Quotes & Sayings About Tracing

The roaches were in high spirits. There were half a dozen of them, caught in the teeth of love. They capered across the liquor bottles, perched atop pour spouts like wooden ladies on the prows of sailing ships. They lifted their wings and delicately fluttered. They swung their antennae with a ripe sexual urgency, tracing love sonnets in the air. — Nathan Ballingrud

Sella smiled sadly as she laid the scarf on her knees, her fingers tracing over the delicate gold-thread pattern (...) The moon, the sing of calm reflection, from where reason and balance are derived (...) The sun, source of passion, love, anger (...) We exist here, between the two. Grown from the earth, warmed by the sun, cooled by the moonlight night. Your brother's heart had been pulled too far into the sun, fired with anger and regret. Now he has cooled and he looks to the moon for guidance. — Anthony Ryan

This is what death does to you, it takes and takes, so that all that is left of your memories is a faint tracing of spilled ash. — Hilary Mantel

She was a beautiful woman." Gavner sighed, tracing the outline of one of the elephants. "She just had very bad taste in underwear ... "
"And in boyfriends," I added impishly.
Mr. Crepsley burst into laughter at that — Darren Shan

We don't know how to say goodbye,
We wander on, shoulder to shoulder
Already the sun is going down
You're moody, and I am your shadow.
Let's step inside a church, hear prayers, masses for the dead
Why are we so different from the rest?
Outside in the graveyard we sit on a frozen branch.
That stick in your hand is tracing
Mansions in the snow in which we will always be together. — Anna Akhmatova

We are the local embodiment of a Cosmos grown to self-awareness. We have begun to contemplate our origins: starstuff pondering the stars; organized assemblages of ten billion billion billion atoms considering the evolution of atoms; tracing the long journey by which, here at least, consciousness arose. Our loyalties are to the species and the planet. We speak for Earth. Our obligation to survive is owed not just to ourselves but also to that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring. — Carl Sagan

They say your skin is the largest organ in your body, but I'd never really appreciated that before, the way his fingertips slowly tracing the curve of my jaw could travel down the entire length of my body, covering me in goose bumps. The way he could make me feel flushed with something that wasn't fever. — Robyn Schneider

True wisdom consists of tracing effects to their causes. — Oliver Goldsmith

We have time to do everything," he said, tracing one of his fingers down the side of her face. "We have forever. — Cassandra Clare

However, like a piece of tracing paper slipping away, everything had, little by little, become irreparably different than it had been in the past. — Haruki Murakami

Slum kids die slowly, their lives eroded at so languid a pace that even they would have trouble tracing the disintegration. To the children of war death explodes like a car bomb. — Roger Rosenblatt

He palms my ass before his fingers explore, tracing the upper elastic of my underwear. "Georgiana. Are you wearing impractical undergarments?"
"Yes. One might even call them . . . ridiculous."
He pulls back, eyes gleaming. "I'll be the judge of that. — Lauren Layne

Savannah moved gracefully, going directly across the darkened street, heading for the shadows of the square. She was very much aware of Gregori still close to her, his body protective. For a moment she thought he brushed her shoulder with his hand, the sensation was so real, but when she turned her head, he was several feet behind.
Go, ma petite, take Gary to the house.Do not allow the neighbors to see either of you.And place the safeguards carefully.
What about you?
There is no safeguard I cannot unravel. Go now. This time, there was so mistake. He was four feet away, already turning away from her, but she felt his mouth burning possessively on hers, lingering for just a moment, his tongue tracing the curve of her lip. She couldn't believe he could make her want him, burn for him, when he was going off into the night alone to fight their enemies.
The night has always been mine, Savannah.Do not waste your time worrying about me. — Christine Feehan

The world seems so meaningless when I am engulfed in the bliss of love and you tracing the evolution of the restless soul of eternal belonging on my face. — Annie Ali

If he would just work with pure ideas like a proper mathematician he could go as fast as thought. As it happens, Alan has become fascinated by the incarnations of pure ideas in the physical world. The underlying math of the universe is like the light streaming in through the window. Alan is not satisfied with merely knowing that it streams in. He blows smoke into the air to make the light visible. He sits in meadows gazing at pine cones and flowers, tracing the mathematical patterns in their structure, and he dreams about electron winds blowing over the glowing filaments and screens of radio tubes, and, in their surges and eddies, capturing something of what is going on in his own brain. Turing is neither a mortal nor a god. He is Antaeus. That he bridges the mathematical and physical worlds is his strength and his weakness. — Neal Stephenson

When you wake up to kingdom realities, you find that you are tracing the steps of both the Israelites and Jesus himself into the wilderness ... The wilderness is the place where God meets his people, Satan attacks, and kingdom allegiances are revealed. [Ed Welch, Running Scared, 118] — Edward T. Welch

The secret to a long-lasting relationship is perpetually imagining the worst. It's a world view tracing back to my Eastern European ancestry and one I draw upon regularly. — Zoe Lister-Jones

I just get a feeling sometimes that everything is predetermined, and I am going through the motions of tracing an existence that will be what it will already be. — Reif Larsen

He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her g's the same way he did : he searched through the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing ink into these letters, these words, words about him, Harry, her son. — J.K. Rowling

Combining in our survey then, the whole range of deposits from the most recent to the most ancient group, how striking a succession do they present:- so various yet so uniform-so vast yet so connected. In thus tracing back to the most remote periods in the physical history of our continents, one system of operations, as the means by which many complex formations have been successively produced, the mind becomes impressed with the singleness of nature's laws; and in this respect, at least, geology is hardly inferior in simplicity to astronomy. — Roderick Murchison

I like to say that I'm tracing the intersection between big ideas and human experience, between theology and real life. — Krista Tippett

Harry's extremities seemed to have gone numb. He stood quite still, holding the miraculous paper in his nerveless fingers while inside him a kind of quiet eruption sent joy and grief thundering in equal measure through his veins. Lurching to the bed, he sat down.

He read the letter again, but could not take in any more meaning than he had done the first time, and was reduced to staring at the handwriting itself. She had made her "g's" the same way he did: he searched the letter for every one of them, and each felt like a friendly little wave glimpsed from behind a veil. The letter was an incredible treasure, proof that Lily Potter had lived, really lived, that her warm hand had once moved across this parchment, tracing into these letters, words about him, Harry, her son. — J.K. Rowling

Horace's eyes get wide, and he glances between me and the house. "Every time I think I got a grip on this crazy shit going on in your head, I realize I don't know the half of it, do I?"
My eyes tracing the red trim of the house, I shake my head. "Not even close. — Erica Cameron

I allowed myself to consider the infinity of details that might have left Jennie alive. A change of weather the day she died, rain keeping the girls inside. One of us taking longer int he bathroom that morning and delaying Jennie's walk to the field. A broken washing machine and all the girls pitching in to help do the laundry by hand. Sometimes my tracing of consequence and connection went back as far as the war. If Frank had not survived, Jennie would have. The possibilities were endless. — Rhonda Riley

Then her eyes narrowed. The sun was spilling in the window behind her and Dageus's eyes were golden, dappled with darker flecks. Smoky and sensual, fringed by thick dark lashes, but gold nonetheless.
"What is with your eyes?" she exclaimed. "Is it part of being
a Druid?"
"What color are they?" he asked warily.
"Gold."
He flashed her another unguarded smile. It was like basking in the sun, she thought, tracing her fingers over his beard-shadowed jaw, smiling helplessly back. — Karen Marie Moning

The process of tracing regularity in any complicated, and at first sight confused, set of appearances, is necessarily tentative; we begin by making any supposition, even a false one, to see what consequences will follow from it ; and by observing how these differ from the real phenomena, we learn what corrections to make in our assumption. — John Stuart Mill

Poetry is a tracing of the trajectories of a finite sound to the infinite points of its echoes. — Carl Sandburg

Freedom was a thing that shifted as you looked at it, the way a forest is dense with the trees up close but from the outside, from the empty meadow, you see its true limits. Being free had nothing to do with chains or how much space you had. On the plantation, she was not free, but she moved unrestricted on its acres, tasting the air and tracing the summer stars. The place was big in its smallness. Here, she was free of her master but slunk around a warren so tiny she couldn't stand. — Colson Whitehead

Maybe you could drive yourself crazy trying to chart backward all the causes and effects, all the ends and means, tracing everything to some original sin that may or may not have actually occurred but that people accepted as true, or true enough. Maybe staring into the eyes of all that history was a dangerous thing to do, as her mother had calmly warned her. Maybe you were supposed to move forward armed with just enough history to help you figure out the present without obsessing over the past. But how much was enough? Where was the gray area between ignorance and obsession? — Thomas Mullen

