Rattle Quotes & Sayings

If he touches me, I'll kill him.
Rattle on a snake, a dog's growl to prevent a bite, her warning was meant to avoid unnecessary bloodshed and the burden of taking life, because as surely as the earth turned, if that man put a hand on her, instinct and history would overwhelm reason and she would destroy him or die trying. — Taylor Stevens

I don't care about anybody being handsome", she said, "but I never did go for anybody that reminded me of a box of spilled spaghetti. All elbows and dry rattle. — Robert Penn Warren

Right now, AJ. I wanna pin you against the wall and fuck you hard enough to rattle the stalls. Then I want to bend you over the railing' and take you from behind, sinkin' my teeth into that spot at the base of your neck that makes you scream my name."
AJ swallowed. "Um. Let's start with just one and work our way down the wish list, okay? — Lorelei James

County library? Reference desk, please. Hello? Yes, I need a word definition. Well, that's the problem. I don't know how to spell it and I'm not allowed to say it. Could you just rattle off all the swear words you know and I'll stop you when ... Hello? — Bill Watterson

I always thought that if those psychic phone lines were for real, I could just call them and not say a word and the psychic on the other end of the phone would rattle off my vital statistics, then tell me all about my future. — Jeff Belanger

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. — Francis Pharcellus Church

Maude meant nothing that she said. She knew how pretty she looked in furs. She was a rattle, not understanding her own bnoise; but the scholar hung upon her words, and believed them inspired, and did not know they were murmurings from a shell. — Ernest G. Henham

Near the Mexican border, rocky canyons cleave the mountains, laying them aside like broken wedges of gray cheese furred with a dark mold of pinon and juniper that sheds hard shadows on moon glazed stone, etched lithographs in gray and black, taupe and silver. Beneath feathery chamisa a rattlesnake flicks his tongue, following a scent. Along a precarious rock ledge a ring-tailed cat strolls, nose snuffling the cracks. At the base of the stone a peccary trots along familiar foot trails, toward the toes of a higher cliff where a seeping spring gathers in a rocky goblet. In the desert, sounds are dry and rattling: pebbles toed into cracks, hoofs tac-tacking on stone, the serpent rattle warning the wild pig to veer away, which she does with a grunt to the tribe behind her. From the rocky scarp the ring-tailed cat hears the whole population of the desert pass about its business in the canyon below. — Sheri S. Tepper

But the shrieking went on and on, primal, almost glad - this protest was righteous. I couldn't make up my mind whether the baby was male or female; the only certainties were near baldness and incandescent rage. The kid didn't like its blanket, or its rattle, or the lap it was sat on, or the world . . . the time had come to demand quality. — Helen Oyeyemi

Although they were hardened and seasoned individual fighters - every male baby born in Afghanistan seems to be given an AK before he gets a rattle - they — Simon Chase

Since a woman must wear chains, I would have the pleasure of hearing 'em rattle a little. — George Farquhar

People, as curious primates, dote on concrete objects that can be seen and fondled. God dwells among the details, not in the realm of pure generality. We must tackle and grasp the larger, encompassing themes of our universe, but we make our best approach through small curiosities that rivet our attention - all those pretty pebbles on the shoreline of knowledge. For the ocean of truth washes over the pebbles with every wave, and they rattle and clink with the most wondrous din. — Stephen Jay Gould

Rattlesnakes would be a lot more dangerous if they didn't have the rattle. — Louis Sachar

The new-born child does not realize that his body is more a part of himself than surrounding objects, and will play with his toes without any feeling that they belong to him more than the rattle by his side; and it is only by degrees, through pain, that he understands the fact of the body. And experiences of the same kind are necessary for the individual to become conscious of himself; but here there is the difference that, although everyone becomes equally conscious of his body as a separate and complete organism, everyone does not become equally conscious of himself as a complete and separate personality ... It is such that he, as little conscious of himself as the bee in a hive, who are lucky in life, for they have the best chance of happiness: their activities are shared by all, and their pleasures are only pleasures because they are enjoyed in common ... It is because of them that man has been called a social animal. — W. Somerset Maugham

That's not trouble; that's fail. Tell me that isn't all the whites. Like, Michael's and Shane's, too."
"All the whites," Claire said, and held up the guilty red sock. "Yours?"
"Oh, damn." Eve snatched it out of Claire's fingers and shook the sock like a floppy rattle. "Bad sock! Bad! You are never going anywhere fun ever again! — Rachel Caine

