Leafed Quotes & Sayings

THAT YEAR THE RAINS HAD COME so gently that the Salinas River did not overflow. A slender stream twisted back and forth in its broad bed of gray sand, and the water was not milky with silt but clear and pleasant. The willows that grow in the river bed were well leafed, and the wild blackberry vines were thrusting their spiky new shoots along the ground. — John Steinbeck

Do we write books so that they shall merely be read? Don't we also write them for employment in the household? For one that is read from start to finish, thousands are leafed through, other thousands lie motionless, others are jammed against mouseholes, thrown at rats, others are stood on, sat on, drummed on, have gingerbread baked on them or are used to light pipes. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

She walked Toby to Victoria Station and left him at the barrier. On her way into the underground she thought he'd followed her, but there was nobody to be seen behind her on the escalator that sailed downwards with a faint inconsolable squeal. She sat on a bench on the empty platform, the breaths of oncoming trains stirring the hairs on the back of her neck. She leafed through Graham's notebook, but couldn't concentrate; she found she had to keep glancing along the platform towards the tunnel. Some fault in the mechanism made the train doors reopen after she boarded, as if someone had leapt on at the last moment. The galloping rush of the wheels made her think of a hunt in the dark. — Ramsey Campbell

As I leafed through the book in front of me and watched the dust swirl in the air, I wondered if maybe there was some evil dormant virus in the pages that would infect me, like the mummy dust that used to kill archaeologists. Death by research. That was not a glorious end. — Rachel Caine

They all have tired mouths
and bright seamless souls.
And a longing (as for sin)
sometimes haunts their dreams.
They are almost all alike;
in God's gardens they keep still,
like many, many intervals
in his might and melody.
Only when they spread their wings
are they wakers of a wind:
as if God with his broad sculptor-
hands leafed through the pages
in the dark book of the beginning. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I didn't have any more time. Directly below the window was a thickly leafed bush of some sort. I couldn't see it clearly and only hoped it wasn't a rosebush or something equally sharp. A second floor drop wouldn't kill me, though. Probably wouldn't even hurt - much.
I climbed over the ledge, briefly meeting Dimitri's gaze as the other Strigoi moved in on him. The words came to me again: Don't hesitate. Dimitri's important lesson. But it hadn't been his first one. His first had been about what to do if I was outnumbered and out of options: Run.
Time for me to run.
I leapt out the window.
I think the profanities that came out of my mouth when I hit the ground would have been understandable in any language. It hurt. — Richelle Mead

The most daring flights of genius do not always soar assured when they seek a throne in the fire & find a grave in copious tears.
For knowledge is also a vice: if it is not constantly curbed, & if this is not acknowledged, the greater the havoc it wreaks;
& if the flight is not brought down, fed & fattened on subtleties it will forget the essential for the sake of the rare & strange.
If a skilled hand does not prevent the growth of a thickly leafed tree, its proliferating branches will steal the fruit. — Juana Ines De La Cruz

The DSM-IV-TR is a 943-page textbook published by the American Psychiatric Association that sells for $99 ... There are currently 374 mental disorders. I bought the book ... and leafed through it ... I closed the manual. "I wonder if I've got any of the 374 mental disorders," I thought. I opened the manual again. And instantly diagnosed myself with twelve different ones. — Jon Ronson

Eleanor had bargained for their wedding present, the dragon-spouted teapot worth thousands and the cups to match, gold-leafed, scaly. — Kate Walbert

We walked down a crunchy, leafed path as the sun shot through the tall, semi-bare trees. Yellows, browns, oranges and reds still clung to life and those that had lost the battle decorated the foliage and grounds. — Denise Baer

There have been times when I reread - or at least leafed through - something because I'd sent a copy to a friend, and what usually happened was that I noticed dozens and dozens of clumsy phrases I wished I could rewrite. — Peter Straub

They do not kiss
but they both want to
instead their feet touch and so do their arms
it is electric magic
their tiny arm hairs tingling
happily lying together
the sun warming them
watching sky through green-leafed gum branch
close enough to hear each other breathe
sweet togetherness
this lazy lying down dance of love — Brigid Lowry

When he [Malevranche] happened to find Descartes' book entitled Man in a book shop on the rue Saint Jaques, he leafed through it, bought it and "read it with so much pleasure that he was forced at times to interrupt his reading, so loud were the beatings of his heart due to the extreme pleasure he had in doing so". Those who never put down a book of erudition, science or philosophy, to catch their breath, so to speak, and recover from the strong emotion they experience, certainly ignore of of the most exquisite pleasures of intellectual life. — Etienne Gilson

I loved rhubarb, that hardy, underappreciated garden survivor that leafed out just as the worst of winter melted away. Not everyone was a fan, especially of the bitter, mushy, overcooked version. Yet sometimes a little bitterness could bring out the best in other flavors. Bitter rhubarb made sunny-day strawberry face the realities of life- and taste all the better for it. As I brushed the cakes with a deep pink glaze made from sweet strawberry and bottled rhubarb bitters, I hoped I would change rhubarb doubters. Certainly, the little Bundt cakes looked as irresistible as anything I had ever seen in a French patisserie. — Judith Fertig

