The Whole Long Day Quotes & Sayings

With just a little drop of kindness you can water a whole garden. — Heather Wolf

To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book - to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor - to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire - to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower - to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind - to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in - Such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to any thing like analysis or explanation. — Edgar Allan Poe

Our faith is a person; the gospel that we have to preach is a person; and go wherever we may, we have something solid and tangible to preach, for our gospel is a person. If you had asked the twelve Apostles in their day, 'What do you believe in?' they would not have stopped to go round about with a long sermon, but they would have pointed to their Master and they would have said, 'We believe him.' 'But what are your doctrines?' 'There they stand incarnate.' 'But what is your practice?' 'There stands our practice. He is our example.' 'What then do you believe?' Hear the glorious answer of the Apostle Paul, 'We preach Christ crucified.' Our creed, our body of divinity, our whole theology is summed up in the person of Christ Jesus." (Ray Ortlund blog, Christ Is Deeper Still) — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I've never changed my approach to acting. I've always felt like I've gotten better. I think that all of us can get better. I feel like, in my acting, I'm better than I was three pictures ago. I think about it. I'm a slow study. It takes me a long time to grasp the material, in order to perform it. But when I come to the set, on the first day, I know the whole movie. That's why I have to start early. — Kevin Costner

The rishis of old attained the Knowledge of Brahman. One cannot have this so long as there is the slightest trace of worldliness. How hard the rishis laboured ! Early in the morning they would go away from the hermitage, and would spend the whole day in solitude, meditating on Brahman. At night they would return to the hermitage and eat a little fruit or roots. They kept their mind aloof from the objects of sight, hearing, touch, and other things of a worldly nature. Only thus did they realize Brahman as their own inner conciousness. — Ramakrishna

Two free days like an open mouth. They drank beer all day in the sun and passed out, and when she woke, she was burnt all over, and it was sunset, and Lotto had started building something enormous with sand, already four feet high and ten feet long and pointing toward the sea. Woozy, standing, she asked what it was.
He said, 'spiral jetty.'
She said, 'In sand?'
He smiled and said, 'That's its beauty.'
A moment in her bursting open, expanding. She looked at him. She hand't seen it before, but there was something special here. She wanted to tunnel inside him to understand what it was. There was a light under the shyness and youth, a sweetness, a sudden surge of the old hunger in her to take a part of him into her and make him briefly hers.
Instead, she bent and helped, they all did. And deep into the morning, when it was done, they sat in silence, huddled against the cold wind and watched the tide swallow it whole. Everything had changed somehow — Lauren Groff

I remember that winter because it had brought the heaviest snows I had ever seen. Snow had fallen steadily all night long and in the morning I woke in a room filled with light and silence, the whole world seemed to be held in a dream-like stillness. It was a magical day ... and it was on that day I made the Snowman. — Raymond Briggs

Each morning is a new beginning of our life. Each day is a finished whole. The present day marks the boundary of our cares and concerns. It is long enough to find God or lose Him, to keep faith or fall into disgrace. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning — W.S. Merwin

Warm are the still and lucky miles, White shores of longing stretch away, A light of recognition fills The whole great day, and bright The tiny world of lovers' arms. Silence invades the breathing wood Where drowsy limbs a treasure keep, Now greenly falls the learned shade Across the sleeping brows And stirs their secret to a smile. Restored! Returned! The lost are borne On seas of shipwreck home at last: See! In a fire of praising burns The dry dumb past, and we Our life-day long shall part no more. — W. H. Auden

The age seems sore from excess of stimulation, just as a day or two after a thorough Debauch and long sustained Drinking-match a man feels all over like a Bruise. Even to admire otherwise than on the whole and where "I admire" is but a synonyme for "I remember, I liked it very much when I was reading it ," is too much an effort, would be too disquieting an emotion! — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Nothing, nothing,
the whole long day, nothing. — Franz Kafka

Do you know how much I love you sweetness?" she shook her head no, "I love you the whole world and then some."
"And for how long will you love me Yash?"
"I promise to love you for forever and a day. — Racheal Lachman

Yakov spent the whole day playing his fiddle; when it got completely dark, he took the notebook in which he recorded his losses daily, and out of boredom began adding up the yearly total. It came to over a thousand roubles. This astounded him so much that he flung the abacus to the floor and stamped his feet. Then he picked up the abacus, again clicked away for a long time, and sighed deeply and tensely. His face was purple and wet with sweat. He thought that if he could have put that lost thousand roubles in the bank, he would have earned at least forty roubles a year in interest. And therefore those forty roubles were a loss. In short, wherever you turned, there was nothing but losses everywhere.
- Rothchild's Fiddle — Anton Chekhov