From childhood he had been devoted to whatever was useless, metamorphosing the streetcar rattle of life into events of consequence, and when he began to fall in love he tried to tell women about this, but they did not understand him, for which he revenged himself by speaking to them in a wild, bombastic birdy language and exclusively about the loftiest matters. — Osip Mandelstam

You know what, I'm going to say this and I mean it, if all else fails and I've got to shake, rattle 'n' roll and get on the woo-wop, this is going to be my heeyah zone. — Snoop Dogg

She look me over from head to foot. Then she cackle. Sound like a death rattle. You sure is ugly, she say, like she ain't believed it. — Alice Walker

Surrounded by enemies, there were officially no enemies for them. With civilization at large trickling down shitholes like Mogadishu and Kigali and Port-au-Prince, the "new" Army was under strict orders: Thou shalt have no enemy. No casualties. No turf. You occupied high ground only long enough to let the politicos rattle sabers and get reelected, and then you moved on to the next bad place. The landscape changed; the hatreds did not. — Jeff Long

Sometimes life isn't magical, you see. Sometimes life is everyday. Its a trip to the keycutters in a rushed lunch break. It's the light, high rattle of a lightbulb's broken filament. It's your neighbour coming round to tell you you've left your car lights on.
Yes rarely its something outer. Maybe it's the glance of a girl on Charlotte street, for example. But how long before a glance runs out? How long can you keep coasting on a look? — Danny Wallace

Forgiveness offered -especially when so undeserved - cuts chains off the human heart that no other power in any universe anywhere can rattle much less break ... love did what hatred can not and never will. — Charles Martin

I have all these computers and keyboards and synthesizers, and I rattle away. For instance, with The Lion King I wrote over four hours worth of tunes, and they were really pretty -but totally meaningless. So in the end I came up with material I liked. We worked on The Lion King for four years, but I wasn't toying until the last three-and-a-half weeks properly. On Crimson Tide, on the other hand, I just went in and within seconds I knew what I wanted. — Hans Zimmer

Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are Johnny Carson and find yourself caught in an intolerable one-on-one conversation at a cocktail party from which there is no escape. Which of the two following events would you prefer to take place: (1) That the other person become more and more witty and charming, the music more beautiful, the scene transformed to a villa at Capri on the loveliest night of the year, while you find yourself more and more at a loss; or (2) that you are still in Beverly Hills and the chandeliers begin to rattle, a 7.5 Richter earthquake takes place, and presently you find yourself and the other person alive and well, and talking under a mound of rubble.
If your choice is (2), explain why it is possible for a true conversation to take place under the conditions of (2) but not (1). — Walker Percy

Outwork the bullshit. That means nothing can rattle you when your conditions are set. And the way you set those conditions is by working damn hard. — Lil' Wayne

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifle's rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers, nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells,
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes,
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall,
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each, slow dusk a drawing down of blinds. — Wilfred Owen

Then came the hostage crisis during which Carter did nothing to rattle the ayatollahs who hung tough until Ronald Reagan was inaugurated, when they suddenly backed down. — Alexander Haig

You never have perfect knowledge in combat, gentlemen. It's what we call the fog of war. You can either sit around worrying what's real and what's not, or you can realize the enemy hasn't got a clue either and fire off a few rounds of psychology. A truly great army is one that only has to rattle its saber to win a war. — Karen Traviss

... you know, sometimes an electric lightbulb goes out all of a sudden. Fizzles, you say. And this burned-out bulb, if you shake it, it flashes again and it'll burn a little longer. Inside the bulb it's a disaster. The wolfram filaments are breaking up, and when the fragments touch, life returns to the bulb. A brief, unnatural, undeniably doomed life - a fever, a too-bright incandescence, a flash. The comes the darkness, life never returns, and in the darkness the dead, incinerated filaments are just going to rattle around. Are you following me? But the brief flash is magnificent!
"I want to shake ...
"I want to shake the heart of a fizzled era. The lightbulb of the heart, so that the broken pieces touch ...
" ... and produce a beautiful, momentary flash ... — Yury Olesha

The rattle of plates and cutlery was the sound of empires falling. — Robert Charles Wilson

The rich are all alike, to revise Tolstoy's famous words, but the poor are poor in their own particular ways.

