Subsided Quotes & Sayings

After the storm there will always be calm - once the winds of change have subsided — Gavin Mills

He had to hold his body very still, very still, like some vessel about to slosh over from too much motion. Gradually he managed to get control of his breathing. His excited heart beat more steadily; the pounding of the waves inside him subsided slowly. And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusky reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened, and he entered. The next performance in the theatre of his soul was beginning. — Patrick Suskind

Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat. — Herman Melville

But they had already tried, again and again and again, and always, when the first crashing wave of mutual longing subsided, the ugly wreck of the past lay revealed again, its shadow lying darkly over everything they tried to rebuild. — Robert Galbraith

There was a point after the whole intensity of the Clash finally subsided when I just found that painting grounded me in a way that music didn't. — Paul Simonon

Yet as the days went by and the pains in my feet subsided, I began to look back on my little adventure with a hint of fondness. When it comes to memories, it seems we all have an editor within who will - if it'll make for a good story - revise the senseless into symbols, or rephrase miseries into warm memories. — Ken Ilgunas

I knew I used food to cope with emotions, but just knowing it wasn't enough to completely stop it. That's why I created the twenty-second rule: Before letting myself rip into a bag of junk food, I forced myself to sit down and county to twenty. Slowly. During those twenty seconds I made myself answer a very simple question: What was really bothering me? Almost every single time, I came up with the answer before the twenty seconds were up. The next question was: What can I do right this minute to help fix it? Do I need to call someone to sort out a misunderstanding? Do I need to get paperwork done? Do I need to run overdue errands? . . .By the time I came up with something that I could do right at that moment my urge to eat had subsided and I was tacking the underlying problem. — Monica Seles

In the years afterward, I fled whenever somebody began to understand me. That has subsided. But one thing remained: I don't want anybody to understand me completely. I want to go through life unknown. The blindness of others is my safety and my freedom. — Pascal Mercier

I didn't know, nor have I ever discovered, who let go first. I'm not prepared to accept that it was me. But everyone claims not to have been first. What is certain is that if we had not broken ranks, our collective weight would have brought the balloon to earth a quarter of the way down the slope a few seconds later as the gust subsided. But as I've said, there was no team, there was no plan, no agreement to be broken. No failure. So can we accept that it was right, every man for himself? Were we all happy afterwards that this was a reasonable course? We never had that comfort, for there was a deeper covenant, ancient and automatic, written in our nature. Co-operation - the basis of our earliest hunting successes, the force behind our evolving capacity for language, the glue of our social cohesion. Our misery in the aftermath was proof that we knew we had failed ourselves. But letting go was in our nature too. Selfishness is also written in our hearts. — Ian McEwan

There was a certain amount of initial argumentation about the "meaning" of the balloon; this subsided, because we have learned not to insist on meanings, and they are rarely even looked for now, except in cases involving the simplest, safest phenomena. — Donald Barthelme

The house begins to be a home. The unfamiliar places are beginning to fold the familiar objects into their keeping and to cozy them down. Objects that swore at each other when the movers heaved them into the new rooms have subsided into corners and sit to lick their feet and wash their faces like cats accepting a new home. — Emily Carr

Check and restrain anger. Never make any determination until you find it has entirely subsided. — Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood

He had entered an endless subterranean cavern, where jeweled rocks loomed out of the spectral gloom like marine plants, the sprays of glass forming white fountains. Several times he crossed and recrossed the road. The spurs were almost waist-high, and he was forced to climb over the brittle stems. Once, as he rested against the trunk of a bifurcated oak, an immense multi-colored bird erupted from a bough over his head, and flew off with a wild screech, aureoles of light cascading from its red and yellow wings. At last the storm subsided, and a pale light filtered through the stained-glass canopy. Again, the forest was a place of rainbows, a deep, iridescent light glowing from within. — J.G. Ballard

Things are better now that the attention has subsided a bit, and I'm happier. Now I can concentrate on what I'm supposed to do, that is, training and running. Despite everything that's happened, I feel like I'm still the same person. — Liu Xiang

One thing," I said, when we had broken apart and the swirling feeling in my head subsided. "Maybe ... don't tell your mom too much about this. I think she has ideas." "What?" he asked, all innocence, as he put an arm around my shoulders and led me back toward his house. "Don't your parents cheer and stare when you make out with someone? Is that weird where you come from? I guess they don't get to see it much, though. From jail, I mean." "Shut it, Weintraub. If I knock you down in the snow, these kids will swarm and eat you. — Maureen Johnson

