Mary Rose O'reilly Quotes & Sayings

My throat tightened when I noticed a small tattoo of an origami rose on his upper arm. . .
"Hey, Lenzi," he whispered, barely louder than the surf.
"Rose," I said as our lips met. "My name is Rose. — Mary Lindsey

If you have a big splash of ecstasy in your life every day you are going to teach students something finer than "buy low/sell high". Maybe you'll teach them, not by what you say but by who you are, to live their lives as a standing affront to the ravaging mercantile mentality. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

When I speak in Christian terms or Buddhist terms I'm simply selecting for the moment a dialect. Christian words for me represent the comforting vocabulary of the place I came from hometown voices saying more than the language itself can convey about how welcome and safe I am what the expectations are and where to find food. Buddhist words come from another dialect from the people over the mountain. I've become pretty fluent in Buddhist it helps me to see my home country differently but it will never be speech I can feel completely at home in. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

When I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing. — Mary Oliver

The night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean; my feelings became calmer, if it may be called calmness when the violence of rage sinks into the depths of despair. I left the house, the horrid scene of the last night's contention, and walked on the beach of the sea, which I almost regarded as an insuperable barrier between me and my fellow creatures. — Mary Shelley

Whatever you eye falls on - for it will fall on what you love - will lead you to the questions of your life, the questions that are incumbent upon you to answer, because that is how the mind works in concert with the eye. The things of this world draw us where we need to go. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

I think Oscar Wilde wrote a poem about a robin who loved a white rose. He loved it so much that he pierced his breast and let his heart's blood turn the white rose red. Maybe this sounds very sentimental, but for anybody who has loved a career as much as I've loved mine, there can be no short cuts. — Mary Pickford

He sat and looked at her. "How is Mary Darling?"
"Fast asleep after playing and having a bath," she said. "The nursery is lovely."
"I'm glad you like it."
"Rose and Annie are obviously practiced nursemaids, and what is even better, they seem to like Mary, and she them."
He grunted. "It would take a hard heart to turn away from my Mary Darling."
A smile curved the corners of her lips. "You didn't seem too enamored of her when you first met."
"She has a forceful personality, as do I. We just took a bit to get to know one another. — Elizabeth Hoyt

She was feeling so much all at once and yet she wanted so much more. She wanted Jack - naked - now. "I'm going to leave you, Rose." She heard the words, but it took a moment for the meaning to register. Leaving? Was He leaving? — Mary J. Williams

And then something blossomed deep within and opened almost like the multitude petals of a rose, pushing back the tension in rippling waves as they bloomed until she surrendered to relaxation with a soft exclamation of surprise — Mary Balogh

I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,

yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head

and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one

with its petals
of silk
with its fragrance
rising

into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen

hovered -
and easily
she adored
every blossom

not in the serious
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom

the way we praise or don't praise -
the way we love
or don't love -
but the way

we long to be -
that happy
in the heaven of earth -
that wild, that loving. — Mary Oliver

Tethered to the universe by tendrils of history, with threads of continuity descending to God knows where, I see that I'm more than the dust I'll become."
This quote is from my novel, "Whispers from St. Mary's Well." Many readers have said that, like the fictional narrator of the story, Carrie Rose Stillwell, they felt a deep connection to the universe through past, present, and future experiences, after reading the story of a child who communicates with future generations. — Carol Kenny

ROSE FELT LIKE she had a neon sign flashing over her head - looking for a one night stand, only sex gods need apply. — Mary J. Williams

But finding a voice-let's be clear-is a political act. It defines a moment of presence, of being awake; and it involves not only self-understanding, but the ability to transmit that selfunderstanding to others ... To experience yourself as "voiceless" is a definition of depression, subjugation, and being counted out. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Relax." She soothed the rigid line of his jaw with her other hand. "I wouldn't want you to ruin that beautiful smile by breaking some teeth." "Then let go of my dick." Sighing with obvious disappointment, Rose did as he asked. "Do you remember what you said to me the night you, you know," now was not the time to blush, "went down on me?" "Sweetheart, right now I'm having trouble remembering my name. — Mary J. Williams

The two Mast Houses just within the Victory Gate of Portsmouth Dockyard are raised above the water on piloti. They are structures of remarkable grace, clinker-built, painted the palest green. They are vast, as they needed to be. Their survival is an industrial site devoted for a century to the servicing of mastless vessels is a matter for celebration. The use of which the more southerly is put is a matter for obloquy: the Mary Rose Shop is a repository of tawdry, insipid tat. It's the sort of stuff to make me wince- a dismal, timid inventory of mediocrity. Bad taste is forgivable. It's no taste which is so disheartening. — Jonathan Meades