Any reasonably intelligent reader could blow that generalization apart in the time it takes to write it. But as with most generalizations, a truth lies behind it. Ultimately, what binds the rich together is that they have more money, lots more. For one reason or another, the poor don't have enough of it. But poverty doesn't bind the poor together as much as wealth and the need to protect it bind the rich. If it did, we would hear the rattle of tumbrels in the streets. One hears mutterings, but the chains have not yet been shed. — William McPherson

Lets rattle the stars. — Sarah J. Maas

A silent concave of puppet buffoons
neither eagles nor jaguars
buzzard lawyers
locuses
wings of ink sawing mindibles
ventriloquist coyotes
peddlers of shadows
beneficent satraps
the cacomistle thief of hens
the monument to the Rattle and its snake
the altar to the mauser and the machete
the mausoleum of the epauletted cayman
rhetoric sculpted in phrases of cement — Octavio Paz

As far as plans went, it was like facing the zombie apocalypse with a nail file and a bag of Skittles. It might work, but chances were good that I'd die a horrible, painful death.
At least the end would be filled with fruity, candy goodness. And for my dramatic death scene I could whisper, in a creepy, quivery death rattle, taste the rainbow. Boy would those zombies be confused. — E.J. Stevens

You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain, too much love drives a man insane. You broke my will, but what a thrill. Goodness gracious, great balls of fire. — Jerry Lee Lewis

If Edgar sounded overeager, even rushed, the race was with his own temperament. He placed a premium on savvy. Yet since you could only obtain new information by admitting you didn't know it already, savvy required an apprenticeship as a naive twit. You had to ask crude, obvious questions ... you had to sit still while worldly-wise warhorses ... fired withering glances as if you were born yesterday.
Well, Edgar was born yesterday for the moment, although his tolerance for being treated liked a simpleton was in short supply. He'd needed to rattle off a multitude of stupid questions before he embraced his next incarnation as an insider. The trouble was that savvy coated your brain in plastic like a driver's license: nothing more could get in. Hence the point at which you decided you knew everything was exactly the point at which you became an ignorant dipshit. — Lionel Shriver

These five links stand out in the chain that binds our will. They hold us, guide us, coerce us - And we rattle them still. ~The Bern Seer~ — Hugh Howey

Since the grasses are being parasitised, they grow less, leaving more room for other flowering plants. Pywell demonstrated that sowing rattle seed into an English meadow significantly boosted the diversity of flowers present by suppressing growth of grasses. — Dave Goulson

Hodges could remember buying his first new car and letting the guy's post-sales tutorial wash over him - uh-huh, yep, right, gotcha - just anxious to get his new purchase out on the road, to dig the rattle-free ride and inhale that incomparable new-car smell, which to the buyer is the aroma of money well spent. — Stephen King

Men rattle their chains-to manifest their freedom. — Arthur Helps

You can do this. You are invincible; nothing can rattle you. You have nerves of steel; you are a confident, strong woman; you- — Lauren Barnholdt

Closing my eyes, I breathe in the air around me.
When I slowly re-enter the world, I look into the most intense brown eyes I've ever seen. My breathing catches. I can't look away. Fuck, he's hot. I can literally feel my brain cells frying. Who's dumb as a rock now, Alexis?
I feel completely frozen and can't move. I don't even think I want to. Blink, Richards, blink."

-Alexis

What happens to someone who has everything figured out and doesn't let anyone rattle her?
To some love is exciting. To her, it's a nuisance. — Kristina Steiner

Let's go rattle the stars. — Sarah J. Maas

As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. — Henry David Thoreau

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear — T. S. Eliot

Marketers keep inventing desires, necessities for you and for me. I need this. I need that. I need. I need. It's the need of a smoking fit. If you don't smoke that cigarette now, you'll die-when in reality you die because you succumb to the rage and rattle of the needy greed that keeps you busy needing more and more things. Is this the American Dream-the greedy need? — Giannina Braschi

People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline ... The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the way a figure skater might choose a focal point as she spins, and just like that, she's grounded again. — Jennifer E. Smith

The American media produce a product of very poor quality. Its information is not reliable, it has too much chrome and glitz, its doors rattle, it breaks down almost immediately, and it's sold without warranty. It's flashy, but it's basically junk. — Michael Crichton

