Small Circles Quotes & Sayings

What are you terrible at?" I asked, running my hand across his starched shirt. Encouraged by the touch, Maxon drew circles on my shoulder with the hand he had wrapped behind my back.
"Why would you want to know that?" He asked in mock irritation.
"Becaue I still know so little about you. And you seem perfect all the time.It's nice to have proof you aren't.
He propped himself up on an elbow, focusing on my face.
"You know I'm not."
"Pretty close,' I countered. Little flickers of touch ran betwen us. Knees, arms, fingers.
He shook his head, a small smile on his face. "Okay then. I can't plan wars. I'm rotten at it. And I'm guessing I'd be a terrible cook. I've never tried, so-"
"Never?"
"You might have noticed the teams of people keeping you up to your neck in pastries? They happen to feed me as well. — Kierra Cass

All money is imaginary," answered the Calcatrix simply. "Money is magic everyone agrees to pretend is not magic. Observe! You treat it like magic, wield it like magic, fear it like magic! Why should a body with more small circles of copper or silver or gold than anyone else have an easy life full of treats every day and sleeping in and other people bowing down? The little circles can't get up and fight a battle or make a supper so splendid you get full just by looking at it or build a house of a thousand gables. They can do those things because everyone agrees to give them power. If everyone agreed to stop giving power to pretty metals and started giving it to thumbnails or mushroom caps or roof shingles or first kisses or tears or hours or puffin feathers, those little circles would just lay there tarnishing in the rain and not making anyone bow their noses down to the ground or stick them up in the air. — Catherynne M Valente

His hold is tight, our fingers are laced, and he's occasionally rubbing circles on the top of my hand with his thumb. These small gestures definitely make handholding seem more like an art. — Kim Karr

I would by all means have men beware, lest Aesop's pretty fable of the fly that sate on the pole of a chariot at the Olympic races and said, 'What a dust do I raise,' be verified in them. For so it is that some small observation, and that disturbed sometimes by the instrument, sometimes by the eye, sometimes by the calculation, and which may be owing to some real change in the sky, raises new skies and new spheres and circles. — Francis Bacon

So we see that even when Fortuna spins us downward, the wheel sometimes halts for a moment and we find ourselves in a good, small cycle within a larger bad cycle. The universe, of course, is based upon the principle of the circle within the circle. At the moment, I am in an inner circle. Of course, smaller circles within this circle are also possible. — John Kennedy Toole

Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently? — Flann O'Brien

The sickness of the mother runs on through the girl, leaving her small and helpless. Liquor flies through her brain with the force of a gun, leaving her running in circles. — Lou Reed

I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles in which vital and transforming events take place. — Rufus Jones

When an individual changes in even a small way he immediately changes the world around him. And that concentric circle moves out and changes everything. — Tom Shadyac

Of course he could see only blackness, such was the treachery of fire, which iluminated small circles by darkening the entire world. — R. Scott Bakker

The rule of law is critical for economic development; without clear property rights and contract enforcement, it is difficult for businesses to break out of small circles of trust. — Francis Fukuyama

The neoconservatives are a small circle, and they're all sort of holding hands as they develop their policy, and outsiders aren't allowed. If you agree with the guys on the inside, you're a genius. If you disagree, you're a traitor, a pariah, you're an apostate, and you're not allowed in. — Seymour Hersh

If there were two things Silas McFuller knew about the world, it was that life is not always fair, but everything happens for a reason. — Megan Duke

If you've never had a God-sized dream that scared you half to death, then you haven't really come to life. If you've never been overwhelmed by the impossibility of your plans, then your God is too small. If your vision isn't perplexingly impossible, then you need to expand the radiuses of your prayer circles. — Mark Batterson

A gentleman, is a rarer thing than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle
men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant and elevated; who can look the world honestly in the face, with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are well made, and a score who have excellent manners; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper, and each make out his list. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Each one of us is bound to make the little circle in which he or she lives better and happier. Bound to see that out of that small circle the widest good may flow. — Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

I made a birdhouse," he said confidently. "And I painted it to look like Hogwarts. — Megan Duke

I never think about anything in my brain. I think in very small repetitive circles inside my own brain. That's why I'm a writer. It's the only way I get any sort of conclusion or understanding about anything. — Melissa Febos

Paxton choked on the tears that were gushing uncontrollably down his face. "This feels ... a lot like falling," he let out through his gasps for air.
Jade pulled Paxton's trembling frame against hers. His hoodie was warm from his body heat and it smelt like cigarette smoke and deodorant. "No," she corrected him. "This is just ... slipping gracefully. — Megan Duke

You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons ... full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire ... You are therefore properly the king of desire ... equal
in this to the greatest kings of the earth ... It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet. — Blaise Pascal

I lick my lips as his teeth nibble on my earlobe. Between my muscles melting under his touch, my blood tingling with the teasing of my ear and the way my foot rubs against his calf, my thoughts become hazy.
My shirt rides up and Isaiah rubs his thumb in small circles on the bare skin of my stomach. The sensation causes me to arch my back and Isaiah groans as I kiss his neck. I like these feelings. Actually, I more than like them. They're addicting, and I love how every little thing I do causes Isaiah to kiss and touch me more.
He rolls and I move with him. Our tangled legs become unraveled as my thighs fall open, accepting his weight. Isaiah's body over mine is heavier than I would have imagined, but it's a weight I craved without knowing it.
Isaiah kisses up my neck and when his lips meet mine again, he rocks his hips. Suddenly very aware parts of him are touching very aware parts of me, and my head falls to the side as a new sensation spikes through my body. — Katie McGarry

We're just lines and angles. — Megan Duke

I always tried to make clear that basketball is not the ultimate. It is of small importance in comparison to the total life we live. There is only one kind of life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere. — John Wooden

The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whoever sets himself to see things as they are will find himself one of a very small circle but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. — Matthew Arnold

There is so much we can do to render service, to make a difference in the world - no matter how large or small our circle of influence. — Stephen Covey

Though Lexington is not a small town, it sometimes feels like one, with circles of acquaintance overlapping once, then again; the person you meet by chance at the library or the pool may turn out to be the best friend of your down-the-street neighbor. Maybe that's why people are so friendly here, so willing to be unhurried. — Kim Edwards

Everything is balanced. Everything physical (matter/energy) goes back and forth in balanced circles, cycles, or the equivalent. Birth-death, old-young, big-small, strong-weak, start-stop, up-down, rich-poor, beginning-end, fast-slow, hot-cold, pain-pleasure, win-lose, day-night, full-empty, high-low, in-out, success-failure, united-divided, give-receive, creation-destruction, on-off, positive-negative, etc.

Positive and negative forces moving in balance are the physical universe. — Michael Smith

The religious fanatic drew a small circle and left me, the infidel, outside it. However, I, with the help of love, won over him - I drew a large circle and included him. — Ameen Rihani

There Rhoda sits staring at the blackboard,' said Louis, 'in the
schoolroom, while we ramble off, picking here a bit of thyme,
pinching here a leaf of southernwood while Bernard tells a story.
Her shoulder-blades meet across her back like the wings of a small
butterfly. And as she stares at the chalk figures, her mind lodges
in those white circles, it steps through those white loops into
emptiness, alone. They have no meaning for her. She has no answer
for them. She has no body as the others have. And I, who speak
with an Australian accent, whose father is a banker in Brisbane, do
not fear her as I fear the others. — Virginia Woolf

Sink," I mumbled."What?" the nurse asked."I think she said 'drink,'" Preya said."Sink!" I yelled.They hurried me to the small washing area near the rear of the clinic just in time for the stainless steel sink to catch the chicken soup that refused to stay eaten. I heaved and heaved until I had nothing
left to heave, and then some. Preya held up my hair while the nurse rubbed circles on my back. My entire body convulsed. After the trembling stopped, I lifted the tap and washed out my mouth."When did I eat carrots? — Kate Evangelista

If you wanted candles and romantic music, then you wouldn't have chosen me."
"Maybe I didn't choose," she dared. "Maybe it just happened. — Megan Duke

The fact that lately some circles, not less powerful by their small size, have been actively promoting certain theories, as dangerous as they are illusory, of a "limited", "winnable" or "protracted" nuclear war, as well as their obsession of "nuclear superiority", make it advisable to bear always in mind that the immediate goal of all States, as was expressly declared in the Final Document of the Special Assembly of 1978, "is that of the elimination of the danger of a nuclear war" — Alfonso Garcia Robles

But you're so much stronger than he was. He wasn't able to get up after being knocked down. You're different. I've never even seen you fall. - Jade, Small Circles — Megan Duke

Larson had been putting up a front like he wasn't listening, but hearing that last statement from Owen made him speak up. "It's not about that," he asserted.
"It has to be," Owen disagreed. "How else am I supposed to define myself?"
"Why do you have to have a definition? A label isn't gonna make you feel any better about yourself or this situation. Stop trying to put yourself in one group or the other. It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me!" Owen challenged. "My whole world has been flipped upside down thanks to you! Am I just supposed to sit back and accept that?"
Larson was beginning to boil over with repugnance. "Yes! Because that's what happens!" He was trying as hard a he could not to scream. "Things change and sometimes there's nothing we can do about it. Life sucks. Deal with it! That's what I'm doing. I'm not doing it in the best way, but I'm doing it. I'm dealing with that fact that you left me. — Megan Duke

A small team of A+ players can run circles around a giant team of B and C players. — Steve Jobs

It's a small world, but we all run in big circles. — Sasha Azevedo

Sadly most films only get exposure if they win an award or were in a festival, which is really difficult because those things cost money! Submitting your film to a festival or campaigning for an Oscar or a Golden Globe is very expensive. Most people don't know that, but all those events require a lot of money. If you have a small independent film, it's very hard to get the attention of people in those circles. — Kate Del Castillo

Altruism is like rings in the water when you toss a pebble. At first the circles are very small, then they get larger, and finally they embrace the entire surface of the ocean. - ALEXANDRE JOLLIEN — Matthieu Ricard

He didn't answer me, but held my gaze intently as he stood and slowly started to reach for the bottom of his sweater. He turned around and lifted it up over his shoulders, and I forgot how to breath. The sweater slid off of him in one long smooth motion and messed up his hair, leaving it tousled and sexy-looking. An interlooking chain of small black circles and triangles was etched onto each shoulder blde, ending halfway down his back ... He turned back around to face me, and his green eyes stared right through me ... I gulped again and tried very hard not to drool — Jessica Verday

The geometrician teaches me how to work out the size of my estates rather than how to work out how much a man needs in order to have enough ... You geometers can calculate the area of circles, can reduce any given shape to a square, can state the distances separating starts. Nothing's outside your scope when it comes to measurement. Well, if you're such an expert, measure a man's soul; tell me how large or how small that is. You can define a straight line; what use is that to you if you've no idea what straightness means in life? — Seneca The Younger

To envy is to draw circles that isolate us from others, to take small, bitter trips that diminish the traveler. — Phyllis Grissim-Theroux

I kept running around it in large or small circles, always looking for someone or something able to convince me of my Belovedness.
Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the "Beloved". Being the Beloved expresses the core truth of our existence. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Of course ours was a very small circle among a multitude of circles, a few of them concentric, but mostly not, but it would not be too much to say that for ours David Cecil held a torch - not for war heroes, or anti-war heroes, but for people who led quiet lives, studious and sociable, into which the idea of violence never entered — L.P. Hartley

We sometimes fear to bring our troubles to God, because they must seem small to Him who sitteth on the circle of the earth. But if they are large enough to vex and endanger our welfare, they are large enough to touch His heart of love. For love does not measure by a merchant's scales, not with a surveyor's chain. It hath a delicacy ... unknown in any handling of material substance. — R.A. Torrey

Take care of the small circle around you. When you have succeeded with them, then move outwards, one small step at a time. — Audrey Hepburn

I want to tell you that I love you," he said. "But I'm afraid you won't remember it tomorrow."
"There's no way I would forget that. — Megan Duke

I don't know how it happened. Through the din of the crowd, I heard this tiny scream. As small and distant as it was, it was like thunder in my head.' He looked up at me. Some of the blood had drained from his face making the dark circles under his eyes more pronounced. 'I knew it was you. I don't know how or why, but I knew it was you. — Tess Oliver

