Shake The Ground Quotes & Sayings

Cicadas bury themselves in small mouths
of the tree's hollow, lie against the bark tongues like amulets,

though it is I who pray I might shake off this skin and be raised
from the ground again. I have nothing

to confess. I don't yet know that I possess
a body built for love. When the wind grazes

its way toward something colder,
you, too, will be changed. One life abrades

another, rough cloth, expostulation.
When I open my mouth, I am like an insect undressing itself. — Richie Hofmann

A harmonica is easy to carry. Take it out of your hip pocket, knock it against your palm to shake out the dirt and pocket fuzz and bits of tobacco. Now it's ready. You can do anything with a harmonica: thin reedy single tone, or chords or melody with rhythm chords. You can mold the music with curved hands, making it wail and cry like bagpipes, making it full and rounds like an organ, making it as sharp and bitter as the reed pipes of the hills. And you can play it and put it back in your pocket. It is always with you, always in your pocket. And as you play, you learn new tricks, to pinch the tone with your lips, and no one teaches you. You feel around - sometimes in the tent door after supper when the women are washing up. Your foot taps gently on the ground. Your foot taps gently on the ground. Your eyebrows rise and fall in rhythm. And if you lose it or break it, why, it's no great loss. You can buy another for a quarter. — John Steinbeck

It is only when people begin to shake loose from their preconceptions, from the ideas that have dominated them, that we begin to receive a sense of opening, a sense of vision ... That is the sort of time we live in now. We ... live in an epoch in which the solid ground of our preconceived ideas shakes daily under our uncertain feet. — Barbara Ward, Baroness Jackson Of Lodsworth

Men will flee to caves in the rocks and to holes in the ground from dread of the LORD and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth. — Isaiah

The people ... " Winter whispered. "Are going to die," the man said, watching coldly. "It's a shame; I didn't mean for it to get quite that out of control. I let my anger get away from me. I had intended to scorch the ground around us, leave you in the middle of a smoking crater, but when people interfere with me, when they try to shake me down, take what's mine, it makes me ... so angry." Winter watched the scorched ground as the black smoke started to rise. The man shook him, diverting Winter's attention back to him. "Listen to me. — Robert J. Crane

Jen smiled at them, a wicked gleam in her eyes.
"Do you hear that, Desdemona, last of the witches? I have so named you! Hear me now," Jen yelled into the dark forest, the wind and thunder still rolling around her. "Your time is drawing near! We are coming. Throw back your head in your tiny victory, laugh at our short-lived defeat, but we are coming. The night will be filled with our howls, the ground will shake with the stomping of our feet! We are coming. We are coming for you, Desdemona, and death follows!"
Jen lifted her head and let out a howl worthy of an Alpha female. The others joined. And as their howls died down, for a brief moment before the silence took over, they heard howls beyond the earthly realm, howls filled with grief and triumph, pain and fear, anger and love-howls from those caught in the jaws of the In Between. They had heard their females' cries and they had answered. — Quinn Loftis

I walked far down a dirt side road and into a farmer's field - some sort of cereal that was chest high and corn green and rustled as its blades inflicted small paper burns on my skin as I walked through them. And in that field, when the appointed hour, minute, and second of the darkness came, I lay myself down on the ground, surrounded by the tall pithy grain stalks and the faint sound of insects, and held my breath, there experiencing a mood that I have never really been able to shake completely - a mood of darkness and inevitability and facination - a mood that surely must have been held by most young people since the dawn of time as they have crooked their necks, stared at the heavens, and watched their sky go out. — Douglas Coupland

Gregory was in the walls, in the crawl space between the board floor of the cabin and the bitter ground. He was gone, but he was everywhere. He was on the small pantry shelf where canning was removed. The air of the cabin still held Gregory. He filled and expanded every dark corner, tight, to exploding. He was jammed between her legs so that no matter how she moved, he was inside of Agnes. She couldn't shake him from her vestments or burn him from the stove. He nested in the books, of course. She couldn't stand to touch their pages. He was in the sweet, fragrant wood Mary Kashpaw chopped, split, and piled. In the cloth of curtains, the clasp of doors, he waited. She turned the handle, let the light in, and he came, too, solid and good and alive. — Louise Erdrich

