Not What They Seem Quotes & Sayings

What are you terrible at?" I asked, running my hand across his starched shirt. Encouraged by the touch, Maxon drew circles on my shoulder with the hand he had wrapped behind my back.
"Why would you want to know that?" He asked in mock irritation.
"Becaue I still know so little about you. And you seem perfect all the time.It's nice to have proof you aren't.
He propped himself up on an elbow, focusing on my face.
"You know I'm not."
"Pretty close,' I countered. Little flickers of touch ran betwen us. Knees, arms, fingers.
He shook his head, a small smile on his face. "Okay then. I can't plan wars. I'm rotten at it. And I'm guessing I'd be a terrible cook. I've never tried, so-"
"Never?"
"You might have noticed the teams of people keeping you up to your neck in pastries? They happen to feed me as well. — Kierra Cass

The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission is to preach and to teach. These are gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don't ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners. What you do with your petty life is of no concern to them. What you do with your life is only of concern to you, they seem to say. In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire. And what more can one ask of a human being than that? — Henry Miller

Few words in any language carry such a load of meaning as 'honor.' It is an old word, unchanged even in its spelling from classical Latin to modern English. Spoken or written, it does not seem to require much explanation; most people think they know what it means. — Edmund Morgan

What would you do if you had to make a run for it?' His voice is husky as he stares, mesmerized, at the unraveling thread.
'I'd grab my shoes and run.'
'Dressed like this? In front of lawless men?' His eyes drift up to my midriff.
'If you're worried about pervs breaking into the house, it's not going to make a difference whether I'm in this outfit or in baggy jeans and a sweatshirt. Either they're decent human beings or they're not. Their actions are on them.'
'It'll be tough for them to take any action while I'm pummeling their faces. Disrespect will not be tolerated.'
I half smile at him. 'Because you're all about respect.'
He sighs as if a little disgusted with himself. 'Lately, I seem to be all about you. — Susan Ee

Names are not always what they seem. — Mark Twain

In fact, those who most seem to be themselves appear to me people impersonating what they think they might like to be, believing they ought to be, or wish to be taken to be by whoever is setting standards. So in earnest are they that being in earnest is the act. For certain self-aware people, however, this is not possible: to imagine themselves being themselves, living their own real, authentic, or genuine life, has for them all the aspects of a hallucination. — Philip Roth

And just as Catskin went to the ball, and Cendrillon, and Aschenputtel, so must you. The ball that will be given soon in the palace; I've heard talk of it in the kitchens. The servants say one is held each year. Have you never gone?"
She shook her head.
"Then you must go this year dressed in a fine gown as it is done in the stories."
She sat staring at him. "Me, Gillie? I don't belong at the ball."
"As much as Cinderella did."
"But they are only stories; they're not things that can happen." She studied him for a long time. He did not seem to be making a joke.
"It's what you dream, Thursey. You should do what you dream of doing, else where is the good in dreaming? — Shirley Rousseau Murphy

All mechanical habits are bad and slavish, and this one is ferocious as well. Of course, if you look upon the work of the revolutionist as the mere wresting of certain definite concessions from the government, then the secret sect and the knife must seem to you the best weapons, for there is nothing else which all governments so dread. But if you think, as I do, that to force the government's hand is not an end in itself, but only a means to an end, and that what we really need to reform is the relation between man and man, then you must go differently to work. Accustoming ignorant people to the sight of blood is not the way to raise the value they put on human life. — Ethel Lilian Voynich

Rebellion can seem pointless to those whom have never had to fight for what they need, or would like. Privilege is not always kindly given. — Cheri Bauer

An untrained observer will see only physical labor and often get the idea that physical labor is mainly what the mechanic does. Actually the physical labor is the smallest and easiest part of what the mechanic does. By far the greatest part of his work is careful observation and precise thinking. That is why mechanics sometimes seem so taciturn and withdrawn when performing tests. They don't like it when you talk to them because they are concentrating on mental images, hierarchies, and not really looking at you or the physical motorcycle at all. They are using the experiment as part of a program to expand their hierarchy of knowledge of the faulty motorcycle and compare it to the correct hierarchy in their mind. They are looking at underlying form. — Robert M. Pirsig

The ocean, for me, is what LSD was to Timothy Leary. He claimed the hallucinogen is to reality what a microscope is to biology, affording a perception of reality that was not before accessible. Shamans and seekers eat mushrooms, drink potions, lick toads, inhale smoke, and snort snuff to transport their minds to realms they cannot normally experience. (Humans are not alone in this endeavor; species from elephants to monkeys purposely eat fermented fruit to get drunk; dolphins were recently discovered sharing a certain toxic puffer fish, gently passing it from one cetacean snout to another, as people would pass a joint, after which the dolphins seem to enter a trancelike state.) — Sy Montgomery

Things aren't always what they seem
You're only seeing part of me
There's more than you could ever know
Behind the scenes. — Francesca Battistelli

Every religion is just a different interpretation of nature, but many people have strong beliefs in a religion they seem to know nothing about. If this applies to you, stop and think for a moment. Do you really believe what you have been taught, or have you just accepted an opinion that the majority of people around you share? Do you think your religion is the truth, or do you fear that if it is the truth and you do not believe it, that you will be punished in the afterlife? — Joseph P. Kauffman

We are the people birthed from this land. For the first time I can seem something I've not fully understood before, not until now as these pale creatures from somewhere far away stare down at us in wonder, trying to makes sense of what they see. We are this place. This place is us. — Joseph Boyden

He's not my lover," Isolfr said.
She raised an eyebrow, a long feathery, shaggy sweep. "You're his beloved. Both of them. I saw enough on the war-trail to know." Then she laughed, and took her hand off his and pushed his chest like a wolf-cub nudging playfully. "We don't get to pick who loves us, you know. And better to get him to write the song than be remembered forever as 'fair Isolfr, the cold.'"
He scrubbed a hand across his face, roughness of beard and scars and the smooth skin of the unmarked cheek. "Is that really what they call me?"
She smiled. "You frighten them, Viradechtisbrother. You went down under the mountain and came out again, twice, and the alfar call you friend. They'll have you among the heroes before you know it. And you can seem quite untouchable - 'ice-eyes, and ice-heart, and ice-hard, his will.'"
"Othinn help me. It is a song already. — Sarah Monette

We must limit the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about houses, theatres, and marketplaces. They mind other men's business, and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, "Whither are you going?" he will answer, "By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall see some people and do something." They wander purposelessly seeking for something to do, and do, not what they have made up their minds to do, but what has casually fallen in their way. They move uselessly and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining anything. Many men spend their lives in exactly the same fashion, which one may call a state of restless indolence. — Seneca.

And they will pause just for an instant, and give a sigh to me, and think, "Poor girl!" believing they do great justice to my memory by this. But they will never, never realize that it was my single opportunity of existence, as well as of doing my duty, which they are regarding; they will not feel that what to them is but a thought, easily held in those two words of pity, "Poor girl!" was a whole life to me, as full of hours, minutes, and peculiar minutes, of hopes and dreads, smiles, whisperings, tears, as theirs: that it was my world, what is to them their world, and that in that life of mine, however much I cared for them, only as the thought I seem to them to be. Nobody can enter into another's nature truly, that's what is so grievous. — Thomas Hardy

We all start from "naive realism," i.e., the doctrine that things
are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones
are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the
greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of
snow are not the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and
the coldness of snow that we know in our own experience, but
something very different — Bertrand Russell

An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they what it was to be young ... and I seem to have forgotten lately ... — J.K. Rowling

DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. WHAT THINGS SEEM TO BE MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE.
-Death — Terry Pratchett

You probably can't imagine there being a glory in your life, let alone one that the Enemy fears. But remember
things are not what they seem. We are not what we seem. You probably believed that your heart was bad too. I pray that fog of poison gas from the pit of hell is fading away in the wind of God's truth. And there is more. Not only does Christ say to you that your heart is good, he invites you now out of the shadows to unveil your glory. You have a role you never dreamed of having ... — John Eldredge

Most fear is fear of the unknown. We do not know what lies ahead of us, so we become apprehensive. Our imaginations can magnify problems until they seem insurmountable. We need a sound mind to see things in proper perspective. That is why God gave us His Holy Spirit, to enable us to see things as God sees them. — Henry T. Blackaby

The other cops were almost evenly divided between being scared by what they'd seen and being so impressed that it was almost worse, because I wasn't sure what they'd expect me to be able to do next time. Aimes hadn't been the only one who saw the white-shadowed outline of wings. I told them it was an answer to prayer, not me personally. I finally told one overly solicitous uniform, 'Trust me, I'm no angel.'
Nicky started laughing and couldn't seem to stop.
'Yuk it up, lion boy.'
That made him laugh harder, until he had to lean against the wall with tears trailing down from his eye. At least his laughing stopped any more weird theological questions; they just couldn't seem to talk about angels with this big, muscled bad-ass guy laughing his ass off beside me. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Most people bestow tremendous power onto those human beings we consider evil, who cause of threaten harm to others, even though we know they are acting from their own pain or fear. Would ignoring evil disarm it? Don't dismiss the idea. As we have declared War on Terror, a War on Drugs, a War on Poverty, a War on Crime, the problems only seem to have gotten bigger. We cling tthe notion of evil as detrimental, unpredictable force in our world and refuse any suggestion that it is not real. We argue for our fear about terrorism or climate change or economic instability, heatedly trying to prove that things are only getting worse. And in doing so, we reinforce the principle that what we focus on grows. We create our experience by where we place our attention. What we resist, persists. — Ellen Debenport

The longer you hold on to a person who isn't for you, the longer you will go without receiving the person who is. Get the help you need to break away from these unhealthy attachments. Also, understand it doesn't have to necessarily be a "bad" relationship to validate walking away. The relationship may seem to be going well, but if they're not the right person for you, this relationship is bound to take a bad turn eventually. Ask God for the strength to do what is truly best for you, which is walk away. — Stephan Labossiere

Organizations like the UN do a lot of good, but there are certain basic realities they never seem to grasp ... Maybe the most important truth that eludes these organizations is that it's insulting when outsiders come in and tell a traumatized people what it will take for them to heal.
You cannot go to another country and make a plan for it. The cultural context is so different from what you know that you will not understand much of what you see. I would never come to the US and claim to understand what's going on, even in the African American culture. People who have lived through a terrible conflict may be hungry and desperate, but they are not stupid. They often have very good ideas about how peace can evolve, and they need to be asked.
That includes women. Most especially women ...
To outsiders like the UN, these soldiers were a problem to be managed. But they were our children. — Leymah Gbowee

You may think this a strange story, but it is not. There are people whose lives are every bit as unusual as Bobby Box's
I can promise you that. Not all of them end as well, of course. For many people, the world is a place of sadness and sorrow, which is a great pity, as we have only one chance at life, and it is very bad luck if things do not go well.
But even if you think they are not going well, you can still wish, as Bobby Box did. And sometimes those wishes will come true, as his did, and the world will seem filled with light and happiness. That can happen, you know. So never give up hope; never think things are so bad that they can never get better. They can get better, and they do. And if you have the chance to make things easier for another person, never miss it. Stretch out your hand to help them, to cheer them up, to wipe away their tears. Stretch out your hand as that man and that woman did to Bobby Box. Stretch out your hand and see what happens. — Alexander McCall Smith

I talk to my friends and, you know, they all seem to get relationships that aren't right. You kind of want someone who is not at your beck and call but loves the idea of being in a relationship and what that entails. — Ray Liotta

What is driving the tendency to discount Joseph Smith's revelations is not that they seem less reasonable than those of Moses; it is that the book containing them is so new. When it comes to prophecy, antiquity breeds authenticity. Events in the distant past, we tend to think, occurred in sacred, mythic time. — Noah Feldman

What is evil neither can nor should be loved; for it is not one's duty to be a lover of evil or to become like what is bad; and we have said that like is dear to like. Must the friendship, then, be forthwith broken off? Or is this not so in all cases, but only when one's friends are incurable in their wickedness? If they are capable of being reformed one should rather come to the assistance of their character or their property, inasmuch as this is better and more characteristic of friendship. But a man who breaks off such a friendship would seem to be doing nothing strange; for it was not to a man of this sort that he was a friend; when his friend changed, therefore, and he is unable to save him, he gives him up. — Aristotle.

What is there," Owain wondered aloud, to the sky above him and the soil below, "persuades this man still that my words do not mean what they seem to mean in sane men's ears? — Edith Pargeter

What I mean is, all the terrible things that happen in fairy tales seem real. Or not real, but genuine. Life is unfair, and the bad guys keep winning and good people die. But I like how that's not always the end of it ... Evil is real, but so is good. They always say fairy tales are simplistic, black and white, but I don't think so. I think they're complicated. That's what I love about them. — Polly Shulman

The seeming imperfections of Earth, the hazards and inequalities of life, the cruelty, harshness and apparent indifference to suffering and affliction are not what they seem; as it is Earth is perfect for its purpose. It is ignorance of that purpose which makes it appear imperfect. — Kolbrin BIble

They're on a cusp; a highly heterogeneous but highly connected
and stressedly connected
civilization. I'm not sure that one approach could encompass the needs of their different systems. The particular stage of communication they're at, combining rapidity and selectivity, usually with something added to the signal and almost always with something missed out, means that what passes for truth often has to travel at the speed of failing memories, changing attitudes, and new generations. Even when this form of handicap is recognized all they ever try to do, as a rule, is codify it, tidy it up. Their attempts of filter become part of the noise, and they seem unable to bring any more thought to bear on the matter than that which leads them to try and simplify what can only be understood by coming to terms with its complexity. — Iain M. Banks

He got up and said, I think you've got something in you. I don't know. Women very rarely have. I mean most women just want to be good at something, they've got good-at minds, and they mean deftness and a flair and good taste and what-not. They can't ever understand that if your desire is to go to the furthest limits of yourself then the actual form your art takes doesn't seem important to you. Whether — John Fowles

And for some reason, there seems to be no internal policeman for a bully that says maybe you're hurting somebody's feelings. Or worse, maybe you're going to push this perons too far and they'll do something terrible. Something's not processing correctly in a bully's head. It doesn't seem to occur to them that what they're doing is corssing a line that shouldn't be crossed. And it's really, in my mind, no different than taking on defenseless kids. You do it just because you can.
It's an exercise in power; but it's also meant to dinsintegrate someone's Self. It's meant to take away their sense of who they are. And why? Because they're not as strong, or as bit, or as witty.
Bullies are ball-less, soul-less creatures to me. And they're not just children, they're adults too.
It's a terrorist act.
It's meant to make you feel afraid. It's meant to make you feel powerless to take care of the situation you find yourself in. — Whoopi Goldberg

I found I was able to relieve people not only of pain but of fear. It's strange how many people suffer from it. I don't mean fear of closed spaces and fear of heights, but fear of death and, what's worse, fear of life. Often they're people who seem in the best of health, prosperous, without any worry, and yet they're tortured by it. I've sometimes thought it was the most besetting humour of men, and I asked myself at one time if it was due to some deep animal instinct that man has inherited from that primeval something that first felt the thrill of life. — W. Somerset Maugham

I write books that seem more suitable for children, and that's OK with me. They are a better audience and tougher critics. Kids tell you what they think, not what they think they should think. — Maurice Sendak

Not merely hope, but any burdensome yearning: ambition, hatred, love (especially love) - how rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at see, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us. Catastrophe has become art; but this is no reducing process. It is freeing, enlarging, explaining. Catastrophe has become art: that is, after all, what it is for. — Julian Barnes

I don't know to what author you may be alluding, but believe me I feel what I think; and I seem to be philosophizing only for those who do not think what they feel, because they blind themselves with their own sentiment. I know that for many people this self-blinding seems much more "human"; but the contrary is really true. — Luigi Pirandello

I was told afterwards, that some of those men who took me were professing Christians, but, to me, they did not seem to live up to what they professed; they did not seem, by their practice, at least, to recognise that God as their God, who hath said, 'thou shalt not deliver unto his master, the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee, he shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place which he shall choose, in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best; thou shalt not oppress him.'--Deut. xxiii, 15, 16 — Moses Roper

But one needs to bear in mind that things are not always what they seem and, contrary to the dead stillness of a photograph, reality is in a state of perpetual flux. — Audur Ava Olafsdottir

WHAT THINGS SEEM MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE, — Terry Pratchett

Now that they had a secure hiding place almost a home it did not even seem a hardship that they could only meet infrequently and for a couple of hours at a time. What mattered was that the room should exist. To know that it was there inviolate was almost the same as being in it. — George Orwell

What would the masters do?
when people arn't successful, they sometimes wonder, why not? they get answers, then they wonder why those answers don't seem to meet their needs. they get the wrong answers, and they get upset about it. perhaps they're really getting the right answers, but answering the wrong questions.
too many people ask nothing but "Why" questions.
they analyze and analyse problems - but no solution. "you can analyse a glass of water and you're left with a lot of chemical components, but nothing you can drink".
"Why?" questions can drive us crazy. "What?" questions drive us sane.
What questions lead us to practical solutions. — Peter McWilliams

What you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce ... Men must want to do things of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organisations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work, every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you overorganize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness - they cannot work and their civilization collapses. — Frank Herbert

Everybody can use more love. Do not take offense if people are rude or unkind or seem like they are trying to hurt your feelings. You cannot know what is happening with them. Send them love no matter how they act. It will come back to you many times over as increased love in your life. — Orin

I really should not be so willing to interpret my own books as I seem to be this evening. But the blessing Ames gives Jack is an act of recognition that blesses Ames, too. He is profoundly moved that he has had the occasion to do it, that Jack accepted it, wanted it. I really do believe that all blessing is mutual, and that the moment of blessing is when people rise to the very beautiful seriousness of what they are. I feel that we ought to value ourselves and one another far more than we do, and I'm speaking theologically here, but also with an awareness that always haunts me, that we are the wonder of the universe, incomparably complex, brilliant, poignant - and perverse, of course. Our own overwhelming problem. But there are good grounds for awe in any human encounter. If we came anywhere near respecting the richness of this improbable life - hopes would flourish and blossom as they have never done before. — Marilynne Robinson

What is especially disturbing about the political left is that they seem to have no sense of the tragedy of the human condition. Instead, they tend to see the problems of the world as due to other people not being as wise or as noble as themselves. — Thomas Sowell

the voices are so persuasive, you don't know what's real and what's not. You know the voices aren't talking into your ears, but they're not exactly in your head either. They seem to call to you from another place that you've accidentally tapped into, like a cell phone pulling in a conversation in some foreign language - yet somehow you understand it. They linger there on the edge of your consciousness like the things you hear just as you're waking up, before the dream collapses under the crushing weight of the real world. But what if the dream doesn't go away when you wake up? And what if you lose the ability to tell the difference? — Neal Shusterman

What's interesting is that most free-marketers don't seem to want a free market at all, but a status quo market. The market in the United States is anything but free. If it were, big business would have to survive without corporate welfare to the tune of about $1 trillion (that's trillion) in government subsidies, the majority of which, about $650 billion, go to the fossil fuel industry! They are living off of the public dole on subsidies totaling billions of dollar - that we hand out either directly, or through tax breaks for their big corporations - with the false assumption that they are creating jobs. They are not. They are creating yachts, Leer Jets, and McMansions with swimming pools. — Steve Bivans

Animals are ever so psychic. There are some people who just can't come in here. The cats particularly seem to know. You can fool everybody, but landy M deary-me, you can't fool a cat. They seem to know who's not right, if you know what I mean. — Dewitt Bodeen

Have you ever asked yourself why one person is honorable and another dishonorable; why one is honest, another dishonest; why one is moral, another immoral? Most individuals do not intend to be dishonest, dishonorable, or immoral. They seem to allow their characters to erode by a series of rationalizations, lies, and compromises. Then when grave temptation presents itself, they haven't the strength of character to do what they know to be right. — Ezra Taft Benson

Just like Jacob, Larkin made me realize that no matter how much you think you know a person-no matter how pretty they are, how together they act, or how popular they seem, you can never know what their lives are really like.
Not until you ask them.
And not unless you're listening. — Jess Rothenberg

Maybe before you can be fearless, you must be humble. Maybe before you can be courageous, you must surrender. Maybe before you can have pride, you must swallow it. The ego obscures reality just as t6he clouds do the sun. Maybe that's why intelligent people seem more prone to phobias. It's not because they're smarter, it's because they feel more self-important. Conceit is what worry and fear feed on. — Joe Kita

You think of me that way because you look at me and at what I do through the lens of your mundane understanding of the world. Mundane humans create distinctions between themselves, distinctions that seem ridiculous to any Shadowhunter. Their distinctions are based on race, religion, nation identity, any of a dozen more irrelevant markers, To mundanes they seem logical, for though mundanes connote see, understand, or acknowledge the demon worlds, still somewhere found buried in their ancient memories, they know that there are those that walk this earth and are other. That do not belong, that mean only harm and destruction. Since the demon threat is invisible to mundanes, they must assign the threat to others of their own kind. They place the face of their enemy onto the face of their neighbor, and thus are generations of misery assured. — Cassandra Clare

My concern always has been with how - not why - people make transitions out of relationships. Many times the people I talked to did not understand why themselves. Even when they thought they knew, the reasons changed, so that what seemed to explain it at one time often did not seem important six months later. — Diane Vaughan

What stronger denunciation of an agrarian society than the charge of bestiality? Even in modern times, when Basque peasants engage in the duel by insults known as xikito, the accusation of bestiality remains a classic attack. And though to most people, sex with a goat would seem sufficiently perverted, it was not even conceded that they had conventional goat sex. It was group sex, and the goat sometimes used an artificial phallus, with the intercourse sometimes vaginal and sometimes anal. According to some accounts, the goat would lift his tail so the women could kiss his posterior while he broke wind. The — Mark Kurlansky

Did you notice that trials do not test our character, they test our faith? Faith is fundamentally a relational term - it is not first a matter of what you believe, but of whom you trust. The battle for our trust is as old as Adam and Eve. In the midst of battle, it can seem so complex, but when the dust settles and the smoke clears, the real war is always over the same question - whom will we believe? Whom will we listen to, God or the devil? — Kris Vallotton

In the narrative of his third voyage Columbus wrote: "For I believe that the earthly Paradise lies here, which no one can enter except by God's leave." As for the people of this land, Peter Martyr would write as early as 1505: "They seem to live in that golden world of which old writers speak so much, wherein men lived simply and innocently without enforcement of laws, without quarreling, judges, or libels, content only to satisfy nature." Or as the ever present Montaigne would write: "In my opinion, what we actually see in these nations not only surpasses all the pictures which the poets have drawn of the Golden Age, and all their inventions representing the then happy state of mankind, but also the conception and desire of philosophy itself. — Paul Auster

Before this reaches you, you will have learned, the Circumstances of the Insurrections in England,13 which discover So deep and So general a discontent and distress, that no wonder the Nation Stands gazing at one another, in astonishment, and Horror. To what Extremities their Confusions will proceed, no Man can tell. They Seem unable to unite in any Principle and to have no Confidence in one another. Thus it is, when Truth and Virtue are lost: These Surely, are not the People who ought to have absolute authority over Us. In all Cases whatsoever, this is not the nation which is to bring Us to unconditional Submission. — Lester J. Cappon

Presently, I sense within me the slightest touch. The harmony of one chord lingers in my mind. It fuses, divides, searches
but for what? I open my eyes, position the fingers of my right hand on the buttons, and play out a series of permutations.
After a time, I am able, as if by will, to locate the first four notes. They drift down from inward skies, softly, as early morning sunlight. They find me; these are the notes I have been seeking.
I hold down the chord key and press the individual notes over and over again. The four notes seem to desire further notes, another chord. I strain to hear the chord that follows. The first four notes lead me to the next five, then to another chord and three more notes.
It is a melody. Not a complete song, but the first phrase of one. I play the three chords and twelve notes, also, over and over again. It is a song, I realize, I know. — Haruki Murakami

One night after dinner a group of us were talking about the supernatural, and one of our dinner guests said that when the electric light was invented, people began to lose the dimension of the supernatural. In the days before we could touch a switch and flood every section of the room with light, there were always shadows in the corner, shadows which moved with candlelight, with firelight; and these shadows were an outward and visible sign that things are not always what they seem; there are things which are not visible to the mortal human being; there are things beyond our ken. — Madeleine L'Engle

Flight from God always leads downward. It culminates not in the vivacious life we imagined but in what amounts only to stagnant sleep. It's why so many people seem to exist without ever really living. In fact, they aren't really living; they're only going through the motions - rarely if ever experiencing the internal shalom they were designed to enjoy from God, because they're running from him. — Tullian Tchividjian

Your two selves: Most people are not aware of the fact that they have two different selves. You have a mind and a spirit (consciousness), and though they seem like one thing, they are separate. The way to realize that this is true is to realize that something has to be listening to the thoughts created by your mind.

What is it that hears your thoughts?

There is the part of you that thinks and the part that hears the thoughts. The thinking part is your mind; the part that hears the thoughts is your spiritual-self. You do not actually hear thoughts through your ears, because your mind is already inside your head. The point is, your spiritual-self receives the things the mind creates in a similar way to hearing them.

Check it out: Just ask yourself, what is it that is hearing the thoughts you are thinking right now?

It is your spiritual-self, the same thing that receives all life. — Michael Smith

When you have a bad year, there is this need to package it up and write it off-as I have done in the past. I hope, in 2014, when things go badly-people create themselves a New Years's day the moment they need it. Don't make 12 resolutions in January but one with every breath. Don't wait until December 31st to start anew.You can divide time with months and days and weeks-but each minute is only a minute long and belongs completely to itself. What you do in those tiny moments that seem so inconsequential are what will define not only your year-but your life — S.K. Munt

The girl's arms jutted out at awkward angles, not quite hands on the hips belligerent but not relaxed either, as if they weren't all the way under the girl's control. "I came to find you."
"I didn't know. If I'd known ... "
"It doesn't matter now." The girl's attention was unwavering. "This is where you are."
"It is at that."
The girl looked sad. Her soil-dark eyes were clouded over by tears she hadn't been able to shed. "I came here to find you."
"I couldn't have known." Maylene reached out and plucked a leaf from the girl's hair.
"Doesn't matter." She lifted a dirty hand, fingernails flashing chipped red polish, but she didn't seem to know what to do with her outstretched fingers. Little girl fears warred with teenage bravado. Bravado won. "I'm here now."
"All right, then." Maylene walked down the path toward one of the gates. She pulled the key from her handbag, twisted it in the lock, and pushed open the gate. — Melissa Marr

It has been said that the great things in life are exactly what they seem to be. Such simplicity can be difficult to understand. I have had many visions that I could not interpret, visions meant to be passed to a greater soul. I am but a thread in the fabric. Nevertheless, I do know this: even the finest and most self-sacrificing actions must be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them so fine. — Susan Cartwright

Be careful ... not all are what they seem. Some people pretend to be the beach, but they're actually quicksand. — Steve Maraboli

Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught. — John Steinbeck

NOTHING MAKES SENSE. Do not look for any sense in things. It is not there. It is you who ascribe it to what you live or get to know. A defeat or a victory is neither a message from the gods nor a trick of fate. Neither means anything - and, if they seem to, it is but an interpretation you yourself make of them - , inasmuch as things in themselves are only indifference and silence. So, do not waste your precious time in looking for signs everywhere around you. Try and interpret happenings, those which bleed and those which make you smile, as maturing experiences. Oh, yes, what is most important: live! — Camilo Gomes Jr.

Not one thought entered my head that did not seem disloyal. I was ashamed, seeing their pride close up, as if for the first time, at how little I had accomplished, how much I had failed to do at St. Paul's. Somewhere in the last two years I had forgotten my mission. What had I done, I kept thinking, that was worthy of their faith? How had I helped my race? How had I prepared myself for a meaningful future? ... They were right: only a handful of us got this break. I wanted to shout at them that I had squandered it. Now that it's all over, hey, I'm not your girl! I couldn't do it. — Lorene Cary

I started out writing when I was young; stuff about exposing the truth about how people are not what they appear, about how they are much more dysfunctional than they seem. Pulling back the curtain - that felt smart. But as I got older, exposing how frail people can be seems less and less deep. — Mike White

Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting. Sometimes you hear a distant refrain. What does it mean, you ask, who is singing? A childlike sun grows warm. A grandson and a great-grandson are born. You are led by the hand once again. The names of the rivers remain with you. How endless those rivers seem! Your fields lie fallow, The city towers are not as they were. You stand at the threshold mute. — Czeslaw Milosz

Things are seldom what they seem. — W.S. Gilbert

I give it a fifty-fifty chance of total failure. If Kai refuses to repay a debt he legitimately owes, he'll be dishonoured in front of his entire Flight. Thunderbirds always avenge their dead, honour their word, and pay their debts. Those seem to be the only laws they have." Based on what little time I'd spent with them.
Marc frowned. "It's the 'legitimately owes' part that worries me."
"Thus the fifty-fifty shot of failure." I stared up at the nest, watching for any sign of activity. "It all depends on whether or not I'm able to bullshit him into thinking he owes us."
"The odds are always in your favour when bullshit's involved." Jace grinned, and I couldn't help returning his smile. — Rachel Vincent

You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember."
"Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers."
"Was it magic?"
"Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge."
Oh, to be sure, there is much we do not understand. The years pass in their hundreds and
their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so
they seem ... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink
beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.
So long as there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights. — George R R Martin

Who do you want them to think you are? How do you think people see you? Or don't you let them near enough to see. You make up their minds for them. Do you think you succeed in convincing people that you are what you seem to be? You make people meet you on your own territory. You don't help them. You let them verbally hang themselves and then feel better about yourself, your power, your own sense of worth. You have the power to alienate them and if they allow it, you might even manage to make them feel awkward and foolish--foolish for letting you affect them at all. Do you want them to like you? Or are you one of those people who "don't care what people think." You're not living your life for them, so why should you give a fuck what people think? You make people come to you and, when they eventually do, you punish them with your smugness. Nothing ever out of character. — Carrie Fisher

In essence, individuals more concerned with portraying their own uniqueness were more likely to select an alcoholic beverage not yet ordered at their table in an effort to demonstrate that they were in fact one of a kind. What these results show is that people are sometimes willing to sacrifice the pleasure they get from a particular consumption experience in order to project a certain image to others. When people order food and drinks, they seem to have two goals: to order what they will enjoy most and to portray themselves in a positive light in the eyes of their friends. — Dan Ariely

I do not know what the Democratic Party spent, in toto, on the 2004 election, but what they seem to have gotten for it is Barack Obama. Let us savor. — Peggy Noonan

have never come across a coherent notion of bad or good, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable that did not depend upon some change in the experience of conscious creatures. It is not always easy to nail down what we mean by "good" and "bad" - and their definitions may remain perpetually open to revision - but such judgments seem to require, in every instance, that some difference register at the level of experience. Why would it be wrong to murder a billion human beings? Because so much pain and suffering would result. Why would it be wrong to painlessly kill every man, woman, and child in their sleep? Because of all the possibilities for future happiness that would be foreclosed. If you think such actions are wrong primarily because they would anger God or would lead to your punishment after death, you are still worried about perturbations of consciousness - albeit ones that stand a good chance of being wholly imaginary. — Sam Harris

I know they're not actually talking but the books on my desk seem to whisper "Drop what you're doing! Set aside your poetry! Open us, read us! Read slowly while you're at it. Always read us - every day - before you play. — Ed Sanders

A seeming ignorance is very often a most necessary part of worldly knowledge. It is, for instance, commonly advisable to seem ignorant of what people offer to tell you; and, when they say, Have you not heard of such a thing? to answer, No, and to let them go on, though you know it already. — Lord Chesterfield

If things are not what they seem - and we are forever reminded that this is the case - then it must also be observed that enough of us ignore this truth to keep the world from collapsing. — Thomas Ligotti

Which is probably one of the reasons those of us who love contemporary fiction love it as we do. We're alone with it. It arrives without references, without credentials we can trust. Givers of prizes (not to mention critics) do the best they can, but they may - they probably will - be scoffed at by their children's children. We, the living readers, whether or not we're members of juries, decide, all on our own, if we suspect ourselves to be in the presence of greatness. We're compelled to let future generations make the more final decisions, which will, in all likelihood, seem to them so clear as to produce a sense of bafflement over what was valued by their ancestors; what was garlanded and paraded, what carried to the temple on the shoulders of the wise. — Michael Cunningham

My mom says Ingrid's name and I start to hum, not the melody to a song, just one drawn-out note. I know it makes me seem crazy, I know it won't make anything change, but it's better than crying, it's better than screaming, it's better than listening to what they're telling me. — Nina LaCour

Be skilled at seeing people for what they are, not for what they seem. — Orson Scott Card

This is the same establishment that all those who want, or rather aspire to, to be literary figures of the century, artists, painters and sculptors want acceptance from and approval. They want to be looked up to. Young and upcoming poets must approach their craft with an almost angelic perspective. So many writers are missing a condensed fusion in their writing, they condescend to their audience, the truth is not spoken in their work, they gabble, their words seem to make a hot fuss on the page. What do they gain? They gain this, simply nothing. Poets must assemble and present their work accordingly to how they see fit and should be careful of advice from other writers and editors. Sometimes there can be too much going on in the words that are meant to be given with the best of intentions. — Abigail George

...Such a subcontinental thing to do, no? To bury what is difficult and painful in cerebral things. To let the intellect soak up the blood from a fight. This is what we do. Not because we lack sensitivity, but because we lack the right language for emotion. English has such a jealous hold over us, but it is a hard and brittle thing in our hands. It doesn't suit the easy melodrama of our natures. And it has a way of making matters of the heart seem at once inert and deeply shameful. So what do upper-class Indian men do when they are too wretched to do anything else? They talk of the Russians! Of Dostoevsky and Belinsky, of "cultural schizophrenia" and "the lackeyishness of thinking"... — Aatish Taseer

Mma Ramotswe found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no people. There were, she knew, those who had no others in this life, who had no uncles, or aunts, or distant cousins of any degree; people who were just themselves. Many white people were like that, for some unfathomable reason; they did not seem to want to have people and were happy to be just themselves. How lonely they must be
like spacemen deep in space, floating in darkness, but without even that silver, unfurling cord that linked the astronauts to their little metal womb of oxygen and warmth. For a moment, she indulged the metaphor, and imagined the tiny white van in space, slowly spinning against a background of stars and she, Mma Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Space Agency, floating weightless, head over heels, tied to the tiny white van with a thin washing line. — Alexander McCall Smith

Locke's essay on Toleration of 1689 argued for the toleration of opinions and ways of life with which you do not agree, as one of the virtues of a liberal society. But many who call themselves liberal today seem to have little understanding of what this virtue really is. Toleration does not mean renouncing all opinions that others might find offensive. It does not mean an easy-going relativism or a belief that 'anything goes'. On the contrary, it means accepting the right of others to think and act in ways of which you disapprove. It means being prepared to protect people from negative discrimination even when you hate what they think and what they feel. But — Roger Scruton

Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all.
Bertha: What's that?
Socrates: Philosophy.
Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here.
Socrates: Where are they?
Bertha: In the philosophy department.
Socrates: Philosophy is not department.
Bertha: Well, we have philosophers.
Socrates: Are they dangerous?
Bertha: Of course not.
Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers. — Peter Kreeft

What is happening to the daughters of the yam? Seem like they just don't know how to draw up the powers from the deep like before. Not full sunned and sweet anymore. — Toni Cade Bambara

What the Israelites saw, from high on the ridge, was an intimidating giant. In reality, the very thing that gave the giant his size was also the source of his greatest weakness. There is an important lesson in that for battles with all kinds of giants. The powerful and the strong are not always what they seem. — Malcolm Gladwell

Seen from that future time, when every commodity the human mind could imagine would flow from the industrial horn of plenty in dizzy abundance, this would seem a scanty, shoddy, cramped moment indeed, choked with shadows, redeemed only by what it caused to be created.
Seen from plenty, now would be hard to imagine. It would seem not quite real, an absurd time when, for no apparent reason, human beings went without things easily within the power of humanity to supply and lives did not flower as it was obvious they could. — Francis Spufford

[After World War II:] By now we are used to the rubble, which they clear up religiously and indefatigably. What a determination to get on top again! One could admire it, if one would not be afraid that somewhere lurks another Hitler. But you can't seem to find a single Nazi in Germany! Nobody was one! It was all a dream! — Lotte Lenya

But if sleep it was, of what nature, we can scarcely refrain from asking, are such sleeps as these? Are they remedial measures - trances in which the most galling memories, events that seem likely to cripple life for ever, are brushed with a dark wing which rubs their harshness off and gilds them, even the ugliest, and basest, with a lustre, an incandescence? Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to time lest it rend us asunder? Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living? And then what strange powers are these that penetrate our most secret ways and change our most treasured possessions without our willing it? Had Orlando, worn out by the extremity of his suffering, died for a week, and then come to life again? And if so, of what nature is death and of what nature life? — Virginia Woolf

There seem to be a lot of gay people there ... Oh please, as if that's what I meant by that. Trust me, none of them would ever want to fuck you anyway. They're gay, not blind. — Justin Halpern

I think I'm not always what I seem. Most people, when they get to know me, say, 'You know, when I first met you ... ' People initially think I'm a snob because I'm intensely private. — Evangeline Lilly

Things are not quite what they seem always. Don't start me on class, otherwise you'll get a four-hour lecture. — Michael Caine