Man Without A Face Quotes & Sayings

There never was a man with such a face as yours, unless it was your father, and I suppose he is singeing his grizzled red beard by this time, unless you came straight from the old un without any father at all betwixt you; which I shouldn't wonder at, a bit. — Charles Dickens

Just as the dignity of man is based on his freedom
to the extent that he may even say no to God
likewise, the dignity of a science is based on that unconditional freedom which guarantees its independent search for truth. And just as human freedom must include the freedom to say no, so the freedom of scientific investigation must face the risk that its results will turn out to contradict religious beliefs and convictions. Only a scientist who is ready to fight militantly for such an autonomy of thought may triumphantly live to see how the results of his research eventually fit, without contradictions, in the truths of his belief. — Viktor E. Frankl

Cara Kim sucked in her breath when she realized a man was standing behind her. God, how long had he been there? Given the sort of lusty, heated look on his face, it was possible he'd seen her putting on her robe. Seen her naked.

Which might not seem like a big deal, since she danced nude for a living, but it had the potential to ruin her night.No man had ever seen her naked without the screen in front of her. Not one man ever, because she was arguably the oddest attraction in all of Vegas - the virgin stripper. — Erin MacCarthy

I could have done even better, miss, and I'd know a lot more, if it wasn't for my destiny ever since childhood. I'd have killed a man in a duel with a pistol for calling me low-born, because I came from Stinking Lizaveta without a father, and they were shoving that in my face in Moscow. It spread there thanks to Grigory Vasilievich. Grigory Vasilievich reproaches me for rebelling against my nativity: 'You opened her matrix,' he says. I don't know about her matrix, but I'd have let them kill me in the womb, so as not to come out into the world at all, miss. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He turned to face her and studied her as if he could see right through her. "None of them are worthy of you."

A wave of longing coursed through her. "Then who am I to marry?" When he failed to answer, she turned away and fiddled with the flowers on the desk. "Without the advantage of wealth or status, I'm not exactly overrun with prospects like you are."

"Perhaps not," he said softly, "but at least you can be certain the man who marries you did so for love and not because of your wealth or title."

Charlotte & Sebastian — Ally Broadfield

It was she who had led him to find himself. Picasso had risen to the challenge God had placed before him without even realizing it. In spite of his fears, in the face of her lengthy illness, and now her impending death, he had not abandoned her. Her steadfast love had helped him to become a noble man, and to be there for her in a way he had not been able to be for Conchita. — Anne Girard

I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying ... nameless ... — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

I am asking you to marry me because I love you," he said, "because I cannot imagine living my life without you. I want to see your face in the morning, and then at night, and a hundred times in between. I want to grow old with you, I want to laugh with you, and I want to sigh to my friends about how managing you are, all the while secretly knowing I am the luckiest man in town."
"What?" she demanded.
He shrugged. "A man's got to keep up appearances. I'll be universally detested if everyone realizes how perfect you are. — Julia Quinn

With a cold barren weariness that quenched the dry glow of anger, he thought, What can you do about these people? The terrible thing is, there are such a lot of them. There are so many, they expect to meet each other wherever they go.
Not wicked, he thought: that's not the word, that's sentimentality. These are just runts. Souls with congenitally short necks and receding brows. They don't sin in the sight of heaven and feel despair: they only throw away lighted cigarettes on Exmoor, and go on holiday leaving the cat to starve, and drive on after accidents without stopping. A wicked man nowadays can set millions of them in motion, and when he's gone howling mad from looking at his own face, they'll be marching still with their mouths open and their hands hanging by their knees, on and on and on. ... — Mary Renault

You're the hero my young romantic heart settled on so long ago, you're an absolute tiger at times, you're devious and not above playing a few tricks. I love you whatever you are all the time. I've loved you for ten years without stopping. I'll love you for as long as I have breath in my body. I'm committed to one man and I'm ready to face real life with him. — Margaret Way

I am a free man - and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me! Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to God alone - if He existed! — Giovanni Papini

Isaac's face lit up. The phrase was literally true in his case, for his cheeks and the tip of his nose shone rosily and his blue eyes were suddenly as flooded with light as sapphires held to the sun. In the country of his mind the advancing shadows were halted and rolled back upon themselves like the fen mists when the wind suddenly freshened from the sea. He glowed and the Dean felt a pang of sadness. What would this man have been, what would he have done, had he not been so wrenched from the true by the sufferings of his boyhood? Yet perhaps without them he would not have been Bella's fairy man. Such twistings sometimes forced out poison but at other times honey. It depended what was at the heart of a man. — Elizabeth Goudge

A thousand for his love expired each day, And those who saw his face, in blank dismay Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away- To die for love of that bewitching sight Was worth a hundred lives without his light. None could survive his absence patiently, None could endure this king's proximity- How strange it was that man could neither brook The presence nor the absence of his look! — Farid Al-Din Attar