Teaching English is an intrinsically radical act. Is it possible to teach English so that people stop killing each other? — Mary Rose O'Reilley

As the Roman Empire came to its close, all the old gods of the pagan world were seen as demons by the Christians who rose. It was useless to tell them as the centuries passed that their Christ was but another God of the Wood, dying and rising, as Dionysus or Osiris had done before him, and that the Virgin Mary was in fact the Good Mother again enshrined. Theirs was a new age of belief and conviction, and in it we became devils, detached from what they believed, as old knowledge was forgotten or misunderstood. — Anne Rice

For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
"Don't love you life
too much," it said,

and vanished
into the world. — Mary Oliver

Sometimes when Rose was reading, she would catch a whiff of the musty smell of her book. She put her nose down in the fold and inhaled deeply so that wonderful smell, the smell of adventure in faraway lands, would fill her up. She rubbed her hand across the pages to feel the velvety surface of the paper. When she closed her eyes, her fingertips could even feel the words that were printed there, each letter raised just a little, almost like the special language that her blind aunt Mary could read.
To Rose, a book was as real and alive as if it breathed and walked and spoke. — Roger Lea MacBride

The economy of gift, of art, is fundamentally opposed to the economy of war. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

If we remember that the German word for holy (selig) is the root of our word silly, we may be forced to make some pertinent connections. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

she rose from her seat and crossed the room to a filing cabinet. Dangling from the waist band of her stretch pants hung a bra. One end was caught by the hooks in the knit material, while the other end tapped right above her calf. The bra looked like Old Glory. It flashed red, white, and blue. I didn't know whether to laugh or salute it. "Mary Lou, you have a bra hanging off your butt." I don't believe I've ever had to make that statement before in my life. — Dolores Wilson

The comforting thing about difficult days, Chloe had learned from experience, was that the sun rose at the start of them and set at the end just as it did on any other day. And there was always the assurance of better days ahead. — Mary Balogh

Teaching English is (as professorial jobs go) unusually labor-intensive and draining. To do it well, you have to spend a lot of time coaching students individually on their writing and thinking. Strangely enough, I still had a lot of energy for this student-oriented part of the job. Rather, it was _books_ that no longer interested me, drama and fiction in particular. It was as though a priest, in midcareer, had come to doubt the reality of transubstantiation. I could still engage with poems and expository prose, but most fiction seemed the product of extremities I no longer wished to visit. So many years of Zen training had reiterated, 'Don't get lost in the drama of life,' and here I had to stand around in a classroom defending Oedipus. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being.
No one was shallow. Not really. — Mary Balogh

I cleaned the shit off my pink high-tops and drove home, stopping for an espresso at the coffeehouse across from the college. Men and women were hunched over copies of Jean Paul Sartre and writing in their journals. Most wore the thin-rimmed tortoiseshell glasses favored by intellectuals. Their clothes were faded to a precisely fashionable degree; you can buy them that way from catalogs now, new clothes processed to look old. The intellectuals looked at me in my overalls the way such people inevitably look at farmers.
I dumped a lot of sugar in my espresso and sipped it delicately at a corner table near the door. I looked at them the way farmers look at intellectuals. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

One night I begged Robin, a scientist by training, to watch Arthur Miller's 'Death of a Salesman' with me on PBS. He lasted about one act, then turned to me in horror: 'This is how you spend your days? Thinking about things like this?' I was ashamed. I could have been learning about string theory or how flowers pollinate themselves.
I think his remark was the beginning of my crisis of faith. Like so many of my generation in graduate school, I had turned to literature as a kind of substitute for formal religion, which no longer fed my soul, or for therapy, which I could not afford ... I became interested in exploring the theory of nonfiction and in writing memoir, a genre that gives us access to that lost Middlemarch of reflection and social commentary. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

You need to talk to Alden about your feelings for him, Race said.
"You don't know anything about it. Mind your own business, Race."
You love him. I know. I'm in here. I feel your soul, Rose. — Mary Lindsey

What if we were to take seriously the possibility that our students have a rich and authoritative inner life and tried to nourish it rather than negate it? — Mary Rose O'Reilley

I'm a perfectly good carrot that everyone is trying to turn into a rose. As a carrot, I have good color and a nice leafy top. When I'm carved into a rose, I turn brown and wither. — Mary Pipher