On this evening, Mme. Padva wears a dress of black silk, hand embroidered with intricate patterns of cherry blossoms, something like a kimono reincarnated as a gown. Her silver hair is piled atop her head and held in place with a small jeweled black cage. A choker of perfectly cut scarlet rubies circles her neck, putting forth a vague impression of her throat having been slit. The overall effect is slightly morbid and incredibly elegant. — Erin Morgenstern

So long as we continued to attach more importance to our own narrow group membership than to the 'global village' we would propagate prejudice and ignorance. There was absolutely no harm in being part of a small group - indeed, with our hunter-gatherer band mentality it gave comfort, provided us with an inner circle of friends who could be utterly trusted, who were absolutely reliable. It helped give us peace of mind. The danger came only from drawing that sharp line, digging that ditch, laying that minefield, between our own group and any other group that thought differently. — Jane Goodall

The earliest phase of social formations found in historical as well as in contemporary social structures is this: a relatively small circle firmly closed against neighboring, strange, or in some way antagonistic circles. — Georg Simmel

Medicine is a science which hath been (as we have said) more professed than laboured, and yet more laboured than advanced: the labour having been, in my judgment, rather in circle than in progression. For I find much iteration, but small addition. It considereth causes of diseases, with the occasions or impulsions; the diseases themselves, with the accidents; and the cures, with the preservation. — Francis Bacon

A circle may be small, yet it may be as mathematically beautiful and perfect as a large one. — Isaac D'Israeli

If there was a temperature at which drama boiled, they were all sitting in hot water. — Megan Duke

He closed his eyes as she put her hand on his shoulder, and in that instant, nothing else mattered. Not the song, not the place, not the other couples around him. Only this, only her. He gave himself over to the feel of her body as it pressed against him, and they moved slowly in small circles on the sawdust-strewn floor, lost in a world that felt as though it had been created for just the two of them. — Nicholas Sparks

When we lose the contemplative mind, or non-dual consciousness, we invariably create violent people. The dualistic mind is endlessly argumentative, and we created an argumentative continent, which we also exported to North and South America. We see it in our politics; we see it in our Church's inability to create any sincere interfaith dialogue - or even intra-faith dialogue. The Baptists are still fighting the Anglicans as "lost" and the Evangelicals are dismissing the Catholics as the "Whore of Babylon," and we Catholics are demeaning everybody else as heretics, and each of us is hiding in our small, smug circles. What a waste of time and good God-energy, while the world suffers and declines. We have divided Jesus. — Richard Rohr

Sand is one of the best exfoliates out there! Take a handful of sand and rub it on your skin in small circles. When you're done, wash it off and presto ... you get spa like skin, without the price tag. — Jenna Morasca

Ye dinna want to believe in witches and zombies and things that go bump in the night?" she said, with a small, sly smile at me. She nodded at the centipede, struggling round and round in frenzied, lopsided circles. "Well, legends are many-legged beasties, aye? But they generally have at least one foot on the truth." She — Diana Gabaldon

At the first sound of the drum, the revolutionary movement died down. The more active layers of the workers were mobilized. The revolutionary elements were thrown from the factories to the front. Severe penalties were imposed for striking. The workers' press was swept away. Trade unions were strangled. Hundreds of thousands of women, boys, peasants, poured into the workshops. The war - combined with the wreck of the International - greatly disoriented the workers politically, and made it possible for the factory administration, then just lifting its head, to speak patriotically in the name of the factories, carrying with it a considerable part of the workers, and compelling the more bold and resolute to keep still and wait. The revolutionary ideas were barely kept glowing in small and hushed circles. In the factories in those days, nobody dared to call himself "Bolshevik" for fear, not only of arrest, but of a beating from the backward workers. — Leon Trotsky

Yet the widespread planetary theories, advanced by Ptolemy and most other astronomers, although consistent with the numerical data, seemed likewise to present no small difficulty. For these theories were not adequate unless they also conceived certain equalizing circles, which made the planet appear to move at all times with uniform velocity neither on its deferent sphere nor about its own epicycle's center. — Nicolaus Copernicus

It's okay to be happy. — Megan Duke

Let us live in as small a circle as we will, we are either debtors or creditors before we have had time to look around. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

That small circle of earth became a second home to both of us. Gardening boring? Never! It has surprise, tragedy, startling developments - a soap opera growing out of the ground. I'd forgotten that tremolo of expectation produced by a tiny forest of sprouts. — Paul Fleischman

"What the hell'd you let them break your spirit for?" You know, their lives ran in circles so small. Ah, they thought they'd seen it all. And they could not make a place for a girl who'd seen the ocean. — Michelle Shocked

Their lives ran in circles so small They thought they'd seen it all — Michelle Shocked

He finds his way up the side of my neck, biting me just a little, moving lightly back and forth, like he's searching for a special spot. When he finds it, I make small sound I've never heard myself make before, like a gasp. He traces his tongue in slow circles around that spot. I realise my hands are just lying in my lap, doing nothing. I concentrate on lifting my arm and reaching for his face, but he catches my hand and holds it tightly at the wrist. His lips leave the spot and find their way back to my mouth, which is waiting, hoping for his return. He plants a gentle kiss on my lower lip and then whispers in my ear, I just got lucky, Rose. — Louise Rozett

It's not perfect, this thing between us, like trying to bring the two circles of our lives together, and living in the small, tight space where they intersect, everything else pushed to the circumference, until we step back inside our very different, very separate orbs. — Leylah Attar

One hand traced small circles against my back, and I pressed closer to him, listening to his heartbeat. "I used to think that having nothing to live for made you a better fighter," he murmured. "Turns out I was wrong on a lot of fronts. — Julie Kagawa

You make me feel like I'm drowning. — Megan Duke

Abdominal Massage When I went to massage school and learned how to perform abdominal massage, I understood just how powerful it could be for relieving constipation and indigestion. You can perform massage on yourself, and I strongly encourage you to do it morning and night for five minutes. It will definitely improve your situation. Here's how to do it: 1. Lie down in a comfortable place, place a pillow underneath your knees, and put a little lotion or massage oil (such as my Belly Massage Oil) on your hands. 2. Beginning in your lower right pelvic area, gently apply pressure and massage in small circles, slowly moving upward toward your rib cage. 3. When you get to the right side of your rib cage, gently but firmly massage toward the outer edge of your left rib cage. 4. Work your way down the left side of your torso toward your groin area. 5. As you massage, you may find some areas that are tender when you apply pressure. Spend a little more time in those areas, massaging gently but — Tieraona Low Dog

He looked at her face and hesitated. He looked up at the canyon walls. Here on the sandbar, it was eerily quiet except for the tinkle of water over the rocks. A large bird made lazy soaring circles way up in the sky, almost invisible due to the angle of the sun. God forgive me, he thought. Then he touched Ranjit's lighter to the small sheaf of dried grass and threw it on the pyre. He was surprised at the flash when it caught fire. It wouldn't be long, he thought. I will move on, but I will never forget this place.
(from The Sacrament of the Goddess) — Joe Niemczura

Thanks for our moment. — Megan Duke

Why?" Owen whispered. "Because it might be true? I'm tired of pretending like my heart isn't bleeding inside my chest because I want to be with you so badly. I don't want to fight it anymore. I want to be happy. — Megan Duke

Unlike the Marines, who are given macho monikers like "jarheads," the Coast Guard had long been denigrated in military circles as fey "puddle jumpers." But just as 9/11 brought a newfound respect to firemen, Katrina did the same for the reputation of the Coast Guard. At the peak of rescue operations they had 62 aircraft, 30 cutters, and 111 small boats stepping up in rescue and recovery operations. They did it all one person at a time. — Douglas Brinkley

These people were building homes for the rich, but they lived in tents covered with blue tarpaulin sheets, and partitioned into lanes by lines of sewage. It was even worse than Laxmangarh. I picked my way around broken glass, wire, and shattered tube lights. The stench of feces was replaced by the stronger stench of industrial sewage. The slum ended in an open sewer - a small river of black water went sluggishly past me, bubbles sparkling in it and little circles spreading on its surface. Two children were splashing about in the black water. — Aravind Adiga