Quotes & Sayings About Sweeping

Vampires are sexy to a woman perhaps because the fantasy is similar to that of the man on the white horse sweeping her off to paradise. — Frank Langella

We like recovery stories to move quickly through the dark so we can get to the sweeping redemptive ending. I worry that this lack of honest accounts of overcoming adversity has created a Gilded Age of Failure. — Brene Brown

There's a transparency revolution sweeping the world. The more you can have transparency of payments, the more you'll be able to follow the money and the more you'll be able to see that payments for mineral rights in poor countries actually go to the people who need it, and don't get put into a kleptocrat's pocket. Transparency is terribly important for us. — Michael Elliott

Enough of thought, philosopher!
Too long hast thou been dreaming
Unlightened, in this chamber drear,
While summer's sun is beaming!
Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain
Concludes thy musings once again? — Emily Bronte

Perhaps in the world's destruction it would be possible at last to see how it was made. Oceans, mountains. The ponderous counterspectacle of things ceasing to be. The sweeping waste, hydroptic and coldly secular. The silence. — Cormac McCarthy

A broom is drearily sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterday's life. — Jimi Hendrix

Anger is sweeping the country! Tea bags from sea to shining sea! Voters everywhere exploding from frustration!" "Why?" "Because the facts don't support their beliefs. — Tim Dorsey

A sweeping statement is the only statement worth listening to. The critic without faith gives balanced opinions, usually about second-rate writers. — Patrick Kavanagh

All sweeping assertions are erroneous. — Letitia Elizabeth Landon

Heaven has its business and earth has its business: those are two separate things. Heaven, that's the angels' pasture; they are happy; they don't have to fret about food and drink. And you can be sure that they have black angels to do the heavy work like laundering the clouds or sweeping the rain and cleaning the sun after a storm, while the white angels sing like nightingales all day long or blow in those little trumpets like they show in the pictures we see in church. — Jacques Roumain

(About sweeping) ...
What he was in FACT doing was moving the dirt around with a broom, to give it a change of scenery and a chance to make new friends. — Terry Pratchett

What I wanted was for them to have a grand, sweeping narrative that they deserved, the kind of American history that belongs to the Wright Brothers and the astronauts, to Alexander Hamilton and Martin Luther King Jr. Not told as a separate history, but as part of the story we all know. Not at the margins, but at the very center, the protagonists of the drama. And not just because they are black, or because they are women, but because they are part of the American epic. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Confronted with the truly microscopic, all loftiness is hopeless, completely meaningless. The diminutive of the parts is more impressive than the monumentality of the whole. I no longer have any use for the sweeping gestures of heroes on the global stage. I'm going for a walk. — Joseph Roth

A high upland common was this moor, two miles from end to end, and full of furze and bracken. There were no trees and not a house, nothing but a line of telegraph poles following the road, sweeping with rigidity from north to south; nailed upon one of them a small scarlet notice to stonethrowers was prominent as a wound. On so high and wide a region as Shag Moor the wind always blew, or if it did not quite blow there was a cool activity in the air. The furze was always green and growing, and, taking no account of seasons, often golden. Here in summer solitude lounged and snoozed; at other times, as now, it shivered and looked sinister. ("The Higgler") — A.E. Coppard

Americans did not acquire their fear neurosis as the result of a traumatic experience - war devasting their country, pestilence sweeping the land, famine wiping out helpless millions. Americans had to be taught to hate and fear an unseen enemy. The teachers were men in official positions, in government, men whom Americans normally trust without question. — Martha Gellhorn

I shook my head, sweeping my lips across hers. Not good enough. "I need to hear you say it. I need to know you're mine."
"I've been yours since the second we
met," she said, begging. I stared into her eyes for a few seconds, and then felt my mouth turn up into a half smile, hoping her words were true and not just spoken in the moment. I leaned down and kissed her tenderly, and then she slowly pulled me into her. My entire body felt like it was melting inside of her.
"Say it again." Part of me couldn't believe it was all really happening.
"I'm yours." She breathed. "I don't ever want to be apart from you again."
"Promise me," I said, groaning with another thrust.
"I love you. I'll love you forever." She looked straight into my eyes when she spoke, and it finally clicked that her words weren't just an empty promise. — Jamie McGuire

So when one adjusts for population size, the availability bias, and historical myopia, it is far from clear that the 20th century was the bloodiest in history. Sweeping that dogma out of the way is the first step in understanding the historical trajectory of war. — Steven Pinker

I can't tell you what I look like. I look in the mirror and see
nothing but space. Space reflecting space, that's what the
mirror shows. It figures because Grandmamma said I was
nothing but dirt. Dirt under her feet she'd say. Dirt she needed
to keep kicking out of the way. Grandmamma said I wasn't
sweeping-up kind of dirt; I was the kind of dirt you needed to
kick and scrape off the bottom of your shoes. — Jan Fink

After a moment, his father looked up from the list and surveyed her. "Well done, Champion. Well done indeed."
Then Celaena and the King of Adarlan smiled at each other, and it was the most terrifying thing Dorian had ever seen.
"Tell my exchequer to give you double last month's payment," the king said. Dorian felt his gorge rise- not just for the severed head and her blood- stiffened clothing, but also for the fact that he could not, for the life of him, find the girl had loved anywhere in her face. And from Chaol's expression, he knew his friend felt the same.
Celaena bowed dramatically to the king, flourishing a hand before her. Then, with a smile devoid of any warmth, she stared down Chaol before stalking from the room, her dark cape sweeping behind her.
Silence. — Sarah J. Maas

Some day we will try
To do as many things as are possible
And perhaps we shall succeed at a handful
Of them, but this will not have anything
To do with what is promised today, our
Landscape sweeping out from us to disappear
On the horizon. — John Ashbery

Today humankind has broken the law of the jungle. There is at last real peace, and not just absence of war. For most polities, there is no plausible scenario leading to full-scale conflict within one year. What could lead to war between Germany and France next year? Or between China and Japan? Or between Brazil and Argentina? Some minor border clash might occur, but only a truly apocalyptic scenario could result in an old-fashioned full-scale war between Brazil and Argentina in 2014, with Argentinian armoured divisions sweeping to the gates of Rio, and Brazilian carpet-bombers pulverising the neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires. Such wars might still erupt between several pairs of states, e.g. between Israel and Syria, Ethiopia and Eritrea, or the USA and Iran, but these are only the exceptions that prove the rule. — Yuval Noah Harari

When I was 13, I had my first job with my dad carrying shingles up to the roof. And then I got a job washing dishes at a restaurant. And then I got a job in a grocery store deli. And then I got a job in a factory sweeping Cheerio dust off the ground. — Ashton Kutcher

What business needs now is exactly what women are able to provide, and at the very time when women are surging into the work force. But perhaps even more important than work force numbers is the fact that women
who began this sweeping entry in the mid-seventies
are just now beginning to assume positions of leadership, which give them the scope to create and reinforce the trends toward change. The confluence is fortunate, an alignment that gives women unique opportunities to assist in the continuing transformation of the workplace ... — Sally Helgesen

O'Kelly's disregard for cliche is so sweeping that it almost has its own panache. I find this entertaining or irritating or mildly comforting, depending on my mood, but at least it makes it very easy to prepare your script in advance. — Tana French

It's good to raise awareness that men and boys are struggling, at least many of them are. But why say men are finished? It's too harsh, too sweeping, and it happens to not be true. — Christina Hoff Sommers

It's funny the things people say when someone dies.
He's in a better place.
How do you know that?
Life goes on.
That's supposed to comfort me? I'm excruciatingly aware that life goes on. It hurts every damned second. How lovely to know it's going to continue like this. Thank you for reminding me.
Time heals.
No, it doesn't. At best, time is the great leveler, sweeping us all into coffins. We find ways to distract ourselves from the pain. Time is neither scalpel nor bandage. It is indifferent. Scar tissue isn't a good thing. It's merely the wound's other face. — Karen Marie Moning