You know all those bad girls who take off their selendang and put round their neck like fashion-show? One day, when the wind is very strong, the selendang will catch the wind. Then it will swing up and down and then round and round so fast, very fast, until it traps the spirit of the wind. Then it will grow long and thick and wrap itself round and round and round this girl's neck. And then, when the girl cannot breathe, it will swallow her whole. Be careful, girl, be careful how you wear this. — Jinat Rehana Begum

Today there is a pleasant very light haze over the whole sky, and the sea has a misleadingly docile silvered look, as if the substantial wavelets were determined to stroke the rocks as hard as they could without showing any trace of foam. It is a compact radiant complacent sort of sea, very beautiful. There ought to be seals, the waves themselves are almost seals today, but still I scan the water in vain with my long-distance glasses. Enormous yellow-beaked gulls perch on the rocks and stare at me with brilliant glass eyes. A shadow-cormorant skims the glycerine sea. The rocks are thronged with butterflies. The temperature remains high. I wash my clothes and dry them on the lawn. I have been swimming every day
and feel very fit and salty. Still no move from Lizzie, but I am not worried. I feel happy in my silence. If the gods have some treat in store for Lizzie and me, good. If not, also good. I feel innocent and free. Perhaps it is all that swimming. — Iris Murdoch

The man of control is the man of repression. He goes on repressing, and because he goes on repressing, he goes on accumulating all that is wrong. His whole life becomes a junkyard. Sooner or later, and it is going to be sooner than later, the volcano explodes - because there is only a certain limit you can contain. You repress anger, you repress sex, you repress all kinds of desires, longings - how long can you go on repressing? You can contain only so much, then one day it is more than you can control. It explodes. Your — Osho

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself. — Henry Miller

I have a friend who loves housework. Honest, she loves all housework. All day long she moves from one chore to the next, smiling the whole time. I went over there one day and begged her to tell me her secret. It's simple, she said, right after breakfast you light up a joint. — Gabrielle Burton

Well everybody's got a secret, son, something that they just can't face. Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it, they carry it with them every step that they take Till some day they just cut it loose, cut it loose or let it drag 'em down Where no one asks any questions or looks too long in your face In the darkness on the edge of town. — Bruce Springsteen

Our darling Roberta,
No sorrow shall hurt her
If we can prevent it
Her whole life long.
Her birthday's our fete day,
We'll make it our great day,
And give her our presents
And sing her our song.
May pleasures attend her
And may the Fates send her
The happiest journey
Along her life's way.
With skies bright above her
And dear ones to love her!
Dear Bob! Many happy
Returns of the day! — E. Nesbit

These boys ride the gales in rapture at their own glory. But every now and then, a true storm rises. It shatters their masts and rips the hair from their heads. They do not last long till the sea swallows them whole. But their mothers have wept their deaths long before, as I wept for yours the first day we met." He — Pierce Brown

Until he turned twelve, Nimrod was a shitty person. The kind of whiner that, if he wasn't your best friend, you'd have kicked his ass a long time ago. And then one day, just before his bar mitzvah, they put insoles in his shoes, and suddenly the guy was a whole new human being. — Etgar Keret

My opinion means nothing. It happens every day. The most unlikely people commit the most unlikely crimes. Nice old ladies poison whole families. Clean-cut kids commit multiple holdups and shootings. Bank managers with spotless records going back twenty years are found out to be long-term embezzlers. And successful and popular and supposedly happy novelists get drunk and put their wives in the hospital. We know damn little about what makes even our best friends tick. — Raymond Chandler

God damn there is nothing better tasting in the whole damn world than warm brains when you were shot the hell up, like a cold beer after a long hot day of working in the yard. — Diana Rowland

Just sharing one little smile can change someone's whole world. — Heather Wolf

He can't understand people who long to retire. How can anyone spend their whole life longing for the day when they become superfluous? Wandering about, a burden on society, what sort of man would ever wish for that? Staying at home, waiting to die. Or even worse: waiting for them to come and fetch you and put you in a home. Being dependent on other people to get to the toilet. Ove can't think of anything worse. His wife often teases him, says he's the only man she knows who'd rather be laid out in a coffin than travel in a mobility service van. — Fredrik Backman

Glorious,' said Steerpike, 'is a dictionary word. We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect. In dead and shackled language, my dears, you *are* glorious, but oh, to give vent to a brand new sounds that might convince you of what I really think of you, as you sit there in your purple splendour, side by side! But no, it is impossible. Life is too fleet for onomatopoeia. Dead words defy me. I can make no sound, dear ladies, that is apt.' 'You could try,' said Clarice. 'We aren't busy.' She smoothed the shining fabric of her dress with her long, lifeless fingers. 'Impossible,' replied the youth, rubbing his chin. 'Quite impossible. Only believe in my admiration for your beauty that will one day be recognized by the whole castle. Meanwhile, preserve all dignity and silent power in your twin bosoms. — Mervyn Peake