But the aeronaut, still greatly discomposed, and having apparently no farther business to detain him in Rotterdam, began at this moment to make busy preparations for departure; and it being necessary to discharge a portion of ballast to enable him to reascend, the half dozen bags which he threw out, one after another, without taking the trouble to empty their contents, tumbled, every one of them, most unfortunately upon the back of the burgomaster, and rolled him over and over no less than one-and-twenty times, in the face of every man in Rotterdam. — Edgar Allan Poe

A young man - we can sketch his portrait at a dash. Imagine to yourself a Don Quixote of eighteen; a Don Quixote without his corselet, without his coat of mail, without his cuisses; a Don Quixote clothed in a woolen doublet, the blue color of which had faded into a nameless shade between lees of wine and a heavenly azure; face long and brown; — Alexandre Dumas

The man who will go where his colors go, without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in the jungle and mountain range, without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship, without complaint, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome to sceptered Britain to democratic America. He is the stuff of which legions are made. His pride is in his colors and his regiment, his training hard and thorough and coldly realistic, to fit him for what he must face and his obedience is to his orders. He has been called United States Marine. — T.R. Fehrenbach

Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself. — William Shakespeare

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed. — Bertrand Russell

You look pensive," he said quietly, holding his hand out from where he lay on the bed. He wore only his shirt and breeches. She went to him without protest. Why pretend when they really had so little time left together? He gathered her against him, her back to his front, and began plucking the pins from her coiffure. "Have I told you how much I admire your hair?" "It's just plain brown," she murmured. "Plain, lovely brown," he replied, raising a lock he'd freed to his face. "Are you smelling my hair?" she asked in amusement. "Yes." "Silly man," she said lightly. "Smitten man," he corrected, spreading her hair over her shoulders. "I've been watching you today." "In between escorting Miss Royle about the garden?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him. "Yes. I'd rather it'd been you, but that wouldn't've been prudent." He frowned down at the strands of her hair caught between his fingers. "Or, perhaps, safe. — Elizabeth Hoyt

He knew that she was to have an elaborate wedding, and the being who loved her most, who would love her forever, would not even have the right to die for her. Jealousy, which until that time had been drowned in weeping, took possession of his soul. He prayed to God that lightning of divine justice would strike Fermina Daza as she was about to give her vow of love and obedience to a man who wanted her for his wife only as a social adornment, and he went into rapture at the vision of the bride, his bride or no one's, lying face up on the flagstones of the Cathedral, her orange blossoms laden with the dew of death, and the foaming torrent of her veil covering the funerary marbles of the fourteen bishops who were buried in front of the main altar. Once his revenge was consummated, however, he repented of his own wickedness, and then he saw Fermina Daza rising from the ground, her spirit intact, distant but alive, because it was not possible for him to imagine the world without her. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

At this point, I couldn't help it. I walked around to see her better, and from the moment I witnessed her face again, I could tell that this was who she loved the most. Her expression stroked the man on his face. It followed one of the lines down his cheek. He had sat in the washroom with her and taught her how to roll a cigarette. He gave bread to a dead man on Munich Street and told the girl to keep reading in the bomb shelter. Perhaps if he didn't, she might not have ended up writing in the basement. Papa - the accordionist - and Himmel Street. One could not exist without the other, because for Liesel, both were home. Yes, that's what Hans Hubermann was for Liesel Meminger. — Markus Zusak

He was a greater craftsman even than Isaac, and he knew it, and so, presently, did Isaac.
There was a greatness in Isaac. One evening at supper, between one bite of sausage and another, he was able to acknowledge that it was so. "He must increase, but I must decrease," he said to himself. He did not know where the quotation came from, or that in taking it to himself he had taken a fence at which many balked or fell. He finished the sausage without having the slightest idea that he was not the same man that he had been when he embarked upon it. The next morning he smiled at Job and asked him if he would like to help him with his clock. Job went crimson to the roots of his hair and unable to speak bent to pick up a tool he had dropped under the workbench. When he reappeared he was no more able to speak than he had been before, but his face was shining like the morning sun. From that moment the two increasingly loved each other. — Elizabeth Goudge

Maybe we should go by tube', he said.
A taxi'll come', she said. 'I'm in no hurry'.
She remembered something a woman in Paris had told her once. A woman in her forties, much married, elegant, a little world-weary. There is nothing easier in this world, this woman had claimed, than getting a man to kiss you. Oh really? Eva had said, so how do you do that? Just stand close to a man, the woman has said, very close, as close as you can without touching - he will kiss you in one minute or two. It's inevitable. For them it's like an instinct - they can't resist. Infaillible.
So Eva stood close to Romer in the doorway of the shop on Frith Street as he shooted and waved at the passing cars moving down the dark street, hoping one of them might be a taxi.
We're out of luck', he said, turning, to find Eva standing very close to him, her face lifted.
I'm in no hurry', she said.
He reached for her and kissed her. — William Boyd