Punk gave me the strength to think, "Yeah, you can stand up and be counted, and do what you want in life, and not be hoodwinked by it all," in a simple, very general sweeping way. — Steve Diggle

When you hear a large symphony orchestra. for instance, in a concert hall, there's a big, sweeping sound that just doesn't get on to a record. — Teddy Wilson

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work. — Debbie Allen

Feeling the Wind in Your Hair

The peak of the cliff sits tantalizingly close. Your hands rest on your knees as you gasp, willing more oxygen into your lungs. You look back with pride down the way you've come. Just a little farther and you'll be there. Your energy now partially restored, you step on and on. The light wind lifts the closer you get to the peak. A plateau soon falls away abruptly down to the sea, and the sweeping air collects and whips into your face. The view is sublime but the payoff comes as you stand--arms stretched wide in triumph--with your eyes closed as the raging wind buffets your face. This wind, collected and grown above oceans, flitting and crashing its way across the waves, finally reaches the shore and clasps itself around you in a fleeting embrace. The crack of its passing meets your ears and slowly it absorbs you--a streaming current of air caressing your rejoicing face. — Dan Kieran

- so as the great Achilles rampaged on, his sharp-hoofed stallions
trampled shields and corpses, axle under his chariot splashed
with blood, blood on the handrails sweeping round the car,
sprays of blood shooting up from the stallions' hoofs
and churning, whirling rims - and the son of Peleus
charioteering on to seize his glory, bloody filth
splattering both strong arms, Achilles' invincible arms - — Homer

The Grecian's maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer. — Charles Caleb Colton

Men demand much more than you think," she would tell her enigmatically. "There's a lot of cooking, a lot of sweeping, a lot of suffering over little things beyond what you think. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Come, evening, once again, season of peace;
Return, sweet evening, and continue long!
Methinks I see thee in the streaky west,
With matron step, slow moving, while the night
Treads on thy sweeping train; one hand employ'd
In letting fall the curtain of repose
On bird and beast, the other charged for man
With sweet oblivion of the cares of day. — William Cowper

The characteristic of vision. That great sweeping act of imagination which evoked a marvelous park, where children pressed against the fences, wondering at the extraordinary creatures, come alive from their storybooks. Real vision. The ability to see the future. The ability to marshal resources to make that future vision a reality. — Michael Crichton

A modern man may disapprove of some of his sweeping reforms, and approve others; but finds it difficult not to admire even where he does not approve. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Bringing up teenagers is like sweeping back ocean waves with a frazzled broom-the inundation of outside influences never stops. Whatever the lure-cars, easy money, cigarettes, drugs, booze, sex, crime-much that glitters along the shore has a thousand times the appeal of a parent's lecture. — Mary Ellen Snodgrass

Mountain with a sweeping view of the mountain range. Under starlight, — J.L. Bryan

Norman is a very up-close, personal, character drama and I'd like to do something more zoomed out, a little more pastoral, some sweeping epic. I'd like to try something different. — Andrew Bird

A mighty wind of resolution sets in strong upon him and freshens the whole atmosphere of his soul, sweeping down before it the light flakes of difficulty, till they vanish like snow upon the sea. He is imprisoned no more in a small compartment of time, but belongs to an eternity which is now and here. The isolation of his separate spirit passes away; and with the countless multitude of souls akin to God, he is but a wave of his unbounded deep. He is at one with Heaven, and hath found the secret place of the Almighty. — James Martineau

Loud wind, strong wind, sweeping o'er the mountains,
Fresh wind, free wind, blowing from the sea,
Pour forth thy vials like streams from airy mountains,
Draughts of life to me. — Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

Few boys have been as fortunate as I, raised into manhood with only the gentlest of words and blandishments in my ears and the kindest of caresses upon my person, by a mother who sheltered us from everything that is harsh and ugly in this world. I was spoiled, utterly unprepared for cruelty, and perhaps this sounds like I'm complaining, but I'm not! You mustn't think I blame you. I'm afraid I must sound like the most ungrateful son in the world, when in fact the opposite is true. I am more grateful now than ever for the way you raised us, teaching us the value of kindness, of education, of independent thinking and liberal ideals, in the face of the fascism that is sweeping our country. The cruelest punishments now fail to bring even a tear to my eye, but the thought of the hardship you've suffered on behalf of your ideals makes me weep like a baby. — Ruth Ozeki

