Staked Quotes & Sayings

She jumped to her feet and hurried off, returning only seconds later with a dark brown bottle and a coffee mug that said And then Buffy staked Edward. The End. — Heidi Betts

Tell Hugh, she whispered.
Tell Hugh your freaking self! He's right here! And you're not going anywhere. — L.J.Smith

America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice. — Thomas Paine

The vision of a nation formed from many different peoples bound together by a common love of freedom was staked out long before our lifetimes or even our parents' or grandparents' lifetimes. — Trent Lott

You want to find your self in the flow of time, miraculously relieved of your irrelevance . . . I saw the pursuit of historical beauty, the yearning for those higher essences other people had staked their lives on, as the hope for some kind of voice, a chance to join the chorus. I was mad for relevance, connection, some hint that I was not alone. I started scribbling in notebooks in part just so I'd have an excuse, a reason for sitting where I sat, an alibi for being by myself. — Charles D'Ambrosio

Definiteness of decision always requires courage, sometimes very great courage. The fifty-six men who signed the Declaration of Independence staked their lives on the decision to affix their signatures to that document. — Napoleon Hill

But it's daylight," she said at last. "Vampires can't go out in the sun, everyone knows that!"
Bones chuckled. "Right And we shrink back from crosses, can't travel over water, and always get staked in the end by the righteous slayer. Really, who'd be afraid of a creature like that? All you'd need is a Bible, a tanning bed, and some holy water to send us shivering to our dooms. — Jeaniene Frost

We believed in the existence in this country of a vast reading public for intelligent books at a low price and staked everything on it. — Allen Lane

She had realized there are only fragments, that 'memories' always consist of fragments the mind puts together into a pattern, adapts a picture staked out early without the need for a conenction with anything that really happened. A great deal is misunderstood by small children, then stored as images that attract similar images, confirming and reinforcing. — Marianne Fredriksson

I think 'Family Guy' and 'American Dad' have definitely staked out their own style and territory, and now the accusations are coming that 'The Simpsons' is taking jokes from 'Family Guy.' And I can tell you, that ain't the case. — Matt Groening

Roza ... "
The voice caressed my skin, cold and deadly. Still scrutinizing his surroundings, Dimitri took one step forward. Then another. And then another.
I think it occurred to him to look up the instant I jumped. My body slammed into his, knocking him to the ground back first. He immediately tried to throw me off, just as I tried to drive the stake through his heart. Signs of fatigue and fighting were all over him. Defeating the other Strigoi had taken its toll, though I doubted I was in much better shape. We grappled, and once, I managed to rake the stake over his cheek. He snarled in pain but kept his chest well protected. Over it, I could see where I'd ripped his shirt the first time I'd staked him. The wound had already healed. "You. Are. Amazing," he said, his words full of both pride and battle fury. — Richelle Mead

Constantine, eight years old, was working in his father's garden and thinking about his own garden, a square of powdered granite he had staked out and combed into rows at the top of his family's land. — Michael Cunningham

I had staked all on Gussie making a favourable impression on his hostess, basing my confidence on the fact that he was one of those timid, obsequious, teacup-passing, thin-bread- and-butter-offering, yes-men whom women of my Aunt Dahlia's type nearly always like at first sight. — P.G. Wodehouse

Yesterday I staked off the ground on the hill for an orchard. I want to get 1,000 apple trees agrowing. — Ezra Cornell

Ever since, two summers ago, Joe Marino had begun to come into her bed, a preposterous fecundity had overtaken the staked plans, out in the side garden where the southwestern sun slanted in through the line of willows each long afternoon. The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic in such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please. Of plants, tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot. Picking the watery orange-red orbs, Alexandra felt she was cupping a giant lover's testicles in her hand. — John Updike

One thing, though," Qhuinn murmured.
"What?"
The voice that came out his throat was unlike anything he'd ever heard from himself before. "If any guy breaks your heart or treats you like shit, I will bust him apart with my bare hands and leave his broken, bloody body for the sun."
Blay's laughter rumbled around the tiled walls. "Of course you will
"
"I'm dead fucking serious."
Blay's blue eyes shot over his shoulder.
"If there are any who dare to hurt you," Qhuinn growled in the Old Language, "I shall see them staked afore me and shall leave their bodies in ruin. — J.R. Ward

I have been stabbed, shot, burned, bitten, beaten unconscious too many times to count, and even staked. None of those held a candle to the pain I felt at seeing his mouth on hers. — Jeaniene Frost

Was I not mad, after all, for journeying to this place, of my own free will? "And all for what? Original lust? Die before trying as a matter of trust, I see with staked hands a man before us, who fixes, and features and burrows a bribe, like a Pallas Athene, a winter-crossed bride. — Benjamin Robert Carrico

The mountains and moors, the wild uplands, are to be staked out like vampires in the sun, their chests pierced with rows of five-hundred-foot wind turbines and associated access roads, masts, pylons, and wires. — Paul Kingsnorth

I loved you! I loved you and you destroyed me. You took my heart and ripped it up. You might as well have staked me! I. Loved. You. And you used me the whole time. (Adrian Ivashkov) — Richelle Mead

The new situation must be created, in which it is possible to believe on Jesus as God incarnate; that is the impossible situation in which everything is staked solely on the word of Jesus. Peter had to leave the ship and risk his life on the sea, in order to learn both his own weakness and the almighty power of his Lord. If Peter had not taken the risk, he would never have learnt the meaning of faith. Before he can believe, the utterly impossible and ethically irresponsible situation on the waves of the sea must be displayed. The road to faith passes through obedience to the call of Jesus. Unless a definite step is demanded, the call vanishes into thin air, and if men imagine that they can follow Jesus without taking this step, they are deluding themselves like fanatics. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. ( ... ) You don't pick out the rain that soaks you to the skin when you come out of a concert. — Julio Cortazar

Cat will have you staked in five seconds flat. — Cheyenne McCray

There were glowing pumpkins and ghost lights in the yard and cheerful looking spiders and vampire posters everywhere. "This is just disgusting," Abel said in disgust, landing on a happy mummy poster staked in the yard. "Must everything be commercialized these days? I'm surprised the vampires don't sparkle. — John H. Carroll

raising chickens. It was almost as hard for Eisman to imagine himself raising chickens as it was for people who knew him, but he'd agreed. "The idea of it was so unbelievably unappealing to him," says his wife, "that he started to work harder." Eisman traveled all over Europe and the United States searching for people willing to invest with him and found exactly one: an insurance company, which staked him to $50 million. It wasn't enough to create a sustainable equity fund, but it was a start. Instead of money, Eisman — Michael Lewis

Monastic contemplatives have staked out a clearly limited area to be transformed by contemplation: the monastery. Lay contemplatives face the challenge of transforming the whole world. — David Steindl-Rast

He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him up twice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Jem. — Harper Lee

Maybe if she'd invited him into the forest all those years ago, things would have ended differently. But she doubted it. Darkness grew where it would and took what it wanted. It staked its claim and never let go.
And no one could pry you free of it. — Carrie Ryan

Did you see the way he glared at me? It wasn't with daggers, Cait, it was fists. That fine piece of man-meat has staked a claim on you and he's going to pummel anyone who stands in his way, including my gay ass. My face can't handle that. After tonight, you're on your own. — Abby Niles

Possessiveness was hot. A man who staked his claim, marked his territory. It wasn't about lack of trust. It was about belonging to someone. It was about them having pride in that and wanting everyone to know it, especially you. — Kristen Ashley

Sometimes we would be staked out in the middle of the river, several barges tied together. So we could party. — Terry Southern

During the battle, Spartacus himself tried with frenzied
determination, the symbolism of which is obvious, to reach Crassus, who was commanding the Roman
legions. He wanted to perish, but in single combat with the man who symbolized, at that moment, every
Roman master; it was his dearest wish to die, but in absolute equality. He did not reach Crassus:
principles wage war at a distance and the Roman general kept himself apart. Spartacus died, as he wished,
but at the hands of mercenaries, slaves like himself, who killed their own freedom with his. In revenge for
the one crucified citizen, Crassus crucified thousands of slaves. The six thousand crosses which, after
such a just rebellion, staked out the road from Capua to Rome demonstrated to the servile crowd that
there is no equality in the world of power and that the masters calculate, at a usurious rate, the price of
their own blood. — Albert Camus

Cyril had staked out his claim and refused to move. "Move over!" I said, freeing one hand from holding the cat to push. "Dogs are supposed to sleep at the foot of the bed." Cyril had never heard of this rule. He jammed his body up against my back and began to snore. I tugged at the rugs, trying to get enough to cover me, and turned on my side, the cat cradled in my arms. Princess Arjumand paid no attention to the regulations of animals on the bed either. She promptly wriggled free and walked round the bed, treading on Cyril, who responded with a faint "oof," and kneading her claws in my leg. Cyril shoved and shoved again until he had the entire bed and all the covers, and Princess Arjumand draped herself across my neck with her full weight on my Adam's apple. Cyril shoved some more. An hour into this little drama it began to rain in earnest, and everyone moved in under the covers and began jockeying for position again. — Connie Willis

In the same way, I saw our General once approach the table in a stolid, important manner. A lacquey darted to offer him a chair, but the General did not even notice him. Slowly he took out his money bags, and slowly extracted 300 francs in gold, which he staked on the black, and won. Yet he did not take up his winnings - he left them there on the table. Again the black turned up, and again he did not gather in what he had won; and when, in the third round, the RED turned up he lost, at a stroke, 1200 francs. Yet even then he rose with a smile, and thus preserved his reputation; yet I knew that his money bags must be chafing his heart, as well as that, had the stake been twice or thrice as much again, he would still have restrained himself from venting his disappointment. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

At that point I ought to have gone away, but a strange sensation rose up in me, a sort of defiance of fate, a desire to challenge it, to put out my tongue at it. I laid down the largest stake allowe-four thousand gulden-and lost it. Then, getting hot, I pulled out all I had left, staked it on the same number, and lost again, after which I walked away from the table as though I were stunned. I could not even grasp what had happened to me. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

All men wish to be captains, but few men wish to shoulder the burden of decision, and in coming here with these others, I had staked a claim that I must wall against misfortune. — Louis L'Amour

I am amused to see from my window here how busily a man has divided and staked off his domain. God must smile at his puny fences running hither and thither everywhere over the land. — Henry David Thoreau

Listen to me, Jez. There's no reason for you to die-"
Wood ... poison."
No it isn't! Not to humans. And you're half human. You're vampire enough to survie something that would kill a human, but you're human enough not to be poisoned by wood. — L.J.Smith

You staked a vampire with a number two pencil."
"I didn't actually check the number."
- Shane Collins and Claire Danvers from Morganville Vampires — Rachel Caine

There is a point at which everything becomes simple and there is no longer any question of choice, because all you have staked will be lost if you look back. Life's point of no return. — Dag Hammarskjold

I love you. The words reverberated between them, sinking into their skin, scored onto their hearts as they staked their claims to each other's bodies, surrendering themselves and possessing each other, a tangle of limbs and lust and love, coiled together into one perfect unit, one small miracle, one simple story that has been told and retold since the beginning of time: just two people meeting, the most extraordinary and wondrous and mundane thing in the world. — Kate Aaron

I have a very ecumenical faith. I have a very inclusive faith. There's a quote I love from recovery literature that says, "The realm of the spirit is roomy and broad. It is open to all." I've absolutely staked my life on that. — Ashley Judd

Now this greatest tent staled out hot raw breaths of earth, confetti that was ancient when the canals of Venice were not yet staked, and wafts of pink cotton candy like tired feather boas. In rushing downfalls, the tent shed skin; grieved, soughed as flesh fell away until at last the tall museum timbers at the spine of the discarded monster dropped with three canon roars. — Ray Bradbury

You mean before Mab Monroe staked him out and barbecued him like a pork chop for all his friends to see," I replied. "And you too. Pity, dear old dad getting roasted like that right in front of you. — Jennifer Estep

Did you see that? Buffy just staked that poor vampire. He had yet to even do anything untowared, he just crawled out of his grave and she staked him. That is just not right. She is taking out her problems with that Angel fellow on a vampire, that is what she is doing. — Lynsay Sands

DON'T YOU DARE DIE ON ME, JEZEBEL! DON'T YOU DARE! Or I'll follow you to the next world and KILL you. — L.J.Smith

You've claimed me, little firecracker. You kicked a pair of two hundred pound men's asses. I will never get over that. You kicked my whores out. Pete told me. You staked your claim on me, even before you realized I'd staked mine already." He fists my hair and pulls me close to his lips. "I'm yours now ... Even if I screw this up, I'll still be your screw-up. — Katy Evans

He had asked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgot about it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was the only girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. — Harper Lee

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. — George Washington

We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments. — James Madison

And then one babbles - "If only I could bear it, or the worst of it, or any of it, instead of her." But one can't tell how serious that bid is, for nothing is staked on it. If it suddenly became a real possibility, then, for the first time, we should discover how seriously we had meant it. But is it ever allowed?
It is allowed to One, we are told, and I find I can now believe again, that He has done vicariously whatever can be done. He replies to our babble, "You cannot and you dare not. I could and dared. — C.S. Lewis

I must say, though, that a man who has staked his whole life on the card of a woman's love and who, when that card is trumped, falls to pieces and lets himself go to the dogs
a fellow like that is not a man, not a male. You say he's unhappy
you know best. But all the nonsense hasn't been taken out of him yet. I'm sure he really believes he's a smart fellow just because he reads that rag Galignani and saves a muzhik from a flogging once a month. — Ivan Turgenev

You staked him. You actually staked him."
"It was handy. Let's get those medics in here. I don't want this guy skipping out on multiple murder charges by dying on me. I want to know the minute he's able to talk. I think we're going to get an interesting confession."
"It's supposed to be the heart." she heard Peabody mutter. "It's really supposed to be the heart."
Eve blew out a long breath. "Keep it up, Peabody, and I may have Mira shrink your head after she's done with the second-rate Dracula — J.D. Robb

What most people call loving consists of picking out a woman and marrying her. They pick her out, I swear, I've seen them. As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. They probably say that they pick her out because-they-love-her, I think it's just the siteoppo. Beatrice wasn't picked out, Juliet wasn't picked out. You don't pick out the rain that soaks you to a skin when you come out of a concert. — Julio Cortazar

Shane looked down at the staked vamp at his feet. 'Claire?'
'Yes?'
'You staked a vampire with a number two pencil.'
'I didn't actually check the number.'
'Have I told you lately how freaking awesome you are?'
She tried to smile, but her heart was fluttering in her chest now, and not in a good way. 'Compliments later. We really need to get out of here and get to the car. Any ideas?'
'Find another pencil and I'll pin this one down, too,' Michael said.
'You know how weird that sounds, right?' Shane said. 'Right, never mind. Number two pencil, coming up. Why do I feel like we're taking a test? — Rachel Caine

Darkness grew where it would and took what it wanted. It staked its claim and never let go. And no one else could pry you free of it. — Carrie Ryan

My wolf wants to claim you. To make you mine. To protect you. But I'm trying to give you time, give you a choice even if it's killing me. It's why I keep messing up. I should've just staked my claim and let you deal with having me attached at your hip. — Aileen Erin

The question of accumulation, Adrian had written. You put money on a horse, it wins, and your winnings go on to the next horse in the next race, and so on. Your winnings accumulate. But do your losses? Not at the racetrack - there, you just lose your original stake. But in life? Perhaps here different rules apply. You bet on a relationship, it fails; you go on to the next relationship, it fails too: and maybe what you lose is not two simple minus sums but the multiple of what you staked. That's what it feels like, anyway. Life isn't just addition and subtraction. There's also the accumulation, the multiplication, of loss, of failure. Adrian — Julian Barnes

writing it helped me to believe it. It staked some claim on the truth. — Amanda Lindhout

The confrontation lasted about five minutes; then the display died out as quickly as it had begun, and everyone drank his fill of the muddy water. Honor had been satisfied; each group had staked its claim to its own territory. — Arthur C. Clarke

The goat gave a high, questioning bleat. It was staked out in the middle of the boneyard. It was a brown-and-white-spotted goat with those strange yellow eyes they sometimes have. It had floppy white ears and seemed to like having the tope of its head scratched. Larry had petted it in the Jeep on the drive over. Always a bad idea. Never get friendly with the sacrifices. Makes it hard to kill them.
I had not petted the goat. I knew better. This was Larry's first goat. He'd learn. Hard or easy, he'd learn. There were two more goats at the bottom of the hill. One of them was even smaller and cuter than this one. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The nights are his, but in the daytime you will hound him and hound him until he takes fright and flees or until you drag him, staked and screaming, into the sunlight! — Stephen King

We've staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all our heart. — James Madison

You can conclude from the glossy surfaces of 'The L Word' that L stands for latte or Lexus and stop there. Or you can notice that in some of its less flashy moments, the show has staked a claim on Large - as in a larger, denser, more ambivalent imaginary world, populated by imperfect and riveting citizens of all sexual stripes. — Stacey D'Erasmo

But about then I began to get into different trouble and more serious. You might call it doctrinal trouble.
The trouble started because I began to doubt the main rock of the faith, which was that the Bible was true in every word ... They had staked their immortal souls on the infallible truth of every pen scratch from "In the beginning" to "Amen." But I had read all of it by then, and I could see that it changed. And if it changed, how could all of it be true?
For instance, there is a big difference between the old tribespeople's coldhearted ferocity against their enemies and Jesus' preaching of forgiveness and of love for your enemies. — Wendell Berry

Like her mother and all her mother's people before her, those inexhaustible blondes who staked their claims in verdant prairies, Marina was cut from Minnesota, the soil and the starry night. Instead of growing up inquisitive and restless, she had developed a profound desire to stay, as if her center of gravity was so low it connected her directly to this particular patch of earth. — Ann Patchett

Yet he never gave up. Bitterness never staked its claim. Anger never metastasized into hatred. His heart never hardened; his resolve never vanished. He not only survived; he thrived. — Max Lucado

I loved you and you destroyed me. You took my heart and ripped it up. You might as well have staked me. — Richelle Mead

"Godling? Demigod?" Lysis nearly howled. "You'd be beaten black and blue in Thebes, and staked out overnight for claims like that. In Sparta, the secret police would ambush you, violate you, skin you alive and use your skull for a drinking cup." — Janet Morris

Amor fati: this is the very core of my being - And as to my prolonged illness, do I not owe much more to it than I owe to my health? To it I owe a higher kind of health, a sort of health which grows stronger under everything that does not actually kill it! - To it, I owe even my philosophy. ... Only great suffering is the ultimate emancipator of spirit, for it teaches one that vast suspiciousness which makes an X out of every U, a genuine and proper X, i.e., the antepenultimate letter. Only great suffering; that great suffering, under which we seem to be over a fire of greenwood, the suffering that takes its time - forces us philosophers to descend into our nethermost depths, and to let go of all trustfulness, all good-nature, all whittling-down, all mildness, all mediocrity, - on which things we had formerly staked our humanity. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Never had Dallas seen the Targon more pissed. There'd been none of his usual charm, none of his nonchalance. He simply hadn't liked other men looking at Bride. And when the Mckell had staked claim on her ... shit. Bastard was probably already dead. — Gena Showalter

The retirees are gone from their plastic rockers on the front porches of the aging art-deco hotels. Hookers, dealers, pimps, chicken hawks, and runaways no longer stroll Ocean Drive, hustling their wares. The Yuppies have staked claims to South Beach, spiffing up the old buildings with turquoise and salmon paint, dressing themselves in bright, baggy cottons and silks, and hovering on the perimeter of perpetual trendiness. — Paul Levine

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a moment's view! ... Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will! The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin; And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is-the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say. — Robert Browning

This is why people cry at the movies: because everybody's doomed. No one in a movie can help themselves in any way. Their fate has already staked its claim on them from the moment they appear onscreen. — John Darnielle

It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained; ... the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Truths open to everyone, and the claims aren't all staked yet. — Seneca The Younger

Thanks. Hey, before I go, how's the romance coming with that vampire, what's his name?" "Vlad? I staked him. He was going to cheat on me and break my heart." Sasha shrugged. "I broke his first." Never screw around with a psychic. Especially not murderous ones. — Eve Langlais

Too many journalists and scientists have built their careers on the global-warming alarm. Certain newspapers have staked their reputation on it. The death of this theory will be painful and ugly. But it will die. Because it is wrong, wrong, wrong. — Martin Durkin

Christ himself deliberately staked his whole claim to the credit of men upon his resurrection. When asked for a sign, he pointed to this sign as his single and sufficient credential. — Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Are we bereft of citizenship because we are mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country
no interests staked in public weal
no liabilities in common peril
no partnership in a nation's guilt and shame? — Angelina Grimke

Horace, however, had arrayed himself in a Gothic assortment of crushed velvet, black satin, and patent leather that shouldn't have been allowed in my view. He might as well have I AM A VAMPIRE embroidered across the front of his watered-silk waistcoat. An outfit like that is going to get him staked one of these days; it's exactly what Boris Karloff would have worn, if he had joined the cast of Rocky Horror Motion Picture Show. — Catherine Jinks

Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game 'or else people won't take it seriously'. Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world. — C.S. Lewis

Getting staked had been a hard lesson in choosing one's friends wisely. — Heather Brewer

Your intended?" Dakota demanded. "You mean to say he already had a mate staked out and he's been encroaching on my preserve? — Madelaine Montague

Charles," Bones said distinctly. "You'd better have a splendid explanation for her being on top of you."
The black-haired vampire rose to his feet as soon as I jumped off, brushing the dirt off his clothes.
"Believe me, mate, I've never enjoyed a woman astride me less. I came out to say hello, and this she-devil blinded me by flinging rocks in my eyes. Then she vigorously attempted to split my skull before threatening to impale me with silver if I so much as even
twitched! It's been a few years since I've been to America, but I daresay the method of greeting a person has changed
dramatically!"
Bones rolled his eyes and clapped him on the shoulder. "I'm glad you're still upright, Charles, and the only reason you are is because she didn't have any silver. She'd have staked you right and proper otherwise. She has a tendency to shrivel someone first
and then introduce herself afterwards. — Jeaniene Frost