I'm wearing clothes in my thoughts and dreams though. What am I wearing in yours?" she asked.
"Me."
Conversation between Mary Rose and Harrison in Julie Garwood's FOR THE ROSES — Julie Garwood

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better. — Mary Oliver

Are you certain they aren't?"
Rose looked for a delicate way to put it.
"Doing the horizontal mumbo?"
Tyler laughed at the look the other two women gave her.
This was her mother, after all. "Mother spent too many years with a man who treated her like crap. She was lonely even when she wasn't alone. If Doctor Yum-Yum could coax her into bed, I'd say more power to her and way to go, Mom! — Mary J. Williams

What to wear on a Minnesota farm? The older farmers I know wear brown polyester jumpsuits, like factory workers. The younger ones wear jeans, but the forecast was for ninety-five degrees with heavy humidity. The wardrobe of Quaker ladies in their middle years runs to denim skirts and hiking boots. This outfit had worked fine for me in England. But one of my jobs in Minnesota will be to climb onto the industrial cuisinart in the hay barn and mix fifty-pound bags of nutritional supplement and corn into blades as big as my body. Getting a skirt caught in that thing would be bad news for Betty Crocker. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

My heart, far too sensitivefor this human world.My heart, so easily wounded, sheds rose tears of compassion. — Mary Summer Rain

My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.
These, by contrast, are the six elements of a Sacred Harp alto: rage, darkness, motherhood, earth, malice, and sex. Once you feel it, you can always do it. You know where to go for it, though it will cost you. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

There must be a mirror to show the soul to itself before the soul can begin to gather its courage. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

I did not have an opportunity to speak privately with Peter until just as he was leaving, when he handed me one of the Burns song-sheets and (with a most earnest look) told me to read it before I went to bed.
The song was 'My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose,' but it was not until was up in my bedchamber that I saw he had written on the inside page: 'My mother would be honoured if you visited her after church tomorrow. — Jennifer Paynter

There, below the cliffs, is a bay of sand where the rocks stand up like the fangs of wolves, and no boat or swimmer can live when the tide is breaking round them. To right and left of the bay the sea has driven arches through the cliff. The rocks are purple and rose-coloured and pale as turquoise in the sun, and on a summer's evening when the tide is low and the sun is sinking, men see on the horizon land that comes and goes with the light. It is the Summer Isle, which (they say) floats and sinks at the will of heaven, the Island of Glass through which the clouds and stars can be seen, but which for those who dwell there is full of trees and grass and springs of sweet water . . .' The — Mary Stewart

Cultural wisdom says 'Don't quit your day job.' Yet I think these desires represent our psyche's stretch toward wholeness. And to be whole, as many religious tranditions teach, is to make manifest a unique face of God in the world. We don't want to be irresponsible, yet for every accountant who deserts his family and sails for Tahiti, ten American men have heart attacks at their desks, after hours. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

I loved Disney. 'Fantasia' was my first, favorite Disney movie. And it just kept going. I loved 'Bambi.' I loved 'Cinderella,' 'Lady and the Tramp' and 'Snow White' and even 'Mary Poppins' which wasn't even fully animated - it was just a little bit animated. They were such a part of my growing up years; I was just very connected to them. — Anika Noni Rose

I would not say I am looking for God. Or, I am not looking for God precisely. I am not seeking the God I learned about as a Catholic child, as an 18-year-old novice in a religious community, as an agnostic graduate student, as - but who cares about my disguises? Or God's. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Best and dearest flower that grows, / Perfect both to see and smell; / Words can never, never tell / Half the beauty of a Rose - . — Cicely Mary Barker

My greatest pleasure was the enjoyment of a serene sky amidst these verdant woods: yet I loved all the changes of Nature; and rain, and storm, and the beautiful clouds of heaven brought their delights with them. When rocked by the waves of the lake my spirits rose in triumph as a horseman feels with pride the motions of his high fed steed.
But my pleasures arose from the contemplation of nature alone, I had no companion: my warm affections finding no return from any other human heart were forced to run waste on inanimate objects. — Mary Shelley

There are no miracles because all is a miracle. There is no magic because all is magic." -Llewelyn Powys — Rose Mary Boehm

Snow makes the world quieter and louder at the same time. — Mary-Rose MacColl

There is no greater joy nor greater reward than to make a fundamental difference in someone's life. — Mary Rose McGeady

We may be touched by the most powerful of suppositions--even to a certainty--as we stand in the rose petals of the sun and hear a murmur from the wind no louder than the sound it makes as it dozes under the bee's wings. This, too, I suggest, is the weather, and worthy of report. — Mary Oliver

If I had another life
I would want to spend it all on some
unstinting happiness.
I would be a fox, or a tree
full of waving branches.
I wouldn't mind being a rose
in a field full of roses.
Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.
Reason they have not yet thought of.
Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.
Or any other foolish question. — Mary Oliver

If I had to sum up the gospel I should have to tell you certain facts: Jesus, the Son of God, became man; he was born of the virgin Mary; lived a perfect life; was falsely accused of men; was crucified, dead, and buried; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God; from whence he shall also come to judge the quick and the dead. This is one of the elementary truths of our gospel; we believe in the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, and the life everlasting. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Each book was like an underwater cave, and when I rose again to the surface, I was pale and grumpy, resentful of everyone who hadn't been where I'd been. — Mary Stewart Atwell

But I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Such were my reflections as I commenced my journey; but as I proceeded, my spirits and hopes rose. — Mary Shelley

Egyptian President Sadat had a belly dancer entertain President Nixon at a state dinner. Mr. Nixon was really impressed. He hadn't seen contortions like that since Rose Mary Woods. — Johnny Carson

Maddi glared at him. "Thats why your not built like Alden. French fries." Race laughed. "Id love to look like Alden. Hot female speakers would be falling all over themselves to be paired up with me, just like they did whith Alden when Rose...Lenzi was gone. You should've seen it, Lenzi. It was halarious." My insides gave a jealous churn. — Mary Lindsey

I do believe all shall be well with you, Prue. It's come to my heart as soft as dew, and as sweet as a red rose, that you'll get love as well as give it. After my time, though, after my time. But no matter for that, so I do know it's to come. — Mary Webb

Clouds of black birds rose up wailing and screaming, like the thoughts of my heart. — Mary Renault

Sadie was at his side when the old desire to leave everything behind rose up in him again.
"Suppose . . ." he began. "Suppose . . ."
Then he moved on, one last time. — Mary Doria Russell

He nodded. "You're right. It's probably for the best."
Bitterness rose in my throat. I hated things being for the best. They never really were. It was a phrase that sugarcoated the leftover crumbs of our options. — Mary E. Pearson

Meanwhile, as we read, two little girls slept as if couched on zephyrs on the south side of the parlor floor, in a room that had bunny wallpaper ... and a bookcase crammed with the collected Beatrix Potter. Snow White was in a youth bed and Rose Red was in a crib, and next to them was the little blue and white guest room that one of them would have one day. Because I recognize emotions only in retrospect, I didn't know that I was happy. As always, there was something nagging at my mind's corners. But I did know that I had all that it is proper in this world to wish for. — Mary Cantwell

I see his blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of his eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.
I see his face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but his voice - and carven by his power
Rocks are his written words.
All pathways by his feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree. — Joseph Mary Plunkett

Finding voice is a socially responsible political act. We don't just do it for ourselves. And helping someone to find voice demands a spiritual partnership with that seeker. It's an exercise of compassion. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Ma Li, you have been scarce since you reunited with your element. I only feel you in fleeting moments now. I cried out for you when the wolves attacked. Why didn't you come to help me?" "I searched for you. I did! I felt your fear, and as the terror rose in you, I kept calling out to you. I could feel you, but I couldn't see you, Mary. What happened? — J A Graffagnino

Rue not my death. Rejoice at my repose, It was no death to me but to my woes. The bud was opened to let out the rose. The chain was loosed to let the captive go." - ROBERT SOUTHWELL ON MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS — J.T. Ellison

Rose was drowning in pleasure like she'd never known, just from a kiss. Jack wasn't touching her any place but on the lips and yet she could feel it on every inch of her body. Long, sure strokes of his tongue made her ache for him to explore the rest of her with equal thoroughness. She needed to touch him, why wasn't she touching him? — Mary J. Williams

What do you do for ecstasy? — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Singing in the midst of evil is what it means to be disciples. Like Mary Magdalene, the reason we stand and weep and listen for Jesus is because we, like Mary, are bearers of resurrection, we are made new. On the third day, Jesus rose again, and we do not need to be afraid. To sing to God amidst sorrow is to defiantly proclaim, like Mary Magdalene did to the apostles, and like my friend Don did at Dylan Klebold's funeral,t hat death is not the final word. To defiantly say, once again, that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, will not, shall not overcome it. And so, evil be damned, because even as we go to the grave, we still make our song alleluia. Alleluia. Alleluia. — Nadia Bolz-Weber