Leveled Quotes & Sayings

The Internet has definitely opened doors and leveled the playing field for musicians. — Vivian Campbell

[New Orleans.] Katrina changed everything. Life here is different, every face altered. Yet we feel and sense the landscape not only in its hurricane-leveled, sodden depressions but - perhaps even more so now in the strangely comforting depths of our shared history. Even in the worst hit areas, not all is dissipated. Dense intricate attachments burrow too deep to underestimate or overlook. This is no featureless town to be rubbed off the map and cast aside. Here the band plays on.

Our kindred colors speak to the values of justice, faith and power; to curious combinations of passion, openness, irreverence and loyalty, to the values of individuality, sharing and compassion. Not least, we still enjoy the sounds of music and respond to succulent foods, to the magnificent flowering gardens, to the elements of grace and dreamy escape, and to the languid Southern charm typical of faded days gone by. — T.J. Fisher

There's a sorry history of these kinds of charges of bias being leveled at women and judges of color, and also gay and lesbian judges. The theory being that they're going to be incapable of a disinterested judgment on matters that involve their own identity groups. And it came up famously for Constance Baker Motley who was one of the first African American federal judges in a case involving sex discrimination. — Deborah Rhode

The purpose of American culture is to create a norm, Morris. That means extraordinary people must be leveled, and it happens to Jimmy. He ends up working in advertising, for God's sake, and what greater agent of the norm is there in this fucked - up country? — Stephen King

There are those, too, who are ethnically predisposed in favor of funerals, who recognize among the black drapes and dirges an emotionally potent and spiritually stimulating intersection of the living and the dead. In death and its rituals, they see the leveled playing field so elusive in life. Whether we bury our dead in Wilbert Vaults, leave them in trees to be eaten by birds, burn them or beam them into space; whether choir or cantor, piper or jazz band, casket or coffin or winding sheet, ours is the species that keeps track of our dead and knows that we are always outnumbered by them. — Thomas Lynch

Logan felt raw inside from the look of betrayal she had leveled on him. Who was he to demand honesty when every aspect of his presence in her life, even on the periphery, was a lie? — Cindy Skaggs

Don't worry. It'll never happen again. You know me, I do date occasionally, but I usually spend at least a few normal, boring days with a guy before we rock the house down. Of course, no one ever rocked my house down the way this guy did. He leveled the mother to its foundations. (Sunshine) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The hardest [part] is some of the misperceptions that are leveled against me as a person and against Muslim women. — Queen Rania Of Jordan

Our people" have functioned in this country for nearly a century as political weapons, the trump card up the enemies' sleeve; anything promised Negroes at election time is also a threat leveled at the opposition; in the struggle for mastery the Negro is the pawn. — James Baldwin

Nothing teaches you like getting leveled. And I got leveled in my early 30s. Nothing went exactly the way I thought it would. — Ethan Hawke

He leveled his gaze on her - the intensity there whispering promises she couldn't fathom - and she shivered. — Katherine McIntyre

Just seven minutes after most of Murphysboro was leveled, the Tri-State Tornado hit DeSoto at 2:48 P.M. No town in the path would proportionally suffer a higher fatality rate than this tiny village in which sixty-nine people died. Thirty-three of them were children buried in the burning ruins of the DeSoto Schoolhouse, a heartbreaking record that remains the single worst tornado-related death toll for a school in US history. One in four DeSoto children who walked off to school that day would never come home to supper. — Geoff Partlow

You're not mad at me?" she asked.
He leaned to the side and placed a lingering kiss on her neck. "If I pretended I was, would you make it up to me?"
Another kiss landed on the sensitive skin of her collarbone, testing the edges of the coveralls.
"Um," Jenna stammered. "No."
"No?" He leveled his eyes with hers. They sparkled with amusement.
She tried to think, but her body had apparently decided her brain was a nonessential system and shut it down. "Yes? — Aria Kane