Nehemia stared at him for a long moment before nodding. "You have power in you, Prince. More power than you realize." She touched his chest, tracing a symbol there, too, and some of the court ladies gasped. But Nehemia's eyes were locked on his "It sleeps," she whispered, tapping his heart. "In here. When the time comes, when it awakens, do not be afraid." She removed her hand and game him a sad smile. "When it is time, I will help you. — Sarah J. Maas

Ahead of them lay an expressway access road. Except that there were no guardrails or markings. No road signs either. And no other vehicles at all. Yet the road, following a narrow curve, led to a broad ribbon of asphalt tracing a straight line all the way to the horizon. Again, it had no lines painted on it and there were no signs. Rosa thought there would have been space for four traffic lanes on it, but it was covered with the dust and loose soil that had blown over it.
No other sign of life. Just the two of them, the car, and a forgotten road to nowhere.
"Where does it go?"
"To the end of the world. — Kai Meyer

The song "Dream a Little Dream of Me" comes on Tariq's playlist, which makes Harry think of the movie Beautiful Thing, as Tariq no doubt knew it would. Harry can feel Craig smile under his lips, and knows he must be sharing the same thought. As confirmation, Harry feels Craig's finger on his back, tracing the letter B, then T. They start to shuffle and slow-dance. It feels good to move their legs. — David Levithan

What we experience in various and specific milieux, I have noted, is often caused by structural changes. Accordingly, to understand the changes of many personal milieux we are required to look beyond them. And the number and variety of such structural changes increase as the institutions within which we live become more embracing and more intricately connected with one another. To be aware of the idea of social structure and to use it with sensibility is to be capable of tracing such linkages among a great variety of milieux. To be able to do that is to possess the sociological imagination — C. Wright Mills

By means of tracing-paper I transfer my design to the wood and draw on that. — John Tenniel

Not threatening - warning. I haven't been hunting it this long and gotten this close to let anyone get in my way and fuck things up. There are two kinds of people in this world, Ms. Lane: those who survive no matter the cost, and those who are walking victims." He pressed his lips to the side of my neck. I felt his tongue where my pulse fluttered, tracing my vein. "You, Ms. Lane, are a victim, a lamb in a city of wolves. I'll give you until nine P.M. tomorrow to get the bloody hell out of this country and out of my way. — Karen Marie Moning

I do love rocks, as a matter of fact." A coquettish smile crept into her voice. "I find them utterly fascinating. I'm forever taking them in hand. Exploring their every ridge and contour." She skimmed a petal-soft fingertip over the head of his cock, tracing the flared ridge of the crown and the dewy slit of the tip. Then her touch teased down his length, all the way to the root. "Some of them have very interesting veins. — Tessa Dare

What the ethnographer is in fact faced with - except when (as, of course, he must do) he is pursuing the more automatized routines of data collection - is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render. And this is true at the most down-to-earth, jungle field work levels of his activity; interviewing informants, observing rituals, eliciting kin terms, tracing property lines, censusing households ... writing his journal. Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of "construct a reading of") a manuscript - foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in conventionalized graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped behavior. — Clifford Geertz

The memory of him tracing the lines of my face filled me. I remembered the touch of his sensitive fingers, following my jawline, running down my neck to follow the curves of my body. I remembered his warmth, his laughter, and his eyes sparkling when I twisted a phrase to mean something entirely new and naughty. I remembered the way he made me feel needed, appreciated for who and what I was, never having to apologize for it, and the contentment I found in sharing ourselves. We'd been happy together. It had been great. — Kim Harrison

A lost road will remember your footsteps because someday you may want to return, tracing the way. — Munia Khan

Raphael lifted a finger, tracing it over her cheekbone. She flinched. Not because he was hurting her. The opposite. The places he touched ... it was as if he had a direct line to the hottest, most feminine part of her. A single stroke and she was embarrassingly damp. But she refused to pull away, refused to give in.
(page 33 , Gollancz edition) — Nalini Singh

But finally, when they stopped to sleep, not bothering with a tent, just bedding down in a hollow they'd trampled in the tall grass with their boots, Arin spoke. He slid a hand under her tunic to touch her bare back, then stopped. "Is this all right?"
She wanted to explain that she hadn't thought she'd ever bear anyone's touch on her scarred back, that it should revolt him and revolt her. Yet his touch made her feel soft and new. "Yes."
He pushed the shirt up, seeking the lash marks, tracing their length. She let herself feel it, and shivered, and thought of nothing. But a tension grew. He was still, but for his hand.
Kestrel said, "What's wrong?"
"Your life would have been easier if you had married the Valorian prince."
She drew herself up so that she could face him. The scent of black powder clung to them both. His skin smelled like a blown-out candle. "But not better," she said. — Marie Rutkoski

I am tracing the knobs of your spine like the map of my favorite continent. You are all the places that I haven't visited yet and I mark each one off with my teeth. — Amanda Oaks

This is why a new task faces us which did not exist before, the task of investigating the relationship of the manifest dream-content to the latent dream-thoughts, and of tracing the processes by which the latter turned into the former. — Sigmund Freud

Deep, dark unearthly black. I hadn't told anyone yet, but the color kept streaking across my mind at the oddest moments. When it did, my skin shivered pleasantly, and it was as if I could feel the color tracing a finger tenderly along my jaw, tipping my chin up to face it directly. I knew it was absurd to think a color would come to life, but once or twice, I was sure I'd caught a flash of something more substantial behind the color. A pair of eyes. The way they studied me cut to the heart. — Becca Fitzpatrick

I love trains. It's the only way to travel anymore where it doesn't involve a TSA agent slowly tracing the curve of my inner thigh. — Bill Maher

The East is marvellously interesting for tracing our steps back. But for going forward, it is nothing. All it can hope for is to be fertilised by Europe, so that it can start on a new phase. — D.H. Lawrence

[F]or who ever heard of a Gold-finder that had the Impudence or Folly to assert, from the ill Success of his Search, that there was no such thing as Gold in the World? Whereas the Truth-finder, having raked out that Jakes his own mind, and being there capable of tracing no Ray of Divinity, nor any thing virtuous, or good, or lovely, very fairly, honestly, and logically concludes, that no such things exist in the whole creation. — Henry Fielding

She reached toward the chessboard, and he caught her hand in his. "Believe me," he whispered. "When I wish to be, I can be very convincing." He followed the seam of her fingers with this thumb, tracing slowly upward until he reached the soft cleft below her knuckles. He watched as her eyes widened and her lips parted. Then he stroked the spot lightly - a quick, circular caress - and she made a little sound, half gasp and half sigh. That little sound - that tiny, panting breath - was very nearly his undoing. Jeremy knew that sound. It was the tumbler of a lock falling in place, the charged crackle between lightning and thunderbolt, the hiss of a candlewick the instant before it comes alive with flame. An incomplete sound. A sound that promised - and begged for - more. — Tessa Dare

if he will watch, control, and alter his thoughts, tracing their effects upon himself, upon others, and upon his life and circumstances, linking cause and effect by patient practice and investigation, and utilizing his every experience, even to the most trivial, everyday occurrence, as a means of obtaining that knowledge of himself which is Understanding, Wisdom, Power. In — James Allen

He reached out and pulled me to him, one hand on my waist and the other behind my neck. He tipped my head up and lowered his lips to mine. I closed my eyes and melted as my whole body was consumed in that kiss. I was nothing. I was everything. Chills, ran over my skin, and fire burned inside me. His body pressed closer to mine, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. His lips were warmer and softer than anything I could have ever imagined, yet fierce and powerful at the same time. Mine responded hungrily, and I tightened my hold on him. His fingers slid down the back of my neck, tracing its shape, and every place they touched was electric. — Richelle Mead

When you look at me that way, I feel so beautiful."
"You are beautiful." He signed deep in his chest. His hands slid up and down her arms, caressing her roughly. "So damned beautiful."
"So are you." She put a hand to his bare chest, tracing the defined ridges of his musculature. "Like a diamond. Hard and gleaming, and cut with all these exquisite facets. Inside ... pure, brilliant fire. — Tessa Dare

If progressive deep frames had been articulated and present in the public mind, the idea of a "war on terror" never would have made sense. If we viewed our strength as our diplomatic ability to forge international consensus and coalitions, and if we recognized that killing and maiming civilians through military action creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terrorism, we wouldn't have looked to our military to solve the problem. Had progressive deep frames been prevalent at the time of 9/11, Americans would have taken "war on terror" as a powerful metaphor but not a literal guide to action, like the "war on poverty." They would have seen it as a major crime problem - like international organized crime - and sought to bring these criminals to justice by the means that work best, like tracing bank accounts, placing spies in their organizations, and so on. It — George Lakoff

An extraterrestrial visitor examining the differences among human societies would find those differences trivial compared to the similarities. Our lives, our past and our future are tied to the sun, the moon and the stars ... We humans have seen the atoms which constitute all of nature and the forces that sculpted this work ... and we, who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, have begun to wonder about our origins ... star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of ten billion billion billion atoms, contemplating the evolution of nature, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet earth ... Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring. We are one species. We are star stuff harvesting star light. — Carl Sagan

There are things I need to say first. Things you need to hear before we go any further."
She tensed. "Oh, God, are you married?"
He chuckled. "No, nothing like that."
"Good," she replied, letting out a relieved breath.
"I want you to know you've made this very difficult for me. I had a speech prepared. Then I see you like this." His finger continued to trail down her stomach, tracing the rim of her panties. "And I can't even remember my damn name. — Stacey O'Neale

People differ in their proficiency at tracing the outlines of another self, and thus their ability to love also varies. (207) — Thomas Lewis

You just keep kissing me like that, and let me decide how much is too much." Her fingers were against my mouth, tracing my lips. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to kiss these. — Lacey Weatherford

While he himself was marking out lines and courses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing lines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead. — Herman Melville

It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it. — Gustav Mahler

I do think, where would kids be if it weren't for you and for the good pediatricians, and for the good parents? I passionately believe in sitting a child on your lap and tracing the lines of the book with your finger, and they can read before they know they can, if you bother enough. I did it with my kids, and they're doing it with their kids now. — Julie Andrews

After travelling a few miles, he fell asleep; and Emily, who had put two or three books into the carriage, on leaving La Vallee, had now the leisure for looking into them. She sought for one, in which Valancourt had been reading the day before, and hoped for the pleasure of re-tracing a page, over which the eyes of a beloved friend had lately passed, of dwelling on the passages, which he had admired, and of permitting them to speak to her in the language of his own mind, and to bring himself to her presence. — Eliza Parsons

What's it like feeling the smooth heat of that arm, tracing the supernatural muscles bunched in his arms and chest, teasing anyone with a pulse and hormones to lick their way down the divots and planes of that skin, to unbutton the leather shielding his body and taste all the way down to that silver buckle on his belt. — Poppet

Though in this world there are phenomena that might justly be termed "strange," there are no phenomena that cannot -- given sufficient information -- be explained. This is not to suggest that for every effect there is a cause, of course. That is an assumption that we are not prepared to make, less it launch us ineluctably down the path of determinism. This is only to suggest, rather, that there is no "thing" that exists without some relation to at least one other "thing," and it is the matrix of a "thing's" relationship that determines its meaning in the larger context of the world. Even something strange can be explained by tracing its relational lines of flight, however casual or casual they may be. — Dustin Long

After a long time, one small hand moved, slowly, tentatively, tracing the feathers falling around her, stroking the black slashes along one huge wing. She didn't ask where he'd gotten them, didn't ask why they mimicked the marks on his shoulder. She didn't ask, just kept running her soft fingers through the down, along the spines ...
"How long will they last?"
"A few hours," he said hoarsely. He should tell her, he thought, that the feathers weren't just a projection. That for the moment for however long the Irin's essence held out, they were an innate, physical part of him. And that her fingers stroking along the marks felt just like they once had, moving over his scars. He ought to tell her, ought to ask her to stop. It's what a gentleman would do, he knew that. But then he was half demon. And tonight, he thought maybe he'd just go with that.
"They're nice," she murmured, pulling one around her.
"Yes." One hand tightened in her thick soft hair. "Yes. — Karen Chance

But in this case," he continues, tracing the line of the plasterwork with one finger, "I feel that there is one cliche that sums up my position so admirably that it would be pure egotism to attempt a more interesting periphrasis. Plain speaking, therefore, there is to be.
"There is undoubtedly a strong possibility, notwithstanding the vagaries of contingency and misfortune, that my son might
have fallen - or might, we could say, have voluntarily jumped, in accordance with the ethical codes with which he has been brought up - for a play you have made with some success, although, as I am persuaded you would concede, very little originality."
Plain speaking if you're Henry James, perhaps. — Deborah Meyler

In theory, cars are fairly simple. If they don't start, it's either the fuel system or the electrical system. Teach yourself about the path of each in your engine and tracing it is fairly straightforward. But at the beginning, mastering each new system seems like an unreachable shore. The car is effectively a black box. — Adam Savage

After the debacle of the party, debugging the code running in his own brain was bliss. His body lay safely in his bed. His mind exulted inside the Nexus development environment, tracing the events that had led to the fault. Here he was in his element. — Ramez Naam

It was as if he (Sigmar Polke) painted his imagery in a highly wrought way, instead of a calculatedly dumb way, or mechanical way, by silk-screening or by tracing from epidiascope projections, and so on. — Matthew Collings

Rolling onto his side, Jamie reached out and touched Evan's chest, two fingertips only tracing the curve of his pectoral and threading through the dark, curly hair. Something about that hairiness fascinated him, masculine yet soft. An unaccountable shyness wrapped around him, a weight upon his shoulders. His fingers trembled a little. "You'll, um, tell me if I do it wrong?"
Evan laughed softly, "Angel, there is no wrong. Go ahead and explore. If I don't like something, I'll tell you, 'kay? — Finn Marlowe

It had been a long time since I felt the fragrance of summer: the scent of the ocean, a distant train whistle, the touch of a girl's skin, the lemony perfume of her hair, the evening wind, faint glimmers of hope, summer dreams.
But none of these were the way they once had been; they were all somehow off, as if copied with tracing paper that kept slipping out of place."
-from "Hear the Wind Sing — Haruki Murakami

Suddenly, something fluttered down from the nest to rest at Chasmira's feet. She picked it up- A phoenix father.
It glistened in the sunlight, and tracing her fingers along its edges, she marveled at its soft and delicate touch.
Extending it to Aaron, she said quietly, They say a phoenix feather is a symbol of everlasting friendship. — Christine E. Schulze

Demons," drawled the blond boy, tracing the word on the air with his finger. "Religiously defined as hell's denizens, the servants of Satan, but understood here, for the purposes of the Clave, to be any malevolent spirit whose origin is outside our own home dimension - — Cassandra Clare

Santa Claus ran his finger across the rough parchment, lightly tracing the inscription below. "Charity unto others brings its own reward," he whispered. — Brom

They all occupied the same space but did not occupy it together. Imagine a thousand leaves of tracing paper, each with one person lightly pencilled on it, all stacked atop a scene of a frozen city block. A thousand discreet and solitary realities that appear to be occurring in the same location. — Doug Dorst

Tracing the beginnings of the interwoven stories of science can be arbitrary, as beginnings are so often lost in the mists of time. — Elizabeth Blackburn

One of her hands is slowly tracing up and down from my waist to my arm. The feel of her hands against my skin is something I never want to become a memory. — Colleen Hoover

The old marchioness had him tracing down bed hangings and carpets for her. Send that. Be here. To her, all the world was a menial. If she wanted a lobster or a sturgeon, she ordered it up, and if she wanted good taste she ordered it in the same way. The marchioness would run her hand over Florentine silks, making little squeaks of pleasure. "You bought it, Master Cromwell," she would say. "And very beautiful it is. Your next task is to work out how we pay for it. — Hilary Mantel

It is by tracing things to their origin, that we learn to understand them; and it is by keeping that line and that origin always in view, that we never forget them. — Thomas Paine

He suddenly leaned in, and his fingers brushed my cheek. Warmth flooded my skin, and I frozen, waiting for him to pull back.
He didnt. The tips of his fingers lingered on my cheek for a moment. Then, very slowly, his hand slipped forward, the palm brushing my skin. Frozen, I stared at him, watching his face as his fingers moved from my cheek to my forehead to my chin, like a blind man tracing someone's features to see them in his mind.
"What are you doing to me?" he whispered. — Julie Kagawa

His hand came to her neck, his fingers tracing the corded muscle there, and she knew he could feel her pulse racing. "You think I did not miss you?" She froze at the words, her breath coming shallow, desperate for him to say more. "You think I did not miss everything about you? Everything you represented?" He pressed against her, his breath soft against her temple. She closed her eyes. How had they found themselves here, in this place where he was so dark and so broken? "You think I did not want to come home?" His voice was thick with emotion. "But there was no home to which I could return. There was no one there." "You're wrong," she argued. "I was there. I was there . . . and I was . . ." Alone. She swallowed. "I was there. — Sarah MacLean

As he speaks his right hand finds the chain hanging from my collar and collects it in his fingers, tracing the metal through his hand until he feels the leather loop. I watch as he slips the end over his left wrist. It's an incredibly erotic thing to witness and I find myself hypnotised by this simple act of control. — Felicity Brandon

In reviewing my life, in tracing its course, I fill my cell with the pleasure of being what for want of a trifle I failed to be, recapturing, so that I may hurl myself into them as into dark pits, those moments when I strayed through the trap-ridden compartments of a subterranean sky — Jean Genet

Fidelity is surely our highest aim, but a translation is not made with tracing paper. It is an act of critical interpretation. Let me insist on the obvious: Languages trail immense, individual histories behind them, and no two languages, with all their accretions of tradition and culture, ever dovetail perfectly. They can be linked by translation, as a photograph can link movement and stasis, but it is disingenuous to assume that either translation or photography, or acting for that matter, are representational in any narrow sense of the term. Fidelity is our noble purpose, but it does not have much, if anything, to do with what is called literal meaning. A translation can be faithful to tone and intention, to meaning. It can rarely be faithful to words or syntax, for these are peculiar to specific languages and are not transferable. — Edith Grossman

I am here tracing the History of the Earth itself, from its own Monuments. — Jean-Andre De Luc

Sir Everard had never been himself a student, and, like his sister Miss Rachael Waverley, held the vulgar doctrine, that idleness is incompatible with reading of any kind, and that the mere tracing the alphabetical characters with the eye, is in itself a useful and meritorious task, without scrupulously considering what ideas or doctrines they may happen to convey. With — Walter Scott

Today, the men from that meeting are frozen in photographs.
They are immortal, or rather: they must never be forgotten.
The villa has become a place of memorial.
I visited it one gloriously sunny day in July 2004.
You can walk through the horror.
The long table used for the meeting is frightening.
As if the objects had taken part in the crime.
The place with forever be charged with terror.
So this is what it means, when a chill runs down your spine.
I had never understood that expression before.
The physical manifestation of an invisible icy finger.
Tracing the vertebrae in your back. — David Foenkinos

The fish fanciers, sitting by their ponds and gazing into their depths, were tracing shadows darker than they understood. — Tom Holland

The human race is a zone of living things that should be defined by tracing its confines. — Italo Calvino

Tracing the progress of mankind in the ascending path of civilization, and moral and intellectual culture, our fathers found that the divine ordinance of government, in every stage of the ascent, was adjustable on principles of common reason to the actual condition of a people, and always had for its objects, in the benevolent councils of the divine wisdom, the happiness, the expansion, the security, the elevation of society, and the redemption of man. They sought in vain for any title of authority of man over man, except of superior capacity and higher morality. — William M. Evarts

I suppose I'm still walking that line between life and death, trying to choose which side I'm on."
"I want you on my side, healer," Jenna said.
"And ... I want to be," he said. "It's just ... " He searched her face. "How do you ever really know a person?"
Jenna ran her fingertips over the back of his hand, tracing the veins. "Not everything is a lie, Wolf," she said. "Sometimes you have to believe what you see. — Cinda Williams Chima

I heard the Avarosh aunt say, 'She should grow her hair to hide that pointy chin and pointy nose.'"
"If I see that pointy chin and nose hidden, I'll have to hurt someone."
"You're supposed to say I don't have a pointy chin or pointy nose."
"But you do. And you also have pointy eyes," he added as he kissed both lids, "and a pointy mouth," he teased, pressing his lips against hers, "and a pointy tongue." His body covered hers as he held her face in his hands and captured her mouth, the silk warmness of her tongue matching his, stroke for stroke. Then he felt the sharp nip of her teeth as his mouth dared leave hers, traveling down toward her throat, fleetingly tracing the scars of the noose. "And a pointy, pointy heart. — Melina Marchetta

I thought I was leading this kiss, but I'm not anymore, because he's claiming me, tracing his tongue across my top lip, then nipping at the bottom lip, then kissing me so deeply and with so much heat that I shudder. — Lauren Blakely

I don't want your babies, Felix. I can assure you I'm not sitting up here like some tragic fallen woman every night dreaming of having your babies." She began tracing a figure of eight with her fingernail along his stomach. The movement looked idle but the nail pressed in hard. "You realize of course that if it were the other way round there would be a law, there would be an actual law: John versus Jen in the high court. And John would put it to Jen that she did wilfully fuck him for five years, before dumping him without warning in the twilight of his procreative window, and taking up with young Jack-the-lad, only twenty-four years old and with a cock as long as my arm. The court rules in favor of John. Every time. Jen must pay damages. Huge sums. Plus six months in jail. No - nine. Poetic justice. — Zadie Smith

I left them to it, the pointing of fingers on maps, the tracing of mountain villages, the tracks and contours on maps of larger scale, and basked for the one evening allowed to me in the casual, happy atmosphere of the taverna where we dined. I enjoyed poking my finger in a pan and choosing my own piece of lamb. I liked the chatter and the laughter from neighbouring tables. The gay intensity of talk - none of which I could understand, naturally - reminded me of left-bank Paris. A man from one table would suddenly rise to his feet and stroll over to another, discussion would follow, argument at heat perhaps swiftly dissolving into laughter. This, I thought to myself, has been happening through the centuries under this same sky, in the warm air with a bite to it, the sap drink pungent as the sap running through the veins of these Greeks, witty and cynical as Aristophanes himself, in the shadow, unmoved, inviolate, of Athene's Parthenon. ("The Chamois") — Daphne Du Maurier

Along some northern coast at sundown a beaten gold light is waterborne, sweeping across lakes and tracing zigzag rivers to the sea, and we know we're in transit again, half numb to the secluded beauty down there, the slate land we're leaving behind, the peneplain, to cross these rainbands in deep night. This is time totally lost to us. We don't remember it. We take no sense impressions with us, no voices, none of the windy blast of the aircraft on the tarmac, or the white noise of flight, or the hours waiting. Nothing sticks to us but smoke in our hair and clothes. It is dead time. It never happened until it happens again. Then it never happened. — Don DeLillo

Thinking in art and morals and even mathematics is neither the reflection in consciousness of a mechanical order in the brain nor the tracing with the mind's eye of some empirical order in its object, but an endeavour to realize in thought an ideal order which would satisfy an inner demand. The nearer thought comes to its goal, the more it finds itself under constraint by that goal, and dominated in its creative effort by aesthetic or moral or logical relevance. These relations of relevance are not physical or psychological relations. They are normative relations that can enter into the mental current because that current is ... teleological. Their operation marks the presence of a different type of law, which supervenes upon physical and psychological laws when purpose takes control. — Brand Blanshard

Part of history is tracing artifacts and looking at patterns. — A.G. Riddle

You bring out a side in me I thought I didn't have." His voice is low and reverent somehow, as are his eyes, knowing and grateful. "I've been told that I'm reckless, that I could not be relied upon, that I couldn't make a difference for others - just for myself. My father looked at me as if I was to blame for everything, and Mother as if I would get myself killed. People look at me like I can get them the moon, but you look at me like I already did. Like all I need to do is exist, and you would be happy," he murmurs, tracing his thumb down my earlobe as he smiles at me, his eyes happily twinkling. "I like it, Rachel. — Katy Evans

He raised a hand and she closed her eyes on instinct. She waited, expected to feel his fingers in her hair. When he touched her she snapped her eyes open and let out a gasp. His index finger was tracing a slow, tender path from the side of her face and along her scar. No one had touched her scar before except her surgeon. No one had wanted to and why should they? It was horrible. It was ugly. It was a disfigurement. As if reading her mind, he spoke. 'You're beautiful, Honor. — Mandy Baggot

I was breathless, talking as fast as I could. I was afraid if I stopped talking, even for a second, I'd start sobbing again.
"Whoa, there." Fang smiled and reached up, tracing a hand down the side of my face, winding strands of my hair around his fingers. "Stop talking and let me just tell you how great it is to wake up staring at your face. Okay? — James Patterson