Shrivelled Quotes & Sayings

Through this image he had a glimpse of a strange dark cavern of speculation but at once turned away from it, feeling that it was not yet the hour to enter it. But the nightshade of his friend's listlessness seemed to be diffusing in the air around him a tenuous and deadly exhalation and he found himself glancing from one casual word to another on his right or left in stolid wonder that they had been so silently emptied of instantaneous sense until every mean shop legend bound his mind like the words of a spell and his soul shrivelled up, sighing with age as he walked on in a lane among heaps of dead language. His own consciousness of language was ebbing from his brain and trickling into the very words themselves which set to band and disband themselves in wayward rhythms:
The ivy whines upon the wall
And whines and twines upon the wall
The ivy whines upon the wall
The yellow ivy on the wall
Ivy, ivy up the wall.
Did any one ever hear such drivel? — James Joyce

Together they had painted a rather vivid image in her mind of a man with a bloody sword, guided by a shrivelled lump of ash and ice for a heart, in possession of actual fangs and claws. — Alexandra Bracken

When you're poor, you have nothing to lose and be afraid of. Holding onto the dream and having nothing to lose is what helped me succeed. — Cesar Millan

But marriage is forever.'
'Oh, not really,' he assured her. 'Only until one of us dies.'
Her eyes widened. 'I do not want you to die,' she said.
'Perhaps you will go first,' he said, though I rather think I hope not. I would probably have grown accustomed to you by then and would miss you. — Mary Balogh

The locals died and shrivelled with the autumnal leaves as their plastic, seasonal smiles faded with the last of the holidaymakers. — Moonshine Noire

I wished I could read in their shrivelled faces and watery eyes, I wished I could hear in the bad French which came half through their pinched lips and half through their pointed noses, how the old ladies had got at least on to good terms with the uncanny beings which haunted the castle. — E.T.A. Hoffmann

They hurry in; the wind bangs a door behind them. Rafe takes his arm. He says, this silence of More's, it was never really silence, was it? It was loud with his treason; it was quibbling as far as quibbles would serve him, it was demurs and cavils, suave ambiguities. It was fear of plain words, or the assertion that plain words pervert themselves; More's dictionary, against our dictionary. You can have a silence full of words. A lute retains, in its bowl, the notes it has played. The viol, holds a concord. A shrivelled petal can hold its scent, a prayer can rattle with curses; an empty house, when the owners have gone out, can still be loud with ghosts.
Someone - probably not Cristophe - has put on his desk a shining silver pot of cornflowers. The dusky blueness at the base of the crinkled petals reminds him of this morning's light; a late dawn for July, a sullen sky. — Hilary Mantel

I think she cried at my funeral. It's not that I'm conceited or anything, but I'm pretty sure. Sometimes I can actually picture her talking about me to some guy she feels close to. Talking about me dying. About how they lowered me into the grave, kind of shrivelled up and pitiful, like an old chocolate bar. About how we never really got a chance. And afterwards the guy fucks her, a fuck that's all about making her feel better. — Etgar Keret

Your mother didn't give birth to you," I told hint, "but farted you out of her shrivelled arsehole."
"Frightened or not," Asser said, "you've taken Peredur's silver, so you must fight them now."
"Say one more word, monk," I said, "and I'll cut off your scrawny balls. — Bernard Cornwell

I want to give a beautiful speech at the end of the world - a rousing and inspiring collection of thoughts expressed eloquently through a dying language that is ultimately too little too late; absurd and utterly meaningless - almost insulting as life burns away. — Jonathan Douglas Duran

His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!
Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. — Mary Shelley

You think too much, Pearl. It's your most irritating flaw, and, let us be honest, given the severity and sheer volume of your flaws, that is saying something. Since this seems to be a time for advice, I suggest you stop thinking entirely.' 'And how might I achieve that? Follow your lead, perhaps?' 'I think neither too much nor too little. I am perfectly balanced - this is what you find so attractive. As a capemoth is drawn to fire.' 'So I am in danger of being burned up?' 'To a blackened, shrivelled crust.' 'So, you're pushing me away for my own good. A gesture of compassion, then.' 'Fires neither push nor pull. They simply exist, compassionless, indifferent to the suicidal urges of flitting bugs. That is another one of your flaws, Pearl. Attributing emotion where none exists.' 'I could have sworn there was emotion, two nights past - ' 'Oh, fire burns eagerly when there's fuel - ' 'And in the morning there's naught but cold ashes. — Steven Erikson

We cannot live without the Earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

True delicacy is not a fragile thing. — James Broughton

I thought you said you wre bringing a dead body in for examination. Didn't you think to check he actually was dead first?'
Gwen knew he was being sarcastic, but the tone still stung.
'Be fair, Jack,' said Owen from the doorway.'Y'know the guy had done a lot to make himself look dead: lain in a bog for forty years, decayed himself, let the worms in, shrivelled up a bit, stopped breathing, no circulation, all major organs dried up and inactive. Could've fooled anyone. — Trevor Baxendale

What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship. — George Eliot

The jury had persuaded themselves that he was decent, because they had wanted to think that in his shoes they would have been decent too. They had no idea how decency, loyalty, courage, how it all shrivelled away when one was frightened. — Sarah Waters

The punter sweated on top of Marina, his lips all over her young body, his tongue slipping out from rows of crooked teeth, pushing hungrily from between his shrivelled lips like a clam from a shell, a bottom feeder searching for salty nutrition. — Tom Conrad

You and I are now nearly in middle age, and have not yet become soured and shrivelled with the wear and tear of life. Let us pray to be delivered from that condition where life and nature have no fresh, sweet sensations for us. — James A. Garfield

The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. — Charles Dickens

There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world weary, will weary, and one day he suffocated through his excessive pity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

To use the same words is not a sufficient guarantee of understanding; one must use the same words for the same genus of inward experience; ultimately one must have one's experiences in common. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Amelia looked at the eggs-like sickly, jaundiced eyes-and thought of her own eggs, a handful left, old shrivelled like musty dried fruit where once they must have been bursting toward the light- — Kate Atkinson

Sam's hand wavered. His mind was hot with wrath and the memory of evil. I would be just to slay this treacherous, murderous creature, just and many times deserved; and also it seemed the only safe thing to do. But deep in his heart there was something that restrained him: he could not strike this thing lying in the dust, forlorn, ruinous, utterly wretched. He himself, though only for a little while, had borne the Ring, and now dimly he guessed the agony of Gollum's shrivelled mind and body, enslaved to that Ring, unable to find peace or relief ever in life again. But Sam has no words to express what he felt. — J.R.R. Tolkien

If any good comes out of the current famine in the Horn of Africa - amidst the pictures of mothers carrying dying babies at their shrivelled breasts and hollow-eyed children with swollen bellies and matchstick limbs - it will be galvanising the world on the need to ensure access to nutritious food for the world's most vulnerable people. — Josette Sheeran

I have a message to give to the world, and I shall not be thwarted. — Elizabeth Kenny

I regret, most of all, my shrivelled heart. So focused on the numbers. On the maths of my personal equation. Can a man change his heart? Are there ways to improve the spirit of who you are? Of why you choose? — Andrew Miller

It was autumn and falling stars
Covered the shrivelled forms
Crouched in the moonlight. — Wallace Stevens

The idea that literary theorists killed poetry dead because with their shrivelled hearts and swollen brains they are incapable of spotting a metaphor, let alone a tender feeling, is on of the more obtuse critical platitudes of our time. — Terry Eagleton

He was powerless because he had no precise desire, and this tortured him because he was vainly seeking something to desire. He could not even make himself stretch out his hand to switch on the light. The simple transition from intention to action seemed an unimaginable miracle. — Vladimir Nabokov

I met a few chimpanzees on my pilgrimages and I wasn't sure if they were just shrivelled-up villagers or chimps... — Jonathan Dunne

I saw Frau Helga counting money in the stable. I saw the fair down on her arms. Once I dreamed I might kiss her. Long ago. I was at the stream washing, naked, teetering on razor shale which can amputate your toes. When Sumper touched my shoulder I jumped in fright. My private parts shrivelled like gizzards in a stockpot. He was armoured in his leather apron, a beak in his hand, but I did not know that then. He said, "You will have been responsible for something far finer than you could ever conceive." "I wanted only a duck." "You were not born to have a duck. You were born to bring a Wonder to the world." And then he turned away and left me in my nakedness. — Peter Carey

Alberta felt her face grow old and shrivelled at her own words. She was a shadow already, half old, distressing, comic. Something happened from year to year, suspicion became knowledge, bad dreams reality.
A weariness crept over her, more intense and pervasive than any she had known before. It sat in her back, sapping her strength. She sank down into it as if it were an abyss, sank inwards into gaping emptiness. — Cora Sandel

I believe that time destroys everything. You can take one beautiful apple, red. After a while, it becomes shrivelled and full of worms, just like what happens to us. — Monica Bellucci

You only mature when you face problems you can't deal with. — Ralph Waite

He had the sourdough smell of age. His chest sagged into shrivelled teats; his lovemaking was unreliable, yet she found it strangely wholesome in a way that defied sense. — Richard Flanagan

Decency, loyalty, courage, how it all shrivelled away when one was frightened. She remembered Lilian reaching for her hand as the foreman got to his feet. In the seconds before the verdict, her own grip had tightened like a vice. Had she been about to urge Lilian forward, or to hold her back? She didn't know. She would never know. And the not knowing wasn't like the absence of something, it was like another burden, a different shape and weight from the last. The lightness left her. She — Sarah Waters

He traced the constellations as they slid their way across the roof of the world from dusk till dawn. The precision of it, the quiet orderliness of the stars, gave him a sense of freedom. There was nothing he was going through that the stars had not seen before, somewhere, some time on this earth. Given enough time, their memory would close over his life like healing a wound. All would be forgotten, all suffering erased. — M. L. Stedman - The Light Between Oceans