Van Houten was still staring at the ceiling beams. He took a drink. The glass was almost empty again. 'Lidewij, I can't do it. I can't. I can't.' He leveled his gaze to me. 'Nothing happens to the Dutch Tulip Man. He isn't a con man or not a con man; he's God. He's an obvious and unambiguous metaphorical representation of God, and asking what becomes of him if the intellectual equivalent of asking what becomes of the disembodied eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg in Gatsby. Do he and Anna's man get married? We are speaking of a novel, dear child, not some historical enterprise. — John Green

You want to come in?" she asked softly.
He leveled his gaze at her. "You know what's likely going to happen if I go in there, right?"
She didn't blink. "Yeah. That's why I'm asking. — Paige Tyler

Rosie perked up and clapped excitedly. "When I was younger, the older girls in our gym kidnapped us from our houses in the middle of the night and took us to IHOP." She beamed. "All-you-can-eat pancakes."

Lexi leveled her with a glare. "How has life failed you so miserably?"

"It was fun," she said, defending herself. "I had whipped cream on mine."

Oh Rosie. — R.S. Grey

The fact that social media has leveled the playing field doesn't offer you the right to disrespect the elderly — Bernard Kelvin Clive

Ignorance is king. Many would not profit by his abdication. Many enrich themselves by means of his dark monarchy. They are his Court, and in his name they defraud and govern, enrich themselves and perpetuate their power. Even literacy they fear, for the written word is another channel of communication that might cause their enemies to become united. Their weapons are keen-honed, and they use them with skill. They will press the battle upon the world when their interests are threatened, and the violence which follows will last until the structure of society as it now exists is leveled to rubble, and a new society emerges. I am sorry. But that is how I see it. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

Has it ever struck you people how arrogant you are?" it asked, huge hands taking an attitude of query that bordered on accusation. "You're talking of slaughtering a nation. Thousands of innocent people destroyed, lands made barren, mountains leveled and the sea pulled up over them like a blanket. And you're feeling sorry for yourself that you had to wring a bird's neck as a boy? How can anyone have feelings that delicate and that numbed both at the same time? — Daniel Abraham

Big banks churn out page after page of incomprehensible fine print to obscure the cost and risks of checking accounts, credit cards, mortgages and other financial products. The result is that consumers can't make direct product comparisons, markets aren't competitive, and costs are higher. If the playing field is leveled and the broken market fixed, a lot more money will stay in the pockets of millions of hard-working families. That's real stimulus - money to families, without increasing our national debt. — Elizabeth Warren

The city had grown, implacably, spreading its concrete and alloy fingers wider every day over the dark and feral country. Nothing could stop it. Mountains were stamped flat. Rivers were dammed off or drained or put elsewhere. The marshes were filled. The animals shot from the trees and then the trees cut down. And the big gray machines moved forward, gobbling up the jungle with their iron teeth, chewing it clean of its life and all its living things.
Until it was no more.
Leveled, smoothed as a highway is smoothed, its centuries choked beneath millions and millions of tons of hardened stone.
The birth of a city ... It had become the death of a world. — Charles Beaumont

1908: A massive explosion over Tunguska, Siberia, leveled sixty to eighty million trees over 2,150 square kilometers. Blamed on an asteroid or comet, or Nikola Tesla's Coil. The Bermuda Triangle J — Catherine Coulter

(Adron leveled a scowl that made him shrink back.)
Jeeze, you ought to bottle that look. I know armies that would pay a fortune to have something that toxic in their arsenal. (Tiernan) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You can do it now. You can't say you've never dated, because you have. A lot of people, actually." Xander's gave her a mischievous grin. "You've leveled up, dearest. You're an expert on dating compared to Liv of six months ago. — Danika Stone