Destiny
Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours
For one lone soul another lonely soul
Each choosing each through all the weary hours
And meeting strangely at one sudden goal
The blend they, like green leaves with golden flowers
Into one beautiful and perfect whole;
And life's long night is ended, and the way
Lies open onward to eternal day — Dean Koontz

All day long the thoughts that occupy your mind, your Secret Place, as Jesus calls it, are moulding your destiny for good or evil; in fact, the truth is that the whole of our life's experience is but the outer expression of inner thought. Now we can choose the sort of thoughts that we entertain. It will be a little difficult to break a bad habit of thought, but it can be done. We can choose how we shall think - in point of fact, we always do choose - and therefore our lives are just the result of the kind of thoughts we have — Emmet Fox

Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer. — Charles Darwin

Last semester was intense," I said to Dad.

"Intense?" he echoed, picking up my file. "Let's see. On your first day at Hecate, you were attacked by a werewolf. You insulted a teacher, which resulted in semester-long cellar duty with one Archer Cross. According to the notes, the two of you became 'close.' Apparently close enough for you to see the mark of L'Occhio di Dio on his chest.

I flushed at that, and felt Mom's arm tighten around me. Over the past six months, I'd filled her in on a lot of the story with Archer, but not all of it.

Specifically, the whole me-making-out-in-the-cellar-with-a-murderous-warlock-working-with-the-Eye-part. — Rachel Hawkins

The whole point of meditation is not to follow the path laid down by thought to what it considers to be truth, enlightenment or reality. There is no path to truth. The following of any path leads to what thought has already formulated and, however pleasant or satisfying, it is not truth. It is a fallacy to think that a system of meditation, the constant practising of that system in daily life for a few given moments, or the repetition of it during the day, will bring about clarity or understanding. Meditation lies beyond all this and, like love, cannot be cultivated by thought. As long as the thinker exists to meditate, meditation is merely a part of that self-isolation which is the common movement of one's everyday life. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Initially, a simple phrase chased round and round in Cecilia's thoughts: Of course, of course. How had she not seen it? Everything was explained. The whole day, the weeks before, her childhood. A lifetime. It was clear to her now. Why else take so long to choose a dress, or fight over a vase, or find everything so different, or be unable to leave? What had made her so blind, so obtuse? — Ian McEwan

I'm taking this time to create my day and I'm infecting the quantum field. Now if (it) is in fact the observer's watching me the whole time that I'm doing this and there is a spiritual aspect to myself, then show me a sign today that you paid attention to any one of these things that I created, and bring them in a way that I won't expect, so I'm as surprised at my ability to be able to experience these things. And make it so that I have no doubt that it's come from you,' and so I live my life, in a sense, all day long thinking about being a genius or thinking about being the glory and the power of God or thinking about being unconditional love. — Joe Dispenza

A lot of American actors I work with are in character all day long. You can't talk to them. It's Method and the whole thing. — Norman Jewison

Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into."
"You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up. — Franz Kafka

What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those of other things, are his history. These are his life, and they are not written. Everyday would make a whole book of 80,000 words
365 books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man
the biography of the man himself cannot be written. — Mark Twain

My God, I think about way back in the day when we were running around in Mary Janes and Doc Martens, that whole 90210-inspired look. I'm glad that's long gone. — Meghan Markle

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come. — Erich Maria Remarque

I used to love history class. I can still quote whole passages by heart: "When the emperor entered the Hall of Balming Virtue, a violent wind came from a dark corner, and out of it slithered a giant serpent that coiled around the throne. The emperor fainted, and that night earthquakes struck Loyang, and waves swept the shores, and cranes shrieked in the marshes. On the fifth day of the sixth moon a long trail of black mist floated into the Hall of Concubines, and hot and cold became confused, and a hen turned into a rooster, and a woman turned into a man, and flesh fell from the skies." Now, that is grand stuff, just the thing to give to growing boys, and then we were old enough to read the greatest of all historians. This is what Ssu-ma Ch'ien had to say about the exact same subject: "The Chou Dynasty was nearing collapse." Bah. — Barry Hughart

One particular aspect of Siddhartha's revelation of the outside world has always struck me. Quite possibly he lived his first thirty years without any knowledge of number. How must he have felt, then, to see crowds of people mingling in the streets? Before that day he would not have believed that so many people existed in all the world. And what wonder it must have been to discover flocks of birds, and piles of stones, leaves on trees and blades of grass! To suddenly realise that, his whole life long, he had been kept at arm's length from multiplicity. — Daniel Tammet

For years, he said, his life had felt to him like a kind of experiment. The question being, How long could he hold out before the whole thing came crashing down on his head? He'd pictured himself looking back on the present day or week from his jail cell, or while contemplating the grass outside the asylum where surely he was headed. But rather than defeating him, these thoughts had actually fueled Wolf with determination. Fuck it, he'd think, if he had to go down, he sure as hell wasn't going without a fight. — Jennifer Egan

But it is possible, it is possible: the old grief, by a great mystery of human life, gradually passes into quiet, tender joy; instead of young, ebullient blood comes a mild, serene old age: I bless the sun's rising each day and my heart sings to it as before, but now I love its setting even more, its long slanting rays, and with them quiet, mild, tender memories, dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life
and over all is God's truth, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Just one act of kindness can change someone's whole world. — Heather Wolf

Day appears again. This time he leans in close enough for his hair to brush, light as silk, against my cheeks. He pulls me towards for a long kiss. The scene vanishes, replaced abruptly by a stormy night and Day struggling through the rain, blood dripping from his leg and leaving a trail behind him. He collapses onto his knees in front of Razor before the whole scene disappears again. — Marie Lu

When a day passes, it is no longer there. What remains of it? Nothing more than a story. If stories weren't told or books weren't written, man would live like the beasts, only for the day. The whole world, all human life, is one long story. — Isaac Bashevis Singer

But filled with one of those unreasonable exultations which start generally from an unknown cause, and sweep whole countries and skies into their embrace, she walked without seeing. The night was encroaching upon the day. Her ears hummed with the tunes she had played the night before; she sang, and the singing made her walk faster and faster. She did not see distinctly where she was going, the trees and the landscape appearing only as masses of green and blue, with an occasional space of differently coloured sky. Faces of people she had seen last night came before her; she heard their voices; she stopped singing, and began saying things over again or saying things differently, or inventing things that might have been said. The constraint of being among strangers in a long silk dress made it unusually exciting to stride thus alone. — Virginia Woolf

How little wives may realize that a biting, stinging word in the morning will rob a husband of efficiency the whole day long. But a loving, tender, beautiful word - a little prayer word - will fill him with music and will lead him into victory. — Kenneth E. Hagin

What does God do all day long? He gives birth. From the beginning of eternity, God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to all. God is creating this whole universe full and entire in this present moment. — Meister Eckhart

Suffice it to say, during the whole long day I came not to the conclusion, even once, that the southern slave, fed, clothed, whipped and protected by his master, is happier than the free colored citizen of the North. To that conclusion I have never since arrived. — Solomon Northup

The day after the British entered the war Henry James wrote a friend:
The plunge of civilization into this abyss of blood and darkness ... is a thing that so gives away the whole long age during which we have supposed the world to be, with whatever abatement, gradually bettering, that to have to take it all now for what the treacherous years were all the while really making for and meaning is too tragic for any words. — Paul Fussell

The plane that had taken off from Baltimore was caught in bad weather, which meant the Derridas missed their connection at Boston. Derrida found this delay and the whole chaotic journey a real trial. On the flight the following day, he spent the whole time tense and hunched up, clenching his fists tightly. And when Marguerite coaxed him to relax, he replied, furiously: 'Don't you realize that I'm keeping the plane in the air by the sole force of my will?' He was traumatized for a long time, and for several years he refused to get back into a plane. — Benoit Peeters

Time always seems long to the child who is waiting - for Christmas, for next summer, for becoming a grownup: long also when he surrenders his whole soul to each moment of a happy day. — Dag Hammarskjold

I had a good day. For the first time in a very long time, I really did, which is why I almost don't want to wash it away tonight. I like the feel of the salt and the sand on my skin, like a reminder that there is a whole world that's alive and continuing on out there. And that today I was a part of it again. — Jessi Kirby

Relationship is ugly, relating is beautiful. In relationship both persons become blind to each other. Just think, how long has it been since you saw your wife eye to eye? How long has it been since you looked at your husband? Maybe years. Who looks at one's own wife? You have already taken it for granted that you know her; what more is there to look at? You are more interested in strangers than in the people you know - you know the whole topography of their bodies, you know how they respond, you know everything that has happened is going to happen again and again. It is a repetitive circle. It is not so, it is not really so. Nothing ever repeats; everything is new every day. Just your eyes become old, your assumptions become old, your mirror gathers dust and you become incapable of reflecting the other. Hence — Osho