His life was cheap to him. Perhaps that's why he rode faster than any other, perhaps that was why he had walked into the house of Aquila without the quickening of a heartbeat: because at the heart of his courage was the fact that he really did not care if he died. Such courage is not true courage. True courage is when a man quakes with fear in the face of death, yet still risks his life for something he cares about. Ricardo Bruni did not know this yet, but he was to learn it soon. — Marina Fiorato

Alas, Experience! No other mentor has so wasted and frozen a face as yours, none wears a robe so black, none bears a rod so heavy, none with hand so inexorable draws the novice so sternly to his task, and forces him with authority so resistless to its acquirement. It is by your instructions alone that man or woman can ever find a safe track through life's wilds; without it, how they stumble, how they stray! On what forbidden grounds do they intrude, down what dread declivities are they hurled! — Charlotte Bronte

When he, whoever of the gods it was, had thus arranged in order and resolved that chaotic mass, and reduced it, thus resolved, to cosmic parts, he first moulded the Earth into the form of a mighty ball so that it might be of like form on every side ... And, that no region might be without its own forms of animate life, the stars and divine forms occupied the floor of heaven, the sea fell to the shining fishes for their home, Earth received the beasts, and the mobile air the birds ... Then Man was born: ... though all other animals are prone, and fix their gaze upon the earth, he gave to Man an uplifted face and bade him stand erect and turn his eyes to heaven. — Ovid

He saw the tension of the face, the speed of the walk, the drunken exhilaration of the body, drunk on the energy of sleepless nights, the proud lift of the head, the clear, steady, ruthless eyes, the eyes of a man who drove himself without pity toward that which he wanted. — Ayn Rand

How easy it is to call rogue and villain, and that wittily! But how hard to make a man appear a fool, a blockhead, or a knave, without using any of those opprobrious terms! Tosparethegrossness ofthenames, and to dothe thing yet moreseverely, isto drawa full face, and tomake the nose and cheeks stand out, and yet not to employ any depth of shadowing. — John Dryden

When it became obvious that the stranger was no longer a threat, Laeth said congenially, "She doesn't like it when men touch her without an invitation. You're lucky that she's in a good mood or she'd have just cut your hand off - that's what she did to the last man who tried it."
A friend of Laeth's leaned over from a nearby table and said sadly, "Poor Jard was never the same."
"Remember what she did to Lothar?" added another man, shaking his head.
"Took us three days to find all the pieces so that we could bury him," commented one of Laeth's fellow lieutenants, a stocky, bald man with a friendly face. He leaned closer and said softly, "But then, Lothar tried to kiss her. — Patricia Briggs

One does not really feel much grief at other people's sorrows; one tries, and puts on a melancholy face, thinking oneself brutal for not caring more; but one cannot and it is better, for if one grieved too deeply at other people's tears, life would be unendurable; and every man has sufficient sorrows of his own without taking to heart his neighbour's. — W. Somerset Maugham

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. — Charles Dickens

Is that "great cloud of witnesses" watching my way so as to judge or is it informing my way so that I may walk it? Do they hide the light so that I cannot see it or do they filter it so that its blaze will not blind me? Can a man see God face to face and live? Can I not see an eclipse better through a pinhole in a paper than without it?
We can't so much see light as we can see things because of it. So I do not meet God in a vacuum
I meet Him in the world He has provided for me to meet Him in
in a world of events and of places, of history (time and space), in a world of lives of people and their records of their encounters. I meet God in this world
in the world of these things ...
... and this is the world as best as I can remember it. — Rich Mullins

What Gibbie made of Mr. Sclater's prayers, either in congregational or family devotion, I am at some loss to imagine. Beside his memories of the direct fervid outpouring and appeal of Janet, in which she seemed to talk face to face with God, they must have seemed to him like the utterances of some curiously constructed wooden automaton, doing its best to pray, without any soul to be saved, any weakness to be made strong, any doubt to be cleared, any hunger to be filled. What can be less like religion than the prayers of a man whose religion is his profession, and who, if he were not "in the church," would probably never pray at all? — George MacDonald

Perrin told me about his people before I ever came here," she said. He was not a man to brag, but things had a way of coming out. "When hail flattens your crops, when the winter kills half your sheep, you buckle down and keep going. When Trollocs devastated the Two Rivers, you fought back, and when you were done with them, you set about rebuilding without missing a step." She would not have believed that without seeing for herself, not of southerners. These people would have done very well in Saldaea, where Trolloc raids were a matter of course, in the northern parts at least. "I cannot tell you the weather will be what it should tomorrow. I can tell you that Perrin and I will do what needs to be done, whatever can be done. And I don't need to tell you that you will take what each day brings, whatever it is, and be ready to face the next. That is the kind of people the Two Rivers breeds. That is who you are. — Robert Jordan

There must be some kind of internal time distortion effect in here, because when I look at myself in the little mirror above my sink, what I see is my father's face, my face turning into his. I am beginning to feel how the man looked, especially how he looked on those nights he came home so tired he couldn't even make it through dinner without nodding off, sitting there with his bowl of soup cooling in front of him, a rich pork-and-winter-melon-saturated broth that, moment by moment, was losing - or giving up - its tiny quantum of heat into the vast average temperature of the universe. — Charles Yu

If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs. — Theodore Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. — Theodore Roosevelt

That man is intellectually of the mass who, in face of any problem, is satisfied with thinking the first thing he finds in his head. On the contrary, the excellent man is he who contemns what he finds in his mind without previous effort, and only accepts as worthy of him what is still far above him and what requires a further effort in order to be reached. — Ortega Y Gasset

What...the fuck... is the matter with you?" ...
What? ...
"I didn't do anything!" ...
"You put on that dress, didn't you?"...
"What?"...
"You... do not... leave your house... dressed like that... without being on the arm of a man like me," he ground out...
"A man like you?" I whispered back.
"A man who'd shoot another man in the face he even looked at you. Yeah, Anya, a man... like... me — Kristen Ashley

For the soldier death is the future, the future his profession assigns him. Yet the idea of man's having death for a future is abhorrent to nature. Once the experience of war makes visible the possibility of death that lies locked up in each moment, our thoughts cannot travel from one day to the next without meeting death's face. — Simone Weil

Your wife happens to work for me, so I'd say it is." I was sure Jock was going to lunge for Boy. He was much the taller and broader man and could have wrecked Boy without trying - but some tide inside him turned, like a switch going off, and he thought better of it for the moment. "You should be careful, Beryl," he said icily, without taking his eyes from Boy's face. Then he stormed away. — Paula McLain

Today in the west we are asking the question, why is man unhappy? Answer is very simple. We have created a very fast society but we do not have a cozy home, and without a cozy home we do not have a mental state of nerve relaxed personality. Without having a mental state of nerve relaxed personality, you cannot face this fastness of the outer world; it's impossible. — Harbhajan Singh Yogi

A man who could urinate standing up and without help was a man in a fit state to face his responsibilities. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes connot write books. Very gladly would I learn what face things present to a mouse or a bee; more gladly still would I perceive the olfactory world charged with all the information and emotion it carries for a dog. Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality ... in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad of eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do. — C.S. Lewis

If there is any intelligence guiding this universe, philosophy wishes to know and understand it and reverently work with it; if there is none, philosophy wishes to know that also, and face it without fear. If the stars are but transient coagulations of haphazard nebulae, if life is a colloidal accident, impersonally permanent and individually fleeting, if man is only a compound of chemicals, destined to disintegrate and utterly disappear, if the creative ecstasy of art, and the gentle wisdom of the sage, and the willing martyrdom of saints are but bright incidents in the protoplasmic pullulation of the earth, and death is the answer to every problem and the destiny of every soul
then philosophy will face that too, and try to find within that narrowed circle some significance and nobility for man. — Will Durant

Nothing of the sort. I knew you came from Afghanistan. From long habit the train of thoughts ran so swiftly through my mind, that I arrived at the conclusion without being conscious of intermediate steps. There were such steps, however. The train of reasoning ran, 'Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.' The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished. — Arthur Conan Doyle

There's something very lazy about the way you have loved him blindly for so long without ever criticizing him. You've never even accepted that the man is ugly,' Kainene said. There was a small smile on her face and then she was laughing, and Olanna could not help but laugh too, because it was not what she had wanted to hear and because hearing it had made her feel better. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I looked into his sandy brown eyes, at one with the hair. At the business- like outward presentation of the man who daily printed sneers, innuendo, distrust and spite and spoke without showing a trace of them. 'Off the record,' I said,'bash his face in'. — Dick Francis

Some guys will say all kinds of things to look macho and save face," Max said. "Guys are jerks sometimes. But in his heart, a man loves his wife or girlfriend for so many reasons besides her outward appearance. Think of it - as a couple they've probably been through a lot together. Unless their sex life is trashed or they can't trust each other or they're fighting all the time, there's so much more to a relationship than just looks.
And you have to understand, when a guy really loves a woman, he can't imagine his life without her. Even if she isn't the most beautiful woman in the world anymore, she's still the woman who captured his heart. — Jenell Hollett