She was as unused to seeing tenderness in a man's eyes as she was to being caught off guard. Admiration? Amusement? Yes. Even desire. But those looks could be leveled at any inanimate object: a beautiful painting, a political cartoon, a French postcard. Tenderness was far more intimate, reserved for beings, not things. — Connie Brockway

You like the girl," Alasdair offered.
Nassar leveled a heavy gaze at him.
"Lillian said you tried to be funny in the car. I told her it couldn't possibly be true. The moment you try to make a joke, the sky shall split and the Four Horsemen will ride out, heralding Apocalypse. — Ilona Andrews

The point was, Eve supposed, no matter who you were - sex, race, tax bracket - death leveled it all out. — J.D. Robb

One less happy practice Vanbrugh introduced with Carlisle at Castle Howard was that of razing estate villages and moving the occupants elsewhere if they were deemed to be insufficiently picturesque or intrusive. At Castle Howard, Vanbrugh cleared away not only an existing village but also a church and the ruined castle from which the new house took its name. Soon villages up and down the country were being leveled to make way for more extensive houses and unimpeded views. It was almost as if a rich person couldn't begin work on a grand house until he had thoroughly disrupted at least a few dozen menial lives. Oliver — Bill Bryson

Esperanza leaned around the side of the truck. As they rounded a curve, it appeared as if the mountains pulled away from each other, like a curtain opening on stage, revealing the San Joaquin Valley beyond. Flat and spacious, it spread out like a blanket of patchwork fields. Esperanza could see no end to the plots of yellow, brown, and shades of green. The road finally leveled out on the valley floor, and she gazed back at the mountains from where they'd come. They looked like monstrous lions' paws resting at the edge of ridge. — Pam Munoz Ryan

From the dark horizon of my future a sort of slow, persistent breeze had been blowing toward me, all my life long, from the years that were to come. And on its way that breeze had leveled out all the ideas that people tried to foist on me in the equally unreal years I then was living through. What difference could they make to me, the deaths of others, or a mother's love, or his God; or the way a man decides to live, the fate he thinks he chooses, since one and the same fate was bound to "choose" not only me but thousands of millions of privileged people who, like him, called themselves my brothers. — Albert Camus

I worry about you. Not just about your safety. I worry when you're stressed. I worry when you're unhappy."

His words leveled her world.

Her eyes snapped open and she saw him - saw him in a way that would stay with her forever.

"I fucking worry about you not eating breakfast. I worry about every damn little thing about you. I worry about you like I've never worried about anything in my life. Because I care. I fucking care, Charlize. I care so much it makes me scared. I don't think you're incapable of looking after yourself - I just can't help needing to make everything okay. — Amber A. Bardan

Walter Wagner, the man who had gone to court to stop the Large Hadron Collider from beginning operations. A serious charge had been leveled: the LHC was a hazard to the very existence of life on earth. JO: So, roughly speaking, what are the chances the world is going to be destroyed? Is it one in a million, one in a billion? WW: Well, the best we can say right now is about a one-in-two chance. JO: Hold on a second. It's ... fifty-fifty? WW: Yeah, fifty-fifty ... If you have something that can happen, and something that won't necessarily happen, it's going to either happen, or it's going to not happen, and, so, the best guess is one in two. JO: I'm not sure that's how probability works, Walter. — Sean Carroll

God can craft ten thousand tomorrows and shape a thousand dreams to fill every one of them. And He carries out this most ingenious 'crafting' and 'shaping' using the very cinders and ashes left by the fires that had originally destroyed our tomorrows and leveled our dreams. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Syn was so gone watching his fingers disappear inside the flushed opening that he quickly lathered more lube on his hand to get his cock nice and slippery. With his hooded eyes leveled on the pulsing hole, he lined his cock up and began to push inside with slow, steady pressure. Remembering exactly how Furi always did it. He got past the first ring of muscle with a pop and both of them let out a startled grunt. Syn — A.E. Via

I leaned forward on the table and leveled her with my steady gaze. Do not ever speak to her that way again. If she hadn't agreed to come with me I wouldn't have come. Don't underestimate her importance. She's mine. Respect that. — Abbi Glines

I'm tougher than this."