Children provide us with a necessary gut check. They challenge the distorted value systems that inhibit us from loving well. They are God-given reminders of life as it's meant to be. Don't hinder the little children. Let them come to me. Jesus sweeping children up into his embrace is also an invitation - no, a command - to welcome them into ours as well. The children will be the better for it. And so will we. — Scott Sauls

There is only silence. A hollow silence for victors and losers all.
I am empty.
What do I do now? There was always a fear, always a concern, always a reason to hoard weapons and food, always a quest or trial. Now, nothing. Just the wind sweeping in over our battlefield. An empty battlefield filled only with echoes of things lost and learned. Friends. Lessons. Soon it will be a memory. I feel like a lover has died. I yearn to cry. Feel hollow. Adrift. I look for Mustang. Will she still care for me? — Pierce Brown

A sudden wind thrashed the treetops in the garden, sweeping down from the east. — Steven Erikson

Wind now Sweeping over my Bare Back
I wish I could wrap up the glitter star-green of this moment and hand it to you like an angel gift.
Give you the heat lightning flying in jagged silence over the distant mountains. And the smell of September prairie grass and the even fainter scent of October pine now descending ...
Give you the invisible sage wind whisking past your cheeks. And the cricket quartets and frog symphonies that play near the creek's edge.
To collect these sensations like a scientist of the soul and give them to you in their finest hour of coincidence and destiny. — Carew Papritz

Men mistook measurement for understanding. And they always had to put themselves at the center of everything. That was their greatest conceit. The earth is becoming warmer-it must be our fault! The mountain is destroying us-we have not propitiated the gods! It rains too much, it rains too little-a comfort to think that these things are somehow connected to our behavior, that if only we lived a little better, a little more frugally, our virtue would be rewarded. But here was nature, sweeping toward him-unknowable, all-conquering, indifferent-and he saw in her fires the futility of human pretensions. — Robert Harris

Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s, so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this. — Peter Agre

I think there are crossroads in our lives when we make grand, sweeping decisions without even realizing it. — Jodi Picoult

I'm a starving child trying to stuff my stomach, gorging my senses on the decadence of these moments as if I'll wake up in the morning and realize I'm still sweeping cinders for my stepmother.But then Adam's lips press against my head and my worries put on a fancy dress and pretend to be something else for a while. — Tahereh Mafi

If we're sweeping up the station with a dustpan and brush, just when we've finished, someone will flick a cigarette butt or a piece of litter right on the spot where we've cleaned. There are too many self-assertive people out there. — No One

The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it - once you can honestly say, 'I don't know', then it becomes possible to get at the truth. — Robert A. Heinlein

Ethan groaned. "To business already, Sentinel? So much for, 'Good morning, Liege. I love you, Liege.'" He managed a remarkably bad imitation of my voice, then feigned sweeping hair over his shoulder. "I don't do that." "You do," he said, grinning. "But my larger point still stands." I rolled my eyes but sat up, sheet strategically around my breasts, and smiled at him. "Good morning, Liege," I said in a husky voice. "I love you, Liege." "That's more like it," he said. — Chloe Neill

I'm a California girl, right? I grew up with that farm-to-table dining before it was sweeping the nation. — Meghan Markle

Due to the sweeping time frame and the voices moving back and forth, the outline for 'The Invention of Wings' was the strangest one I've ever done. I created six large, separate outlines, one for each part of the book, and hung them around my study. — Sue Monk Kidd

If with a sweeping heart I sow firstly this seeds,
If too dearly deeds I give arms long,
That will make tomorrow a better day to gift infancy's years the sunshine song,
For none cause, then has a better bottom than smiles of youth, — Mpho Leteng

I could hear hundreds of elves sweeping out my head with their tiny brooms. They kept sweeping and sweeping. It never occurred to any of them to use a dustpan. — Haruki Murakami

The old exhortations to nationalist fervor and jingoist pride have begun to lose their appeal. Perhaps because of rising standards of living, children are being treated better worldwide. In only a few decades, sweeping global changes have begun to move in precisely the directions needed for human survival. A new consciousness is developing which recognizes that we are one species. — Carl Sagan

It is not only prayer that gives God glory but work. Smitting on an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses, sweeping, scouring, everything gives God some glory if being in his grace you do it as your duty. To go to communion worthily gives God great glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a sloppail, give him glory too. He is so great that all things give him glory if you mean they should. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

His room was still and very quiet, insulated by sound building and oak boards from the jabber of the dissenting voices below. He unlatched the window in the seaward wall and forced it open with both hands against the blast of the gale. the wind rushed into the room swirling the bed cover into folds, sweeping the papers from his desk and rustling the pages of his bedside Jane Austen like a giant hand. It took his breath away so that he leaned gasping against the window ledge, welcoming the sting of spray on his face and tasting the salt drying on his lips. When he closed the window the silence seemed absolute. The thundering surf receded and faded like the far-away moaning on another shore. — P.D. James

Come forward.
Come in from the summer heat and the flies. Come in from that assault on all senses, that pummelling of rod and cone and drum and cilia. Come in from the great spotlight of the sun, sweeping across the white sands, making everyone, and therefore no one, a star.

Come inside and meet the prologue. — Catherynne M Valente

Moffat's prose is fine: clear and steady, with just enough sweeping statements about destiny and dragons to keep things well inflated. The characters are appealing archetypes: Fernwen the scholarly dwarf is the everynerd, doing his best to live through the adventure. Telemach Half-Blood is the hero you wish you could be. He always has a plan, always has a solution, always has secret allies that he can call upon - pirates and sorcerers whose allegiance he earn with long-ago sacrifices. — Robin Sloan

The vast majority of us don't want to face the fact that we're in the middle of a sweeping social revolution. In sex. In spiritual values. In opposition to wars no one wants. In opposition to government big-brotherhood. In civil rights. In basic human goals. They're all facets of a general upheaval. — Johnny Carson

Recreation in the open is of the finest grade. The moral benefits are all positive. The individual with any soul cannot live long in the presence of towering mountains or sweeping plains without getting a little of the high moral standard of Nature infused into his being ... with eyes opened, the great story of the Earth's forming, the history of a tree, the life of a flower or the activities of some small animal will all unfold themselves to the recreationist ... — Arthur Carhart

The palimpsests of molecules need not be overwritten, for machines make once-ephemeral words persist: they collect in gutters; they pile up and require sweeping; they hang in air like morning fog. — Dexter Palmer

I could feel everything. From the tragic cellos, to the tender sounds of the piano giving awe to my touch. My body slowly swayed to the sweet feel of the air sweeping over me. I felt myself being taken away as the hearts of my fans soared with me. — Charles Lee

It is up to us to organize the people. As for the reactionaries in China, it is up to us to organize the people to overthrow them. Everything reactionary is the same; if you do not hit it, it will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself. — Mao Zedong

Whether they'll write the story of my life as a tragedy or an epic fantasy ... I was wondering if it was going to be a kiss at the end, or sad music and a sweeping camera shot over the fields I once roamed freely. I'm hoping for the kiss, but expecting the sweeping camera shot. — Maggie Stiefvater

It was an aspiring neighbourhood that retained a faint edge of slum, typical of Shanghai. Pensioners in Mao-era padded jackets would sit on doorsteps playing mah-jong, oblivious to the Prada-clad girls sweeping past on their way to work. — Hyeonseo Lee

And I try sweeping it all one side — Yesenia Vargas

The whole point of the Eugenic pseudo-scientific theories is that they are to be applied wholesale, by some more sweeping and generalizing money power than the individual husband or wife or household. Eugenics asserts that all men must be so stupid that they cannot manage their own affairs; and also so clever that they can manage each other's. — G.K. Chesterton

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women's History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.
Half the world is full of women, but it's rare to hear a narrative that doesn't speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man's daughter. A man's wife. — Kameron Hurley

From paradise to paradise I go sweeping; collecting rocks & views; owning nothing but what I feel. — Alice Walker

I believe that the supreme duty of the historian is to write history, that is to say, to attempt to record in one sweeping sequence the greater events and movements that have swayed the destinies of man. — Steven Runciman

As I've submerged myself in news of the revolutions sweeping North Africa and the Middle East, I wanted desperately to feel part of what was going on. And then it hit me: This is what white people were doing to me after Obama was elected! — Baratunde Thurston

His lips covered hers swiftly, his tongue taking advantage of her gasp and sweeping in commandingly. He had asked for the caress earlier that morning, now he demanded. He conquered, he licked and stroked her tongue and gloried in her instant, if hesitant, response. She was shy. Wary. She wouldn't give in to the heat pulsing between them easily. But she was curious enough about it to allow the kiss. — Lora Leigh

I turned, gaze sweeping the restaurant until I'd zeroed in on my sweet yellow Lab all crouched under a table, chewing on a shiny gold stiletto a diner had slipped off her foot. — Alyson Noel

Every election matters. Anyone that tells you otherwise doesn't understand politics. That said, not every election sends sweeping messages that are easy to discern, but every election provides lessons worth learning. — Chuck Todd

She slapped his shoulder. "You... you go down to breakfast, Gram. I'll be there as soon as I shower and dress."
"Have you been exercising? You sound out of breath."
Creighton buried his face in a pillow, his body shaking with laughter.
Gram knocked on the door. "Do you have a man in there with you?"
"No, Gram..."
He pushed himself off the pillow and sat, his large hands sweeping dark hair away from his face. "Aye, she bloody well does."
Clapping sounded from the other side of the door followed by Gram's bellowing "Born to be Wild. — Vonnie Davis

I will continue to show openly and inside me the total commitment to the Sharia movement that is sweeping all over Nigeria God willing, we will not stop the agitation for the total implementation of the Sharia in the country. — Muhammadu Buhari

You can call me, Tyler, Miss Dandridge." "That would hardly be appropriate, Mr. Atherton. I do see, however, you are a soldier." "Yes, ma'am. A lieutenant in the Texas Third Cavalry." Tyler's gaze never left Hannah's. William felt a strange sense of jealousy wash over him when Hannah offered Tyler a smile. "Then perhaps you would allow me to call you . . . Lieutenant." Tyler laughed and gave a sweeping bow. "You can call me anything, ma'am, so long as it ain't late to the dinner table." His men laughed, as well, and even Hannah appeared amused. — Tracie Peterson

Why was it given to Darwin, less ambitious, less imaginative, and less learned than many of his colleagues, to discover the theory sought after by others so assiduously? How did it come about that one so limited intellectually and insensitive culturally should have devised a theory so massive in structure and sweeping in significance? — Robert Wright

Things will be different this time," Caine said. "There was too much contention, too much violence the last time. I tried to be a peaceful leader. But thing went badly."
"I wonder why," Diana muttered.
"These people," Caine said grandly, sweeping his arm towards the town, "need more than a leader. They need ... a king. — Michael Grant

A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement. Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. I — Charlotte Bronte

Time is a river sweeping away all that is born towards the darkest shore. — Felix J. Palma

Do you remember that piece of footage on the local news, just as the first tower comes down, woman runs in off the street into a store, just gets the door closed behind her, and here comes this terrible black billowing, ash, debris, sweeping through the streets, gale force past the window ... that was the moment, Maxi. Not when 'everything changed.' When everything was revealed. No grand Zen illumination, but a rush of blackness and death. Showing us exactly what we've become, what we've been all the time."
"And what we've always been is ... ?"
"Is living on borrowed time. Getting away cheap. Never caring about who's paying for it, who's starving somewhere else all jammed together so we can have cheap food, a house, a yard in the burbs ... planetwide, more every day, the payback keeps gathering. And meantime the only help we get from the media is boo hoo the innocent dead. Boo fuckin hoo. You know what? All the dead are innocent. There's no uninnocent dead. — Thomas Pynchon