Nice to meet ya," Popeye said. He sort of held his hand out. "Do we shake?" "Of course," Ronald said, enveloping the small man's hand in his massive hairy one. "Decorum doesn't go away just because there are bodies on the ground." Ronald — Jake Bible

Many children grow through adolescence with no ripples whatever and land smoothly and predictably in the adult world with both feet on the ground. Some who have stumbled and bumbled through childhood suddenly burst into bloom. Most shake, steady themselves, zigzag, fight, retreat, pick up, take new bearings, and finally find their own true balance. — Stella Chess

In the morning, he had to shake her awake. When she saw him leaning over her, shirtless, his dark hair loose and disheveled, her first feeling was one of wonder. She'd dreamed she was asleep atop her feather tick, not the hard ground, and certainly not with a husband. "You're beautiful awake," he said with a knowing smile. "But you're even more beautiful asleep. — Laura Frantz

She would never understand her sister. Her sister was like the weather, no, she was worse than the weather. She was like an earthquake that came out of nowhere to shake the world up, but even the tiny tremors, so unpredictable, were a little disorienting. Still, afterward, you were left feeling glad, if only because the ground was no longer shaking. — Victoria Kahler

Maggots are freaky hideous,' I say, getting up. I try to salvage some dignity, but I can't help but shiver and shake my hands in the air. It's an instinctive impulse, one I'm not up for resisting right now.
'You've fought off a gang of men twice your size, killed an angel warrior, stood up to an archangel, and wielded an angel sword.' Raffe cocks his head. 'But you scream like a little girl when you see a maggot?'
'It's not just a maggot,' I say. 'A hand burst out of the ground and grabbed my ankle. And maggots crawled out of it and tried to burrow into me. You would scream like a little girl too if that happened to you.'
'They didn't try to burrow into you. They were just crawling. It's what maggots do. They crawl.'
'You don't know anything. — Susan Ee

You may claim no affiliation with them, but perhaps some have crossed your path.And perhaps you'd like to help us find them."
"Oh,sure.You killed my mother. You can imagine I'm dying to help you out."
Thomas manages to ignore me again. He glances at the first photo projected on the wall. "Know this person?"
I shake my head. "Never seen him before."
Thomas clicks the remote. Another photo pops up. "How about this one?"
"Nope."
Another photo. "How about this?"
"Nope."
Yet another stranger pops up on the wall. "Seen this girl before?"
"Never seen her in my life."
More unfamiliar faces. Thomas goes through them without blinking an eye or questioning my responses. What a stupid puppet of the state. I watch him as we continue, wishing I weren't chained so I could beat this man to the ground. — Marie Lu

I never rode on the back of an old
Chopper down the highway
Holdin' on tight just him and I
Makin' our getaway
I've always been the good girl
Walked the straight and narrow path all my life,

I like a man with a tan and a twisted chrome kickstand
Leanin' on a big old bike
The low rollin' sound that'll shake the ground
Comin' out of long pipes
I like a tattoo or two
Or even more if they're cool
On the big old arms of a long-haired dude
Inside of me, there's an all I wanna be
Biker chick — Jo Dee Messina

I will shake the house of Israel among all the nations, as one shakes a sieve, but not a pebble will fall to the ground. Amos 9:9 — Beth Moore

Disruptors challenge assumptions. They shake the status quo. They are curious and creative. They adapt and improvise. They push the boundaries and shatter conventional wisdom. They'd rather forge new ground than blindly salute the flag of the past. — Josh Linkner

Something is coming to shake the earth. Something is coming to scorch the ground. Jade Mountain will fall beneath thunder and ice, unless the lost city of night can be found. — Tui T. Sutherland

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

No one will shake my conviction that those leaders of men, who are in the nature of carbuncles, of semi-conscious abscesses, who draw feverish crowds to them like noxious humours, have an innate knowledge of arrested time. They play with those vacant moments as though at a game of chequers. A fraction of suspended, frozen time, of inert time, jammed like a wedge into the most wonderfully oiled cogs of the most lucid of minds: and the whole mechanism is brought crashing to the ground, prepared to accept any authority, to endorse the most monstrous aberrations, especially collective ones. — Jacques Yonnet

When it gets dark, it's only because god has tucked me in a cleft of the rock and covered me, protected, with His hand? In the pitch, I feel like I'm falling, sense the bridge giving way, God long absent. In the dark, the bridge and my world shakes, cracking dreams.
But maybe this is true reality: It is in the dark that God is passing by. the bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us, I-beam supporting in earthquake. — Ann Voskamp