He shook his head. "Somehow it doesn't matter how tough you are. You can be tough as hell and still be leveled flat without warning."
She looked at him. "What do you do when you're leveled flat?"
"You make a plan, you move on that plan, and you keep breathing — Jill Shalvis

were more of them around than there had been of the old Watch. No man would make a victim of her again. She leveled the gun at the stranger's chest. "I don't want to shoot you." Her voice was calm, even confident. In the past two and a half years, she'd learned to lie, to steal, and to brazen through the worst of situations. She'd had no other choice. — Erica Monroe

When the ramp leveled off, he was met by a scarred farmhouse table surrounded by a mishmash of twenty chairs, scattered at all angles as if a seated crowd had sprinted into the night. Past the dozens of half-finished wine bottles. Past the coffee cup ashtrays. Past dried-out lime wedges, empty bottles of stronger spirits, and fruit-flyed glasses. Past the residue of drugs, the residue of nights. Past it all was the wonder of what could be hidden if this much was left to be found. — Will Chancellor

Pistols, please," she said, once they'd all returned. She traded her bow and arrow for a single-barreled weapon.

Each lady in line lifted a similar firearm and held it in braced, outstretched arms, staring down her respective bull's-eye. When Susanna cocked her pistol, the others followed suit. The chorus of clicks raced down Bram's spine.

"I find this scene wildly arousing," Colin murmured, echoing Bram's own thoughts. "Is that wrong?"

"If it is, I can promise you company in hell."

His cousin made an amused sound. "And you thought we have nothing in common."

Susanna leveled her pistol and took aim. "One... Two..."

Crack. — Tessa Dare

They were obviously headstones of graves, though the graves themselves no longer existed as either mounds or depressions; the years had leveled all. Scattered here and there, more massive blocks showed where some pompous or ambitious monument had once flung its feeble defiance at oblivion. — Ambrose Bierce

We start out postulating sharp boundaries, such as between humans and apes, or between apes and monkeys, but are in fact dealing with sand castles that lose much of their structure when the sea of knowledge washes over them. They turn into hills, leveled ever more, until we are back to where evolutionary theory always leads us: a gently sloping beach. — Frans De Waal

Last year in the region where we live part of the year there were violent windstorms, whole forests were leveled, two- and three-hundred-year-old trees torn up by the roots and tossed aside, houses sliced almost in half by the once-sheltering giants flung down through their roofs. Yesterday another storm, powerful but less so, took down no trees. The ground, though, is littered with leaves, as though autumn had arrived, but the leaves are still green, still alive, many torn away in clumps, with the twigs still intact that attached them to their branches. There's something disconsolate about them - the desiccated leaves of autumn always appear to have found the place to which they've been destined, but these don't seem to grasp what's happened to them: they lie on the ground at awkward angles, like things wounded that haven't completely given in to death and don't know yet they must. — C. K. Williams

He was sitting in the back of the booth, and Lila on the outside edge, as far from him as possible. She couldn't shake the feeling he was watching her beneath that brimmed cap, even though every time she checked, his attention was leveled on the tavern behind her head. His fingers traced absent pattern in a pool of spilled ale, but his green eye twitched in concentration. It took her several long seconds to realize he was counting bodies in the room.

"Nineteen," she said coolly, and Alucard and Kell both looked at her as if she'd spoken out of turn, but Holland simply answered, "Twenty," and despite herself, Lila swiveled in her seat. She did a swift count. He was right. She'd missed on e of the men behind the bar. Dammit.

