The Rose Society Quotes & Sayings

Either to die the death or to abjure
For ever the society of men.
Therefore, fair Hermia, question your desires;
Know of your youth, examine well your blood,
Whether, if you yield not to your father's choice,
You can endure the livery of a nun,
For aye to be in shady cloister mew'd,
To live a barren sister all your life,
Chanting faint hymns to the cold fruitless moon.
Thrice-blessed they that master so their blood,
To undergo such maiden pilgrimage;
But earthlier happy is the rose distill'd,
Than that which withering on the virgin thorn
Grows, lives and dies in single blessedness. — William Shakespeare

For a fleeting moment, I imagine that if I were queen, I could make the act of hurting malfettos a crime. I could execute this boy's pursuers with a single command. — Marie Lu

Vogue began to focus on the body as much as on the clothes, in part because there was little they could dictate with the anarchic styles ... In a stunning move, an entire replacement culture was developed by naming a 'problem' where it had scarcely existed before, centering it on the women's natural state, and elevating it to the existential female dilemma ... The number of diet-related articles rose 70 percent from 1968 to 1972 ... The lucrative 'transfer of guilt' was resurrected just in time. — Naomi Wolf

[Father Dmitry] lived through collectivization, the crushing of the 80 percent of Russians that were peasants. He served as a soldier in World War Two, when millions of peasants died defending the government that had crushed them. He spent eight years in the gulag, the network of labour camps created to break the spirit of anyone who still resisted. He rose again to speak out for his parishioners in the 1960's and 1970's, striving to help young Russians create a freer and fairer society. — Oliver Bullough

Every day in the United States, seventeen children are killed by gunfire. That's about 6,000 children each year who are killed by guns, as compared, for example, with about 3,000 a year who died at the height of the polio epidemic of the 1950s. We rose up as a society to fight against polio. Why do we not act more forcefully to halt today's even greater scourge? — Jimmy Carter

Human society is ninety percent muck that won't disperse to the appropriate location that's why I chose the profession of plumber. — Rose Tremain

They tell me that you have been crying in your sleep. Do not grieve our separation, my love, for our reunion will come just as swiftly.
-Letter from unknown prisoner, convicted of treason, to fiancee — Marie Lu

I have always swung back and forth between alienation and relatedness. As a child, I would run away from the beatings, from the obscene words, and always knew that if I could run far enough, then any leaf, any insect, any bird, any breeze could bring me to my true home. I knew I did not belong among people. Whatever they hated about me was a human thing; the nonhuman world has always loved me. I can't remember when it was otherwise. But I have been emotionally crippled by this. There is nothing romantic about being young and angry, or even about turning that anger into art. I go through the motions of living in society, but never feel a part of it. When my family threw me away, every human on earth did likewise. — Wendy Rose

I pledge myself to the Rose Society until the end of my days, to use my eyes to see all that happens, my tongue to woo other to our side, my ears to hear every secret, my hands to crush my enemies. I will do everything in my power to destroy all who stand in my way. — Marie Lu

If we will not be mar-plots with our miserable interferences, the work, the society, letters, arts, science, religion of men would go on far better than now, and the heaven predicted from the beginning of the world, and still predicted from the bottom of the heart, would organize itself, as do now the rose, and the air, and the sun. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was tired of rewriting my opinion of the Society. I was tired of wondering what Rose would wish me to do. I was tired of constantly wondering if I had made the right choice, if I even had a choice, or if I was being manipulated at every turn. — Tarun Shanker

Why feel guilty for something that isn't your fault?
Because I loved him. And now he is gone. — Marie Lu

None of it was your fault, the whispers in my head argue. You didn't kill him, after all
it was not your blade that ended his life. So why are you the one cast out? You didn't have to return to the Daggers
you didn't need to help them rescue Raffaele. And still they turned on you. Why does everyone forget your good intentions, Adelina? — Marie Lu

If our courts lose their authority and their rulings are no longer respected, there will be no one left to resolve the divisive issues that can rip the social fabric apart ... The courts are a safety valve without which no democratic society can survive. — Rose Bird

Sometimes a choppy wave would swamp me, and after I rose gasping I would vomit the foul-tasting water, wiping the sea from my eyes and nostrils. Then I regained my posture to do battle, again with the Solent. — Stephen Richards

By firm immutable immortal laws Impress'd on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE,
Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife
Organic forms, and kindled into life;
How Love and Sympathy with potent charm
Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm;
Allure with pleasures, and alarm with pains,
And bind Society in golden chains. — Erasmus Darwin

Everything in this life passes away - only God remains, only He is worth struggling towards. We have a choice: to follow the way of this world, of the society that surrounds us, and thereby find ourselves outside of God; or to choose the way of life, to choose God Who calls us and for Whom our heart is searching. — Seraphim Rose

I think most artists feel like they're outside society - no matter how many accolades they receive, or how much money is in your bank account, whatever is going on in your life on the professional side. — Aaron Rose

A pledge," I say again. "To drive fear into those who will confront us."
Violetta hesitates - only for a moment. "To bind us together."
"I pledge myself to the Rose Society," I begin. "Until the end of my days." One by one, the others call out the same thing, murmurs at first that turn into firm words.
"To use my eyes to see all that happens," says Sergio.
"My tongue to woo others to our side," says Magiano, with his savage smile.
"My ears to hear every secret," Violetta continues.
"My hands," I finish. "To crush my enemies."
"I will do everything in my power to destroy all who stand in my way." Right now, what I want is the throne. Enzo's power. A perfect revenge. And all the Inquisitors, queens, and Daggers in the world won't be able to stop me. — Marie Lu

Instead, power went to those who made things happen: businessmen and local magistrates. Over time, human nature being what it is, these men would create a kind of nobility, sometimes even buying titles from cash-poor foreigners, but this in itself underscores the point. Upward mobility was part of the Dutch character: if you worked hard and were smart, you rose in stature. Today that is a byword of a healthy society; in the seventeenth century it was weird. — Russell Shorto

I go through the motions of living in society — Wendy Rose

In this moment, I am a god. — Marie Lu

Early on, America took one path and went down the advertising road, and in the UK they founded the BBC and developed a different kind of public broadcasting. There was a point where TV was so beholden to commercial interest that people - civil society - actually rose up and said, "This is ridiculous: we have our soap-selling soap operas, cigarette-sponsored news broadcast; we have our rigged quiz shows - let's put some checks and balances here." — Astra Taylor

We have hardly an adequate idea how all-powerful law is in forming public opinion, in giving tone and character to the mass of society. — Ernestine Rose

Once upon a time, a girl had a father, a prince, a society of friends. Then they betrayed her, so she destroyed them all. — Marie Lu

The role of the press and the protections which we afford it are today more important than ever before, because we dwell in a society where belief in our governments and in the strength of our institutions is declining. — Rose Bird

There is no society that protects freedom of religion more than secular democracies, because in societies where one religion rules, different viewpoints will be labelled as heresy and blasphemy. Why? Because the society is built on religion - not freedom for all points of view. — Flemming Rose

All warfare has its source in this conflict of wills. Before the satanic will rose up to contradict the divine will, there was no war in the universe. The controversy in the universe began with the rebellion of the archangel against God. That rebellion was the beginning of all the fighting that is now taking place among nations, in society, in the family, and in individuals. — Witness Lee

Sometimes milestones are not measured by the accomplishments of society, but by those of integrity. — Tamara Rose Blodgett

One of the insights of the Victorian Revival was that it was not necessarily a good thing for everyone to read a completely different newspaper in the morning; so the higher one rose in the society, the more similar one's Times became to one's peers'. — Neal Stephenson

I'm thinking about Enzo, the way he used to be. The hard look in his eyes as he trained me, and then the vulnerability I saw in him whenever we were alone. I don't need to push Sergio to know that Raffaele had asked Enzo to kill him, just as he did to me. Enzo had spared us both. He had been such a strong leader, such a natural crown prince. He would have been an admirable king. — Marie Lu