The Founder-Director purposely designed the building in a U-shape, in the interior of which is a courtyard with a central fountain, to reflect the introspective nature of a true Muslim, a universal and perfect man. These interior parts of the building are hidden from the outside in contrast to secularized buildings which face the road and are exposed to the busy traffic of secular life and are therefore without real privacy and introspective spirit. — Wan Mohd Nor Wan Daud

So I will say this, "if any man marries just because of the emotions he feels towards a woman without first seeking the face of God to confirm if she is the suitable support needed for his life's assignment, such a man is acting in error. — Aderinsola Obasa

He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Perhaps it is impossible to understand one's own face. Or perhaps it is because I am a single man? People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked? You might say
yes, you might say, nature without humanity. — Jean-Paul Sartre

So we can't make marriage anything but the permanent sexual union of a man and a woman without undermining its central purpose of pointing us to the passionate consummation of God's love for his people. Knowing all of this is why my favorite moment of any wedding is when the groom looks down the aisle to see his bride walking toward him. That moment reminds me of Jesus looking down the aisle of history to his church with the same look of love on his face. That look being exchanged between two men or two women would imply that Jesus' role could be taken by any of us - that there is no essential difference between God and his people. That is not the case - and so that is not possible. Sexual difference matters that much. C. — Ed Shaw

It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it. — Will Durant

'He's black, you see that! I thought he would be all along.' Harelip's voice trembled with excitement. 'He's a real black man, you see!'
'What are they going to do with him, shoot him?'
'Shoot him!' Harelip shouted, gasping with surprise. 'Shoot a real live black man!'
Because he's the enemy,' I asserted without confidence. 'Enemy! You call him an enemy!' Harelip seized my shirt and railed at me hoarsely, spraying my face with saliva through his lip.
'He's a black man, he's no enemy! — Kenzaburo Oe

They agreed, without any prodding, without the shadows of obligation or compromise, on Barack Obama. At first, even though she wished America would elect a black man as president, she thought it impossible, and she could not imagine Obama as president of the United States; he seemed too slight, too skinny, a man who would be blown away by the wind. Hillary Clinton was sturdier. Ifemelu liked to watch Clinton on television, in her square trouser suits, her face a mask of resolve, her prettiness disguised, because that was the only way to convince the world that she was able. Ifemelu — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Where do whites fit in the New Africa? Nowhere, I'm inclined to sayand I do believe that it is true that even the gentlest and most westernised Africans would like the emotional idea of the continent entirely without the complication of the presence of the white man for a generation or two. But nowhere, as an answer for us whites, is in the same category as remarks like What's the use of living? in the face of the threat of atomic radiation. We are living; we are in Africa. — Nadine Gordimer

This sense of absence had been growing ... It was wearing into him. Last night he had woken besides his sleeping wife and had to touch his own face to be assured he remained a physical entity...He was widely known as man without edges, without faults or virtues a man who did not fully exist. — Ian McEwan

I'm not going anywhere." Gently, he stroked her back, cradled her head. Was there anything more astounding or more frightening to a man, he wondered, than a strong woman in tears?
"I've been right here all along. I love you, Eve, almost more than I can stand."
"I need you. I can't help it. I don't want to."
"I know." He eased back, tucking a hand under her chin to lift her face to his.
"We're going to have to deal with it." He kissed one wet cheek, then the other. "I really can't do without you. — J.D. Robb

And she loved a man who was made out of nothing. A few hours without him and right away she'd be missing him with her whole body, sitting in her office surrounded by polyethylene and concrete and thinking of him. And every time she'd boil water for coffee in her ground-floor office, she'd let the steam cover her face, imagining it was him stroking her cheeks, her eyelids and she'd wait for the day to be over, so she could go to her apartment building, climb the flight of stairs, turn the key in the door, and find him waiting for her, naked and still between the sheets of her empty bed. — Etgar Keret

I wouldn't worry about it too much, son. Certainly not about the peasants and the servants. They don't feel things as we do."
"They're human."
"Barely. They might as well be another species. What would happen without us to keep them in check? They wouldn't work the land. They would be at each other's throat if we weren't there to restrain them. Face it, they are driven by their instincts. Granted, that is a generalization, and there are some individuals who rise above that. Personally I think that is how the nobility originated. Even today, with the help of the Gods, hard work and some luck such a man can rise above his station. But as a group ... — Andrew Ashling

I don't think it's illegal. I don't think it's against the rules. It's as dangerous for me to have a toothpick in your mouth as it is to have a 200-pound man punch me in the face hard or try to kick me in the face. I'm more worried about that, to be honest. I don't have any superstitions. I won world titles with a toothpick. I defended it without a toothpick. It all depends. Sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. It's a bad habit. I know I shouldn't do it, but it's fine. — Benson Henderson

I did a film many years ago called The Man Without A Face.Gaby [Hoffmann] was in with Mel Gibson. That was his directing debut. He did a great job. — Richard Masur