"If you have to use your eyes," he added, "you're doing it wrong. — V.E Schwab

Charlotte leveled him with a glare the likes of which he had never seen in synthetic women. It seemed to penetrate his every cell, as though she were watching him decay one picosecond at a time — Madeline Ashby

After centuries of marginalization and neglect, we need to cast our own movements, projects, and ideas as a battle for relevancy in the face of historical manipulation, exploitation, and oppression. We need to fight, tooth and nail, for equity in all areas of social life. One point to make clear, ethnic and racial minorities are not looking for scraps or a handout from the old paternalistic system but an equitable, stable, and leveled playing field. — Martin Guevara Urbina

God's acre was her garden-spot, she said;
She sat there often, of the Summer days,
Little and slim and sweet, among the dead,
Her hair a fable in the leveled rays. — Dorothy Parker

All discourses and disciplines proceed from commitments and beliefs that are ultimately religious in nature. No scientific discourse (whether natural science or social science) simply discloses to us the facts of reality to which theology must submit; rather, every discourse is, in some sense, religious. The playing field has been leveled. Theology is most persistently postmodern when it rejects a lingering correlational false humility and instead speaks unapologetically from the the primacy of Christian revelation and the church's confessional language. — James K.A. Smith

Are the family lists complete yet?" he asked George.
"Aye, my lord. We've gathered the names of every possible successful runner for the last forty years. Not many men, I'll tell you that. Six at most, and all were thought to be very much dead. Four apparently lost to fire-you remember the blaze that leveled the tavern in '33-one to drowning, and one bloke to, ah, wolves."
Kit raised his brows. "Wolves?"
"That's what his son said. Stirling Jacobs was his name. Liked to hunt at dawn. Liked a challenge. Known to venture out beyond our boundaries. Bones were found, possibly his. That's all."
"How old would this man be now?"
"Let's see...nearing eighty, I'd say."
Kit gazed at him over the mess of china and papers.
"Your instructions were to consider everyone." George shifted in the chair, uneasy. "And I've bloody well considered everyone."

-Kit & George — Shana Abe

Mediocrity is a path cleared by fear, leveled by apathy and paved by comfort. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

He lost himself. Blasted outside his body with his come, floated through into Finn, saw himself from the outside, from Finn's eyes, drenched with sweat, eyes squeezed shut, muscular body heaving, the cords on his neck popping out. He was beautiful. Inside Finn, he was beautiful. The revelation leveled him, sent himself back inside his lightning-struck body, and he collapsed, shuddering, into Finn's arms. — Anonymous

You would use your body to get what you want?"
"In a heartbeat."
He was hurt. I could feel it echo through him. He stepped closer again, leveled his face inches from mine, and whispered in the softest of voices, "Whore. — Darynda Jones

The financial wealth that has been created is unprecedented. Even if the stock market, for argument's sake, leveled off here, there's been so much wealth built up that we really can feel spending for some time. — Adam LaVorgna

He leveled his eyes at mine through the darkness. You asked me before if I could take away your memories. I can, and I wanted to. But taking them away wouldn't have stopped what you were feeling. It just would've kept you from being able to understand. In the end the only thing I could do was let you go through whatever you had to go through and hope you were strong enough to make it to the other side. Turns out you're pretty damn tough. — Angela B. Wade

Behold, for years and generations, the way of God has been leveled by the cross and by death. How is this with thee, that thou seest the afflictions of the way as if they were out of the way? Doest not thou wish to follow the steps of the saints? Or doest thou wish to go a way which is especially for thee, without suffering? the way unto God is a daily cross. No one can ascend unto heaven with comfort, we know where the way of comfort leads. — Isaac Of Nineveh

How can you be so sure about me?" He leveled his spellbinding gaze on my face. "When you've been in the dark as long as I have, moy angel, there is no mistaking the light. — Kresley Cole

bananaland, where the jungle had been leveled and replaced by endless acres of banana trees, each displaying bunches of bananas enclosed in bright blue plastic bags. The bags would be filled with insecticide and chemicals deemed essential to marketing bananas where winter was cold and people liked their fruit in uniform: industrial agriculture gone tropical. Later, after the harvest, many of the bags ended up in the Caribbean, where they would be mistaken for jellyfish and eaten by turtles that would then choke to death. Unlike the complex ecosystems of the rainforest and jungle, mono-crop plantings like bananas couldn't hold the ground; when the hard rains fell - it — J.J. Henderson