England have players who can rattle anyone's feathers — Michael Owen

When were you in Christian's bed," Ryodan says softly.
I gape. "Dude, you got a serious case of selective hearing, the kind that bleeps out all the important stuff! Who cares when I was in his stupid bed? How the feck did you kill Velvet? You been holding out on me! You need to learn to share your weapons!"
"When."
There's something in the way he utters that single word that makes me shiver, and I'm hard to rattle. "So, I didn't change in a convenience store! So, shoot me. I need my sword. What're are you going to do to get it back?"
I've never seen Ryodan's face go so smooth. It's like it got iced blank of all expression. I've never heard him talk so soft and silky either. "Take her back to Chester's and lock her down. I'll get the sword. — Karen Marie Moning

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'. — Bob Dylan

There are two dilemmas that rattle the human skull: How do you hang on to someone who won't stay? And how do you get rid of someone who won't go? — Danny DeVito

You could rattle the stars. You could do anything, if you only dared. — Sarah J. Maas

Want is a thing that unfurls unbidden like fungus, opening large upon itself, stopless, filling the sky.
But needs, from one day to the next, are few enough to fit in a bucket, with room enough left to rattle like brittle brush in a dry wind. — Barbara Kingsolver

All along the street, keys rattle in key-holes as each shop's ornate metal clothing is stripped away ... It's as if, having unlocked the chastity of shutters and doors, they can't see the point in maintaining any shred of modesty. — Michel Faber

He will rattle your cage and then break your heart. — Jameson Currier

The Nineteenth Century And After
Though the great song return no more
There's keen delight in what we have:
The rattle of pebbles on the shore
Under the receding wave. — W.B.Yeats

The rattle of plastic keys reminds me of a squadron of butterflies failing to fight their way out of a paper bag. — Clive James

A not-too-distant explosion shakes the house, the windows rattle in their sockets, and in the next room the class of 1964 wakes up and lets out a yell or two. Each time this happens I find myself thinking, "Is it possible that human beings can continue with this lunacy very much longer?" You know the answer, of course. — George Orwell

The labour party is like a stage-coach. If you rattle along at great speed everybody inside is too exhilarated or too seasick to cause any trouble. But if you stop everybody gets out and argues about where to go next. — Harold Wilson

I try to shake it loose-but these ideas, they cling. It's like I'm shackled to them with an iron chain. They rattle along behind me, dragging against the ground, always reminding me of their presence. — Maureen Johnson

GUIL (quietly): Where we went wrong was getting on a boat. We can move, of course, change direction, rattle about, but our movement is contained within a larger one that carries us along as inexorably as the wind and current ... — Tom Stoppard

She follows her nose and stands once more before the doors of a quintessential dilemma. Male or Female. Here is her paradox. A staccato voice seems to challenge her, berate her. Hombre or Mujer. Mann or Frau. Homme or Femme. Gentleman or Lady. Com on, decide. She knows them all. She is them all. Not fluid or all-encompassing, gathering the harvest of the reaping fields, but fractured and split and bleeding. Her inner core weeping out of itself. There is nothing for hermaphrodites. It's too confusing. The words rattle around in her earbones, androgynous and humming. How can she choose? She cannot choose. To choose is to sunder. — Mark O'Flynn

Other sounds woke the hamlet: the blast of a ship's foghorn blown at the pit top to mark the start of the shift; the echo of others - 'buzzers', as they were called - from the pits in the valley below. For the deep sleepers, there was the 'knocker-up'; a human alarm clock, he used a long pole to rattle the window panes of the households that paid him a few pennies each week. — Catherine Bailey

I ache, I rattle with supplements, and my grandchildren cannot believe I have ever been anything but prehistoric. — Jojo Moyes

As wars, rumors of war, tribulation, earthquakes rattle the front pages of news, God is calling His bride into place. It is a bride that knows Him, seeks Him, and desires Him with her whole heart, who looks beyond the turmoil with faith and hope towards the coming triumph. — Susan Rowe

You should see the way she smiles when I rattle off the names of the orchids in the greenhouse: oncidium, dendrobium, bulbophyllum, and epidendrum, tickling her face with each blossom. I wouldn't be surprised if 'Orchidaceae' was her first word. — Vanessa Diffenbaugh

How much do you have in common with
this guy?"
"Not much. Basically we're polar opposites.
But do you want to know the main attraction,
the weird part? ... It's the talking."
"Talking about what?"
"About anything," I said earnestly. "We
get started and it's like sex, this back-andforth,
and we're both so there, do you know
what I mean? We rattle each other. And
some conversations seem to be happening on
a few different levels at once. But even when
we're disagreeing on something, there's a
weird kind of harmony in it. A connection. — Lisa Kleypas

Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they don't bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it less rousing if they don't rattle your windows and nerves with indiscriminate sonic booms just because they can? — Rabih Alameddine

I've actually got a new sorta-boyfriend and I suppose maybe I'll have shake-the-rafters, rattle-the-windows sex with him since I'll finally be legal and all."
"Eponine," Phil hissed. Maube I'd only said it for the reaction, because there was absolutely no way that would be happening withing the month. I could count the numbers of boys I'd merely kissed on one hand. I didn't even need a hand at all to number the guys I'd slept with. I figured the integer wasn't about to change any time soon, either.
"Obviously I'm kidding, Phil." His posture relaxed, only slightly. "We'll be quiet. — Megan Squires

And don't give me the same old story:
"We're in Mexico. Pray."
You'd be better off taking a snake rattle. — Carlos Fuentes

Luke's left side was bloody. His eyes were open - blue eyes, the way they used to be. His breath was a deep rattle. "Good ... blade," he croaked. — Rick Riordan

I have a tendency to kick it up. I like to rattle the cage. — Lisa Marie Presley

We are off! And do we know it, not just because the world is yelling "Lift-off" in our ears, but because the seats of our pants tell us so! Trust your instruments, not your body, the modern pilot is always told, but this beast is best felt. Shake, rattle and roll! — Michael Collins

Violence in the voice is often only the death rattle of reason in the throat. — Henry George Bohn

We love to congratulate ourselves on the forward-leaning liberal society that we live in, and the truth is it's a bunch of rattle snake-handling fundamentalists that are much closer to Stalin than they are to FDR or anybody else like that. — Terence McKenna

I marshalled the words and opened my mouth, thinking I would hear them. But all I heard was a kind of rattle, unintelligible even to me who knew what was intended. — Samuel Beckett

Take your clothes off."
"What?"
"You heard me."
Evelyn forced her mouth shut.
She looked around the room, buying time. The faded brown curtains hung limply over the windows, not quite touching, and the afternoon light filtered through the gaps, its beams turning the dust in the air into diamonds. She could hear the rattle of a wagon on the street below and the regular rhythm of squeaking bedsprings in the adjacent room.
"So? What are you waiting for?"
She stared at the man on the moth eaten chaise longue in front of her. He was serious. — Molly Ann Wishlade

Amusement should be used to do us good "like a medicine": it must never be used as the food of the man ... Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle. — Charles Spurgeon

SENSE OF SOMETHING COMING: I am like a flag in the center of open space.
I sense ahead the wind which is coming, and must live
it through.
while the things of the world still do not move:
the doors still close softly, and the chimneys are full
of silence,
the windows do not rattle yet, and the dust still lies down.
I already know the storm, and I am troubled as the sea.
I leap out, and fall back,
and throw myself out, and am absolutely alone
in the great storm. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Bono and Clayton had such a great time that the band paid homage to Cash in their Rattle and Hum album package with a huge photo of them in the Sun studio just beneath a framed photo of Phillips and Cash. In the early weeks of 1993, Bono was working — Robert Hilburn

When I see the moon on a clear night, I do say "blessed be" and I remind myself to be grateful to the universe that I happen to exist in such a lovely and wondrous world, even and especially as I can rattle on about magma cooling, abiogenesis, and natural selection. — Thomm Quackenbush

Freedom, Truth, Honour - you could rattle off a hundred such words and behind every one of them would gather a thousand punks, pompous little farts, waving the banner with one hand and reaching under the table with the other. — Hunter S. Thompson

Fuck you,' Samuel said as he stole the ball, drove down the court, and went in for a two-handed, rattle-the-foundations, ratify-a-treaty, abolish-income-tax, close-the-uranium-mines monster dunk. — Sherman Alexie

Rattle me out of bed early, set me going, give me as short a time as you like to bolt my meals in, and keep me at it. Keep me always at it, and I'll keep you always at it, you keep somebody else always at it. There you are with the Whole Duty of Man in a commercial country. — Charles Dickens

He turned on to the track and wondered why no birds were singing. The only sound he could hear was the buzz and rattle of a drill, which he assumed to be the farmer doing something to a fence. It was, in fact, a woodpecker whose presence would have thrilled him had he known what it was. — Ruth Rendell

She sat for a moment, feeling the rhythmic rattle of the train's motion. "Does it ever bother you to be in his shadow, Wayne?"
"Who? Wax? I mean, he's been putting on weight, but he's not that fat yet, is he?" He grinned, though that faded when she didn't smile back. And, in an uncharacteristic moment of solemnity, he slid his boots off the table and rested one elbow on it instead, leaning toward her.
"Nah," he said after some thought. "Nah, it doesn't. But I don't care much if people look at me or not. Sometimes my life is easier if they ain't looking at me, ya know? I like listening. — Brandon Sanderson

You baffle me, addle me, drive me insane.
You muddle, befuddle, and rattle my brain.
My senses are mad,
Skewed judgment to blame.
You drive me half stark-raving bonkers!
(But the truly crazy thing is how I love it.) — Richelle E. Goodrich

Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers," said the woman. "Pleased to meet you." She took another puff at the flaming cigarette, and there were more sparks. Some of them dropped on the floor but didn't seem to do any damage. "There's a goddess just for that?" said Tiffany. "Well, I find lost corkscrews and things that roll under furniture," said Anoia offhandedly. "Sometimes things that get lost under sofa cushions, too. They want me to do stuck zippers, and I'm thinking about that. But mostly I manifest whensoever people rattle stuck drawers and call upon the gods." She puffed on her cigarette. "Got any tea? — Terry Pratchett

There are fewer things more thrilling in life than lumpy letters. That rattle. — Jean Shepherd

I had written a tune called 'Shake, Rattle and Roll,' but the white stations refused to play it - they thought it was low-class black music. We thought what we needed was a new name. But a white disc jockey named Alan Freed laid on it, and he thought up the name 'rock n' roll.' — Jesse Stone

At last she interrupted with a harsh rattle of laughter. "Oh, yes, I like this book! Crazy hopes of a glamorous, rich, colorful life and then abduction, rape, slavery. That book, at least, is true."
"It is not true. It is a male sex fantasy."
"And life for most women is just that, a performance in a male sex fantasy. The stupid ones don't notice, they've been trained for it since they were babies, so they're happy. And of course the writer of that book made things obvious by speeding them up. What happens to the Blandish girl in a few weeks takes a lifetime for the rest of us. — Alasdair Gray

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. — Douglas MacArthur

In 1 Samuel 17, we see how comfort stymied the nation of Israel and David's three older brothers up at their army camp. They repeated their battle cry every day. They got suited up and went and stood on the front lines. They had God on their side and believed he was the one true God. But for forty days they were held back by comfort. They were prevented from moving forward by the lure of ease. The giant was calling the shots. He was dictating their lives. Goliath would come out every morning and evening and shake, rattle, and roar, and the Israelites would all say, "Nope, not today. Too dangerous. Too uncomfortable. Let's go have lunch. Let's stay in the tents where it's safe. If we run out of supplies someone will arrive with more. Maybe we'll do battle tomorrow." We — Louie Giglio

After he pulled the trigger, Bing sat with the old man and listened to the rain rattle off the roof of the garage, while John Partridge sprawled on the floor, one foot twitching and a urine stain spreading across the front of his pants. Bing had sat until his mother entered the garage and began to scream. Then it had been her turn - although not for the nail gun. — Joe Hill

A true thing about seeds is that they don't always stay seeds. In addition, most seeds grow up to be something. Some become plants or trees that then go about producing more seeds. Some seeds get popped and eaten and ... well, you probably have a pretty good idea of what happens to things after they get eaten.
Some seeds are dried, some are pressed for oil, and some simply end up in bean bags or as the rattle in a baby's toy. It's probably fair to say that the life and times of a seed isn't necessarily the most exciting thing in the world, but what the seed lacks in excitement, it makes up for in miracles.
It's a miracle that a tiny seed can change from a dot in your palm into a towering tree whose wood can be made into the home you live in or the paper books are printed on. — Obert Skye

I hear music Mighty fine music, The murmur of a morning breeze up there The rattle of the milkman on the stair Sure that's music ... — Frank Loesser

Each of us finds his way, his place; we rattle around the universe until everything fits; this is life; this is science, or something better than science. — Gene Wolfe

If I get clear of my debts, I care not though men call me bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventor of words, practised in lawsuits, a pettifogger, a rattle, a fox, a sharper, a knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an imposter, a rogue that deserves the cat-o-nine-tails, a blackguard, a twister, a licker-up of hashes; they call all this when they meet me, if they please, I care not. — Aristophanes

If you're going to rattle my cage, you better make sure I'm padlocked in it. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Carpe Dium, I say. Seize the day. Grab it by the throat and rattle its bollocks — Liz Jensen