion. Fear even. Not so much of their adversary, but of themselves turning into the very thing they sought to destroy.
Jacques, unprepared for her entrance into his mind, had been confident he could keep the grimmer side of their existence watered down for her. Shea had always been reluctant to enter his mind; it hadn't occurred to him that she would do so whenever she wanted.
His expression was so rueful that Shea burst out laughing. "Where I grew up, that's called being caught with your pants down."
He looked down at his body, glistening with the rain. His grin was self-mocking, his black eyes amused. "Literally. — Christine Feehan

Some people buried their fears in food, she knew, and some in booze, and some in planning elaborate engagements and weddings and other life events that took up every spare moment of their time, in case unpleasant thoughts intruded. But for Nina, whenever reality, or the grimmer side of reality, threatened to invade, she always turned to a book. Books had been her solace when she was sad; her friends when she was lonely. They had mended her heart when it was broken, and encouraged her to hope when she was down. Yet — Jenny Colgan

Bright were the memories of his childhood at these docks, to which he had been ever drawn by the allure of the stranger traders as they swung into their berths like weary and weathered heroes returned from some elemental war. In those days it was uncommon to see the galleys of the Freemen Privateers ease into the bay, sleek and riding low with booty. They hailed from such mysterious ports as Filman Orras, Fort By a Half, Dead Man's Story, and exile; names that rang of adventure in the ears of a lad who had never seen his home city from outside its walls.
The man slowed as he reached the foot of the stone pier. The years between him and that lad marched through his mind, a possession of martial images growing ever grimmer. If he searched out the many crossroads he had come to in the past, he saw their skies storm-warped, the lands ragged and wind-torn. The forces of age and experience worked on them now, and whatever choices he had made then seemed fated and almost desperate. — Steven Erikson

There's nothing grimmer than the tragedy that wears a comic mask. — Edith Wharton

If your hands were not clean, your good actions had grimmer and more relentless consequences than your sins. — Nick Joaquin

It was not just the drink, though, that was making me happy, but the tenderness of things, the simple goodness of the world. This sunset, for instance, how lavishly it was laid on, the clouds, the light on the sea, that heartbreaking, blue-green distance, laid on, all of it, as if to console some lost suffering waybarer. I have never really got used to being on this earth. Somethings I think our presence here is due to a cosmic blunder, that we were meant for another planet altogether, with other arrangements, and other laws, and other, grimmer skies. I try to imagine it, our true place, off on the far side of the galaxy, whirling and whirling. And the ones who were meant for here, are they out there, baffled and homesick, like us? No, they would have become extinct long ago. How could they survive, these gentle earthlings, in a world that was meant to contain us? — John Banville

Just give her one, Ifemelu thought. To overwhelm a child of four with choices, to lay on her the burden of making a decision, was to deprive her of the bliss of childhood. Adulthood, after all, already loomed, where she would have to make grimmer and grimmer decisions. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

You about done?" I asked him. "I need the table."
"What is it with you people?" Butters groused. "For God's sake, these are real injuries here."
"There will be more of them than a thousand reluctant physicians could patch up if we don't get moving," I said. "Today's serious business, man."
"How serious?"
"Can't think when it's been grimmer," I said. "Freaking waste-of-space vampires, lying around on tables you need to use."
"Useless wizards," Thomas said, "jumping on enemy guns and accidentally shooting their allies with them."
"Oh," I said. "That was when I jumped Ace?"
He snorted. "Yeah. — Jim Butcher

When I first thought about writing this book, I conceived of it as a book about moods, and an illness of moods, in the context of an individual life. As I have written it, however, it has somehow turned out to be very much a book about love as well: love as sustainer, as renewer, and as protector. After each seeming death within my mind or heart, love has returned to recreate hope and restore life. It has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest. It has, inexplicably and savingly, provided not only cloak but lantern for the darker seasons and grimmer weather. — Kay Redfield Jamison

And finally - he was neither able nor willing to prevent it - the self-loathing dammed up inside him spilled over and gushed out, gushed out of glaring eyes that grew ever grimmer, angrier, beneath the rim of his cap, flooding the outside world as perfect, vulgar hate. — Patrick Suskind

A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style - and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers. — P. J. O'Rourke

Jamie's face, already drawn and grim, grew somewhat grimmer at this question. The completest of landlubbers, he was not just prone to seasickness, but prostrated by it. He had been violently ill all the way from Inverness to Le Havre, though sea and weather had been quite calm. Now, some six hours later, safe ashore in Jared's warehouse by the quay, there was still a pale tinge to his lips and dark circles beneath his eyes. — Diana Gabaldon

The state, for a long period of time, has been undergoing a wrenching economic transformation. The reality is much grimmer than in other states. — Herb Asher