M. He has waited so long-and we all know what torture waiting can be! His whole life is waiting-waiting for the next walk in the open, a waiting that begins as soon as he is rested from the last one. Even his night consists of waiting; for his sleep is distributed throughout the whole
twenty-four hours of the day, with many a little nap on the grass in the garden, the sun shining down warm on his coat, or behind the curtains of his kennel, to break up and shorten the empty spaces of the day. — Thomas Mann

Wherever Europeans or the descendants of European emigrants live, we see Socialism at work to-day; and in Asia it is the banner round which the antagonists of European civilization gather. If the intellectual dominance of Socialism remains unshaken, then in a short time the whole co-operative system of culture which Europe has built up during thousands of years will be shattered. For a socialist order of society is unrealizable. All efforts to realize Socialism lead only to the destruction of society. Factories, mines, and railways will come to a standstill, towns will be deserted. The population of the industrial territories will die out or migrate elsewhere. The farmer will return to the self-sufficiency of the closed, domestic economy. Without private ownership in the means of production there is, in the long run, no production other than a hand-to-mouth production for one's own needs. — Ludwig Von Mises

The minute you land in New Orleans, something wet and dark leaps on you and starts humping you like a swamp dog in heat, and the only way to get that aspect of New Orleans off you is to eat it off. That means beignets and crayfish bisque and jambalaya, it means shrimp remoulade, pecan pie, and red beans with rice, it means elegant pompano au papillote, funky file z'herbes, and raw oysters by the dozen, it means grillades for breakfast, a po' boy with chowchow at bedtime, and tubs of gumbo in between. It is not unusual for a visitor to the city to gain fifteen pounds in a week
yet the alternative is a whole lot worse. If you don't eat day and night, if you don't constantly funnel the indigenous flavors into your bloodstream, then the mystery beast will go right on humping you, and you will feel its sordid presence rubbing against you long after you have left town. In fact, like any sex offender, it can leave permanent psychological scars. — Tom Robbins

I am excessively slothful, and wonderfully industrious-by fits. There are epochs when any kind of mental exercise is torture, and when nothing yields me pleasure but the solitary communion with the 'mountains & the woods'-the 'altars' of Byron. I have thus rambled and dreamed away whole months, and awake, at last, to a sort of mania for composition. Then I scribble all day, and read all night, so long as the disease endures. — Edgar Allan Poe

There's an old, private cemetery here in Palm Springs, where I live, just down the street from the airport, that belongs to one of the local Native American tribes, and it occurred to me one day that if you really wanted to get away with murder, you'd kill someone, put them in a coffin and bury them in a private cemetery or, better, an abandoned one. And then suddenly this whole idea of a long con appeared before me and I had this idea of using a Jewish cemetery. — Tod Goldberg

We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world didn't seem to notice how bad things really were. I thought of how I'd gotten used to awful, how after my dad died the planets kept on spinning and I got up and ate breakfast every morning and kept going to school. Something happens and it's terrible and you think you can't live another day, but then your mother gets used to it and you get used to it and you both keep on living, and you're not sure if that getting-used-to-things is good or the way life should be. — Margaret McMullan

Every second you dwell on the past you steal from your future. Every minute you spend focusing on your problems you take away from finding your solutions. And thinking about all those things that you wish never happened to you is actually blocking all the things you want to happen from entering into your life. Given the timeless truth that holds that you become what you think about all day long, it makes no sense to worry about past events or mistakes unless you want to experience them for a second time. Instead, use the lessons you have learned from your past to rise to a whole new level of awareness and enlightenment. — Robin S. Sharma

The other Miller was different. Quieter. Sad, maybe, but at peace. He'd read a poem many years before called "The Death-Self," and he hadn't understood the term until now. A knot at the middle of his psyche was untying. All the energy he'd put into holding things together - Ceres, his marriage, his career, himself - was coming free. He'd shot and killed more men in the past day than in his whole career as a cop. He'd started - only started - to realize that he'd actually fallen in love with the object of his search after he knew for certain that he'd lost her. He'd seen unequivocally that the chaos he'd dedicated his life to holding at bay was stronger and wider and more powerful than he would ever be. No compromise he could make would be enough. His death-self was unfolding in him, and the dark blooming took no effort. It was a relief, a relaxation, a long, slow exhale after decades of holding it in. — James S.A. Corey

It is in fact no exaggeration to say that we live in terror that Senator McCarthy will one day make some irreparable blunder that will play directly into the hands of our common enemy and discredit the whole anti-Communist effort for a long while to come. — Whittaker Chambers

A Little Fable
"Alas," said the mouse, "the whole world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when I saw walls far away to the right and left, but these long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must ... — Franz Kafka

And, for the gods sake, don't waste the whole day working! Make time for a bit of adventure dear. This life is only so long. — Adrastus Rood

