Hairsbreadth Quotes & Sayings

The heat rose up my neck, wrapped fingers over my face. His hair fell around me, and I could smell nothing but him. The grain of his lips seemed to rest a hairsbreadth from mine. — Madeline Miller

A critic should always strive to recapture the sense of wonder and surprise with which he first beheld a now-familiar work of art. — Terry Teachout

Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man-yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it. — Marcus Aurelius

Every photo takes him a hairsbreadth closer to her, to the essential core of Helle, a purified Helle that he will one day hand back to her on a sheet of photographic paper. Here, he imagines himself saying. This is you. She will look at the print and know herself, at last, and she will wonder how she missed herself all along. Helle, seeing Helle as clearly as she sees the rest of the world: this is something to be dreamed of. It — Lauren Groff

A warm, ragged breath disturbed the hairs on my forehead, and my blood began pricking as I realized where exactly I had retreated: right into Mr. Braddock, our strange connection humming through the hairsbreadth of distance between our bodies, our faces. I froze, forcing myself to stop shoving against him further. Before I understood anything, a rough, large hand brushed my chin, my face tipped upwards, and his mouth caught mine, and suddenly my entire body was on fire. Whatever odd sensation had thrummed between us before was just the stroke of a violin bow to this clash of an orchestra. I felt the world pass between our lips, tasting champagne, hunger, and something indefinably darker, while his hand ignited sparks down my cheek to the nape of my neck. He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me closer, forcing that elusive essence to run deeper than my skin, deeper than my veins, until my very bones vibrated. — Tarun Shanker

The only thing I hated worse than cleaning my apartment was torture, though the two were a hairsbreadth away from neck-and-neck. I — Darynda Jones

Volunteers don't get paid, not because they're worthless, but because they're priceless. — Sherry Anderson

You have a bad memory for details. You can tell her the date of the Spanish Armada, but you couldn't even guess at the balance of your checkbook. — Jay McInerney

all the hardships in life were all a big joke and there was no need to be sad or depressed about them. — Jonathan Woodrow

Gertrude Stein maintained that one wrote for oneself and for strangers, a superb recognition that I would extend into a parallel apothegm: one reads for oneself and for strangers. The Western Canon does not exist in order to augment preexisting societal elites. It is there to be read by you and by strangers, so that you and those you will never meet can encounter authentic aesthetic power and the authority of what Baudelaire (and Erich Auerbach after him) called "aesthetic dignity." One of the ineluctable stigmata of the canonical is aesthetic dignity, which is not to be hired. — Harold Bloom

Define your uniqueness.
Define your greatness. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I've always heard your best match in life is the person who is the opposite of you that makes a complete whole. — Amber L. Johnson

It's too bad prayer comes bundled in a package of 'spiritual disciplines.' Really, we should see prayer as a spiritual privilege. We don't do it as a callisthenic exercise to gain points with God; we do it, because it is good for us in every way. — Philip Yancey

I think I was nervous enough, even at 3:00 a.m., that you could hear my heart beating over the microphone. — Steve Tibbetts

As Rowland Hill said that he could not see why Satan should have the best tunes, so neither can I see why he should have the most graceful speakers! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon