Sweep Away Quotes & Sayings

If you work by reason, you grow rough-edged; if you choose to dip your oar into sentiment's stream, it will sweep you away. Demanding your own way only serves to constrain you. However you look at it, the human world is not an easy place to live.

And when its difficulties intensify, you find yourself longing to leave that world and dwell in some easier one--and then, when you understand at last that difficulties will dog you wherever you may live, this is when poetry and art are born. — Soseki Natsume

The Chinese say that water is the most powerful element, because it is perfectly nonresistant. It can wear away a rock, and sweep all before it. — Florence Scovel Shinn

It took my breath away, that evening. If you've ever dreamed that you walked into your best-loved book or film or TV program, then maybe you've got some idea how it felt: things coming alive around you, strange and new and utterly familiar at the same time; the catch in your heartbeat as you move through the rooms that had such a vivid untouchable life in your mind, as your feet actually touch the carpet, as you breathe the air; the odd, secret glow of warmth as these people you've been watching for so long, from so far away, open their circle and sweep you into it. — Tana French

The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed, then the more he needs some method of channeling the primitive impulses he's worked so hard to subdue. Otherwise those powerful old forces will mass and strengthen until they are violent enough to break free, more violent for the delay, often strong enough to sweep the will away entirely. — Donna Tartt

Brutal storms may come from the four corners of universe, try to destroy and sweep away everything you ever worked for and even threaten to destroy your entire life. But when the 'The Universe Holder/Storm Calmer' shows up everything changes, becomes still and works in your favour. God is a God of rescue (Psalm 40). — Euginia Herlihy

She looked away. Her attitude seemed to suggest that she had finished with him, and would be obliged if somebody would come and sweep him up. — P.G. Wodehouse

I have to lay off dairy though. That's what my doctor threw in. As I was leaving his office, "Oh, and uh, leave off dairy." What kind of blanket sweep is that? "And no more happiness! Away with you! — Brian Regan

My goal is to sweep the reader away from his world and bring him along for the adventure. Learning something new shouldn't feel like work, nor should today's younger reader be underestimated. If done correctly, there is no need to "dumb down" the plot or simplify words. When someone tells me he thought The Serpent's Ring was easy to read, I know I succeeded in my storytelling. — H.B. Bolton

People are learning to grasp the diversity of nature, to understand its unifying principles and to sweep away the hierarchies and see the real connections. — Frank Schatzing

Stories. Character. Dialouge. Entire worlds created on the page. Worlds that could sweep you away or frighten you, make you laugh or cry. Worlds that allowed you to escape to another country or time. Worlds built piece by piece of ink and punctuation. — Jamie Michaels

Mother!" he cried. "Darling, sweetheart, wait!" Crumpling, she fell to the pavement. He dashed forward and fell at her side, crying, "Mamma, Mamma!" He turned her over. Her face was fiercely distorted. One eye, large and staring, moved slightly to the left as if it had become unmoored. The other remained fixed on him, raked his face again, found nothing and closed. "Wait here, wait here!" he cried and jumped up and began to run for help toward a cluster of lights he saw in the distance ahead of him. "Help, help!" he shouted, but his voice was thin, scarcely a thread of sound. The lights drifted farther away the faster he ran and his feet moved numbly as if they carried him nowhere. The tide of darkness seemed to sweep him back to her, postponing from moment to moment his entry into the world of guilt and sorrow. — Flannery O'Connor

We must in imagination sweep off the drifted matter that clogs the surface of the ground; we must suppose all the covering of moss and heath and wood to be torn away from the sides of the mountains, and the green mantle that lies near their feet to be lifted up; we may then see the muscular integuments, and sinews, and bones of our mother Earth, and so judge of the part played by each of them during those old convulsive movements whereby her limbs were contorted and drawn up into their present posture. — Adam Sedgwick

Energy and invincible determination, these two things will sweep away mighty barriers and will surmount the greatest obstacles — William Walker Atkinson

I am against nationalism, and I am against patriotism. They are both the dark side. It is time not simply to redefine a kinder-and-gentler patriotism, but to sweep away the notion and acknowledge it as morally, politically, and intellectually bankrupt. It is time to scrap patriotism. — Robert Jensen