The potential for loss of soul
to one degree or another
is the affliction of a society that as a collective has lost its sense of the holy, of a culture that values everything else above the spiritual. We live in such a spiritually impoverished culture
and in such a time. Loss of soul, to one degree or another, is a constant teasing possibility. We are invited at every corner to hedge on the truth, indulge outselves, act as if our words and actions have no ultimate consequence, make an absolute of the material world, and treat the spiritual world as if it were some kind of frothy, angelic fantasy. In such a world the soul struggles for survival; in such a world a man can lose his own soul and have the whole culture support him, and in such a world, conversely, the light of a single, great soul that lives in integrity can truly illumine the world. — Daphne Rose Kingma

The cartoonists treated Islam the same way they treat Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other religions. And by treating Muslims in Denmark as equals they made a point we are integrating you into the Danish tradition of satire because you are part of our society, not strangers. The cartoons are including, rather than excluding, Muslims. — Flemming Rose

Rules governing defecation, hygiene, and pollution exist in every culture at every period in history. It may in fact be the foundation of civilization: What is toilet training if not the first attempt to turn a child into an acceptable member of society? — Rose George

We lie and we are lied to, and the best liars - the ones who don't even see it as lying - get the business cards and the corner offices and the fancy clothes some other liar tricked them into thinking they needed. At least it used to bother people that the liars and
frauds and phonies rose to the top, the citizens expressed concern that shit floated. Today we put the shit on magazine covers, laud its buoyancy, and anxiously wait to buy the shit's best-selling business book about how you can float your shit, too. — Shalom Auslander

We are drawn to stories," he says in a soft voice, "and every scar carries one. — Marie Lu

Anyone who says that economic security is a human right, has been to much babied. While he babbles, other men are risking and losing their lives to protect him. They are fighting the sea, fighting the land, fighting disease and insects and weather and space and time, for him, while he chatters that all men have a right to security and that some pagan god - Society, The State, The Government, The Commune - must give it to them. Let the fighting men stop fighting this inhuman earth for one hour, and he will learn how much security there is. — Rose Wilder Lane

Carry out the republican principle of universal suffrage, or strike it from your banners and substitute 'Freedom and Power to one half of society, and Submission and Slavery to the other.' — Ernestine Rose

The more legal and material hindrances women have broken through, the more strictly and heavily and cruelly images of female beauty have come to weigh upon us ... During the past decade, women breached the power structure; meanwhile, eating disorders rose exponentially and cosmetic surgery became the fastest-growing specialty ... pornography became the main media category, ahead of legitimate films and records combined, and thirty-three thousand American women told researchers that they would rather lose ten to fifteen pounds than achieve any other goal ... More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we may actually be worse off than our unliberated grandmothers. — Naomi Wolf

There is a city myth that country life was isolated and lonely; the truth is that farmers and their families then had a richer social life than they have now. They enjoyed a society organic, satisfying and whole, not mixed and thinned with the life of town, city and nation as it now is. — Rose Wilder Lane

Custer was a child once. He didn't spend his childhood killing Indians and stealing their homeland. Nero didn't spend his childhood burning Rome to the ground. Everybody was a child once. No child was born hating the world around him. You had to learn that trait. You had to pick it up from the worst pockets of the universe, the filthiest recesses of society, where the people who learned it before you deposited it when they were done. — Rose Christo

So the idea was that, some catastrophic event had happened. There was a long dark age and then out of that, 100 years ago in this world, seven barons - these men and women - rose up and formed the new society. It's a feudal world, a part feudal barons and part warlord and part mob boss and they each control a huge resource so that there's an uneasy alliance, but they all need each other. — Alfred Gough

Enzo's eyes flick back to me. He does not ask if I will be okay. His silent approval makes me stand taller. — Marie Lu

The best way to rise in society is to use all possible means of persuading people that one has already risen in society. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld