Restlessly Quotes & Sayings

The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision. — Walter Lippmann

Griffin, please," she whispered.
"Do you want me?" he asked.
"Yes!" She tossed her head restlessly. She'd explode if he didn't give her release soon.
"Do you need me?" He kissed her nipple too gently.
"Please, please, please."
"Do you love me?"
And somehow, despite her extremis, she saw the gaping hole of the trap. She peered up at him blindly in the dark. She couldn't see his face, his expression.
"Griffin," she sighed hopelessly.
"You can't say it, can you?" he whispered. "Can't admit it either. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Today's self is restlessly bent on reinvention mainly in order to get rid of a nagging sense of guilt that creates tremendous anxiety despite its unknown origins. The implication of his essay is that when people know why they feel guilty and are able to find an answer to it, they actually become more stable in their identity.15 — Michael S. Horton

Ty's eyes lit up. They still moved restlessly around Kit as if he were reading him, examining him, never quite meeting Kit's own, but that didn't dim their glow. — Cassandra Clare

All your restlessness is out of your desire for stillness
Just desire restlessly, then, love will fill and still you.
All your unhealthiness is out of your desire for health,
Just abandon health, then, even poison will heal you ... — Rumi

He will hear this voice in uneasy dreams for the rest of his life, never quite remembering what he has dreamed, only knowing that the dreams leave him feeling ill somehow - walking restlessly, straightening pictures in loveless rooms, listening to the call to muzzein in alien town squares. — Stephen King

Gargoyles sat on the battlements- lean they were and the same hideous damp grey as the stone. They looked at her with hollow eyes and rattled their silver chains. They had wings of bats or wings or birds, most of them, and licked their beaks or teeth with forked or double tongues. Two paced restlessly before their platforms; others whined or picked their claws or groomed their mangy fur or feathers or lizard skin or scales. — Meredith Ann Pierce

The American Way is so restlessly creative as to be essentially destructive; the American Way is to carry common sense itself almost to the point of madness. — Louis Kronenberger

Sighing restlessly, the boundless sea broke huge rollers into white cream which hissed hungrily up to the tideline. — Brian Jacques

Samsara-the Wheel of Existence, literally, the "Perpetual Wandering"-is the name by which is designated the sea of life ever restlessly heaving up and down, the symbol of this continuous process of ever again and again being born, growing old, suffering, and dying. (It) is constantly changing from moment to moment, (as lives) follow continuously one upon the other through inconceivable periods of time. Of this Samsara, a single lifetime constitutes only a vanishingly tiny fraction. — Gautama Buddha

Her hands twisted restlessly together like a pair of pink and hairless animals at play. — Stephen King

Restlessly, I moved around the surgery, picking things up and putting them down again. — Diana Gabaldon

It was not just for herself that she feared now, but for her baby. He must have sensed her fright, for he moved restlessly inside her. — George R R Martin

I sort of hate the novel when it doesn't push, restlessly, against the tradition and the traditional. — Rick Moody

Do not quarrel or restlessly seek for more knowledge, until you have given proper honor to what you already know. — Bryant McGill

Billy moved restlessly. "Seems like-seems like- towards night as if a body got kind o' lonesome for a woman person-like her." Billy indicated Margaret and then closed his eyes so tight his small face wrinkled. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Are you an atheist?"
"Oh no, I honor all the gods."
"And how many belong to that all?"
"Countless. And one."
"How meaningless!"
"'Oliness, let me hear you count to one."
"One."
"Point at that one."
Brownpony stirred restlessly. Finally he tapped his index finger against his temple.
Wooshin laughed quietly. "Wrong. You had to think about it too long. And you didn't count to one. You counted from one and stopped. The one is countless. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

He groaned, "Goddamn, you're so hot."
"I know," she whimpered as she moved restlessly under his weight. "I'm burning up."
At that, he had to lift his head and grin down at her. "No, baby," he said gently, rocking his hips to begin moving in her. "That wasn't what I meant. I meant, you're so hot."
Her eyebrows quirked, and dimples appeared in her cheeks as she suppressed a grin. "Yeah, I knew that. — Thea Harrison

Life is perpetually creative because it contains in itself that surplus which ever overflows the boundaries of the immediate time and space, restlessly pursuing its adventure of expression in the varied forms of self-realization. — Rabindranath Tagore

From the book he carefully tears out several maps, and in this light Afghanistan's mountains and hills and restlessly branching corridors of rock appear as though the pages are crumpled up, and there is a momentary wish in him to smooth them down. Laser-guided bombs are falling onto the pages in his hands, missiles summoned from the Arabian Sea, from American warships that are as long as the Empire State Building is tall. — Nadeem Aslam

She came and took away all his miseries, his sorrows !!
Then SHe
went and left him restlessly numb. He was her
painkiller. SHe, his anesthetic. — Douglas Self

I am a stranger to half measures. With life I am on the attack, restlessly ferreting out each pleasure, foraging for answers, wringing from it even the pain. I ransack life, hunt it down. I am the hungry peasants storming the palace gates. I will have my share. No matter how it tastes. — Marita Golden

Toward nightfall, Khrenov's temperature had risen. The thermometer was warm, alive - the column of mercury climbed high on the little red ladder. For a long time he muttered unintelligibly, kept biting his lips and gently shaking his head. Then he fell asleep. Natasha undressed by a candle's wan flame, and saw her reflection in the murky glass of the window - her pale, thin neck, the dark braid that had fallen across her clavicle. She stood like that, in motionless languor, and suddenly it seemed to her that the room, together with the couch, the table littered with cigarette stubs, the bed on which, with open mouth, a sharp-nosed, sweaty old man slept restlessly - all this started to move, and was now floating, like the deck of a ship, into the black night. — Vladimir Nabokov

Wind surged across the frozen wastes. Our bodies moved restlessly, we could not feed them enough. Dusk upon us, we crept across the ghetto of boulders, our headlamps sometimes eerie, then like rockets in the fog. Total darkness ambushed us short of our destination. The hours wore on. The moraine wore us down. My eyes were riveted to the rising scythe of a moon. In that instant I figured out what was killing me. It wasn't the quick blow of an ax, but the slow torment of the rack: each day I was weaker, each hour a little more sick. With every night that passed I shuffled a bit nearer to death. I made life-and-death decisions like I was choosing between two brands — Mark Twight

Any one who has lived in the country in winter and knows those long dreary, still evenings when even the dogs are too bored to bark and even the clocks seem weary of ticking, and any one who on such evenings has been troubled by awakening conscience and has moved restlessly about, trying now to smother his conscience, now to interpret it, will understand the distraction and the pleasure my wife's voice gave me as it sounded in the snug little room, telling me I was a bad man. — Anton Chekhov

Henry's also an insomniac. He suffers from Restless Leg Syndrome. I feel the sheets twitching as his legs move restlessly and think about how incredibly bourgeois we are, with our Sur La Table kitchenware, our Sundance catalogue lamps, our upper-middle class insomnia. Why can't we sleep, I wonder? We have enough to eat, we have a roof over our heads, we're not living in a mud hut sporting a thatch of gnarled leaves that barely cover our genitalia. I'm filled with self-loathing. — Shannon Bradley-Colleary

In endless space countless luminous spheres, round each of which some dozen smaller illuminated ones revolve, hot at the core and covered over with a hard cold crust; on this crust a mouldy film has produced living and knowing beings: this is empirical truth, the real, the world. Yet for a being who thinks, it is a precarious position to stand on one of those numberless spheres freely floating in boundless space, without knowing whence or whither, and to be only one of innumerable similar beings that throng, press, and toil, restlessly and rapidly arising and passing away in beginningless and endless time. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Pretty enough to make Henley the Huntsman want to save me ... but not too pretty, because too pretty is what sets my stepmother off. And she wants me gone - she wanted me gone years ago."
Viv twisted restlessly. "I don't know what she's waiting for. Waiting to make him hate me, I guess. Make him loyal to her so he'll cut my heart out when she asks him to ... And then if Henley doesn't kill me, there's the matter of being pretty enough to attract some necrophiliac playboy. Someday my prince will come - and be enamored of my lifeless body. There's some happily-ever-after for you. — Sarah Cross

When in a Mississippi jungle, you feel as if you're at the mercy of dark desires and ancient impulses. Despite unprecedented levels of pollution, cancerous suburban sprawl, and devastating natural disasters, the animals and insects still thrive in Mississippi. But not as much as the humans, the worst of all in Mississippi's animal kingdom, who reproduce with as little forethought as the cicadas restlessly moaning for mates in the bayou. Mississippi — Ken Ilgunas

We attended church Sunday as a family, and it was an even balance as to who was harder to keep still, the four Elliot children or Captain Elliot himself. Jack kept up a stream of secretive winks at me in a most suggestive fashion, which made me blush despite the fact that I desperately tried to maintain my composure. Two year old Suzanne squirmed in my lap but was still for him, so he bounced her quietly on his knee. The boys, true to their deeply spiritual natures, snored softly through the entire sermon, and April sat still but looked out the windows, bored and restlessly shifting in her seat.
(pg 326) — Nancy E. Turner

For some time now, our whole European culture has been moving with a tortured tension that is growing from decade to decade, as toward a catastrophe: restlessly, violently, headlong, like a river that wants to reach the end, that no longer reflects, that is afraid to reflect. — Friedrich Nietzsche

On the bed, Eugenides stirred restlessly. "Upset at the sight of blood?" he said. "Not my wife, Ornon."
"Your blood," the ambassador pointed out.
Eugenides glanced at the hook on his arm and conceded the point. "Yes," he said. He seemed lost in memory. The room was quiet. — Megan Whalen Turner

You're joking. You want to help me?"
"We're brothers-in-arms, Sonny." Fennrys stood and paced restlessly. "And, truth is, I'm bored out of my mind in Manhattan. Nothing to do there but jump at shadows and put up with Aaneel's pompous yapping: 'There're crack in the Gate! Remain vigilant! Protect the puny humans! Eek, a mouse!' It's tiresome. — Lesley Livingston

And then as you were sleeping, you said my name. You spoke so clearly, at first I thought you'd woken. But you rolled over restlessly and mumbled my name once more, and sighed. The feeling that coursed through me then was unnerving, staggering. And I knew I couldn't ignore you any longer. — Stephenie Meyer

The winter night blew in with frosty wind, and the street lamps with their sputtering carbons swung restlessly and made the shadows dart back and forth like a runner trying to steal second base. — John Steinbeck

But when the self speaks to the self, who is speaking? The entombed soul, the spirit driven in, in, in to the central catacomb; the self that took the veil and left the world
a coward perhaps, yet somehow beautiful, as it flits with its lantern restlessly up and down the dark corridors. — Virginia Woolf

I know there isn't no beast - not with claws and all that, I mean - but I know there isn't no fear, either."
Piggy paused.
"Unless - "
Ralph moved restlessly.
"Unless what?"
"Unless we get frightened of people. — William Golding

Not aimless. Not in the least. It's just that my aims are different from most. There are plenty of aimless people on the road, all right. People who hitchhike from kicks to kicks, restlessly, searching for something: looking for America, as Jack Kerouac put it, or looking for themselves, or looking for some relation between America and themselves. But I'm not looking for anything. I've found something."
"What is it that you've found?"
"Hitchhiking. — Tom Robbins

What dreams lie dormant hidden in the womb of your soul, quietly waiting, incubating seeking opportunity to come forth?
Like the female cycle that comes every 28 days, over and over again, dreams come to rest in the soil of your mind. They compel you. They disturb you. They haunt you with visions of possibility.
They prompt you to walk restlessly through life knowing that you may someday stop, listen and decide to nourish them with faith and action.
Yield to the silent urging. Listen. Hear. Receive.
Let the dream speak. For it will burst forth from the womb of your spirit. It frees into existence something that lives, brooding in the corner your mind. Hold the seed. Grow the seed. Birth the seed. And life will begin anew. — Stella Payton

Why did I obsess over people like this? Was it normal to fixate on strangers in this particular vivid, fevered way? I didn't think so. It was impossible to imagine some random passer-by on the street forming quite such an interest in me. And yet it was the main reason I'd gone in those houses with Tom: I was fascinated by strangers, wanted to know what food they ate and what dishes they ate it from, what movies they watched and what music they listened to, wanted to look under their beds and in their secret drawers and night tables and inside the pockets of their coats. Often I saw interesting-looking people on the street and thought about them restlessly for days, imagining their lives, making up stories about them on the subway or the crosstown bus. — Donna Tartt

The night she died, Dan found her propped up in her hospital bed; she appeared to have fallen asleep with the TV on and with the remote-control device held in her hand in such a way that the channels kept changing. But she was dead, not asleep, and her cold thumb had simply attached itself to the button that restlessly roamed the channels - looking for something good. At the time, in 1989, it seemed a fairly unusual way to die. Nowadays, I suspect, more and more people are dropping off that way. And we're still looking for something good on television. We won't find it. There's precious little on TV that can keep us awake or alive. Ever the prophet, Owen Meany was right about television, too. — John Irving