Dr. King's flouting of the law does not justify the flouting by others of the law, but it is a terrifying thought that, most likely, the cretin who leveled his rifle on the head of Martin Luther King, may have absorbed the talk, so freely available, about the supremacy of the individual conscience, such talk as Martin Luther King, God rest his soul, had so widely, and so indiscriminately, made. — William F. Buckley Jr.

He was unable to get it out of his mind. Was it really possible that he had spent the past thirty years worshipping the church rather than God? Because that, in essence, was the accusation Benitez had leveled against him. — Robert Harris

The coral zoophyte may be leveled by transported masses swept over by the waters; yet like the trodden sod, it sprouts again, and continues to grow and flourish as before. — James Dwight Dana

One of the things that upset me was some of the criticism leveled at Simon and Garfunkel. I always took exception to it, but actually I agree with a lot of it. — Paul Simon

The Lord did not make me impossible of error. All I've had to offer you is the total dedication in serving you as best I know how. And I've always leveled with you, and always will, knowing full well that everyone will not agree with me. — Jesse Helms

Left alone in the room with Gavin, Alex let out a sigh. "I fear I won't be able to find a way out of this. How did his even happen? I went out of my way to avoid attracting suitors last night."
Leaning back in his chair, Gavin leveled Alex with a serious look. "You've learned your first lesson, Minx. Men chase that what seems unattainable."
"No. What I learned was that mean are gluttons for punishment. Why 'chase' me when they could catch any number of eligible young females from last evening?"
"Silly girl ... because chasing you makes for more of a challenge
and more of a reward. — Sarah MacLean

I seem to offend everybody. I just never got into the universe. I don't seem to have a tremendous amount of discipline or patience with having to follow a story that is really multi-leveled and science-fiction. — Marc Maron

He didn't scream hysterically or stand up and kick the headstone or any of that. He put his face on his knees and listened as the wind from the mountains mercilessly leveled everything in its path. He remembered the person who had helped him fly with the wind instead of being beaten down by it, and he cried quietly into his knees, finally knowing how the big of the sky could make a person feel as alone as a heartbeat in space. — Amy Lane

normal is just a leveled off version of every kind of weird. — Bill D. Allen

And because they had mass, they became simpler," said Beatty. "Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?" "I think so." Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. "Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending." "Snap ending." Mildred nodded. "Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. — Ray Bradbury

I'm convinced I will be cleared of all these charges that were unfairly leveled against me. — Joseph Estrada

If Obama has his way, the change that is coming is a new America: 'fair,' leveled and social democratic. Obama didn't get elected to warranty your muffler. He's here to warranty your life. — Charles Krauthammer

You can divide infinity an infinite number of times, and the resulting pieces will still be infinitely large," Uresh said in his odd Lenatti accent. "But if you divide a non-infinite number an infinite number of times the resulting pieces are non-infinitely small. Since they are non-infinitely small, but there are an infinite number of them, if you add them back together, their sum is infinite. This implies any number is, in fact, infinite."
"Wow," Elodin said after a long pause. He leveled a serious finger at the Lenatti man. "Uresh. Your next assignment is to have sex. If you do not know how to do this, see me after class. — Patrick Rothfuss

My girl, always hated frogs," Jackie stated when she'd controlled her hilarity.
"That's right, Mom," Feb leveled her irate eyes at her mother, "I'm a girl therefore I hate frogs. I'd get kicked out of the girl club if I didn't. — Kristen Ashley

The amount of data and analysis available for free is a true example of information explosion has leveled the playing field for individual investors. — Maria Bartiromo

The reformers' preferred metaphor is "leveling the playing field." They should listen to the logic of their language: fields are leveled by bulldozers. — George Will

Nothing like a cheap shot, right?' He snorted blood from his nose. 'I'm disappointed. I thought even terrorists had principles.'
'Can it,' Nasira said, towering over him with her P90 leveled at his head. 'If we need patriotic paramoralisms, we'll give Jack Bauer a call.'
Denton grimaced, pulled himself upright. 'And if I need overblown alliteration, I'll give you a call. — Nathan M. Farrugia

The mountain of superstition has to be leveled for our people to taste a fresh breath of life in Christ Jesus. — Sunday Adelaja

This storm you talk of ... t will be such a one, my son, as the world has not seen before. There will be no safety by arms, no help from authority, no answer in science. It will rage till every flower of culture is trampled, and all human things are leveled in a vast chaos. — James Hilton

I just want a life that's full of up-leveled joy. And I'm ready to meet a nice man! Put that out there, too. — Kim Coles

I shared with Fleur the mysterious self-contempt of the survivor. There were times we hated who we were, and who we had to become, in order not to follow those we loved into the next world. We grew hard. We became impenetrable, sparing of our pity. Sorrows that leveled other people were small to us. We made no move to avoid pain. Sometimes we even welcomed it--we were clumsy with knives, fire, boiling water, steel traps. Pain took our minds off the greater pain that was the mistake that we still existed. — Louise Erdrich

We fight our way through the massed and leveled collective safe taste of the Top 40, just looking for a little something we can call our own. But when we find it and jam the radio to hear it again it isn't just ours
it is a link to thousands of others who are sharing it with us. As a matter of a single song this might mean very little; as culture, as a way of life, you can't beat it. — Greil Marcus

Not enough youths fighting windmills. And the old are fearful, jaded or dead. Do not ask me what to do. I am just as cowardly as you. And do not tell me it is enough to speak the truth; that it is bravery enough. Every mountain leveled to the ground, every forest burned, every man, woman, and child who lost their shanties to arsonist fires were defended to the heavens - with words. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

In the cold war, the CIA was condemned by the American left for what it did. In the war on terror, the CIA was attacked by the American right for what it could not do. The charge was incompetence, leveled by such men as Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Say what one may about their leadership, they knew from long experience what the reader now knows: the CIA was unable to fulfill its role as America's intelligence service. — Tim Weiner

Today, to allege corruption seems to be the pastime of most people. All kinds of allegations are leveled. I think it is self-defeating. — P. Chidambaram

You don't have to fight anyone for me," she said.
"Except you."
Oh God. He leveled her with a few words and searing looks. She felt herself in a dizzying plunge, wanting the flight, worried about the landing. "I give as much as I am able," she said.
"I know," he answered. — Zoe Archer

Halved. That was every time. My laughter was for idiots, for their unjustifiable idiocy and for myself for an unrelenting conviction to them, for that unforgivable instance I leveled myself to them. At that awkward realization knowing I precisely was an idiot too, that was the time when I really began to laugh. — Jay Mark D. Saga-ad

By 2000, the rate of GIS development had risen above the normal growth trend of institutional management skills. This means that systems are now more capable than people, and the ordinary incremental growth rate in skills within an organization does not keep up with developments in technology. Recently, the relative curve of GIS development has leveled off somewhat, but management still has a lot of institutional learning to do before truly making use of the full capabilities of GIS. — Roger Tomlinson

warning he swung his bone. It struck the side of my left knee. I dropped, landing hard on my side. I pulled my knees to my chest in expectation of another blow, but he turned away from me and shook his weapon in the air and howled. The mob responded in a cacophony of celebration. Then he leveled the bone at Pascal and barked what might have been an order. Two males went to Pascal and heaved him to his feet. His limbs dangled lifelessly. His head was lolling from left to right. The torchbearer crossed the room and slapped Pascal hard across the face. He peeled Pascal's eyelids open with his thumb. Then he stepped back, lifted Pascal's shirt, and thrust the flaming end of the torch into his stomach. Pascal's head snapped back — Jeremy Bates

Saddam's forces had leveled about four thousand villages and killed some 180,000 Kurds in Anfal - a "counterinsurgency gone wild," I wrote.16 Thousands had been shot and buried in mass graves. Others had starved to death in desert prisons, or been gassed in Halabja, Iraqi Kurdistan, where between 3,500 and 5,000 civilian adults and children had died on a single day in March 1988. Saddam had used chemical weapons against the Shiites in the south, but his attack in Halabja remains the world's largest chemical attack against a civilian-populated area in history. — Judith Miller

Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death; a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched. — Samuel Johnson

Strauss admits to being obsessed by his mother's rejection, and with the resultant rents in self-esteem. The Game echoes with disturbingly abusive comments leveled at his adolescent self, a self he feels was unacceptable. With bravado, he expresses regret that he didn't rack up more sexual conquests in his teens; in person, he expresses a truer regret that he was intimidated by life itself. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Does this prove that our universe arose from nothing? Of course not. But it does take us one rather large step closer to the plausibility of such a scenario. And it removes one more of the objections that might have been leveled against the argument of creation from nothing as described in the previous chapter. There, "nothing" meant empty but preexisting space combined with fixed and well-known laws of physics. Now the requirement of space has been removed. But, remarkably, as we shall next discuss, even the laws of physics may not be necessary or required. — Lawrence M. Krauss

Again and again, I've seen Bush turn a blind eye as his henchmen have leveled zealous attacks against his political enemies - assaults which the president himself has sometimes directly encouraged. — Paul Begala

Finn had finished his coffee run and was strolling back down the hallway, a mug of his steaming chicory brew in his left hand. He saw Vinnie heading toward him, sighed, and reached around behind his back with his right hand. Finn came up with a gun, which he leveled at Vinnie's head.
The Ice elemental froze in the doorway.
"Why don't you be a good boy, Vinnie, and go sit down," Finn said in a pleasant voice before taking a sip of his coffee. His eyes never left the other man, and his gun never wavered. Finn could be a bad-ass when he had to, just like me. — Jennifer Estep

Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too. — Albert Camus

Of course there were plateaus, periods when my results leveled off while I internalized the information necessary for my next growth spurt, but I didn't mind. — Josh Waitzkin

God went down to get your badge since you were in the cave so long." Ruxs smirked. "You guys kiss and make up?" Steele swiveled around and leveled a hard look at him and replied with a clipped, "Yep." Before — A.E. Via

Of all the charges which have been leveled against me," he is quoted as saying in the Nuremberg Interviews, "the so-called looting of art treasures by me has caused me the most anguish. — Robert M. Edsel

Dex leveled a fake-sultry gaze at me. Are you coming on to me? — Rachel Hawkins

The look she leveled on him was pure aunt. — Seanan McGuire

Provides American business with the only reliable domestic market in the world.
Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, familyless, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between Cheers and Seinfeld is a subject worth arguing about. — John Taylor Gatto

I sit up in bed, lean my back against the sill to better enjoy their verbal tennis match. I can feel the summery day through the window, deliciously warming my back. But when I look over at Bailey's bed, I'm leveled. How can something this momentous be happening to me without her? And what about all the momentous things to come? How will I go through each and every one of them without her? — Jandy Nelson

We have won so many contests, leveled so many barriers, that the changes wrought by the women's movement are widely viewed as irreversible, even by feminism's most committed antagonists. Yet, as women near the finish line, we are distracted. We have stopped to gather glittery trinkets from an apparent admirer. The admirer is the marketplace, and the trinkets are the bounty of a commercial culture, which has deployed the language of liberation as a new and powerful tool of subjugation. — Susan Faludi