Suddenly I realize that this is what I've been waiting for - a man who depends entirely on me ... I dreamed for years of a man who couldn't live without me, a man who pictured my face when he closed his eyes, who loved me when I was a mess in the morning and when dinner was late and even when I overloaded the washing machine and burned out the motor. [My son] stares up at me as if I can do no wrong. I have always wanted someone who treats me the way he does; I just didn't know that I'd have to give birth to him. — Jodi Picoult

I have a serious question."
"I will give a serious answer."
"Can a god be killed?"
The humor drained from Roman's face. "Well, that depends on if you're a pantheist or a Marxist."
"What's the difference?"
"The first believes that divinity is the universe. The two are synonymous and nonexistent without each other. The second believes in anthropocentrism, seeing man in the center of the universe, and god as just an invention of human conscience. Of course, if you follow Nietzsche, you can kill God just by thinking about him. — Ilona Andrews

She reached for his wrist, clutched it. "How do I look?"
"Hurt. Pained. Destroyed."
"If I could look into your eyes, what would I see in them, Iain?"
"Devastation. Shame for what I was. Hatred for the vanity and arrogance of my youth. A love for you that has never, ever died, but has only grown and matured, and become all-consuming. Tears," he said, and pressed his face to hers so she could "see" them. "Because I know it is truly over now that the truth is out, and I don't know how I'm going to live without you. Forgive me," he whispered, then stole a kiss from her lips. "Forgive me, and the boy I was, and the man I turned out to be. — Charlotte Featherstone

You just ruined a perfectly delicious Danish!" I squawk at him.
"Man," he laughs, "note to self, don't mess with Elle's pastries."
I scrape a giant hunk off my chin and smush it across his lips. He licks them and moans.
"Oh man, that is seriously one amazing Danish."
"Now you understand." I laugh at him. I wipe my face off and we finish our treats without wasting anymore. — K. Lars

Now, in Mr. Thornton's face the straight brows fell over the clear deep-set earnest eyes, which, without being unpleasantly sharp, seemed intent enough to penetrate into the very heart and core of what he was looking at. The lines in the face were few but firm, as if they were carved in marble, and lay principally about the lips, which were slightly compressed over a set of teeth so faultless and beautiful as to give the effect of sudden sunlight when the rare bright smile, coming in an instant and shining out of the eyes, changed the whole look from the severe and resolved expression of a man ready to do and dare everything, to the keen honest enjoyment of the moment, which is seldom shown so fearlessly and instantaneously except by children — Elizabeth Gaskell

She longed to find out if the sparks would still be there, if her body would still quiver at his touch.
When Rob arrived five o'clock sharp, Jordan had her answer.
He climbed out of the truck. Seeing her standing in the doorway, he walked very slowly toward her, like a predator stalking its prey. He was a man on a mission, and Jordan stood frozen to the spot. Rob stopped short in front of her and without any notice, cupped her face, and brought his mouth down on hers. — Samantha Chase

Sophie dear,' I said. 'Are you in love with him - with this spider-man?'
'Oh, don't call him that - please - we can't any of us help being what we are. His name's Gordon. He's kind to me, David. He's fond of me. You've got to have as little as I have to know how much that means. You've never known loneliness. You can't understand the awful emptiness that's waiting all round us here. I'd have given him babies gladly, if I could ... I - oh, why do they do that to us? Why didn't they kill me? It would have been kinder than this ... '
She sat without a sound. The tears squeezed out from under the closed lids and ran down her face. I took her hand between my own.
I remembered watching. The man with his arm linked in the woman's, the small figure on top of the pack-horse waving back to me as they disappeared into the trees. Myself desolate, a kiss still damp on my
cheek, a lock tied with a yellow ribbon in my hand. I looked at her now, and my heart ached. — John Wyndham

I say, Bill, I've sprained my ankle." Bill staggered on through the milky water. He did not look around. The man watched him go, and though his face was expressionless as ever, his eyes were like the eyes of a wounded deer. The other man limped up the farther bank and continued straight on without looking back. — Jack London

Saint-Just read for the next two hours his report on the plots of the Dantonist faction. He had imagined, when he wrote it, that he had the accused man before him; he had not amended it. If Danton were really before him, this reading would be punctuated by the roars of his supporters from the galleries, by his own self-justificatory roaring; but Saint-Just addressed the air, and there was a silence, which deepened and fed on itself. He read without passion, almost without inflection, his eyes on the papers that he held in his left hand. Occasionally he would raise his right arm, then let it fall limply by his side: this was his only gesture, a staid, mechanical one. Once, towards the end, he raised his young face to his audience and spoke directly to them: "After this," he promised, "there will be only patriots left. — Hilary Mantel

Poets to Come
POETS to come! orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me, and answer what I am for;
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater than before known,
Arouse! Arouse
for you must justify me
you must answer.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the future,
I but advance a moment, only to wheel and hurry back in the darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along, without fully stopping, turns a casual look upon you, and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you. — Walt Whitman

A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man's mind can get both provocation and privacy. — Edward P. Morgan

Man!" he snapped. "A man's cub. Look!" Directly in front of him, holding on by a low branch, stood a naked brown baby who could just walk - as soft and as dimpled a little atom as ever came to a wolf's cave at night. He looked up into Father Wolf's face, and laughed. "Is that a man's cub?" said Mother Wolf. "I have never seen one. Bring it here." A Wolf accustomed to moving his own cubs can, if necessary, mouth an egg without breaking it, and though Father Wolf's jaws closed right on the child's back not a tooth even scratched the skin as he laid it down among the cubs. "How little! How naked, — Rudyard Kipling

You can be our critic. Would you dig that? (Yes, he was the last Man in America who could say "dig" with a straight face without referring to the process of using a tool to remove dirt from the ground.) — Jordan Sonnenblick

A man's work reveals him. In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, and you can only gain a true knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which he is unconscious, and from fleeting expressions, which cross his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. But in his book or his picture the real man delivers himself defenceless. His pretentiousness will only expose his vacuity. The lathe painted to look like iron is seen to be but a lathe. No affectation of peculiarity can conceal a commonplace mind. To the acute observer no one can produce the most casual work without disclosing the innermost secrets of the soul. — W. Somerset Maugham

Men have been found to resist the most powerful monarchs and to refuse to bow down before them, but few indeed have been found to resist the crowd, to stand up alone before misguided masses, to face their implacable frenzy without weapons and with folded arms to dare a no when a yes is demanded. Such a man was Zola! — Hannah Arendt

Well. Well?
What are you going to do? What are you going to say?
What are you going to say when you're drowning in your own dung and they keep booting you back into it, when all the screams in hell wouldn't be as loud as you want to scream, when you're at the bottom of the pit and the whole world's at the top, when it has but one face, a face without eyes or ears, and yet it watches and listens ... .
What are you going to do and say? Why, pardner, that's simple. It's easy as nailing your balls to a stump and falling off backwards. Snow again, pardner, and drift me hard, because that's an easy one.
You're gonna say, they can't keep a good man down. You're gonna say, a winner never quits and a quitter never wins. You're gonna smile, boy, you're gonna show 'em the ol' fightin' smile. And then you're gonna get out there an' hit 'em hard and fast and low, an' - an' Fight! — Jim Thompson

They're your family. Anyone can see that you love them.
He stills as if he's absorbing my words. "Most people believe I'm incapable of feeling anything."
Outrage punches through my chest like a burning fist. In that moment, I know I'd go to war for this man. Even if he hated every second of it. No one should have to face the world without someone at their back. Especially not someone as dedicated as Gabriel. — Kristen Callihan

Come here." Nico reached over and gave Katty a great big hug. "Have I told you how much I love you lately?"
Katty immediately turned soft. She had a big weakness for Nico. Just hearing the word 'love' instantly made her melt. "No, but I like to hear it." She smiled back at him with a smile that illuminated her face. She did like to hear it. She hadn't know Nico for very long, but there was just something so awesome about him that she felt very loved. He may have been a Vampire, and had a heart as black as night, but deep down he was a good man. He knew how to love a girl when he found the right one. He loved her completely, and without any doubt. — Keira D. Skye

No, guys are stupid at my age. I want a man with some age to him, someone who knows his way around the bedroom.' Fallon scoffed at that. 'Good luck with that! Older men can't keep it up without help, which would involve you giving a lot of head or him going on medication, or both.' 'Oh yeah,' Audrey said as a look of digust came over her face, 'back to men my age. — Toni Aleo

Myron headed down the steps. Without warning a man wearing a blue blazer and aviator sunglasses stepped in front of him. He was a big guy - six-four, two-twenty - just about Myron's size. His neatly combed hair sat above a pleasant though unyielding face. He expanded his chest into a paddleball wall, blocking Myron's path. His voice said, "Can I help you, sir?" But his tone said, Take a hike, bub. Myron looked at him. "Anyone ever tell you you look like Jack Lord?" No reaction. "You know," Myron said. "Jack Lord? Hawaii Five-O?" "I'll have to ask you to leave, sir. — Harlan Coben

He made no reply to that, so she continued, gently wiping around his nose, over the broad brow, and up the craggy cheekbones. Not a handsome face. Not pretty or comely. But it was a good face, she thought. Certainly masculine. Certainly one she was attracted to. She paused, swallowing at the thought. She did not know this man. She knew of him - knew that he would without hesitation fling himself into a filthy hole to save her son, knew he was kind to silly dogs and quarrelsome old women, knew he could, with a single, certain look, make her insides heat and melt - but she did not know him. — Elizabeth Hoyt