God takes everyone he loves through a desert. It is his cure for our wandering hearts, restlessly searching for a new Eden ...
The best gift of the desert is God's presence ... The protective love of the Shepherd gives me courage to face the interior journey. — Paul E. Miller

and the night moved restlessly about the house — John Steinbeck

The problem with me is that I cannot focus when she is on my mind. I can't. I probably will make a mistake when writing that paper and will start writing everything I feel about her - the professor will be very happy with that, I am sure. Oh well, such is my life. I guess I've been attempting my best to forget her for several weeks now. But even in that act of forgetting her, I am remembering her. I am recollecting her and recreating her in my mind. And that's where everything falls apart. In remembering her, I remember her goodness. In remembering her, I remember her weaknesses and my own. In remembering her, I am remembering myself. Out of that dark cave of mine, I call myself out. And then all of the remembering starts again. I doodle, I twitch, I aim restlessly for some unseen goal. And then my thoughts drift to you.
I'll let them stay there for now. Just for a minute.
Or two. — Moses Y. Mikheyev

No woman had ever made his wolf pace restlessly. No woman had ever made him feel an inexplicable desire to behave irrationally, all for the sake of making her smile. No woman had ever made him want to be a better man, one who would spill blood to protect what he loved. No woman had ever incited the hunter in him. No woman had ever denied him. Except one. — Dannika Dark

I have sometimes thought that the reason the trees are so quiet in the summer is that they are in a sort of ecstasy; it is in winter, when the biologists tell us they sleep, that they are most awake, because the sun is gone and they are addicts without their drug, sleeping restlessly and often waking, walking the dark corridors of forests searching for the sun. — Gene Wolfe

Most teachers of the humanities lived itinerant lives, traveling from city to city, giving lectures on a few favorite authors, and then restlessly moving on, in the hope of finding new patrons. — Stephen Greenblatt

When I was a fairly precocious young man I became thoroughly impressed with the futility of the hopes and strivings that chase most men restlessly through life. Moreover, I soon discovered the cruelty of that chase, which in those years was much more carefully covered up by hypocrisy and glittering words than is the case today. By the mere existence of his stomach everyone was condemned to participate in that chase. The stomach might well be satisfied by such participation, but not man insofar as he is a thinking and feeling being. — Albert Einstein

I could be the drumbeat in your chest like madness before a storm swirling restlessly. — Moonshine Noire

Your tale is of the longest," observed Monks, moving restlessly in his chair.
It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man," returned Mr. Brownlow, "and such tales usually are; if it were one of unmixed joy and happiness, it would be very brief. — Charles Dickens

I tried to give her my best "I Am A Demon Princess" look, which was quite the challenge, seeing as how my hair was hanging in my face and my nose was running. "What's your name?" I asked.
The girl kept her eyes on me, but her hands were moving restlessly over the ground around her, no doubt searching for the knife. "Izzy," she said.
I raised both my eyebrows. Not exactly a name to strike fear into the heart.
Izzy must've read that in my expression, because she frowned. "I'm Isolde Brannick, daughter of Aislinn, daughter of Fiona, daughter of-"
"Right, right, daughter of a bunch of fierce ladies, got it. — Rachel Hawkins

Clay said, "If they have flashlights like us, we can almost assume-"
"We can't assume anything," [Alice] said restlessly, querulously. "My father says assume makes an ass out of you and me. Get it, u and-"
"I get it," Clay said. — Stephen King

It's going to be a lot of work, Gideon," Eva warned him.
"I'm not afraid of work." He was touching me restlessly as if it were as necessary to him as breathing. "I'm only afraid of losing you. — Sylvia Day

An emptiness rules at its core, a rottenness, a silence when one of you retires to bed without saying good night, when you eat together without conversation, when the phone's passed wordlessly to the other. An emptiness when every night you lie in the double bed, restlessly awake, astounded at how closely hate can nudge against love, can wind around it sinuously like a cat. An emptiness when you realize that the loneliest you've ever been is within a marriage, as a wife. — Nikki Gemmell

Julian paced restlessly in the hospital room, his overcoat and scarf trailing behind him like a supervillian's cape as he prowled. — Madeleine Urban

The happiness and peace attained by those satisfied by the nectar of spiritual tranquillity is not attained by greedy persons restlessly moving here and there. — Chanakya

Our growing addiction to the Internet is impairing precious human capacities such as memory, concentration, pattern recognition, meaning-making, and intimacy. We are becoming more restless, more impatient, more demanding, and more insatiable, even as we become more connected and creative. We are rapidly losing the ability to think long about any- thing, even those issues we care about. We flit, moving restlessly from one link to another. — Margaret J. Wheatley

Once upon a time there were two cities within a city. One was light and one was dark. One moved restlessly all day while the other never stirred. One was warm and filled with ever-changing lights. One was cold and fixed in place by stones. And when the sun went down each afternoon on Maximus Films, the city of the living, it began to resemble Green Glade cemetery just across the way, which was the city of the dead. — Ray Bradbury

Tick, tock," whispers Wiress. I guide her in front of me and get her to lie down, stroking her arm to soothe her. She drifts off, stirring restlessly, occasionally sighing out her phrase. "Tick, tock." "Tick, tock," I agree softly. "It's time for bed. Tick, tock. Go to sleep. — Suzanne Collins

To wait is not merely to remain impassive. It is to expect- to look for with patience, and also with submission. It is to long for, but not impatiently; to look for, but not to fret at the delay; to watch for, but not restlessly; to feel that if He does come we will acquiesce, and yet to refuse to let the mind acquiesce in the feeling that He will not come. — Andrew Bruce Davidson

In the beginning, in the time that was no time, nothing existed but the Womb. And the Womb was a limitless dark cauldron of all things in potential: a chaotic blood-soup of matter and energy, fluid as water yet mud-solid with salts of the earth; red-hot as fire yet restlessly churning and bubbling with all the winds. And the Womb was the Mother, before She took form and gave form to Existence. She was the Deep ... — Barbara G. Walker

I like middles ... It is in middles that extremes clash, where ambiguity restlessly rules. — John Updike

An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished question. — Mary McCarthy

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander on the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing. — Rainer Maria Rilke

It goes against an artist's grain to retire. But whether he retires or not, he will age ... What work will get done in the remaining time? ... Can he find a little peace in this twilight? Or must he still rush on, restlessly and hungrily, to the very end? — Eric Maisel

I would have got past Mr. Rochester's chamber without pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven-a temporary heaven-in this room for me if I chose. — Charlotte Bronte

Does that feel better?" she asked, not expecting any sort of an answer but feeling nonetheless that she ought to continue with her one-sided conversation. "I really don't know very much about caring for the ill, but it just seems to me like you'd want something cool on your brow. I know if I were sick, that's how I'd feel."
He shifted restlessly, mumbling something utterly incoherent.
"Really?" Sophie replied, trying to smile but failing miserably. "I'm glad you feel that way."
He mumbled something else.
"No," she said, dabbing the cool cloth on his ear, "I'd have to agree with what you said the first time." He went still again.
"I'd be happy to reconsider," she said worriedly. "Please don't take offense." He didn't move.
Sophie sighed. One could only converse so long with an unconscious man before one started to feel extremely silly. — Julia Quinn

He lay in bed staring upward into the darkness. On the bunk above him, he could hear Peter turning and tossing restlessly. Then Peter slid off the bunk and walked out of the room. Ender heard the hushing sound of the toilet clearing; then Peter stood silhouetted in the doorway. He thinks I'm asleep. He's going to kill me. Peter walked to the bed, and sure enough, he did not lift himself up to his bed. Instead he came and stood by Ender's head. But he did not reach for a pillow to smother Ender. He did not have a weapon. He whispered, "Ender, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I know how it feels, I'm sorry, I'm your brother, I love you." A long time later, Peter's even breathing said that he was asleep. Ender peeled the bandaid from his neck. And for the second time that day he cried. — Orson Scott Card

The sense of an entailed disadvantage - the deformed foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a self-centered, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. — George Eliot

The need of the human mind for contrast has its roots in the mind's age-old habit of looking for differences and likenesses. When the mind can find no differences and no likenesses, as is the case when monotony is present, it restlessly, then resentfully, and at last frantically seeks for contrast that it may again busy itself with observing differences and likenesses. — Maren Elwood