We must all build national unity, build all revolutionary forces, into one powerful wave to sweep away our main enemy, political imperialism and economic imperialism. — Sukarno

Sweep the broom
Over sand and stone.
Softly, gently,
Brush away the dust.
Listen to the leaves
As they sing in the tree.
Peace fills the soul
When living well. — Teresa Garcia

At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty. — Nicole Krauss

Cherish what is dearest while you have it near you, and wait not till it is far away. Blind and deaf that we are; oh, think, if thou yet love anybody living, wait not till death sweep down the paltry little dust clouds and dissonances of the moment, and all be made at last so mournfully clear and beautiful, when it is too late. — Thomas Carlyle

This was the move that was supposed to sweep me away. She seemed a little out of practice. I guess life with Charley Royce hadn't exactly been the third reel of The English Patient. It had to be bad if Mickey Dolan was your back-up. Not to put Mickey down but he didn't strike me as the lover-boy type. Especially when he took out his teeth. The last time Mickey thought about pleasing anybody but himself was just before he discovered how to sniff glue. — Dan Ahearn

Nature, with equal mind, Sees all her sons at play, Sees man control the wind, The wind sweep man away. — Matthew Arnold

I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy. — Joseph Stalin

I think it is a good thing to have woman friends at every stage of life. We confide in each other, we support each other, we understand each other most of the time. Of course, sometimes we are competitive or angry or distant, too. But I do think it is important not to let the main friendships slip away in the sweep of the days. — Anne Roiphe

I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about
the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of the box. There's no doubt it's the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth; it can put out fire; it can wear a piece of metal down and sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can't survive without being nurtured by water. And yet, you haven't drawn on those strengths in living your life, have you? — Arthur Golden

To Your eyes a thousand years are like yesterday come and gone, no more than a watch in the night.
You sweep men away like a dream, like grass which springs up in the morning.
In the morning it springs up and flowers, by evening it withers and fades.
So we are destroyed in Your anger, struck with terror in Your fury.
Our guilt lies open before You; our secrets in the light of Your face.
All our days pass away in Your anger. Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years or eighty for those who are strong. And most of these are emptiness and pain, they pass swiftly and we are gone. — Psalm 89

We bend. I bend to sweep crumbs and I bend to wipe vomit and I bend to pick up little ones and wipe away tears ... And at the end of these days I bend next to the bed and I ask only that I could bend more, bend lower. Because I serve a Savior who came to be a servant. He lived bent low. And bent down here is where I see His face. He lived, only to die. Could I? Die to self and just break open for love. This Savior, His one purpose to spend Himself on behalf of messy us. Will I spend myself on behalf of those in front of me? And people say, "Don't you get tired?" and yes, I do. But I'm face to face with Jesus in the dirt, and the more I bend the harder and better and fuller this life gets. And sure, we are tired, but oh we are happy. Because bent down low is where we find fullness of Joy. — Katie J. Davis

In our culture, people are so often led to feel that change is like a vast and threatening ocean whose waves will sweep them away unless they cling tenaciously to some firmament. But in fact by holding fast to the rocks one only gets pounded by the waves; the damage is caused not by change itself, but by the resistance to it. — Andrew Olendzki

Peri went to the window, gesturing out at the dragons, perched and flying, everywhere. Safe, true, but how boring! How confining! How sad! How could that compare with this? And what is safe? You were not safe on your little farm. War came to you and took all your safety away! If I am to be in this world, I want more than to be a hound upon the game board, tucked away in a corner until the jackals come and sweep all away! — Mercedes Lackey

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. — W. H. Auden

You see, Momo ... it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept ... And then you hurry. You work faster and faster, and every time you look up there seems to be just as much to sweep as before, and you try even harder ... , and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop-and still the street stretches away in from of you. — Michael Ende

There is a power in the soul, quite separate from the intellect, which sweeps away or recognizes the marvelous, by which God is felt. Faith stands serenely far above the reach of the atheism of science. It does not rest on the wonderful, but on the eternal wisdom and goodness of God. The revelation of the Son was to proclaim a Father, not a mystery. No science can sweep away the everlasting love which the heart feels, and which the intellect does not even pretend to judge or recognize. — Frederick William Robertson

Everyone will have gone then except us, because we're tied to this soil by a roomful of trunks where the household goods and clothing of grandparents are kept, and the canopies that my parenrs' horses used when they came to Macondo, fleeing from the war. We've been sown into this soil by the memory of the remote dead whose bones can no longer be found twenty fathoms under the earth. The trunks have been in the room ever since the last days of the war; and they'll be there this afternoon when we come back from the burial, if that final wind hasn't passed, the one that will sweep away Macondo, its bedrooms full of lizards and its silent people devastated by memories. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

That's why I need a man who can sweep away the mess I made. — Nina Ardianti

They say a man's inspiration is visual, but for a woman, it's the narrative.
Abandon both the narrative and the visual. Close your eyes, measure your breath.
Dead weight is sloughed off, dust swept away, forms dissolve into one atmosphere.
The rib cage opens, the lungs fill, the breast rises.
Waves sweep up the body on their swell, rocking it rhythmically.
Feet planted, the back arches, the pelvis reaches forward.
Oxygen kindles a flame, sprawling through the belly, and gathering in a warm blaze.
The hand reaches to meet the sensation.
Calligraphy spills from the inkwell.
Open your eyes, sharpen your focus, and exclaim:
There are no separations. — Craig Thompson

I is another. If the brass wakes the trumpet, it's not its fault. That's obvious to me: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I hear it: I make a stroke with the bow: the symphony begins in the depths, or springs with a bound onto the stage.
If the old imbeciles hadn't discovered only the false significance of Self, we wouldn't have to now sweep away those millions of skeletons which have been piling up the products of their one-eyed intellect since time immemorial, and claiming themselves to be their authors! — Arthur Rimbaud

Much of American wealth is an illusion which is being secretly gnawed away and much of it will be completely wiped out in the near future ... So what is the rest of your future? A grisly list of unpleasant events
exploding inflation, price controls, erosion of your savings (eventually to nothing), a collapse of private as well as government pension programs, and eventually an international monetary holocaust which will sweep all paper currencies down the drain and turn the world upside down. — Howard Ruff

Eric moved the broom experimentally and made an attempt to sweep the glass into the pan while it lay in the middle of the floor. Of course, the pan slid away. Eric scowled.
I'd finally found something Eric did poorly. — Charlaine Harris

And this is the time. It is the time for this land to become again a witness to the world for what is noble and just in human affairs. It is the time to live more with faith and less with fear- with an abiding confidence that can sweep away the strongest barriers between us and teach us that we truly are brothers and sisters. — George McGovern

Linsey pulled away, smiling in a way that would have made him look almost
angelic if it wasn't for the blood smeared around his mouth. When he licked his lips clean, the angelic image became clearer. Blood welled up from two small cuts on his bottom lip, pooling in the full sweep his skin. I knew it wasn't just my blood that I'd tasted. — Cyrese Covelli

Anything you don't understand, you attribute to God. God for you is where you sweep away all the mysteries of the world, all the challenges to our intelligence. You simply turn your mind off and say God did it. — Carl Sagan

The truth is not always useful, not always good. It's like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channeled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated. — Iain Banks

The last glow of sundown dims away. Stars appear in the east. Night encloses us. The ocean seems to enlarge. When you're adrift at night, imagination and perception merge. They have to. You can't see as well, as far, as deep. You tie knots by muscle memory, and you operate your reel mostly by feel. Your boat drifts, your thoughts drift. You sense the sweep of tide and water, and the boat gets rocked in turbulence just past each undersea ridgeline and boulder field. You, too, are looking up, searching constellations, dreaming. You fell again how flexible and expansive your mind can be when it's working right. And you slip your leash to explore the vast vault of sky and great interior spaces. — Carl Safina

The giant wave of the science has no mercy; when this colossal wave comes, it will sweep away anything untrue! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

My baby is five. She falls asleep in my arms ... Her breath is warm on my face, all that is alive and warm and breathing inside of her now, falling upon me, and I can't capture it, hold it, this, her life now, me in this moment. She is leaving me, she's growing up and moving away from me, and she stirs and I sweep back the crop of the golden ringlets. Stay, Little One, stay. Love's a deep wound and what is a mother without a child and why can't I hold on to now forever and her here and me here and why does time snatch away a heart I don't think mine can beat without? Why do we all have to grow old? Why do we have to keep saying good-bye? — Ann Voskamp

Under the rule of the Peshwas in the Maratha country,11 the Untouchable was not allowed to use the public streets if a Hindu was coming along, lest he should pollute the Hindu by his shadow. The Untouchable was required to have a black thread either on his wrist or around his neck, as a sign or a mark to prevent the Hindus from getting themselves polluted by his touch by mistake. In Poona, the capital of the Peshwa, the Untouchable was required to carry, strung from his waist, a broom to sweep away from behind himself the dust he trod on, lest a Hindu walking on the same dust should be polluted. In Poona, the Untouchable was required to carry an earthen pot hung around his neck wherever he went - for holding his spit, lest his spit falling on the earth should pollute a Hindu who might unknowingly happen to tread on it. — B.R. Ambedkar

Maybe the God we see, the God who calls the daily shots, is merely a subGod. Maybe there's a God above this subGod who's busy for a few God minutes with something else, and will be right back; and when he gets back will take the subGod by the ear and say: Now look. Look at that fat man. What did he ever do to you? Wasn't he humble enough? Didn't he endure enough abuse for a thousand men? Weren't the simplest tasks hard? Didn't you sense him craving affection? Were you unaware that his days unraveled as one long bad dream? And maybe as the subGod slinks away, the true God will sweep me up in his arms, saying: My sincere apologies, a mistake has been made. Accept a new birth, as token of my esteem. — George Saunders

Worldliness doesn't fall like an avalanche upon a person and sweep him or her away. It is the steady drip, drip, drip of the water that wears away the stone. The world is exerting a steady pressure on us every day. Most of us would go down under it, if it weren't for the Holy Spirit who lives inside us, and holds us up, and keeps us. — Billy Graham

So sweep away the sand an' dry the ocean, an' just pack the moon an' stars up in a cardboard box. And stop the clouds from chimin', block the sun from shinin',an' paint the sky a deeper shade of blue, 'cause my world's over without you. — Kenny Rogers

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether. — Arthur Helps

If being grounded is important, stay away from Prince Charming because he will sweep you off your feet. — Khang Kijarro Nguyen

The wall clock and her wristwatch had stopped, their sweep hands no longer wiping away the seconds, and the digital clock on the microwave had gone dark, as if something that lived outside of time had stepped into this world and brought its clockless ambiance with it. — Dean Koontz

It's just a bow and arrow, but it's not a laughing matter. It might have been at one time, but history takes the laugh out of many things. If the arrow is a joke, so is the atom bomb, so is the sweep of disease laden dust that wipes out whole cities, so is the screaming rocket that arcs and falls then thousand miles away and kills a million people. — Clifford D. Simak

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. — George Orwell

There is not a moment but preys upon you, - and upon all around you, not a moment in which you do not yourself become a destroyer. The most innocent walk deprives of life thousands of poor insects: one step destroys the fabric of the industrious ant, and converts a little world into chaos. No: it is not the great and rare calamities of the world, the floods which sweep away whole villages, the earthquakes which swallow up our towns, that affect me. My heart is wasted by the thought of that destructive power which lies concealed in every part of universal nature. Nature has formed nothing that does not consume itself, and every object near it: so that, surrounded by earth and air, and all the active powers, I wander on my way with aching heart; and the universe is to me a fearful monster, for ever devouring its own offspring. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Instead of clinging to the only Lifeboat that can save, we have tossed overboard biblical truths in the name of [compromise], living on the edge of life, like the man who rides the parameter of a hurricane, daring it to sweep him away. — Billy Graham