People think that they can love only when they find a worthy partner - nonsense! You will never find one. People think they will love only when they find a perfect man or a perfect woman. Nonsense! You will never find them, because perfect women and perfect men don't exist. And if they exist, they won't bother about your love. They will not be interested. I have heard about a man who remained a bachelor his whole life because he was in search of a perfect woman. When he was seventy, somebody asked, "You have been traveling and traveling - from New York to Kathmandu, from Kathmandu to Rome, from Rome to London you have been searching. Could you not find a perfect woman? Not even one?" The old man became very sad. He said, "Yes, once I did. One day, long ago, I came across a perfect woman." The inquirer said, "Then what happened? Why didn't you get married?" Sadly, the old man said, "What to do? She was looking for a perfect man. — Osho

As long as it's a regular day, not too rough to begin with, the ocean is pretty smooth once you make it out past the first set of waves. That's why people are afriad to swim in the ocean. They try to jump over those waves and get slammed down to the bottom and pulled across the sand like a piece of shell. You've got to go throught them, dive under just when they're rising up for you, set your direction, close your eyes, and just swim like hell. Once you get throught that, you'll find there isn't a better place for swimming because it's the ocean and it goes on forever. You don't have to see anyone if you don't want to. If you look out, away from the beach, it's easy to imagine that there's no one else but you in the whole world, you and maybe a couple of sea gulls. — Ann Patchett

I sometimes think we expect too much of Christmas Day. We try to crowd into it the long arrears of kindliness and humanity of the whole year. As for me, I like to take my Christmas a little at a time, all through the year. And thus I drift along into the holidays - let them overtake me unexpectedly - waking up some find morning and suddenly saying to myself: 'Why, this is Christmas Day! — Ray Stannard Baker

When you open a book," the sentimental library posters said, "anything can happen." This was so. A book of fiction was a bomb. It was a land mine you wanted to go off. You wanted it to blow your whole day. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of books were duds. They had been rusting out of everyone's way for so long that they no longer worked. There was no way to distinguish the duds from the live mines except to throw yourself at them headlong, one by one. — Annie Dillard

He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone(117). — J.M. Coetzee

She walks,
on the streets,
with a face that,
doesn't belong.
It smiles more than,
many put together,
whole day long.
Her heart misfit,
a little chipped.
And she likes to,
call it once broken,
but now stitched. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Deaf folk hear the fairies However soft their song; 'Tis we who lose the honey sound Amid the clamor all around That beats the whole day long. — Rose Fyleman

I thought about how the past can become so small. An entire day, 24 separate, heavy hours, becomes the size of a tiny brown leaf falling from a tree. Before you know it, a whole year is just a pile of dead leaves on the ground. The year or so I'd spent in love with Chad was starting to feel so long ago, swept away by the wind. I knew that this year would soon feel far away too. — Kimberly Novosel

Whatever be the depth of woe Along the path that I must go, I'll sing my song - My song of joy for all the love That's lavished on us from above, And count no loss of treasure-trove When things go wrong. I'll sing the sunlight, and the bright Soft smiling stars that gem the night; For gifts of good That God hath spread along my way, The lilt of birds in tuneful play, The harvests full and flowers gay, The whole day long I'll sing my song Of gratitude! — John Kendrick Bangs

For the fact was drugs were not necessary to most of us, because the music, youth, sweaty bodies were enough. And if it was too hot, too humid to sleep the next day, and we awoke bathed in sweat, it did not matter: We remained in a state of animated suspension the whole hot day. We lived for music, we lived for Beauty, and we were poor. But we didn't care where we were living, or what we had to do during the day to make it possible; eventually, if you waited long enough, you were finally standing before the mirror in that cheap room, looking at your face one last time, like an actor going onstage, before rushing out to walk in the door of that discotheque and see someone like Malone. — Andrew Holleran

Indeed, I believe that in our own day, after all the efforts of critical exegesis, we can share anew this sense of astonishment at the fact that a saying from the year 733 B.C., incomprehensible for so long, came true at the moment of the conception of Jesus Christ - that God did indeed give us a great sign intended for the whole world. — Pope Benedict XVI

The day Stamp Paid saw the two backs through the window and then hurried down the steps, he believed the undecipherable language clamoring around the house was the mumbling of the black and angry dead. Very few had died in bed, like Baby Suggs, and none that he knew of, including Baby, had lived a livable life. Even the educated colored: the long-school people, the doctors, the teachers, the paper-writers and businessmen had a hard row to hoe. In addition to having to use their heads to get ahead, they had the weight of the whole race sitting there. You needed two heads for that. Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. — Toni Morrison

Why then should I often be unhappy over what happens here? Shouldn't I always be glad, contented and happy, except when I think about her and her companions in distress? I am selfish and cowardly. Why do I always dream and think of the most terrible things- my fear makes me want to scream out loud sometimes. Because still, in spite of everything, I have not enough faith in God. He has given me so much- which I certainly do not deserve- and I still do so much that is wrong every day. If you think of your fellow creatures, then you only want to cry, you could really cry the whole day long. The only thing to do is to pray that God will perform a miracle and save some of them. And I hope that I am doing that enough! — Anne Frank

The whole point of art school is that you're going to be able to have nudes all day long and a teacher who is there to move you. It's great. I did a tiny bit in the one school in Paris, and it was wonderful because you'd have a nude taking a crazy position, and you'd have 10 seconds to do a drawing. Then you'd do a one-minute drawing. — Lou Doillon

Lou reluctantly drew back, still holding Joe, and placed his soft lips on Joe's own. Existence reacted to their reunion. Immediately, it was as if two halves became whole once again. The sky flashed colors overhead as they stood together: day to night, night to day. They stood motionless and kissing for so long a period that they might have been mistaken for part of the landscape, as vines climbed up their legs and grass grew around them; as dirt gathered and buried even more the scattered fragments of the abbey. Only the keepers of time knew that lifetimes did indeed pass, possibly entire eras. And yet it was but a scant moment to Joe and Lou. All of it but a simple, longed-for embrace neither time nor death could contain. — Eric Arvin

How, I asked, could I have gone my whole life not knowing about my mother? How could I have not known what Keith knew when he saw our house? "It's your mom," Helder said. "Because it's Mom." He sounded firm and knowing and clear. "When a child has an alcoholic father, he sees him drink all day long but he doesn't have a label, a concept. You just know that at night, when the tires make a certain sound in the driveway and the doors slam a certain way, with a certain sound, you just know you need to hide. — Heather Sellers

The whole world's effort of working hard goes to waste. Just as the bull [that turns the wheels on the oil mill] gets a piece of oil-cake (as a reward), the wife gives the husband a piece of handvo (savory lentil and rice cake), and so the work continues. All day long, one is producing like the bull in the oil mill. — Dada Bhagwan

To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch fr warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things - but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by the thousands; a houseless rejected creature. — Charles Dickens

If the world made any sense, a new day of the week would be born, one that didn't require him to think about school, one in which he could lie on his back in the grass and look at the sky and imagine what it would be like to run away with her and do nothing but play music and eat fruit and walk down the street together for as long as they lived without feeling like the whole world would be staring and judging, or worse. — Martha Brockenbrough

The constant steaming in of thoughts of others must suppress and confine our own and indeed in the long run paralyze the power of thought ... The inclination of most scholars is a kind of fuga vacui ( latin for vacuum suction )from the poverty of their own mind , which forcibly draws in the thoughts of others ... It is dangerous to read about a subject before we have thought about it ourselves ... When we read, another person thinks for us; merely repeat his mental process. So it comes about that if anybody spends almost the whole day in reading, he gradually loses the capacity for thinking. Experience of the world may be looked upon as a kind of text, to which reflection and knowledge form the commentary. Where there is a great deal of reflection and intellectual knowledge and very little experience , the result is like those books which have on each page two lines of text to forty lines of commentary — Will Durant

To be sure, if you watch CNBC all day long you'll pick up some interesting news about particular companies and the economy as a whole. Unfortunately, to get to the useful information, you have to wade through reams of useless stuff, with little guidance on how to distinguish between the two. — James Surowiecki

Usually when people hear my parents are scientists, they assume they're awkward, unathletic nerds whose idea of fun is doing long division. That drives me nuts. My parents are the least nerdy people you've ever met. Mom swam competitively in college and competed in triathlons up until we left earth. Dad is a rugged outdoorsman; he's summited dozens of mountains and once free-climbed El Capitan in Yosemite in a day. They met on a Class 5 rafting trip down the Snake River. But more importantly, my parents aren't unusual. I've met hundreds of scientists, and most are almost as athletic and adventurous as my parents. I'm not sure how the whole idea that scientists are nerds ever got started. — Stuart Gibbs

One day a man came to watch him work on a painting he was doing of Jesus and his disciples. The man sat there all day, and Leonardo only made one stroke the whole time. 'You stood there all day and only made one stroke,' the man said. Leonardo just looked at him. 'Yeah, but it was the right stroke,' he said." Dan sat quietly for a second. I was not sure if he was angry or if he didn't see the relevance of the analogy. Then, all of a sudden, he burst out laughing. "That's pretty good, Nerburn," he said. He reached over and pushed me playfully. "What was that guy's name?" "Leonardo da Vinci." "I've got to remember that. Leonardo Duvishhi. You sure he wasn't an Indian?" "Might have been Wapashaw's long-lost uncle," I said. Dan laughed heartily. "This is a good day, Nerburn. I'm glad you came to visit me." The hawk cut great arcs against the towering sky. The eastern horizon was filling with pinks and lavenders. "So am I, Dan," I said. "It's been too long. — Kent Nerburn

Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long been banished from the social board. It has at last, in our day of progress and improvement, been degraded to brotherhood with flatulence. Among the best bred, these two arts are now indulged in only private
though by consent of the whole company, when only males are present, it is still permissible, in good society, to remove the embargo on the fundamental sigh. — Mark Twain

Must I keep thinking about those other people, whatever I am doing? And if I want to laugh about something, should I stop myself quickly and feel ashamed that I am cheerful? Ought I then to cry the whole day long? No, that I can't do. Besides, in time this gloom will wear off. — Anne Frank

I have never seen one who really loves goodness or one who really hates wickedness. One who really loves goodness will not place anything above it. One who really hates wickedness will practice goodness in such a way that wickedness will have no chance to get at him. Is there anyone who has devoted his whole strength to doing good for even as long as a single day? I have not seen anyone give up such an attempt because he had not the strength to go on. Perhaps there is such a case, but I have never seen it. — Confucius

From dawn each day the boats traveled, until their shadows grew so long that they joined each vessel with the one behind so that, instead of resembling a procession of dark swans in the distance, they seemed to turn into snakes, inching forward on waters turned to fire by the western sunset ahead. While on the bank, the last red light from the huge sky eerily caught the stands of bare larch and birch so that it appeared as if whole armies with massed lances were waiting by the riverbank to greet them. — Edward Rutherfurd

Is there any of the usual social occasions which it is not difficult to avoid? But if you decide that you cannot very well ignore your worldly obligations, and that you will therefore carry them out properly, the demands on your time will multiply, bringing physical hardship and mental tension; in the end, you will spend your whole life pointlessly entangled in petty obligations.
'The day is ending, the way is long; my life already begins to stumble on its journey.' The time has come to abandon all ties. I shall not keep promises, nor consider decorum. Let anyone who cannot understand my feelings feel free to call me mad, let him think I am out of my senses, that I am devoid of human warmth. Abuse will not bother me; I shall not listen if praised. — Yoshida Kenko

Jack must have looked confused, and Sienna leaned closer to him as she explained. Her perfume was sharp and floral, and he took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh fragrance after a day on the road smelling dust and tar.
"When we were in high school, Uncle Renzo brought us down here to the pier at Monterey for a birthday dinner, and he spun Georgie a story about his grandmother going to sleep at the table when he was a little boy, and drowning in her chowder."
Jack grinned as Sienna continued the story. "He had her sucked in, hook line and sinker, for the whole night until she started to cry, and then he took pity on her."
Sienna smiled as she looked at Jack. Her long, delicate neck arched gracefully as her head turned slowly from side to side, and Jack got another whiff of her perfume. Her eyes were hooded and Jack sensed she was waiting for something. — Annie Seaton

Sunday had spread all over the city. It looked as if the sun had smacked into the earth and broken into pieces and chunks of wet light were scattered everywhere
in the streets, on the window panes, on puddles and roofs. I remembered a day long ago when Grandmother had cleaned a big fish. Her forearms were splattered with shiny scales. It was as if she had Sunday in her whole body. When my father got angry, he had Tuesday. — Ismail Kadare

I remember him with a dark passionflower in his hand, looking at it as no one has ever looked at such a flower, though they might look from the twilight of day until the twilight of night, for a whole life long. — Jorge Luis Borges

My dear little big Marianne,
... I hope that you will grow up to be a healthy, happy and strong human being. I hope you will experience the most beautiful things the world has to give... And then you must have children... And think of our evenings of discussion in bed, about all the important things of life... And think of our beautiful three weeks at the seashore - of the sunrise, and when we walked barefoot along the beach from Bansin to Uckeritz, and when I pushed you before me on the rubber float, and when we read books together. We had so many beautiful things together, my child, and you must experience them all over again, and much more besides... And be happy as often as you can - every day is precious.
My love for you shall accompany you your whole life long.

(From Rose Schlosinger to her daughter, 1943) — Karen Payne

Look out there. Can you feel them? Incredible to think - other human beings out there. You strain your eyes the whole day long, see nothing, hear nothing, still can't believe it somehow - but know it's true. Other warm bodies, hearts pumping blood. That ought to make us feel less lonely, or safer, it seems. Then why is it so shocking? Because - they don't belong here. The possibility of life in this place is more terrifying than the place itself. Can it be that we're really here? — Ted Tally