Tail Set Quotes & Sayings

She set you down on the floor and you started ranging around, picking things up, pulling my cats tail- you screamed like a banshee when the cat scratched you, so I asked your mother if you were part banshee. She didn't laugh.
-Magnus to Clary, pg.228- — Cassandra Clare

Haven't you noticed that you tend to understand a person a lot better when you're in direct contact than you do over the phone? Then you make use of the words 'what do you mean?' or a lot less. This is because a great deal of context is lost when you're having a verbal-only conversation, and a lot more is lost when you engage in a text only conversation. We — Jack Steel

I suppose we were worn down and shivering. Three a.m. is a mean spirited hour. I suppose we were drenched, with the cold hose water trickling in at our collars and settling down at the tail of our shirts. Without doubt the heavy brass couplings felt moulded from metal-ice. Probably the open roar of the pumps drowned the petulant buzz of the raiders above, and certainly the ubiquitous fire-glow made an orange stage-set of the streets. Black water would have puddled the city alleys and I suppose our hands and faces were black as the water. Black with hacking about among the burnt-up rafters. These things were an every-night nonentity. They happened and they were not forgotten because they were not even remembered. — William Sansom

I don't think any president that I worked with has ever said 'pretty please.' — Robert M. Gates

From behind a wooden crate we saw a long black-muzzled nose poking round at us. We took him out-soft, wobbly, tearful; set him down on his four, as yet not quite simultaneous legs, and regarded him. He wandered a little round our legs, neither wagging his tail nor licking at our hands; then he looked up, and my companion said: "He's an angel!" — John Galsworthy

The effective prayers are affirmations. — James Redfield

For when we fail to see that our life is change, we set ourselves against ourselves and become like Ouroboros, the misguided snake, who tries to eat his own tail. Ouroboros is the perennial symbol of all vicious circles, of every attempt to split our being asunder and make one part conquer the other. — Alan W. Watts

Reagan was president. He had the authority to end the infighting, set policy, and advance American interests in the Middle East. Before him was a clear choice; Shultz arguing for engagement, Weinberger for disengagement. Engagement would likely have involved the use of military force; disengagement offered the comfort of a casualty-free retreat. In the post-Vietnam era, for this president, at this time, disengagement made more sense. He still talked a good game, but when it was time for a decision, he punted. "In the weeks immediately after the bombing," he later wrote, "I believed the last thing we should do was turn tail and leave."58 And yet, fearful of another Vietnam, he waited a few months and then pulled the remaining marines out of Beirut. According to McFarlane many years later, his decision opened the door to the terrorism that has plagued the region and the world ever since. "I am convinced we could have stopped it then, just as it was starting, but Reagan chose not to. — Marvin Kalb

I forgive 'Face in the Crowd' its uneven tone because it's precisely what makes it feel unlike other Kazan movies. — Peyton Reed

A traveller must have the back of an ass to bear all, a tongue like the tail of a dog to flatter all, the mouth of a hog to eat what is set before him, the ear of a merchant to hear all and say nothing. — Thomas Nashe

Look, nobody's trying to kill me right now and that's just fine. If they don't
like me, that's just how it goes. I got over needing people to LIKE me in tenth
grade, when I spied the captain of the cheerleading squad on her knees in
front of the offensive line of the football team under the bleachers, one day after school. I figured that wasn't the life for me. — MaryJanice Davidson

This is a difficult question, because it is quite impossible to say how time does wear on in the Neverland, where it is calculated by moons and suns, and there are ever so many more of them than on the mainland. — J.M. Barrie

We may smile and the dog may wag the tail, but in essence, we have a set program and those programs are similar across individuals in the species. — Antonio Damasio

Red, orange and green geometric designs painted its body as well as the flimsy collar around its neck. The creature flicked its tail and blinked its deep-set eyes, apparently oblivious to their presence.
"That's a yraglian lizards," Deven whispered. "We need to stay back. They smell really bad if you upset them. I mean, really, really bad."
Dirck nodded, unsurprised that the first native creature he encountered on Cyraria represented it so well. — Marcha A. Fox

Can you feel it? Something just changed. I believe that's the sound the world makes when it pisses itself. — Brandon Sanderson

If you take a bale of hay and tie it to the tail of a mule and then strike a match and set the bale of hay on fire, and if you then compare the energy expended shortly thereafter by the mule with the energy expended by yourself in the striking of the match, you will understand the concept of amplification. — William Shockley

Beowulf's picture was far more elaborate than those of his siblings, and it did need a bit more work coloring in the background, but the gist of it was on full, frightening view. In the sky: a full moon, its eerie glow partially obscured by dark, swirling clouds. In the foreground: the dense, ferny undergrowth of a forest, bordered by a few gnarled tree trunks rising upward. In the center of the page: an old woman, wrapped in a cloak. Her mouth hung open in a leering smile, and her teeth were large and razor sharp, with a prominent set of gleaming white incisors. From the back of her shroudlike garments poked a long, wolfish tail. Cassiopeia and Alexander clapped and barked with admiration, but Penelope's skin went cold. — Maryrose Wood

She unwrapped the blanket when she came in my door. You were inside it. She set you down on the floor and you started ranging around, picking things up, pulling my cat's tail - you screamed like a banshee when the cat scratched you, so I asked your mother if you were part banshee. She didn't laugh. — Cassandra Clare

Then - as he was talking - a set of tail-lights going past lit up McMurphy's face, and the windshield reflected an expression that was allowed only because he figured it'd be too dark for anybody in the car to see, dreadfully tired and strained and frantic, like there wasn't enough time left for something he had to do ... — Ken Kesey

Slowly the pale
dew-beads of light
lapped up from flowers
can thicken,
darken to gold:
honey of the human. — Denise Levertov

The shadow's potential to destroy is undeniable. Lightning might strike a house and set it ablaze. But harness the electricity and the same house can be illuminated with the turn of a switch. Consider a vaccine. Included in the serum is a small amount of the disease. Light needs the dark. It is the order of the universe. What would thaw in the spring if we didn't have a winter to endure? Consciousness is conditioned against its absence, Jung wrote. Amputate the serpent's tail and the power to heal lies within. Anna — Jill Alexander Essbaum

JAMES HALE sat at a side-street noodle-stall. The stall was set-up underneath the shade of a row of fruit trees. He watched a pair of pigeons courting beneath a fig tree. The male's tail feathers were pushed up in self-promotion and his plumage was arrogantly puffed up. He danced his elaborate dance of love. The female didn't look impressed. She turned her back to him. Birds were like gangster rappers, Hale thought. They sang songs about how tough they were and how many other birds they'd nested. They were egomaniacs with inferiority complexes. Posers in a leafy street. The bastards flew at the first sign of danger. They couldn't make it on the ground. Hale hated birds with their merry chirps and their flimsy nests. Tweet. Tweet. Fucking. Tweet. The only thing Hale admired about them was the fact that they could fly. That would be cool. Right now, flying would be good. — James A. Newman

I work a lot, and not just in Las Vegas. — Juice Newton

TAIL, n. The part of an animal's spine that has transcended its natural limitations to set up an independent existence in a world of its own. — Ambrose Bierce

Bad kitty!" he screeched, snarling and baring his fangs at Grimalkin, who yawned and turned away to groom his tail. "Evil, evil, sneaky kitty! Bite your head off in your sleep, I will! Hang you by your toes and set you on fire! Burn, Burn!"
-Razor — Julie Kagawa

I realize this is blasphemy, but a few weeks ago I tried to watch a NASCAR race being run at Talladega. I lasted about five minutes before terminal boredom overtook me. It appeared to be nothing more than a high-speed freeway commute
a mob of luridly painted, identical lumps of metal loping at 180 mph around the banking, fender to fender, nose to tail. Knowing the scenario would surely devolve into a multicar demolition derby that would thrill the goobers in the grandstands, I turned off the set to later learn that this time it was Jimmie Johnson who triggered the eight-car melee. — Brock Yates

Gould's sunbird landed on the crown of a nearby hemlock. In the brilliant mountain light, its burgundy mantle and back set off its bright yellow rump and belly, highlighted by a long blue tail. The Buddhists say that attachment to beauty is one of the false perceptions humans hold. We, however, suspended Mincha's Buddhist instruction at such moments and wallowed in our attachment. Over — Eric Dinerstein

I even read aloud the part of the novel I had rewritten, which is about as low as a writer can get and much more dangerous for him than glacier skiing unroped before the full winter snowfall has set over the crevices.
When they said, 'It's great, Ernest. Truly, it's great. You cannot know the thing it has, I wagged my tail in pleasure and plunged into the fiesta concept of life to see if I could not bring some attractive stick back, instead of thinking, 'If these bastards like it what is wrong with it?' That was what I would think if I had been functioning as a professional although, if I had been functioning as a professional, I would never have read it to them. — Ernest Hemingway,

I set my monkey on the log, and ordered him to do the Dog. He wagged his tail and shook his head, and he went and did the Cat instead. — Bob Dylan

For me a house or an apartment becomes a home when you add one set of four legs, a happy tail, and that indescribable measure of love that we call a dog. — Roger A. Caras

It only takes a few politicians to stoke division, or a few demagogues encouraging hatred to set your kind upon one another. And then before you know it, you have a whole nation biting on its own tail, going round and round until there is nothing left but the snapping of teeth. — Paolo Bacigalupi

No man as godly as George, the only fault he finds with God is that he made folk with too few orifices. If George could meet a woman with a quinny under her armpit, he would call out 'Glory be' and set her up in a house and visit her every day, until the novelty wore off. Nothing is forbidden to George, you see. He'd go to it with a terrier bitch if she wagged her tail at him and said bow-wow.'
For once he is struck silent. He knows he will never get it out of his mind, the picture of George in a hairy grapple with a little ratting dog. — Hilary Mantel

Monkeys"
"You can buy cooler, more humdrum pets
a monkey deprived of his mother in the cradle
feels the want of her affection so keenly
he either pines away or masters you
by literally hanging on your neck
no ounce of your patience or courage is misplaced;
the worst is his air of boredom and neglect,
manifested in tail-chewing and fur plucking.
The whole species is vulnerable to killing colds,
likes straw, hay or bits of a torn blanket,
a floortray thinly covered with sawdust,
they need trapezes, shelves, old rubber tires
any string or beam will do to set them swinging
these charming youngsters tend to sour with age — Robert Lowell

Ordinary philosophy is like a hound hunting his own tail. The more he hunts the farther he has to go, and his nose never catches up with his heels, because it is forever ahead of them. So the present is already a foregone conclusion, and I am ever too late to understand it...The truth is that we travel on a journey that was accomplished before we set out; and the real end of philosophy is accomplished, not when we arrive at, but when we remain in, our destination (being already there) - which may occur vicariously in this life when we cease our intellectual questioning — Benjamin Paul Blood

The happiest life has the greatest number of points of contact with the world, and it has the deepest feeling and sympathy with everything that is. — Liberty Hyde Bailey

He set Lori on the bed. "You were the only wolf that chased my tail around, trying to grab hold. No other cub would dare. — Terry Spear