I encourage you to consider, just for this moment, your teaching as crafting a sand mandala. You go through your year, a year that took many years and months to prepare for. You create something beautiful and intricate and exquisite to admire. Then, you sweep it away. You drop it into the river of teaching time as a blessing for your future teaching self, for other teachers, and more importantly, all the children who have not yet been taught. — M. Colleen Cruz

We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off limits to others. We're willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea. — Pema Chodron

It's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster and faster and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop
and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.
You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.
That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be.
And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. what's more, you aren't out of breath. That's important, too ... (28-29) — Michael Ende

and eroded. Deandra Demarest's smile said the booking process was just another modeling session. Both times she'd held her head up high, rotated her face to create a flattering contour, squared her shoulders, flashed perfect teeth. Her smile was a strange mix of wholesome and sinful. The kind of blitheness that comes with getting away with too much for too long. In her case, biology helped: perfect oval face, cute cleft in her chin, widely spaced blue eyes with enormous irises that would make her appear appealingly confused when she was anything but. All of that crowned by a creamy sweep of wavy hair - brunette at nineteen, blond at twenty-nine. They say eyes are the true mirrors to the soul but Deandra Demarest's eyes — Jonathan Kellerman

What makes this city different is that nobody expects to be in one place for ten minutes. Everybody moves all the time. Seven nameless men own everything and move us around on a board. People are swept out into the streets because the owners need the space. Then they are swept off the streets because someone owns the air they breathe. Men buy and sell air in the sky and there are bodies heaped together in boxes on the sidewalk. Then they sweep away the boxes."
"You like to overstate."
"I overstate things to stay alive. This is the point of New York. I completely love and trust this city but I know the moment I stop being angry I'm finished forever. — Don DeLillo

This history has for so long lived like a spider in my breast. The spider spins and spins, catching memories in its web, threatening to devour every final happiness. With this letter I hope to sweep away the terror and the sadness and to have my heart made pure again by God's grace. — Kathleen Kent

I was in love with the lyrics, the rhythm, and the way it could sweep me away to another world. — Jessica Sorensen

In my experience, there never seems to be a man or woman who will walk in and literally sweep you off your feet, or away, when you're in the biggest distaster of your life. If it happens, it'll be guaranteed he or she won't be the one you've longed for. Yeah ... we all still seem to be waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right. — Jennifer Salaiz

Go ahead," I told him. "Go see your admirers. Sign some autographs. It's good PR for the House." He slid me a glance, smiled. "Not concerned one of the fans will try to sweep me away with words of love?" "Oh, they'll try to sweep," I said. "But I have no worries you'll come back to me." His smile was meltingly handsome. "Because I love you without measure?" "Of course," I said. Also, I had the car keys. — Chloe Neill

As generations come and go, Their arts, their customs, ebb and flow; Fate, fortune, sweep strong powers away, And feeble, of themselves, decay. — William Wordsworth

I have this theory, that this will be the only city that future archaeologists find, Las Vegas. The dry climate will preserve it all and teams of scientists in the year 5000 will carefully sweep and scrape away the sand to find pyramids and castles and replicas of the Eiffel Tower and the New York skyline and stripper poles and snapper cards and these future archaeologists will re-create our entire culture based solely on this one shallow and cynical little shithole. We can complain all we want that this city doesn't represent us. We can say, Yes, but I hated Las Vegas. Or I only went there once. Well, I'm sure not all Romans reveled in the torture-fests at the Colosseum either, but there it is. — Jess Walter

Okay, here it goes--bread, so you'll never go hungry; a broom, so you can sweep away evil; a candle, so you'll always have light; honey, so life will always be sweet; a coin, to bring good fortune for the year; olive oil, for health, life, and believe it or not, to keep your husband, or in this case, your boyfriend faithful; a plant, so you'll always have life; rice, to ensure your fertility, but that's taken care of, eh? Salt represents life's tears. I recommend you place a pinch of salt on the threshold of every door and window for good luck and according to my grandmother Chetta it also mends old wounds. Oh and... ah, yes, wine, sparkling non-alcoholic wine, so you never go thirsty and always have joy and last, but not least wood, so your home will always have harmony, stability, and peace. — Aimee Pitta

Books were a healthy drug. They could sweep me away from storms, make me forget bruises, and soothe any emotional ache, if only for a moment. — Cara Dee

I can whitewash your little trip out to OR-Kappa-2722 for you. I can sweep it under the rug if you like. You can go back to leading Rapier Squadron and having your hands tied by Command, by Major Deso, by politicians who don't recognize what's happening right before their eyes. I can make it all go away, Poe." She leaned forward. "Or you can join the Resistance and help us stop the First Order before it's too late." "Where do I sign up?" Poe asked. — Greg Rucka

There can be no law of nature, no science,
No aberrant infliction of human will
That unchained the soul cannot conquer,
Simply sweep away, should it chose to. — Scott Hastie

if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. To — George Orwell

Lottie strode to the center of the study and stared at Gentry expectantly. She made her manner brisk. "When shall we leave?"
Gentry emerged from the corner. She saw from the flicker in his eyes that he had half-expected her to change her mind after speaking with Westcliff. Now that her choice had been reaffirmed, there was no turning back.
"Now," he said softly.
Her lips parted in the beginnings of an objection. Gentry intended to sweep her away without allowing any opportunity to say good-bye to anyone in the household, not even Lady Westcliff. On the other hand, it would be easier for her to simply disappear without having to explain anything to anyone. "Isn't it rather dangerous to travel at night?" she asked, then quickly answered her own question. "Never mind. If we met with a highwayman, I would probably be safer with him than you."
Gentry grinned suddenly. "You may be right."
-Lottie & Nick — Lisa Kleypas

Obstinate are the trammels, but my heart aches when I try to break them. Freedom is all I want, but to hope for it I feel ashamed. I am certain that priceless wealth is in thee, and that thou art my best friend, but I have not the heart to sweep away the tinsel that fills my room.
The shroud that covers me is a shroud of dust and death; I hate it, yet hug it in love. My debts are large, my failures great, my shame secret and heavy; yet when I come to ask for my good, I quake in fear lest my prayer be granted. — Rabindranath Tagore

Demanding yet denying the human condition makes for an explosive contradiction. And explode it does, as you and I know. And we live in an age of conflagration: it only needs the rising birth rate to worsen the food shortage, it only needs the newly born to fear living a little more than dying, and for the torrent of violence to sweep away all the barriers. In Algeria and Angola, Europeans are massacred on sight. This is the age of the boomerang, the third stage of violence: it flies right back at us, it strikes us and, once again, we have no idea what hit us. — Frantz Fanon

Memories, they are the cobwebs of the mind.You can try and sweep them away, but it seems as if some trace always remains.. — Kelly Creagh

Set men up to rule their fellow-men, to treat them as mere soulless material with which they may deal as they please, and the consequence is that you sweep away every moral landmark and turn this world into a place of selfish striving, hopeless confusion, trickery and violence, a mere scrambling ground for the strongest or the most cunning or the most numerous. — Auberon Herbert

The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred it replaces old prejudices with new one. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expressions off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits. What began as a crusade for civility has soured into a cause of conflict and even censorship. — George H. W. Bush

No, It does. And if I left, you'd probably want to give me my jacket back. And if you did, I wouldn't be able to put it on, because the whole time I'd be knowing how perfectly it fit on you. How even though the sleeves are ridiculously too long and the collar is all fucked up and for all I know some guy named Salvatore is going to come in this very club and say, 'Hey, that's my jacket' and strike up a conversation and sweep you off your feet away from me- even though all those things are true or possibly true, I just can't ruin the image of you sitting there across from me wearing my jacket better than I, or anyone else could. If I don't owe it to you, and I don't owe it to me, I at least owe it Salvatore. — David Levithan

A person has three choices in life. You can swim against the tide and get exhausted, or you can tread water and let the tide sweep you away, or you can swim with the tide, and let it take you where it wants you to go. — Andrew Schneider

You cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you. — Stephen King

Let the night take you. Let the stars evaporate into your dreams. Let sleep be the only comfort for you to believe. — Anthony Liccione

What was the use trying to make safe and sure our little life? Sooner or later the great wave must come and sweep all away. — Erich Maria Remarque

He had walked on the beach and wished for icy winds to sweep away everything that sounded like mere linguistic habit, a malicious kind of habit that prevented thinking by producing the illusion that it had already taken place and found its conclusion in the hollow words. — Pascal Mercier

You are inhuman brutes determined to rob us of our spiritual consolations and sweep away the moral foundations of our civilization, and on the other: You are obscurantist ignoramuses who'd like to shut down progress and drag us all back to the 16th century, with kings and priests telling us what to think. — John Derbyshire

There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention- that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary- the sunshine, the memories, the future,- which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life. — Joseph Conrad

Water never waits. It changes shape and floes around things, and finds the secret paths no one else thought about the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of a box. There's no doubt it's the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth, it can put out fire; it can wear a piece of metal down and can sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can'survive without being nurtured by water. — Arthur Golden

Waiting for the winds of change to sweep the clouds away. Waiting for the rainbow's end to cast its gold your way ... You don't get something for nothing. You can't have freedom for free — Neil Peart

I was struck, as always, that a heathen poet from long ago should know so much of the human heart, and how little that heart changes, though great cities fall and new dispensations sweep away the old and pagan creeds. — Geraldine Brooks

Poetry, Painting & Music, the three Powers in man of conversing with Paradise, which the flood did not sweep away. — William Blake

We all traverse in and out of people's worlds, leaving footprints. Some larger, some smaller, but there is always a mark. We can't sweep it away. — Krista Ritchie

Before getting to my mother's house, I would always think of her on the porch or even on the street, sweeping. She had a light way of sweeping, as if removing the dirt were not as important as moving the broom over the ground. Her way of sweeping was symbolic; so airy, so fragile, with a broom she tried to sweep away all the horrors, all the loneliness, all the misery that had accompanied her all her life ... — Reinaldo Arenas

We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.There isnot a crime, there isnot a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away. — Joseph Pulitzer

That was the thing about water under a bridge. It could get caught up in a bunch of debris, or it could sweep everything away, leaving nothing behind; it all depended on the ferocity of the storm. — Megan Hart

I do not think that one should demand that love be forever. Perhaps it is better that it not be forever. How can one answer for more than the moment? Who knows what strange tides may sweep us away? What depths there may be, or twists and turns and shallows? Each life sails a separate course, although sometimes, and this is the best of times, two lives may move along together until the end of time. — Louis L'Amour

You are a good person, and something terrible happened to you. Forgive yourself for the rage, the bitterness. It's all right to feel that, but if you push it down, sweep it away, it will only grow. Look at it. Confront it. Love it, even. It's the only way you will survive this. At least, that's the only way the good in you will survive." The — Colleen Halverson

That's life for you. All the happiness you gather to yourself, it will sweep away like it's nothing. If you ask me I don't think there are any such things as curses. I think there is only life. That's enough. — Junot Diaz

Oh the benison of it, she thought, for she seemed to need comfort now, not only because she was tired after the journey and far away from John, but because she had admitted to herself that she loved him, had let her love sweep over her like a kind of illness, 'giving in' to flu, conscious only of the present moment. — Barbara Pym

It's only his thumb brushing slowly across the lower edge of my lip, but it's as if time slows and the sweep of that thumb below my mouth takes forever. It is no spell that I know of, but it holds such magic, I can scarcely breath. He pulls his hand away fast, aware of what he's done. But his touch lingers. — Libba Bray

I wept for relationships not possible due to denial and dreams locked in the back of people's minds, all of the bits of life that lay dormant until the babblings of televisions and nursing homes sweep them away. It makes me wonder how many of the dreams we had originally have already been forgotten. — Christopher Hawke

Like a snowplow in overdrive, a supernova shockwave might sweep away any gas clouds in its path. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Practical life teaches us that people may differ and that both may be wrong: it also teaches us that people may differ and both be right. Anchor yourself fast in the latter faith, or the former will sweep your heart away. — Augustus William Hare