Sibyl Quotes & Sayings

Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!" He was walking up and down the room as he spoke. Hectic spots of red burned on his cheeks. He was terribly excited. — Oscar Wilde

No one said living isn't a pretty chancy business, Sibyl. No one gets out of here alive. — Chris Bohjalian

I know strong cages that are narrow and difficult to avoid: the cages of love. I'm not sure if others build them, like a tailor makes clothes fitted for you, or if you make them on your own. Whether it's the love of a mother, of a child, or of a mate, all cages are made of threats and guilt. — Sibyl Von Der Schulenburg

Yesterday I went to the doctor, to see about these dizzy spells. He told me that I have developed what used to be called a heart, as if healthy people didn't have one. It seems I will not after all keep on living forever, merely getting smaller and greyer and dustier, like Sibyl in her bottle. Having long ago whispered I want to die, I now realise that this wish will indeed be fulfilled, and sooner rather than later. No matter that I've changed my mind. — Margaret Atwood

I am only a cup that knowledge holds. It does not to knowledge matter how poor the cup is. It is the wisdom of those who drink of me that me wise makes. Fools make a sibyl foolish, wherever she is. — Joan D. Vinge

Thus must the bewildered Wanderer stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim howling of wild beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men ...
(The Everlasting No) — Thomas Carlyle

experimental method was the only method by which one could arrive at any scientific analysis of the passions; and certainly Dorian Gray was a subject made to his hand, and seemed to promise rich and fruitful results. His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon — Oscar Wilde

The lord whose is the oracle at Delphoi neither utters nor hides his meaning, but shows it by a sign.
The Sibyl, with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her. — Heraclitus

You should accept the fact that there's no clear boundary between you and the horse, between rationality and instinct. It's not easy for a woman ... — Sibyl Von Der Schulenburg

Mourn for Ophelia, if you like. Put ashes on your head because Cordelia was strangled. Cry out against Heaven because the daughter of Brabantio died. But don't waste your tears over Sibyl Vane. She was less real than they are. — Oscar Wilde

Sacred Sibyl!" I cried. "Madam, there is something wrong with your midsection!"
The woman stopped, mystified, and looked down at her hugely swollen belly. "Well, I'm seven months pregnant. — Rick Riordan

Sexuality and anger are often written with the same note, but never on the same line, because they don't make music together. — Sibyl Von Der Schulenburg

I was thinking of the Cumaean Sybil, who lived for a thousand years, so long that she shrank and was put in an urn. Eliot quoted it as epigraph for 'The Waste Land,' from Petronius Arbiter's Satyricon, 'For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumaean Sibyl hanging in a jar. When the boys asked her, "Sibyl, what do you want?" she said, "I want to die. — Lauren Groff

There are twin Gates of Sleep. One, they say, is called the Gate of Horn and it offers easy passage to all true shades. The other glistens with ivory, radiant, flawless, but through it the dead send false dreams up toward the sky. And here Anchises, his vision told in full, escorts his son and Sibyl both and shows them out now through the Ivory Gate. — Virgil

"Nought usually comes at the beginning," Ralph said. "Not necessarily," said Sibyl. "It might come anywhere. Nought isn't a number at all. It's the opposite of number." Nancy looked up from the cards. "Got you, aunt," she said. "What about ten? Nought's a number there - it's part of ten." "Well, if you say that any mathematical arrangement of one and nought really makes ten - " Sibyl smiled. "Can it possibly be more than a way of representing ten?" — Charles Williams

Surely there comes a moment in every human's life when he or she says, like the Sibyl - I wish to die. — Shashi Deshpande

It has all the contortions of the sibyl without the inspiration. — Edmund Burke

wondered, and hoped that some day he would see the change taking place before his very eyes, shuddering as he hoped it. Poor Sibyl! What a romance it had all been! — Oscar Wilde

A Sibyl is a door shaped like a girl. — Catherynne M Valente

When is she Sibyl Vane?" "Never. — Oscar Wilde

The Sibyl, with frenzied mouth uttering things not to be laughed at, unadorned and unperfumed, yet reaches to a thousand years with her voice by aid of the god. — Heraclitus

His sudden mad love for Sibyl Vane was a psychological phenomenon of no small interest. There was no doubt that curiosity had much to do with it, curiosity and the desire for new experiences; yet it was not a simple but rather a very complex passion. — Oscar Wilde

As a rule, people who act lead the most commonplace lives. They are good husbands, or faithful wives, or something tedious...How different Sibyl was! She lived her finest tragedy. — Oscar Wilde

Well, I can't help going to see Sibyl play, even if it is only for an act. I get hungry for her presence; and when I think of the wonderful soul that is hidden away in that little ivory body, I am filled with awe."
"You can dine with me to-night, Dorian, can't you?"
He shook his head. "To night she is Imogen," he answered, "and tomorrow night she will be Juliet."
"When is she Sibyl Vane?"
"Never."
"I congratulate you. — Oscar Wilde

I had 'em set a table for ye in 'ere," he explained, nodding at the dishes. "Thought ye might like some stew."
"No, thank you." Her stomach growled audibly and he arched his eyebrows again, a gesture that Sibyl found infuriating. Almost as infuriating as being called "skinny." And "lass."
"This jus' rabbit." He smiled like he could read her mind, going over to the fire and using a long, thick pole with hooked end to lift a black iron pot. "We don't eat humans, Sibyl. — Selena Kitt

Should Cassandra initiate us, Sibyl? Matt asked, his eyes narrowed like he was testing a dangerous theory that could blow up in his face. — Josephine Angelini

from Petronius Arbiter's Satyricon, 'For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumaean Sibyl hanging in a jar. When the boys asked her, "Sibyl, what do you want?" she said, "I want to die." '" Long — Lauren Groff

Sibyl, what do you want?"
"I want to live," the Sibyl said, and her voice rang rich and full. "I want to keep on living forever and watching heroes and fools and knights go up and down, into the world and out. I want to keep being myself and mind the work that minds me. Work is not always a hard thing that looms over your years. Sometimes, work is the gift of the world to the wanting. — Catherynne M Valente

Auntie Phyl's last months in the care home were extra pieces. Age is unnecessary. Some of us, like my mother, are fortunate enough to die swiftly and suddenly, in full possession of our faculties and our fate, but more and more of us will be condemned to linger, at the mercy of anxious or indifferent relatives, careless strangers, unwanted medical interventions, increasing debility, incontinence, memory loss. We live too long, but, like the sibyl hanging in her basket in the cave at Cumae, we find it hard to die. — Margaret Drabble

It was to tell him that he was engaged to be married to Sibyl Vane. — Oscar Wilde

Religion is a wizard, a sibyl ... She faces the wreck of worlds, and prophesies restoration. She faces a sky blood-red with sunset colours that deepen into darkness, and prophesies dawn. She faces death, and prophesies life. — Felix Adler

Within a bony labrinthean cave, Reached by the pulse of the aerial wave, This sibyl, sweet, and Mystic Sense is found, Muse, that presides o'er all the Powers of Sound. — Abraham Coles

Sibyl's surrender had been complete. Colin instantly recognised just how much she had been holding back when she opened her heard to him fully. He found the offer of it into his care a gesture so precious, he wasn't certain how to handle it but he was certain that he would not, under any circumstances, let it go. — Kristen Ashley

Sibyl, she's not of the earth but of the air. She's like a kite, all her life, darting about in the wind with no one holding onto her string ... You're of the earth ... You have your feet firmly planted on the ground. She's lucky to find someone like that, like you, willing to let her dart about happily in the wind but still keeping her tethered to the ground. — Kristen Ashley