Portentously Quotes & Sayings

He thought of how when you went out and listened to what people said, you heard all kinds of things, people washing their dirty linen in public, talking about friends and business and,gash, and it made him think how the world must be, at every minute, so full of people fighting, and jazzing, and dying, and working, and losing jobs, and it was a funny world, all right, full of funny people, millions of them. And he was only one out of all these millions of people, and they were all trying to get along, and many of them had gotten farther than he. — James T. Farrell

Who owns a man, Durnik?" the blond young man asked sadly. "The one who rules him, or the one who pays him? — David Eddings

Honest to God, all my life I have had such a fear of spiders. In fact, I use to have a reoccurring dream about one. Very clearly, it was black with a red head. It would sit up in the corner of the bedroom and when it started getting closer, I would wake up in a panic. — Tippi Hedren

Captain Flume was obsessed with the idea that Chief White Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot one night when he was sound asleep and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume had obtained this idea from Chief White Halfoat himself, who did tiptoe up to his cot one night as he was dozing off, to hiss portentously that one night when he, Captain Flume, was sound asleep he, Chief White Halfoat, was going to slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume turned to ice, his eyes, flung open wide, staring directly up into Chief White Halfoat's, glinting drunkenly only inches away.
'Why?' Captain Flume managed to croak finally.
'Why not?' was Chief White Halfoat's answer. — Joseph Heller

Though leaving him always to remark, portentously, on his probably having formed a relation, his probably enjoying a consciousness, unique in the experience of man. People enough, first and last, had been in terror of apparitions, but who had ever before so turned the tables and become himself, in the apparitional world, an incalculable terror? He might have found this sublime had he quite dared to think of it; but he didn't too much insist, truly, on that side of his privilege. — Henry James

Humanizing good people is kind of boring and I don't really see the value in it ... humanizing tricky characters is exhilarating, and making audience films out of indie subjects excites me. — Jason Reitman

Pain never apologizes. — Marty Rubin

All this "confusion" came to an end twenty years after the Royal Visit, when two Bohemian brothers, claiming to be the illegitimate grandsons of Prince Charlie himself, appeared on the scene with their own tartan pattern book, portentously titled Vestiarum Scoticum. James and Charles Sobieski Stuart, as they called themselves, had selected seventy-five different setts, each linked to a specific clan, from a sixteenth-century manuscript they claimed had once belonged to Mary Queen of Scots's father confessor - although they could never quite produce the manuscript when others asked to see it. — Arthur Herman

Mr, Truman was jubilant. President Truman. True man; what a strange name, come to think of it. We refer to Jesus Christ as true God and true Man. Truman is a true man of his time in that he was jubilant. He was not a son of God, brother of Christ, brother of the Japanese, jubilating as he did. He went from table to table on the cruiser which was bringing him home from the Big Three conference, telling the great news; "jubilant" the newspapers said. Jubilate Deo. We have killed 318,000 Japanese. — Dorothy Day

The oldest problem in economic education is how to exclude the incompetent. A certain glib mastery of verbiage-the ability to speak portentously and sententiously about the relation of money supply to the price level-is easy for the unlearned and may even be aided by a mildly enfeebled intellect. The requirement that there be ability to master difficult models, including ones for which mathematical competence is required, is a highly useful screening device. — John Kenneth Galbraith

Once humanity discovers what's behind the mirror of all the ruling class of governments and religions there will be a new beginning of justice called Enlightenment. — Charleston Parker

I like your jumper," she said into it.

"You like my what?" Jared asked. Kami tugged at his sleeve in response and he laughed. "In the civilized land of the Americas, we call that a sweater. A jumper is a dress. You might as well have just said, 'Why, Jared, what a fetching frock you're wearing today.' "

"Why, Jared, what a fetching frock you're wearing today," Kami said instantly, raising her head so she could lift her face up to his. "You look ever so pretty."

Jared laughed, a soft huff of breath, and rested his forehead gently against hers. "Your frock's fairly fetching as well."

Kami closed her eyes, embarrassed to let him see she was happy he'd noticed. "Thanks."

"Not as fetching as mine, of course," Jared added. "I am the prettiest. — Sarah Rees Brennan

My characters will happily march off a cliff if it is in them to do so, but may the gods help me if I write that the character is an alcoholic when they are not. They will fight me at every turn and it is their domain. A writer cannot win against a stubborn character. — Thomm Quackenbush