Sybil Quotes & Sayings
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Top Sybil Quotes
We seem to be trapped by a civilization that has accelerated many physical aspects of evolution but has forgotten that other vital part of man
his mind and his psyche. — Sybil Leek
The hostess extended her swanlike neck and opened her mouth to the fullest. "Aaaahhhaaaahhhhheeeeaaaahhhh!"
Somewhere in the depths of the pine forest an identical sound reverberated.
"An echo!" exclaimed Frannie.
"No," smiled Helena. "Sybil Manigault. She's into nature. — Armistead Maupin
Nevertheless, it bothered Vimes, even though he'd got really good at the noises and would go up against any man in his rendition of the HRUUUGH! But is this a book for a city kid? When would he ever hear these noises? In the city, the only sound those animals would make was "sizzle." But the nursery was full of the conspiracy with bah-lambs and teddy bears and fluffy ducklings everywhere he looked.
One evening, after a trying day, he'd tried the Vimes street version:
Where's my daddy?
Is that my daddy?
He goes "Bugrit! Millennium hand and shrimp!"
He is Foul Ol' Ron!
No, that's not my daddy!
It had been going really well when Vimes heard a meaningful little cough from the doorway, wherein stood Sybil. Next day, Young Sam, with a child's unerring instinct for this sort of thing, said "Buglit!" to Purity. And that, although Sybil never raised the subject even when they were alone, was that. From then on Sam stuck rigidly to the authorized version. — Terry Pratchett
It seems to me that the orthodox religions always know more about the Devil than I do and can describe him in more detail, and if I hadn't a nice type of mind I'd begin to wonder what company they keep when the moon rides high in the sky and good witches are doing simple little incantations and asking for spiritual guidance. — Sybil Leek
My second play, Yellow Fever, which came out at the Repertory Theatre a few months later was produced by Lewis Casson, the husband of Sybil Thorndyke, who was at that time the producer of the old Repertory Theatre in Glasgow. He is an extraordinarily interesting man, quite apart from the theatre. I believe he invented the first poison gas projector to be used on the Somme. — Dot Allan
I let you sleep, Sam," said Lady Sybil. "You didn't get in this morning until after three."
"Everyone's double-shifting, dear," said Sam, daring Carrot and Sally to even think about telling anyone they'd seen the boss wearing a blue shawl covered in ducks. "I've got to set a good example."
"I'm sure you intend to, Sam, but you look like a horrible warning," said Sybil. — Terry Pratchett
Sam Vimes, I've dreamed of visiting Koom Valley all my life, so don't you think for one moment you're gallivanting off to see it and leave me at home!" "I don't gallivant! I've never gallivanted. I don't know how to vant! I don't even have a galli! But there's going to be a war there soon!" "Then I shall tell them we're not involved!" said Sybil calmly. "That won't work!" "Then it won't work in Ankh-Morpork, either," said Sybil, — Terry Pratchett
When a poem says something that could not have been said in any other way, in music, prose, sculpture, movement or paint, then it is poetry. — Sybil Marshall
There was an apology from the ax-wielding Hermione, but according to her mother she was detained in the woods dealing with a very large and troublesome Pinus, which caused Vimes's face to go blank until Sybil nudged him and pointed out that the pinus strobus was the official name for the white pine. But — Terry Pratchett
Sybil's female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars. The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel. — Terry Pratchett
It's like that, isn't it? Just as Raymond Chandler says, 'The first kiss is dynamite, the second is routine and then you take her clothes off,' It had been like that for Alan in his previous affairs, even the extended one he had had with Sybil while Naomi was pregnant. Sure, Alan went on enjoying sex with Sybil, but at a fundamental level his lust for her had died the very first time he felt the shock of her pubic bone against his, and knew that they were now truly welded into one another. Alan was a one-thrust man. Not that he'd ever been exactly promiscuous. Perhaps it would have been better for all concerned if he had been. Rather, his sentiment self-absorption had managed to gild each of these terminal thrusts with enough self-regarding burnish for him to sustain the 'relationships' that legitimised them for months; and in at least two instances, for years. — Will Self
I felt that way not because I never once discovered any palpable hard young throat to crush among the masculine mutes that flickered somewhere in the background; but because it was to me "overwhelmingly obvious" (a favorite expression with my aunt Sybil) that all varieties of high school boys - from the perspiring nincompoop whom "holding hands" thrills, to the self-sufficient rapist with pustules and a souped-up car - equally bored my sophisticated young mistress. — Vladimir Nabokov
The first episodes I actually read for 'Downton,' Sybil was really intimidated and hadn't come into her own. So it's only in Series Two that she's become so headstrong. In general, I find it exciting to play strong, female roles because they're shocking. — Jessica Brown Findlay
I want to see your dreams," he explained. "I want to share them with you, and have you share mine as well. I don't want them hidden in a book. I want them lived together, even - no, especially--when that's hard. — Sybil Shae
I was thinking of the Cumaean Sybil, who lived for a thousand years, so long that she shrank and was put in an urn. Eliot quoted it as epigraph for 'The Waste Land,' from Petronius Arbiter's Satyricon, 'For once I saw with my own eyes the Cumaean Sibyl hanging in a jar. When the boys asked her, "Sibyl, what do you want?" she said, "I want to die. — Lauren Groff
Nowdays it is the fashion to admire loudest what one understands least. - Mr Bingley — Sybil G. Brinton
Sybil tells me your little festival is an annual occurrence," she said, the cadence of her voice swooning like a lullaby.
"Yes," Kai said, lifting a shrimp wonton between his chopsticks. "It falls on the ninth full moon if each year."
"Ah, how lovely for you to base your holidays on the cycles of my planet."
Kai wanted to scoff at the word planet but sucked it back down his throat. — Marissa Meyer
Seated in a car full of women, squashed between his six-foot landlady and Sybil Underwood, having to listen to them talk nonstop all the way to Atlanta and back, was too much for him to bear. — Fannie Flagg
Let me get this straight. First you decide I'm a demon because of a power I didn't ask for and don't even understand. Then when that falls through you label me a fallen sybil and a ho. Am I missing something or do you just not like me — Karen Chance
Sybil, vulgarity is no substitute for wit. — Julian Fellowes
Will there never be an end that also has a beginning? Will there never be continuity bridging the awful void between now and some other time, a time in the future, a time in the past? — Flora Rheta Schreiber
To my surprise, I had not just doodled, I had prayed (I drew new shapes and names of each friend and focused on the person whose name stared at me from the paper). I had though OF each person as I drew but not ABOUT each person. I could just sit with them in a variation on stillness. I could hold them in prayer. — Sybil MacBeth
Hen someone says "please pray for me," they are not just saying "let's have lunch sometime." They are issuing an invitation into the depths of their lives and their humanity- and often with some urgency. And worry is not a substitute for prayer. Worry is a starting place, but not a staying place. Worry invites me into prayer. As a staying place, worry can be self-indulgent, paralyzing, draining, and controlling. When I take worry into prayer, it doesn't disappear, but it becomes smaller. — Sybil MacBeth
And, incidentally, tomato ketchup is not a vegetable." Sybil added. "Not even the dried stuff around the top of the bottle. — Terry Pratchett
Since words elude me when I need them most, I learned long ago that I cannot count on QUALITY time with God when I want to pray. I need QUANTITY and regularity. Quality is not something I can predict. My husband, Andy, and I might schedule an elaborate evening out with candles and a gourmet meal, but there is no guarantee that we'll have a wonderful time together
chopping onions peppers die by side in the kitchen, reading together on the couch, sitting on the front step watching our sons ride bikes, and making plans for our life together. — Sybil MacBeth
Sybil entered, with a plate.
"You're not eating enough, Sam," she announced. "And the canteen here is a disgrace. It's all grease and garbage!"
"That's what the men like, I'm afraid," said Vimes guiltily.
"I've cleaned out the tar in the tea urn, at least," Sybil went on, with satisfaction.
"You cleaned out the tar urn?" said Vimes in a hollow voice. It was like being told that someone had wiped the patina off a fine old work of art.
"Yes, it was like tar in there. There really wasn't much proper food in the store, but I managed to make you a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich."
"Thank you, dear." Vimes cautiously lifted a corner of the bread with his broken pencil. There seemed to be too much lettuce, which is to say, there was some lettuce. — Terry Pratchett
There is no past. Past is present when you carry it with you. — Flora Rheta Schreiber
I want Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D played at my funeral. If it isn't I shall jolly well want to know why. — Sybil Thorndike
For years afterward, I had dreams in which my mother appeared in strange forms, her features sewn onto other beings in combinations that seemed both grotesque and profound: as a slippery white fish at the end of my hook, with a trout's gaping, sorrowful mouth and her dark, shuttered eyes; as the elm tree at the edge of our property, its ragged clumps of tarnished gold leaves replaced by knotted skeins of her black hair; as the lame gray dog that lived on the Mueller's property, whose mouth, her mouth, opened and closed in yearning and who never made a sound. As I grew older, I came to realize that death had been easy for my mother; to fear death, you must first have something to tether you to life. But she had not. It was as if she had been preparing for her death the entire time I knew her. One day she was alive; the next, not.
And as Sybil said, she was lucky. For what more could we presume to ask from death - but kindness? — Hanya Yanagihara
Sarsaparilla boiled for one of Sybil's tonics, overpowering the aroma of the roasting meat. Cora — Colson Whitehead
Sybil and Nancy leaned over to catch a glimpse of the sun sparkling on the muddy waters of the River Plate. The skyscrapers stood proudly in clumps and Sybil assumed that the patches of green were parks. In no time the plane was screeching to a halt and they had arrived in Buenos Aires. — Phyllis Goodwin
Discipline means choices. Every time you say yes to a goal or objective, you say no to many more. — Sybil Stanton
Yea, she hath passed hereby, and blessed the sheaves,
And the great garths, and stacks, and quiet farms,
And all the tawny, and the crimson leaves.
Yea, she hath passed with poppies in her arms,
Under the star of dusk, through stealing mist,
And blessed the earth, and gone, while no man wist.
With slow, reluctant feet, and weary eyes,
And eye-lids heavy with the coming sleep,
With small breasts lifted up in stress of sighs,
She passed, as shadows pass, among the sheep;
While the earth dreamed, and only I was ware
Of that faint fragrance blown from her soft hair.
The land lay steeped in peace of silent dreams;
There was no sound amid the sacred boughs.
Nor any mournful music in her streams:
Only I saw the shadow on her brows,
Only I knew her for the yearly slain,
And wept, and weep until she come again. — Frederic Manning
I had learned to respect the intelligence, integrity, creativity and capacity for deep thought and hard work latent somewhere in every child. they had learned that I differed from them only in years and experience, and that as I, an ordinary human being, loved and respected them, I expected payment in kind. — Sybil Marshall
As a prayer popper, I stay in touch with God. I send lots of spiritual postcards. Little bits and bytes of adoration, supplication, and information attached prayer darts speed in God's direction all day long. — Sybil MacBeth
All human beings have magic in them. The secret is to know how to use this magic ... — Sybil Leek
Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days. — Flora Rheta Schreiber
It's only people who are hysterical who can play hysterical parts. — Sybil Thorndike
We don't want bores in the theatre. We don't want standardised acting, standard actors with standard-shaped legs. Acting needs everybody, cripples, dwarfs and people with noses so long. Give us something that is different. — Sybil Thorndike
So what do you think?' He asked, holding up the book.
'I think Salinger is a closet paedophile,' I replied placidly and was surprised and comforted by this minuscule, acidic, bitter Sylvia Plath like mocking, sniping tone that had crept into my voice. 'The main character Seymour is a fully grown man and a pervert who befriends young girls with his storytelling and swimming, just to get close enough to groom them in preparation for the inevitable sexual assault he lusts after. You might have noticed for example in A Perfect Day For Bananafish he grabs the young girls-'
'Sybil.'
'He grabs Sybil's ankles while lying on the beach and again when he pushes her in the water,' I continued. 'He goes too far when he kisses the bottom of her foot which makes even a four-year-old yell out in fear, knowing a line had been crossed. Frustrated Seymour walks away and goes back to his hotel where he kills himself in shame. — J.D. Gallagher
Most of you have been where I am tonight. The crash site of unrequited love. You ask yourself, How did I get here? What was it about? Was it her smile? Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrists? What are these elusive and ephemeral things that ignite passion in the human heart? That's an age-old question. It's perfect food for thought on a bright midsummer's night. — Sybil Adelman
Corridor. Cress screamed and collapsed onto the ground. "Jacin, we are about to have company," said Sybil, ignoring Cress's sobs. "Separate yourself from this satellite, but stay close enough to have good visual without drawing suspicion. When an Earthen ship draws close, they will likely release one podship - wait until the pilot has boarded this satellite and then rejoin us using the opposite — Marissa Meyer
The U.S.A. has become a nation of determined spectators, willing to watch someone else perform. — Sybil Leek
By journey's end the brides were much better acquainted with their grooms and more or less pleased with the matches. Sybil Bingham wrote in her diary, thanking God for answering her prayer for filling "the void" with a husband like Hiram, a "treasure rich and undeserved." Having read his insufferable memoir, "A Residence of Twenty-one Years in the Sandwich Islands", all I can say is: I'm happy for her? — Sarah Vowell
Obsessions and fixations are not really my field. All I know, when the mind really grabs hold of something, look out. — Sybil Adelman
I was brought up in a clergyman's household so I am a first-class liar. — Sybil Thorndike
For Love...Real Love...The Kind Of Love That Lasts Forever... — Sybil Shae
Silk stockings. With garters. Well, they were out. There were a lot of things he'd do for Sybil, but if garters figured anywhere in the relationship they weren't going to be on him. — Terry Pratchett
He had a notebook. He took notes in it. It was always useful. And them Sybil, gods bless her, had brought him this fifteen-function imp which did so many other things, although as far as he could see at least ten of its functions consisted of apologizing for its inefficiency in the other five. — Terry Pratchett
I don't believe in God. Not with my mind. Not with my sense. I believe in what you can see and feel and hear and know. But sometimes a mood comes over me when all of life seems mysterious. The seasons. Things that grow. The different ways to be a person. My dreams. — Sybil Claiborne
Sybil's my wife, and on the first day of October, that's the first time I knew Ross was going to run. — James Stockdale
I've been wanting to kiss ye since the first moment I saw ye," he said. "I'm going to do it now."
Sybil could not breathe, let alone form the words to object. When she moistened her lips with her tongue, she felt his heartbeat leap beneath her palm. Her gaze fixed on his mouth as he drew her to him ever so slowly.
She had expected a sweet, teasing kiss, not this explosion of passion that seared through her body at the first touch of their lips. No one had ever kissed her like this before, as if he would die if he could not have his mouth on hers. With a will of their own, her arms wound around his neck and her fingers tangled in his long, thick hair as she pulled him closer.
She was lost in the sensations and long past thought. As his kisses slowly changed from feverish to tender, she felt as if she were floating. She wanted this to go on forever.
When Rory pulled away, she stared up at him, stunned.
"That was promising," he said with a wide grin. — Margaret Mallory
What would you rather?" yelled Sybil from the distant sandpit. "Know everything or know nothing?"
"Know nothing," I yelled back. "Then you have the fun of finding everything out. — Martin Amis
I used to worry about losing my husband to another woman. Now, I'm more afraid of losing my nanny to another woman. — Sybil Adelman
And then you rushed off afterward because of that business with the barber in Gleam Street." "Sweeney Jones," said Vimes. "Well, he was killing people, Sybil. The best you could say is that he didn't mean to. He was just very bad at shaving - — Terry Pratchett
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. (friend who is a priest said regarding prayer) — Sybil MacBeth
Where do you think they've gone?' he said.
'Where what?' said Lady Ramkin, temporarily halted.
'The dragons. You know. Errol and his wi - female.'
'Oh, somewhere isolated and rocky, I should imagine,' said Lady Ramkin. 'Favourite country for dragons.'
'But it - she's a magical animal,' said Vimes. 'What'll happen when the magic goes away?'
Lady Ramkin gave him a shy smile.
'Most people seem to manage,' she said.
She reached across the table and touched his hand. — Terry Pratchett
The dwarfs were staring at Lady Sybil as she changed up through the gears into full, operatic voice. For an amateur soprano she had an impressive delivery and range, a touch too wobbly for the professional stage but exactly the kind of high coloratura to impress the dwarfs. Snow — Terry Pratchett
My mother giving birth to me was just like Lady Sybil giving birth, except that there wasn't such a tragic ending. — Jack Whitehall
They will be the architects of my fate, I think to myself, despite what Sybil said about my being the author of my own destiny. — Kim White
[When asked if she had ever considered divorcing Sir Lewis Casson:] Divorce? Never. But murder often! — Sybil Thorndike
He always says that,' muttered Vimes as the two men hurried down the stairs. 'He knows I don't like being married to a duchess.'
'I thought you and Lady Sybil-'
'Oh, being married to Sybil is fine, fine,' said Vimes hurriedly. 'It's just the duchess bit I don't like. — Terry Pratchett
There was no point in arguing with Sybil, because even if you thought that you'd won, it would turn out, by some magic unavailable to husbands, that you had, in fact, been totally misinformed. — Terry Pratchett
Education must have an end in view, for it is not an end in itself. — Sybil Marshall
When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true but just put on, I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. — Flora Rheta Schreiber
The art of presenting oneself, he had once told Sybil, lies in creating an immediate shock which is countered by a slow retreat into custom. People never quite recover from my cravats, but they will never find the equal of my tailor. To be memorable is all, when it comes to dress. — Timothy Findley
My emotions locked, as I saw her lipstick lying on the table and grabbed it, saying, "Yes, yes," as I bent to write furiously across her belly in drunken inspiration:
SYBIL, YOU WERE RAPED
BY
SANTA CLAUS
SURPRISE
and paused there; trembling above her, my knees on the bed as she waited with unsteady expectancy. It was purplish metallic shade of lipstick, and as she panted with anticipation the letters stretched and quivered, up hill and down dale, and she was lit up like a luminescent sign. — Ralph Ellison