What a man finds circa se or sub se is overwhelming in amount, what he finds in se is embarassing in its obscurity, but when from his own being he would obtain light as to what is supra se, then indeed he finds himself face to face with a dark and somewhat terrifying mystery. The trouble is that he is himself involved in the mystery. If, in any true sense, man is an image of God, how should he know himself without knowing God? But if it is really of God that he is an image, how should he know himself? — Etienne Gilson

Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair. — Thomas Merton

Conscious, he must be conscious, he must be conscious without deception, without cowardice - alone, face to face - at grips with his body - eyes open upon death. It was a man's business. Not love, not a landscape, nothing but an infinite waste of solitude and happiness in which Mersault was playing his last cards. — Albert Camus

After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now? — Ernst Toller

From the very beginning, our state and national constitutions and laws have laid great emphasis on procedural and substantive safeguards designed to assure fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law. This noble ideal cannot be realized if the poor man charged with crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist him. — Hugo Black

I thought about breakups, how difficult they were, but then usually it was only after you broke up with one woman that you met another. I had to taste women in order to really know them, to get inside of them. I could invent men in my mind because I was one, but women, for me, were almost impossible to fictionalize without first knowing them. So I explored them as best I could and I found human beings inside. The writing was only a residue. A man didn't have to have a woman in order to feel as real as he could feel, but it was good if he knew a few. Then when the affair went wrong he'd feel what it was like to be truly lonely and crazed, and thus know what he must face, finally, when his own end came. — Charles Bukowski

That man who is without religion and mercy should be rejected. A guru without spiritual knowledge should be rejected. The wife with an offensive face should be given up and so should relatives who are without affection. — Chanakya

Because this week I've started in on a hundred reproductions of Rembrandt van Rijn, a hundred portraits of the old artist with the mushroom face, the face of a man pushed to the brink of eternity by art and drink, the door handle starting to turn, the final door pushed open from without by an unknown hand, and I'm beginning to have his puff-paste face, that peeling, piss-soaked wall of a face, I'm beginning to smile his half-moronic smile, to look at the world from the other side of human causes and events, and all my bales these days are framed with that portrait of Rembrandt van Rijn as an old man while I keep filling my drum with wastepaper and open books. — Bohumil Hrabal

Edge rolled his eyes as he turned to face her. "I appreciate your concern but I think I can handle a few vampires on my own. Besides ... it wasn't anything serious. I have no unsavory intentions towards her. Despite what you may think of me I am not completely without conscience."
"I don't think that. I think you're a man- whore, there's a difference. — Lanie Malone

Deep within the web of pavement and steel, a young boy and girl scurried past an old man, his outdated mechanical limbs shaking and twitching like an addict without a fix. He scowled at the hoodlums, scratching the hole in his face where his nose used to be, sold long ago as a cheap replacement part for someone slightly richer than he was. — Jaron Lee Knuth

What is the scariest thing that can happen? A child can disappear without a trace. A man could follow you at night. Someone could hide behind your bedroom door. There is a small throw rug in the room. There is a wooden chair by the darkening window. There is someone hiding behind my bedroom door. Anything solid in my neck snaps, and I'm screaming, looking into this hideous face, like some dark mold, a toxic messy thing. There — Samantha Hunt

May walked slowly around the body, studying it. Putrefaction had been halted in its advance, but the corpse's skin had turned green and black, producing an acrid odour. He found it hard to imagine that this man had recently been walking around, eating in restaurants, watching TV. He was someone's lover, someone's son, but there was almost nothing human left. Without a head his trunk bore an unsettling similarity to something you would find in a meat locker. How would his loved ones feel if they could see him like this? 'Get anything else?' 'It's tricky because the usual decay process has been interrupted by the relatively sterile storage of the body. Usually, after two to three days you get staining on the abdomen. The discolouration spreads, veins grow dark, the skin blisters after a week, tissue starts softening and nails fall off at around the three-week stage, and finally the face becomes unrecognisable as the skin liquefies - — Christopher Fowler

I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more. — George R R Martin

Rieux knew what the old man was thinking at that moment as he wept, and he thought the same: that this world without love was like a dead world and that there always comes a time when one grows tired of prisons, work and courage, and years for the face of another human being and the wondering, affectionate heart. — Albert Camus

Liam... You're the best. You're handsome, funny, patient with my fits, a fantastic cook. You taught me how to swim." Ryan bit his lip, eyes focused on the shadowed face in front of him. "Like, if there was a zombie apocalypse, you'd save me and feed me." He smiled. "I wouldn't need some loser with a guitar that wouldn't even work without electricity. I'd need a real man. The kind that runs into a burning building to save me. — K.A. Merikan