The subject of Prison Discipline is one of the highest importance to any community; and that in her sweeping reform and bright example to other countries on this head, America has shown great wisdom, great benevolence, and exalted policy. In contrasting her system with that which we have modelled upon it, I merely seek to show that with all its drawbacks, ours has some advantages of its own. — Charles Dickens

I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do or any place I wanted to be more than home. Where I can walk around the yard, sweeping leaves off the slate paths to my heart's content. Where I can spend all day in my pajamas puttering around the house, or curled up in my favorite chair in the family room next to the big stone fireplace. The walls are papered deep red, hung with Madison's paintings and lined with our favorite books. The furniture is comfortable and inviting. Our house is made to be lived in; we use every inch of it and don't mind the signs of wear and tear. There's a deep dent in the floor next to the hearth ... It's part of the story of this house, where a family has left its mark, and where it continues to grow and evolve. — Sissy Spacek

Privacy and pollution are similar problems. Both cause harm that is invisible and pervasive. Both result from exploitation of a resource--whether it is land, water, or information. Both suffer from difficult attribution. It is not easy to identify a single pollutant or a single piece of data that caused harm. Rather, the harm often comes from an accumulation of pollutants, or an assemblage of data. And the harm of both pollution and privacy is collective. No one person bears the burden of all pollution; all of society suffers when the air is dirty and the water undrinkable. Similarly, we all suffer when we live in fear that our data will be used against us by companies trying to exploit us or police officers sweeping us into a lineup. (212-213) — Julia Angwin

Soon he was toiling up a steep slope, the first of three long, sweeping switchbacks that in three miles as the crow flies, and six to follow the road, would finally flatten out onto the top of Eastham Rise, where a hundred and fifty years ago Abraham Vanderzee had donated the land that would one day house the most prestigious research institution in the area. But — Gordon Bonnet

It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Foster, and you will see that no offence so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual
and after all what is an individual?" With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. "We can make a new one with the greatest ease
As many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the lie of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself," he repeated. — Aldous Huxley

On the second and the third night there was again a ball -- this time in mid-ocean, during a furious storm sweeping over the ocean, which roared like a funeral mass and rolled up mountainous seas fringed with mourning silvery foam. The Devil, who from the rocks of Gibraltar, the stony gateway of two worlds, watched the ship vanish into night and storm, could hardly distinguish from behind the snow the innumerable fiery eyes of the ship. The Devil was as huge as a cliff, but the ship was even bigger, a many-storied, many-stacked giant, created by the arrogance of the New Man with his ancient heart. — Ivan Bunin

Strolling down a white-graveled walk to the cliff above the ocean, he let his eyes rove aimlessly over the expanse of sea and sand: The icy-looking whitecaps, the blinking, faraway sails of boats, the sweeping, constantly searching gulls. Desolation. Eternal, infinite. Like Dostoevski's conception of eternity, a fly circling about a privy, the few signs of life only emphasized the loneliness. — Jim Thompson

Cinderella was made for more than sweeping the floor. — Beth Moore Jones

When I moved to Beijing in 2005 to write, I was accustomed to hearing the story of China's transformation told in vast, sweeping strokes - involving one fifth of humanity and great pivots of politics and economics. — Evan Osnos

Sweeping generalizations are easy, but we are more alike than we are different. Our focus and interests may vary, or not, but to dismiss something as less relevant is a missed opportunity. — Deborah Stanish

In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal. — Camille Paglia

We stand at a moment in history without precedent. Decisions that are ours to make over the next ten years will have a sweeping impact on the future direction of life on the planet. — Eban Goodstein

It's an important part of knight training - sweeping maidens off their feet. — Katie M. John

Every minute can be a holy, sacred minute. Where do you seek the spiritual? You seek the spiritual in every ordinary thing that you do every day. Sweeping the floor, watering the vegetables, and washing the dishes become holy and sacred if mindfulness is there. With mindfulness and concentration, everything becomes spiritual. — Thich Nhat Hanh