Surcease Quotes & Sayings

They went forth to battle, but they always fell;
Their eyes were fixed above the sullen shields;
Nobly they fought and bravely, but not well,
And sank heart-wounded by a subtle spell.
They knew not fear that to the foeman yields,
They were not weak, as one who vainly wields
A futile weapon; yet the sad scrolls tell
How on the hard-fought field they always fell.
It was a secret music that they heard,
A sad sweet plea for pity and for peace;
And that which pierced the heart was but a word,
Though the white breast was red-lipped where the sword
Pressed a fierce cruel kiss, to put surcease
On its hot thirst, but drank a hot increase.
Ah, they by some strange troubling doubt were stirred,
And died for hearing what no foeman heard. — Shaemus O'Sheel

In the rest of Nirvana all sorrows surcease: Only Buddha can guide to that city of Peace Whose inhabitants have the eternal release. — William Rounseville Alger

But the fact is, death is not a confrontation. It is simply an event in the sequence of nature's ongoing rhythms. Not death but disease is the real enemy, disease the malign force that requires confrontation. Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost. Even the confrontation with disease should be approached with the realization that many of the sicknesses of our species are simply conveyances for the inexorable journey by which each of us is returned to the same state of physical, and perhaps spiritual, nonexistence from which we emerged at conception. Every triumph over some major pathology, no matter how ringing the victory, is only a reprieve from the inevitable end. — Sherwin B. Nuland

Reason may be depended upon to keep its balance when God gives the surcease of tears in time of trouble. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years. — Bryn Greenwood

I have had my dance with Folly, nor do I shirk the blame;
I have sipped the so-called Wine of Life and paid the price of shame;
But I know that I shall find surcease, the rest my spirit craves,
Where the rainbows play in the flying spray,
'Mid the keen salt kiss of the waves. — Eugene O'Neill

Well, I must do't. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot's spirit! My throat of war be turn'd, Which quier'd with my drum, into a pipe Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice That babies lull asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar's tongue Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees, Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath receiv'd an alms! I will not do't, Lest I surcease to honor mine own truth, And by my body's action teach my mind A most inherent baseness. — William Shakespeare

The tears I feel today
I'll wait to shed tomorrow.
Though I'll not sleep this night
Nor find surcease from sorrow.
My eyes must keep their sight:
I dare not be tear-blinded.
I must be free to talk
Not choked with grief, clear-minded.
My mouth cannot betray
The anguish that I know.
Yes, I'll keep my tears til later:
But my grief will never go. — Anne McCaffrey

Life's sharpest rapture is surcease of pain. — Emma Lazarus

All beings desire pleasure, a surcease of need or want, and there is no shame in that. — Sherri L. King

As wonderful as miracles are, they are children's bread. — Sunday Adelaja

Freedom from worries and surcease from strain are illusions that always inhabit the distance. — Edwin Way Teale

A copywriter is a combination of a professional advertising engineer and a salesman. — Jason Goldberg

I, the dreamer clinging yet to the dream as the patient clings to the last thin unbearable ecstatic instant of agony in order to sharpen the savor of the pain's surcease, waking into the reality, the more than reality, not to the unchanged and unaltered old time but into a time altered to fit the dream which, conjunctive with the dreamer, becomes immolated and apotheosized — William Faulkner

Not death but disease is the real enemy; disease, the malign force that requires confrontation. Death is the surcease that comes when the exhausting battle has been lost. — Sherwin B. Nuland

Why were there so many barriers between us, always? Barriers of clothing, of etiquette, of time and age and reason. — Melanie Benjamin

But imagining what might happen if one's circumstances were different was the only sure route to madness. Sitting — Amor Towles

The possession of a great many things, even the best of things, tends to blind one to the real value of anything. — Holbrook Jackson

Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain. — Charlie Chaplin

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore. — Edgar Allan Poe

Alfriston is a compact village set around a rather traffic-weary High Street, mainly of old, timbered buildings. The principal sights lie to the east on the river side. — David Hewson

If anyone had bothered to notice me, they would only see a scared fifteen-year-old girl with eyes of sable ringed by kohl liner and black hair that fell to her waist. They wouldn't see someone struggling to remain sane. Only an empty space where a real girl used to live. — Sherry Soule

Weight is just not a hot button. In fact, during my life, it probably should have been on my radar screen a bit more. I look back at work photos and am shocked. Was I eating the people I was interviewing?! Good Lord, I was big. — Hoda Kotb

SAYING AND CONCEALING For I would prefer to have these attacks and please you, rather than displease you and not have them. - Marcel Proust in a letter to his mother — Alice Miller

That could sound arrogant, I guess, but sometimes I feel like I have a bit of a Zelig thing. I'll blend in wherever. I'm from the South, so I'll have a Southern accent when I'm home. But if I'm up here in New York, I have a British accent. — Michael Shannon

I tried to tear my mind off my own self loathing.-David — Katherine Applegate

In the great meteor shower of August, the Perseid, I wail all day for the shooting stars I miss. They're out there showering down, committing hari-kiri in a flame of fatal attraction, and hissing perhaps into the ocean. But at dawn what looks like a blue dome clamps down over me like a lid on a pot. The stars and planets could smash and I'd never know. Only a piece of ashen moon occasionally climbs up or down the inside of the dome, and our local star without surcease explodes on our heads. We have really only that one light, one source for all power, and yet we must turn away from it by universal decree. Nobody here on the planet seems aware of that strange, powerful taboo, that we all walk about carefully averting our faces, this way and that, lest our eyes be blasted forever. — Annie Dillard

God never promised us an easy life. He never promised that we wouldn't suffer, that we wouldn't feel despair and loneliness and confusion and desperation. What he did promise was that in our suffering we would never be alone. And though we may sometimes make ourselves blind and deaf to his presence he is beside us and around us and within us always. We are never separated from his love. And he promised us something else, the most important promise of all. That there would be surcease. That there would be an end to our pain and our suffering and our loneliness, that we would be with him and know him, and this would be heaven. — William Kent Krueger

In a completely unreligious sense, he longed for spiritual surcease. — A.E. Van Vogt

Jewish Law is like musical notation; it gives meaning to the stuff of life by regulating it in time. The Sabbath is its most sacred interval — Judith Shulevitz

Although the drama of games of strategy is strongly linked with the psychological aspects of the conflict, game theory is not concerned with these aspects. Game theory, so to speak, plays the board. It is concerned only with the logical aspects of strategy. — Anatol Rapoport

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails ... and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.
- Anonymous Curse on Book Theives from the Monaster of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain — Anatole Broyard

Betrayal was the greatest of all crimes, for it took all that was human within a person and made it a thing of pain. In the face of that, murder itself was surcease: it was quick, and it ended the anguish and despair of a life without hope. — Steven Erikson