Balance lives in the present. When you feel the earth moving, bring yourself back to the now. You'll handle whatever shake-up the next moment brings when you get to it. In this moment, you're still breathing. In this moment, you've survived. In this moment, you're finding a way to step onto higher ground. — Oprah Winfrey

When I went on anyway, my body began to grow cold, and I thought I
was dead. Face pale, my dead self sat down on a bench and began to turn
toward my real self, who was watching this hallucination on the screen of the
night. My dead self came nearer, just as if it might want to shake hands with my
real self. That's when I panicked and tried to run. But my dead self pursued me
and finally caught me, entered me and controlled me. I'd felt then just the way I
felt now. I felt as if a hole had opened in my head from which consciousness
and memory leaked out and in their place the rash crowded in, and a cold like
spoiled roast chicken. But that time before, shaking and clinging to the damp
bench, I'd told myself, Hey, take a good look, isn't the world still under your
feet? I'm on this ground, and on this same ground are trees and grass and ants
carrying sand to their nests, little girls chasing rolling balls, and puppies running. — Ryu Murakami

You held me down, but I got up
Hey!
Alrighty brushing off the dust
You hear my voice
You hear that sound
Like thunder gonna shake the ground
-Roar — Katy Perry

When he concentrated, a miniature tornado swirled around its three points, getting faster and larger the more he focused. When he planted the spear on the ground, the floor of the pit began to shake and crak.
"Best weapon,"he announced." Right here."
Brontes tossed them a third item. Hades caught this one-a gleaming bronze war helmet decorated with scenes of death and destruction.
"You get weapons" Hades grumbled. "i get a hat — Rick Riordan

As in the universe every atom has an effect, however miniscule, on every other atom, so that to pinch the fabric of Time and Space at any point is to shake the whole length and breadth of it, so that to change a character's name from Jane to Cynthia is to make the fictional ground shudder under her feet. — John Gardner

Though they were separated by two screens and vast amounts of empty space, she could feel the link being forged between them in that look. A bond that couldn't be broken. Their eyes had met for the first time, and by the look of pure amazement on his face, she knew he felt it too.
Heat crept up into her cheeks. Her hands began to shake.
"Aces," Carswell Thorne murmured. Dropping his feet to the ground, he leaned forward to inspect her closer. "Is that all hair?"
The bond snapped, the fantasy of one perfect true-love moment disintegrating around her. — Marissa Meyer

It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us ... — Ann Voskamp

What do you want, Mal?" The room seemed very quiet.
"Don't ask me that."
"Why not?"
"Because it can't be."
"I want to hear it anyway."
He blew out a long breath. "Say goodnight. Tell me to leave, Alina."
"No."
"You need an army. You need a crown."
"I do."
He laughed then. "I know I'm supposed to say something noble
I want a united Ravka free from the Fold. I want the Darkling in the ground, where he can never hurt you or anyone else again." He gave a rueful shake of his head. "But I guess I'm the same selfish ass I've always been. For all my talk of vows and honor, what I really want is to put you up against that wall and kiss you until you forget you ever knew another man's name. So tell me to go, Alina. Because I can't give you a title or an army or any of the things you need. — Leigh Bardugo

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy. When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake, we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling conventions. We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure. We were alienated.
But this strategy alone couldn't provide the distance I wanted, from Joyce or my past. After all, there were thousands of so-called campus radicals, most of them white and tenured and happily tolerant. No, it remained necessary to prove which side you were on, to show your loyalty to the black masses, to strike out and name names. — Barack Obama

But Roosevelt was just as much a faker. He constructed his macho persona from the ground up. When he first entered public life at the age of twenty-three as a New York state assemblyman, he was a rich kid with soft hands, a squeaky voice, and clothes that were a little too fashionable for his own good. The newspapers gave him nicknames: "Jane-Dandy," "our own Oscar Wilde," and "Punkin-Lily." He went west to shake this reputation. Viewed from this angle, Roosevelt's entire life looks like one gigantic exercise in overcompensation. — Nathanael Johnson

He wanted to shake her until every one of her chattering teeth hit the ground. "What the hell are you trying to say? Why did she choose me?"
Jodie eyed him warily. "Because she thinks you're stupid. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips