Unfurling Quotes & Sayings

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. — Chief Seattle

The collar came first, and when Guerin drew it from his neck he felt the collar's absence like a lightness, his spine unfurling, his shoulders settling.
Like a lie, cracking and dropping from him. — C.S. Pacat

My wild heart craves shadows. Like a bat unfurling its wings, I open myself to darkness; I open myself to truth. — Nichole McElhaney

Something primal shifted and spread its jagged wings inside him, unfurling along his limbs, flowing like liquid steel through his veins. He — Sarah Fine

I burrowed my head in his neck, Travis clutching me tight to him as he turned his back to the wave. As it crashed wildly around us, the sweet bloom of something beautiful began unfurling in my chest and rocked me hard. My throat worked at swallowing it down, but right then I wanted nothing more than to claw my way Inside his skin and never leave. — Kate McCarthy

i feel the spring breeze ruffling
the new-hatched damp of my unfurling
feathers; i see with eyes bleary from egg-dark
the shell clinging sticky to my screaming
beak. — Beth Morey

One person looks around and sees a universe created by a god who watches over its long unfurling, marking the fall of sparrows and listening to the prayers of his finest creation. Another person believes that life, in all its baroque complexity, is a chemical aberration that will briefly decorate the surface of a ball of rock spinning somewhere among a billion galaxies. And the two of them could talk for hours and find no great difference between one another, for neither set of beliefs make us kinder or wiser. — Mark Haddon

The creation story unfurling within the scientific enterprise provides the fundamental context, the fundamental arena of meaning, for all the peoples of the Earth. For the first time in human history, we can agree on the basic story of the galaxies, the stars, the planets, minerals, life forms, and human cultures. This story does not diminish the spiritual traditions of the classical or tribal periods of human history. Rather, the story provides the proper setting for the teachings of all traditions, showing the true magnitude of their central truths. — Brian Swimme

It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling. — James Joyce

His relationship with his father had been like the unfurling of some flower of beautiful potential, which, when wholly opened, turned out to be blighted inside. — Stephen King

I have never yet managed to see the moment of the petals of a bud unfurling. I might dedicate the rest of my life to it and might still never see it. No, not might, I will: I will dedicate the rest of my life, in which I walk forward into this blossoming. When there's no blossom I will dead-head and wait. It'll be back. That's the nature of things.
As it is, I am careful when kissing, or when taking anyone in my arms. I warn them about the thorns. I treat myself with care. I guard against pests and frost-damage. I am careful with my roots. I know they need depth and darkness, and any shit that comes my way I know exactly what to do with. I'm composed when it comes to compost. — Ali Smith

The same principles that make a spiral galaxy also create the structure of a seashell and unfurling of a fern. This is why ancient spiritual people used natural symbols to convey universal concepts. — Belsebuub

Unfurl your brow. So many people walk around stressed, or upset, or confused, and they make that face, where they scrunch their brow. Just recognizing that your face is clenched and unfurling your brow will instantly make you feel more relaxed. — Asher Roth

True love was a flower in the gut, its petals unfurling inside out. You would risk all for love -- blissful, never without its drops of dismay. — Jessie Burton

The bloody red head emerged.
The white sheet turned crimson.
The infant sat up.
Unfurling soft, white feathered wings, the newborn demigoddess regarded the world around her with large, beguiling blue eyes. As if satisfied with what she saw, she seized her own umbilical cord between her small, sharp teeth and severed her tie with her mother with one, quick bite. — Georgina Anne Taylor

There are olive trees outside and the imagined smell of their bark and silvered leaves brings with it the first unfurling of some new imperative she feels coiled up within her. Her whole body with a joyful shout know it is back in Italy. — Glenn Haybittle

Beneath the great sisterhood of stars unfurling in the night sky ... — Pat Conroy

Somewhere deeper in the city a motor is running, a distant, earthy growl, like an animal panting. in a few hours the bright blush of morning will push through all that darkness, and shapes will reassert themselves, and people will wake up and yawn and brew coffee and get ready for work, everything the same as usual. Life will go on. Something aches at the very core of me, something ancient and deep and stronger than words: the filament that joins each of us to the root of existence, that ancient thing unfurling and resisting and grappling, desperately for a foothold, a way to stay here, breathe, keep going. — Lauren Oliver

At the base of the immense pillar, tiny Babylon was in shadow. Then the darkness climbed the tower, like a canopy unfurling upward. It moved slowly enough that Hillalum felt he could count the moments passing, but then it grew faster as it approached, until it raced past them faster than he could blink, and they were in twilight ... For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky. — Ted Chiang

National festivals should become festivals of development. Republic Day or Independence Day should not be only about unfurling the Tricolour in the state capitals. We have to make them opportunities of Lok Shikshan (Mass Education). — Narendra Modi

For within your flesh, deep within the center of your being, is the undaunted, waiting, longing, all-knowing. Is the ready, able, perfect. Within you, waiting its turn to emerge, piece by piece, with the dawn of every former test of trial and blackness, is the next unfolding, the great unfurling of wings, the re-forged backbone of a true Child of Light. — Jennifer DeLucy

A single yellow flag beats against the ocean wind, and the sky stretches for every mile of ocean, and then longer and farther. We're the only people as far as the eye can see, and all the world feels like a private show, screened on the endless black sky. The universe is unfurling its whole self to us, arms wide and beckoning. — Emery Lord

Open your creative heart like an unfurling flower and petal and share your exquisiteness. — Amy Leigh Mercree

The Kingdom of God works into us like yeast, and it grows like a seed in good soil. It enters quietly, holistically, radically, joyfully subversive, right into the core of our humanity, unfurling, renewing, and giving work to our hands. It shows up when we live loved and where we love each other well. And the Kingdom of God lasts. — Sarah Bessey

We are as a rose unfurling, becoming more clearly ourselves — Renee Ahdieh

As he watched her, Colin was visited by the strangest feeling, unfurling warm and buttery inside him. It was a sense of privilege and mute wonder, as though he'd witnessed one of those small, everyday miracles of spring. Like a licked-clean foal taking its first steps on wobbly legs. Or a new butterfly pushing scrunched, damp wings from a chrysalis.
Before his eyes, she'd transformed into a new creature. Still a bit awkward and uncertain, but undaunted. And well on her way to being beautiful.
Colin scratched his neck. He wished there were someone nearby he could turn to and say, 'Would you look at that? — Tessa Dare

Luce," Jude said, unfurling the blanket cinched around me, grabbing my hands when he pulled them free, "you're my girl. The girl." To join the other emotions flashing over over his face, a trace of pain did as well. "When I look at Adriana, or any other girl for that matter, that's all I see. Some other girl who isn't my girl. I don't see them, Luce. I see you," he continued, his skin lining between his brows. "I've only ever seen you. — Nicole Williams

Some changes occur suddenly like a brilliant flash of lightning striking across a dark sky. These changes are stunning, exciting but can be quickly forgotten. Other changes happen slowly, gradually, like a flower blooming in early spring, each day unfurling its petals another fraction of an inch towards the warm, nurturing sun. These changes are as inevitable as nature running its course; they're meant to be. — Suzi Davis

Observing any human being from infancy, seeing someone come into existence, like a new flower in bud, each petal first tightly furled around another, and then the natural loosening and unfurling, the opening into a bloom, the life of that bloom, must be something wonderful to behold; to see experience collect in the eyes, around the corners of the mouth, the weighing down of the brow, the heaviness in heart and soul, the thick gathering around the waist, the breasts, the slowing down of footsteps not from old age but only with the caution of life-all this is something so wonderful to observe, so wonderful to behold; the pleasure for the observer, the beholder, is an invisible current between the two, observed and observer, beheld and beholder, and I believe that no life is complete, no life is really whole, without this invisible current, which is in many ways a definition of love. — Jamaica Kincaid

Mma Ramotswe found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no people. There were, she knew, those who had no others in this life, who had no uncles, or aunts, or distant cousins of any degree; people who were just themselves. Many white people were like that, for some unfathomable reason; they did not seem to want to have people and were happy to be just themselves. How lonely they must be
like spacemen deep in space, floating in darkness, but without even that silver, unfurling cord that linked the astronauts to their little metal womb of oxygen and warmth. For a moment, she indulged the metaphor, and imagined the tiny white van in space, slowly spinning against a background of stars and she, Mma Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Space Agency, floating weightless, head over heels, tied to the tiny white van with a thin washing line. — Alexander McCall Smith

Since Monday, it has been raining buoyant summer rain shot through with sun, but dark at night and full of sound, full of dripping leaves, watery chimings, sleepless scuttlings. Billy Bob is wide-awake, dry-eyed, though everything he does is a little frozen and his tongue is as stiff as a bell tongue. It has not been easy for him, Miss Bobbit's going. Because she'd meant more than that. Than what? Than being thirteen years old and crazy in love. She was the queer things in him, like the pecan tree and liking books and caring enough about people to let them hurt him. She was the things he was afraid to show anyone else. And in the dark the music trickled through the rain: won't there be nights when we will hear it just as though it were really there? And afternoons when the shadows will be all at once confused, and she will pass before us, unfurling across the lawn like a pretty piece of ribbon? — Truman Capote

All around the recognized word and the comprehended sentence, the other graphisms take flight, carrying with them the visible plenitude of shape and leaving only the linear, successive unfurling of meaning
not one drop of rain falling after another, much less a feather or a torn-of leaf. — Michel Foucault

The human being is that space in which the comprehensive compassion that pervades the universe from the very beginning now begins to surface
within consciousness. (As compared with the natural displays of compassion by other creatures that is not necessarily 'within consciousness. ') That's the only difference. We didn't create compassion, but it's flowing through us-or it could. The phase change that we're in seems, to me, to depend upon that comprehensive compassion unfurling in the human species. — Brian Swimme

He reaches forward slowly, to lift the pen from my lax grip. Wearily I regard the faltering trail of ink it has tracked down my page. I have seen that shape before, I think, but it was not ink then. A trickle of drying blood on the deck of a Red-Ship, and mine the hand that spilled it? Or was it a tendril of smoke rising black against a blue sky as I rode too late to warn a village of a Red-Ship raid? Or poison swirling and unfurling yellowly in a simple glass of water, poison I had handed someone, smiling all the while? The artless curl of a strand of woman's hair left upon my pillow? Or the trail of a man's heels left in the sand as we dragged the bodies from the smoldering tower at Sealbay? The track of a tear down a mother's cheek as she clutched her Forged infant to her despite his angry cries? Like Red-Ships, the memories come without warning, without mercy. — Robin Hobb

Do you want me?" she whispered, licking him again. She felt very warm, and slightly drunk with her feminine power. Desire was unfurling inside her, opening like a flower. Her breasts throbbed, and she rubbed them against his leg.

He gave a strangled laugh, almost undone by her natural sensuality. "Look a few inches to your right and tell me what you think. — Linda Howard

May the Love you are
blossom into Being.
With each unfurling petal
May you know the beauty
of your Soul.
May you sow seeds of Love
through every season — Julie Parker

Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation. — Eugene V. Debs

And while Luce dreamed below of the most glorious wings unfurling-the likes of which she'd never seen before-two angels in the rafters shook hands. — Lauren Kate

Scarcely has night arrived to undeceive, unfurling her wings of crepe (wings drained even of the glimmer just now dying in the tree-tops); scarcely has the last glint still dancing on the burnished metal heights of the tall towers ceased to fade, like a still glowing coal in a spent brazier, which whitens gradually beneath the ashes, and soon is indistinguishable from the abandoned hearth, than a fearful murmur rises amongst them, their teeth chatter with despair and rage, they hasten and scatter in their dread, finding witches everywhere, and ghosts. It is night ... and Hell will gape once more. — Charles Nodier

Whether Hindus or Greeks, Egyptians or Japanese, Chinese, Sumerians, or ancient Americans
or even Romans, the most "modern" among people of antiquity
they all placed the Golden Age, the Age of Truth, the rule of Kronos or of Ra or of any other gods on earth
the glorious beginning of the slow, downward unfurling of history, whatever name it be given
far behind them in the past. — Savitri Devi

Ragged curls of unfurling ampersands swam across her vision. — Ian McEwan

She's always getting into trouble because she gets bored really really easily. [ ... ]
My mum says it's because Celia has an attention span the size of a sesame seed.
Celia's mum says it's because Celia's identity is unfurling itself slowly, like a tulip bud, and it's a breathtakingly beautiful thing to see. — Jaclyn Moriarty

the darkness of the summer slowly unfurling, never to be completely gone, but fading to become no more than a part of the life that surrounds it. — Georgia Blain

Then the short man disappears through the huge doors. Minutes later, the aide-de-camp flings open the shutters of an upstairs window and gazes a moment across the rooftops before unfurling a crimson flag over the brick and securing its eyelets to the sill. — Anthony Doerr

We came to woodlands, with leaves unfurling on every branch, as if one blow of spring's green hammer had set them exploding from the bud. — Mark Lawrence

This was what she needed ... the quiet turning to the other in the middle of the night, the wordless meeting of lips, skin, breath. The trust, unfurling one pale petal at a time, that he would be there. — Eileen Wilks

When it was all over, Kit thankfully slipped away, avoiding the washing-up after dinner, and found himself a quiet spot under the front portico of the house. The air blowing off the desert was cool and spiced, and the ocean gleamed under the stars, a sheet of deep black that ended in a series of unfurling white waves. — Cassandra Clare