Nikolas." The man's voice was deep, rough, and familiar. Nikolas's flare of aggression subsided as he realized the approaching figure was Rhys. "When you weren't here to greet us, we got worried."
"I ran into a pack of Hounds," Nikolas replied tersely.
Rhys hesitated. "Is everything ok?
"They're dead. I'm not. Situation handled. — Thea Harrison

The bottom of a lake we cannot see, because its surface is covered with ripples. It is only possible for us to catch a glimpse of the bottom, when the ripples have subsided, and the water is calm. — Swami Vivekananda

With passion, if you see the first asparagus of the springtime and you become passionate about it, so much the better, but three weeks later, when you've seen that asparagus every day now, passions have subsided. What's going to make you treat the asparagus the same? It's the desire. — Thomas Keller

You've always been a know-it-all. Well, you're about to find out how much you don't know."
"Believe me," I muttered, "I'm the first one to admit that I have no clue about any of this stuff. I had nothing to do with it. This isn't my baby."
"Then give it to Social Services." She was getting agitated. "Whatever happens to him will be your fault, not mine. Get rid of him if you can't handle the responsibility."
"I can handle it," I said, my voice quiet. "It's okay, Mom. I'll take care of him. You don't have to worry about anything."
She subsided like a child who had just been mollified by a lollipop. "You'll have to learn the way I did," she said after a moment, reaching down to adjust her toe ring.
A hint of satisfaction edged her tone as she added, "The hard way. — Lisa Kleypas

Sometimes it seems that bad luck always flows like the sea to me. Hardly has one wave of bad luck subsided, when another washed into my life. — Chun Yu Wang

The experience awakened 'my tremendous musical ambition, which has never subsided to this day. — Georg Solti

Mom hopped up to turn off the burner, but it subsided before she got there. 'If this--whatever it is--starts playing with fire,' she said through clenched teeth, 'I'm going to give it a spanking. — Ann Hodgman

She was playing something so low and soft that it felt as if she were humming it ... notes built and subsided, as if a giant were softly breathing them, as if each note was a drop of water going down a stream filled with rocks. — Eloisa James

Library? That sounded reasonable. As my thoughts revolved around my days surrounded by books, something miraculous happened. My anger subsided. It ebbed away as the thoughts of books, pages, and comfort entered my head. — Rebecca Maizel

And then he closed his eyes and imagined Sun Moon, the one that was always within him...she was a calm presence, open-armed, ready to save him at all times. She wasn't leaving him, she wasn't going anywhere. And here the sharp pain in his chest subsided, and Commander Ga understood that the Sun Moon inside him was the pain reserve that would allow him to survive the loss of the Sun Moon before him. — Adam Johnson

When the lump in his throat subsided, he whispered to her, You are the answer to every prayer I've offered. You are a song, a dream, a whisper, and I don't know how I could have lived without you for as long as I have. I love you, Allie, more than you can ever imagine. I always have, and I always will. — Nicholas Sparks

Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began ... What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided. — Ron Paul

She was looking at Alec instead, watching him as he talked to Jace. There was a kinetic, almost feverish energy to him that hadn't been there before. Something about Jace sharpened him, brought him into focus. If she were going to draw them together, she thought, she would make Jace a little blurry, while Alec stood out, all sharp, clear planes and angles. Jace was looking down as Alec spoke, smiling a little and tapping his water glass with a fingernail. She sensed he was thinking of other things. She felt a sudden flash of sympathy for Alec.
Jace couldn't be an easy person to care about.
I was laughing at you because declarations of love amuse me, especially when unrequited. Jace looked up as the waitress passed. "Are we ever going to get any coffee?" he said aloud, interrupting Alec midsentence. Alec subsided, his energy fading. — Cassandra Clare

The passions and pain of the Vietnam War have subsided to a degree to which we are now able to look at the broader achievements of the Johnson administration," said playwright Robert Schenkkan, whose Broadway show about the president, "All the Way," is playing to packed houses. — The Washington Post

Her little shoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it.
'I love love,' she said, closing her eyes. I promised her beautiful love. I gloated over her. Our stories were told; we subsided into silence and sweet anticipatory thoughts. It was as simple as that. You could have all your Peaches and Bettys and Marylous and Ritas and Camilles and Inezes in this world; this was my girl and my kind of girlsoul, and I told her that. — Jack Kerouac

During a rehearsal of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony the members of the orchestra were so overwhelmingly moved by the conducting of Arturo Toscanini that they rose as one man and applauded him. When the spontaneous cheering has subsided, Toscanini turned to his men, tears glistening in his eyes. "Please ... please! Don't do this! You see, gentlemen, it isn't me you should applaud. It's Beethoven!" — James Keller

The loss of Abu Talib's protection was certainly demoralizing, if not detrimental to Muhammad's physical security. But returning home after one of his painfully violent revelatory experiences, or after suffering another indignity from the Quraysh - his head covered in dirt, his tunic defiled with blood - and not having Khadija there to wrap him in her cloak and hold him in her arms until the terror subsided must have been an unimaginable sorrow for the Prophet. — Reza Aslan

Pixy dust thickened to make my eyes water, but after the loud complaints and muttered disappointment, the Disney nightmare subsided as quickly as it had come. — Kim Harrison

The bubble had subsided, leaving only a tiny scar, but the irrational fear of water never quite left her. I never allowed her to forget, not for a moment. — Deepti Menon

Woe to him who could look on and say: The fool! If she had waited, if she had let time do its work, her despair would surely have subsided, another man would have turned up to comfort her. - That's just like saying: The fool, dying of fever! If he had waited until his strength returned, his circulation improved, the tumult of his blood calmed down, everything would have turned out well and he would still be alive today! — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The noise level subsided, as if people were distracted with — Lois Lowry

I seem to be allergic to whatever that terrible smell is," said Gateman when the urge to sneeze had finally subsided.
"What terrible smell?"
"The air," said Gateman. "It smells ... different."
"That's called oxygen," said Professor Boxley. "Freh air. No cars, no buses, no factories; just pure, clean oxygen. — Cuthbert Soup

In old persons, when thus fully expressed, we often observe a fair, plump, perennial waxen complexion, which indicates that all the ferment of earlier days has subsided into serenity of thought and behavior. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

All the carriages filed out in single file but in a fashion that seemed to mean that they were competing against each other. The only sound that could be heard for a while was the pounding of the horses' hooves and the squeal and groan of the wheels against the road. Their hooves kicked up dirt, creating a storm of dust.
Once the miniature storm and the sound of galloping horses subsided, I could only see one last person. He glared up at me and mouthed, "Next time." Christopher dug his boots into Dawn's muscled flank. She reared up and broke into a gallop through the sparse forest, heading for escape. The last trace of them was the particles of floating dust, bright like floating fire. — Erica Sehyun Song

The timing of Thomas Lewis' illness suggests one chilling alternative history. The Broad Street outbreak had subsided in part because the only viable route between the well and the neighborhood's small intestines had run through the cesspool at 40 Broad. When baby Lewis died, the connection had died with it. But when her husband fell ill, Sarah Lewis began emptying the buckets of soiled water in the cesspool all over again. If Snow had not persuaded the Board of Governors to remove the handle when he did, the disease might have torn through the neighborhood all over again, the well water restocked with a fresh supply of V. cholerae. And so Snow's intervention did not just help bring the outbreak to a close. It also prevented a second attack. — Steven Johnson

To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new, or rather an old, order - not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or Riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust. The Chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker - not the Knight, but Walker, Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of Church and State and People. — Henry David Thoreau

The old Squire was an implacable man: he made resolutions in violent anger, and he was not to be moved from them after his anger had subsided - as fiery volcanic matters cool and harden into rock. Like many violent and implacable men, he allowed evils to grow under favour of his own heedlessness, till they pressed upon him with exasperating force, and then he turned round with fierce severity and became unrelentingly hard ... Godfrey knew all this, and felt it with the greater force because he had constantly suffered annoyance from witnessing his father's sudden fits of unrelentingness, for which his own habitual irresolution deprived him of all sympathy. (He was not critical on the faulty indulgence which preceded these fits; that seemed to him natural enough.) — George Eliot

We shall see. You have been long away from our people. Your skills may have grown rusty."
"What skills?" I asked.
"His sexual ones. That is how we court among our kind," Vlad explained.
"Oh, well, I'm not sure about the charm, Gordane may have to practice on that," I said, making Gordane growl.
"But I can vouch for his sexual skills. He's had plenty of practice." A low growl, two low growls behind me, suddenly made me realize how my words could be taken.
"I meant plenty of practice on other women," I hastened to add, looking exasperatedly at Gryphon and Halcyon-where the growls were coming from. "He has an entire harem of at least eighty women, for Pete's sake."
Thankfully the menacing growls subsided. — Sunny

Once upon a time a Georgian printed a couple of books that attracted notice, but immediately it turned out that he was little more than an amanuensis for the local blacks
that his works were really the products, not of white Georgia, but of black Georgia. Writing afterward as a white man, he swiftly subsided into the fifth rank. — Joel Chandler Harris

Disease, which had reduced the number to less than fifty persons, subsided; the oppressive heat lessened; and Indian crops of peas, corn, and beans began to mature. — Charles E. Hatch

Someone made the mistake of telling me the safest place in a lightning storm was in a car because of the grounding of the rubber tires. After that, at the first sound of thunder, I caterwauled until my parents would take me in the car until the storm subsided. I then proceeded to write about cars for the rest of my life. — Bruce Springsteen

Voldemort held up a large white hand, and Yaxley subsided at once, watching resentfully as Voldemort turned back to Snape. — J.K. Rowling

No pleasure or success in life quite meets the capacity of our hearts. We take in our good things with enthusiasm, and think ourselves happy and satisfied; but afterward, when the froth and foam have subsided, we discover that the goblet is not more than half-filled with the golden liquid that was poured into it. — Louise Imogen Guiney

(It's a weird thing, depression. Even now, writing this with a good distance of fourteen years from my lowest point, I haven't fully escaped. You get over it, but at the same time you never get over it. It comes back in flashes, when you are tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff, and catches you off guard. I woke up with it a few days ago, in fact. I felt its dark wisps around my head, that ominous life-is-fear feeling. But then, after a morning with the best five- and six-year-olds in the world, it subsided. it is now an aside. Something to put brackets around. Life lesson: the way out is never through yourself.) — Matt Haig

As she felt his fangs against her neck, she was in another world.
There was screaming. A woman was somewhere in agony. Everything was black, and the tormented scream was overwhelming, echoing through the emptiness. After the screaming subsided, there was panting, loud and steady, and it wasn't as dark anymore. There was a room visible now, in a reddish light. A pale man with black hair hovered over a woman dressed in white. She lay on a bed, looking disheveled and sweaty. Her brown-black hair clung to her wet forehead and shoulders. She was covered in blood. The man sat next to her, and held her close to him. He stroked her hair as her chest heaved desperately.
"I love you, my dearest Katerina," he said, cradling her in his strong arms. "Soon, we'll be together forever." Everything faded to black once more, and the woman stopped breathing. All was silent and still. — Dawn Bonney

Would you have done that in his place? Would you have left him and gone on?"
"Of course I would!" Halt replied immediately. But something in his voice rang false and Horse looked at him, raising one eyebrow. He'd waited a long time for an opportunity to use that expression of disbelief on Halt.
After a pause, the Ranger's anger subsided.
"All right. Perhaps I wouldn't," he admitted. Then he glared at Horace. "And stop raising that eyebrow on me. You can't even do it properly. Your other eyebrow moves with it! — John Flanagan

If you venture to be a sage
Let your virtues subside your rage
For deep wisdom you'll be venerated
Let cold veins feel blood cells generated — Munia Khan

Hugh refused to leave the scene of the action. He seated himself on the top stair in the hall, banged his head against the railing a few times, just by way of uncorking the vials of his wrath, and then subsided into gloomy silence, waiting to declare war if more "first girl babies" were thrust upon a family already surfeited with that unnecessary article. — Kate Douglas Wiggin

When a waggon with a train of beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding bells came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have sung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around ...
We had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. Its music changed as the horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except when a horse tossed his head, or shook himself, and sprinkled off a little shower of bellringing. — Charles Dickens

If Black people had simply accepted a status of economic and political inferiority, the mob murders would probably have subsided. But because vast numbers of ex-slaves refused to discard their dreams of progress, more than ten thousand lynchings occurred during the three decades following the war. — Angela Y. Davis

She held herself until the sobs of the child inside subsided entirely. I love you, she told herself. It will all be okay. — H. Raven Rose

Finally, mercifully, the spasms subsided, as the old man's head lolled back, his mouth hanging open, taking in deep, ragged breaths of stale, recirculated air. — Joe DeRouen

American Heart Association has reported that 75 per cent of heart involvements begin before ten years of age. My studies have shown that in about 95 per cent of these cases there is active tooth decay. The important change that I made in this boy's dietary program was the removal of the white flour products and in their stead the use of freshly cracked or ground wheat and oats used with whole milk to which was added a small amount of specially high vitamin butter produced by cows pasturing on green wheat. Small doses of a high-vitamin, natural cod liver oil were also added. At this time the boy was so badly crippled with arthritis, in his swollen knees, wrists, and rigid spine, that he was bedfast and cried by the hour. With the improvement in his nutrition which was the only change made in his care, his acute pain rapidly subsided, his appetite greatly improved, he slept soundly and gained rapidly in weight — Anonymous

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
Alma idly wondered if he'd blow his nose, too.
He did. Twice. He made it honk, the sound reminding Alma of Harpo Marx squeezing his bulb horn.
Isabel darted a look at Alma, giving her the don't-you-dare-giggle squint.
Alma dug her fingernails into her palm, the inappropriate laugh rising from her throat as she looked up at the ceiling. Blue refolded his handkerchief and returned it to inside his seersucker jacket. Thankfully, Alma's urge to laugh subsided. — Ed Lynskey

Fear, like love, is difficult to explain after it has subsided, probably because it draws away the veils of illusion as it disappears. — Arthur Miller

The Chairman glared across three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers of space at Conrad Taylor, who reluctantly subsided, like a volcano biding its time. — Arthur C. Clarke

The floods washed away home and mill, all the poor man had in the world. But as he stood on the scene of his loss, after the water had subsided, brokenhearted and discouraged, he saw something shining in the bank which the waters had washed bare. "It looks like gold," he said. It was gold. The flood which had beggared him made him rich.3 HENRY CLAY TRUMBULL — Eric Ludy

There were times when he couldn't believe how fresh the anger was, how little it had subsided. — Hannah Michell

When the fermentation is over and the troubling parts subsided, the wine will be fine and good, and cheer the hearts of those that drink it."41 Franklin was wrong, sadly wrong, about the French Revolution, though he would not live long enough to learn it. Le Veillard would soon lose his life to the guillotine. So would Lavoisier the chemist, who had worked with him on the Mesmer investigation. Condorcet, the economist who had accompanied — Walter Isaacson

The anger subsided, and my shoulders fell. "I know you didn't. But you have got to curb this overprotective big-brother thing you've got going on."
Travis laughed once. "I'm not playing the big brother, Pigeon. Not even close. — Jamie McGuire

Yea, foolish mortals, Noah's flood is not yet subsided; two thirds of the fair world it yet covers. — Herman Melville

The wild gas, the fixed air is plainly broke loose: but we ought to suspend our judgments until the first effervescence is a little subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until we see something deeper than the agitation of the troubled and frothy surface.
[Alluding to Joseph Priestley's Observations on Air] — Edmund Burke

Therefore, doing the Stations of the Cross was still more laborious than consoling, and required a sacrifice. It was much the same with all my devotions. They did not come easily or spontaneously, and they very seldom brought with them any strong sensible satisfaction. Nevertheless the work of performing them ended in a profound and fortifying peace: a peace that was scarcely perceptible, but which deepened and which, as my passions subsided, became more and more real, more and more sure, and finally stayed with me permanently. — Thomas Merton

Very slowly using two fingers, Annabeth drew her dagger. Instead of dropping it, she tossed it as far as she could into the water.
Octavian made a squeaking sound. "What was that for? I didn't say toss it! That could've been evidence. Or spoils of war!"
Annabeth tried for a dumb-blonde smile, like: Oh, silly me. Nobody who knew her would have been fooled. But Octavian seemed to buy it. He huffed in exasperation.
"You other two ... " He pointed his blade a Hazel and Piper. "Put your weapons on the dock. No funny bus
"
All around the Romans, Charleston Harbor erupted like a Las Vegas fountain putting on a show. When the wall of seawater subsided, the three Romans were in the bay, spluttering and frantically trying to stay afloat in their armor. Percy stood on the dock, holding Annabeth's dagger.
"You dropped this," he said, totally poker-faced.
-Heroes of Olympus — Rick Riordan