It was only then I realized I didn't know the name of Elodin's class. I leafed through the ledger until I spotted Elodin's name, then ran my finger back to where the title of the class was listed in fresh dark ink: "Introduction to Not Being a Stupid Jackass."
I sighed and penned my name in the single blank space beneath. — Patrick Rothfuss

Often, as she leafed through the sticky, plastic-coated pages, spotting herself with a frizzy perm or wearing a loud, printed blouse, she was struck by how long life was, and how much time had passed, and she wished she could go back and apologize to those closest to her, explain that she understood now. Impossible, and yet the urge to return and be a different person never lessened, grew only more acute. — Stewart O'Nan

Last night I had rinsed out my sari strip and briefs in the sea. I walked down naked to where they hung in the branches of the silvery leafed tree beside the creek. Underneath the lazy sensuality of a luxurious stretch from toes to nose I felt the strong unequivocal demand of my blood. I hugged myself for a moment watching the grey light yield to dawn through half-closed eyes. — Lucy Irvine

When he was young, the lesson learned from his mother, as much by cuffs as caresses, was that love is action
what you do, not what you feel
but perhaps, he thinks now, it was a false lesson, and that love is something else altogether, something he knows nothing of. He sees it, this love, hovering like the Paraclete above the heads of a fig-leafed Cranach couple, streaming divine grace down upon them in burning rays. Where was his soul when this pentecostal fire was falling from the sky? — John Banville

Ephemerals: That's what Hub called them; flowers that bloomed and died in a matter of weeks, before the trees leafed out and shaded them. She liked the way the word sounded in her head. I am an ephemeral. It made her feel like something passing and precious. — Pamela Todd

Wooed by a vivid cover, she picked one up and leafed through it. She loved thee way it smelled, the ink, the fine paper, the oversized photographs. — Elizabeth Brundage

He remembered that in the art books he had leafed through at Leader's, many paintings depicted death. A severed head on a platter. A battle, and the ground strewn with bodies. Swords and spears and fire; and nails being pounded into the tender flesh of a man's hands. Painters had preserved such pain through beauty. — Lois Lowry

What I have learned from working with plants over the years is that the big leafed plants are the best to absorb the energy so I like philodendrons very, very much. — Doreen Virtue

I leafed through all the men I had known to see whether or not I hated them. But then I realized it wasn't the men I hated, it was the Americans, the human beings, men and women both. They'd had their chance but they had turned against the gods, and it was time for me to choose sides. I wanted there to be a machine that could make them vanish, a button I could press that would evaporate them without disturbing anything else, that way there would be more room for the animals, they would be rescued. — Margaret Atwood

I leafed through the pages, inhaling the enchanted scent of promise that comes with all new books, and stopped to read the start of a sentence that caught my eye. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Just then, a telltale scent reached Trez's nose and rocketed through his blood, the impact wrenching his head and his body around ...
Whereupon he lost all thought. All breath. And all of his soul.
Selena stood at the head of the bloodred-carpeted steps, her lovely hand resting on the gold-leafed balustrade, her body held stiffly, as if she weren't sure about her shoes, or her dress, or maybe even her hair.
There was absolutely nothing to worry about.
Unless she had a problem with being an H-bomb. — J.R. Ward

Commemorative stone in the floor of the Chapel of St. George in Westminster Abbey, London, dedicated in 1947: TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT Baden-Powell CHIEF SCOUT OF THE WORLD 1857-1941 Upon one side of the stone was the badge of the Boy Scouts, the arrow-head to point the true way as it had pointed the way for sailors and navigators from the time of the earliest maps; and on the other the badge of the Girl Guides-the three-leafed clover. — Robert Baden-Powell

Maria? ... She's been writing all this down? Oh, bless her ... ' He leafed on through the pile. 'Although that's not how that happened ... and no, she's wrong, bowties are cool. — James Goss

We leafed through a series of the [1941 Soviet] Front newspaper. I came across the following phrase in a leading article: 'The much-battered enemy continued his cowardly advance. — Vasily Grossman

Nick opened Ruth's journal first. He leafed through several pages while shaking his head, it was like his mind was saying, "No, no, no!
He picked up Luedtke's journal and did the same flipping back and forth; suddenly he flipped back and stood completely still staring at the page he was on.He could not make his brain accept what he was seeing; both drawings were the same but labeled differently. The legend on Luedtke's had a subtitle, The Major Demons of Hell. — Lou Berthelson

My rational mind was full of thoughts such as, 'what the Hell is in the air to cause the violet wavelengths to scatter instead of blue?' and 'the flowers, ivy, and decorative plants all have green leaves, so where do you get gold-leafed trees and red grass?' The rest of my mind was jumping up and down, shouting 'this is so cool!' My rational mind retreated to its cave to sulk. Miranda — Bryan Fields

The wrinkled pages of the Bible crackled as Mom leafed back to the beginning of Matthew. I had always felt I was conceived from the powers of the universe. Maybe I was chosen to fulfill a divine mission. — Diamond Mike Watson