Unhappily Quotes & Sayings

The world has been forced to its knees. Unhappily, we seldom find our way there without being beaten to it by suffering. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married. — C. Northcote Parkinson

Though these young men unhappily fail to
understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of
all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of
their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply
tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set
before them as their goal
such a sacrifice is utterly beyond the strength
of many of them. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

QUIXOTIC, adj. Absurdly chivalric, like Don Quixote. An insight into the beauty and excellence of this incomparable adjective is unhappily denied to him who has the misfortune to know that the gentleman's name is pronounced Ke-ho-tay. — Ambrose Bierce

Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field. — James A. Baldwin

Unhappily, things get clearer as we go along. I perceive that I have no body. What's less, I've been speaking of myself without delight or alternative as self-consciousness pure and sour; I declare now that even that isn't true. I'm not aware of myself at all, as far as I know. I don't think ... I know what I'm talking about. — John Barth

How easy it was, she thought unhappily as she did it, for men and women. They could stand in a street and argue, flirt - they could kiss, make love, do anything at all - and the world indulged them. — Sarah Waters

The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. — Thomas Jefferson

Man is neither angel nor beast, and unhappily whoever wants to act the angel, acts the beast. — Blaise Pascal

A surprising number [of novels] have been read aloud to me, and I like all if moderately good, and if they do not end unhappily-against which a law ought to be passed. — Charles Darwin

He was surprised at the way she answered. She had taken a long time to say that. She had nodded her head in a deep way too. Had she wished to affect him with some sort of premonition? He wondered unhappily. Or was it only that she would not help him, after all, by talking with him? For he was not strong enough to receive the impact of unfamiliar things without a little talk to break their fall. He had lived a month in which nothing had happened except in his head and his body - an almost inaudible life of heartbeats and dreams that came back, a life of fever and privacy, a delicate life which had left him weak to the point of - what? Of begging. The pulse in his palm leapt like a trout in a brook.

("Death of a Traveling Salesman") — Eudora Welty

Our own epoch is determining, day by day, its own style. Our eyes, unhappily, are unable yet to discern it. — Le Corbusier

It is quite impossible to write a worth-while novel about a Jew or a Gentile or a Homosexual, for people refuse, unhappily, to function in so neat and one-dimensional a fashion. — James Baldwin

The woman's bill of rights is, unhappily, long overdue. It should have run along with the rights of man in the eighteenth century. Its drag as to time of official proclamation is a drag as to social vision. And even if equal rights were now written into the law of our land, it would be so inadequate today as a means to food, clothing and shelter for woman at large that what they would still be enjoying would be equality in disaster rather than in realistic privilege. — Mary Ritter Beard

The mark of a good marriage is partnership and continuing to feel inspired by your spouse. I had that with Tao. But the end is not necessarily the tragedy. Staying in a relationship that is no longer working is the tragedy. Living unhappily - that's the tragedy. — Olivia Wilde

Nothing of that which is conducive to help man, collectively or individually, to live not "happily" but less unhappily in this world, ought to be indifferent to the Theosophist-Occultist. It is no concern of his whether his help benefits a man in his worldly or spiritual progress; his first duty is to be ever ready to help if he can, without stopping to philosophize. — H. P. Blavatsky

But it does not seem that I can trust anyone,' said Frodo.
Sam looked at him unhappily. 'It all depends on what you want,' put in Merry. 'You can trust us to stick with you through thick and thin
to the bitter end. And you can trust us to keep any secret of yours
closer than you keep it yourself. But you cannot trust us to let you face trouble alone, and go off without a word. We are your friends, Frodo. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Vladimir Putin is a Russian czar. He's kind of a mix of Peter the Great and Stalin. He's got both in his veins. And he looks out first and foremost for the national security interests of Russia. He accepts that, in Eastern Europe, that is a Russian backyard, that is a Russian sphere of influence. Ukraine lives most uncomfortably and unhappily in a Russian backyard. — Marvin Kalb

fan...fucking...tastic I can't do this I didn't sign up for this shit Tria thought "Yeah...Sure Agres." Tria responded rather unhappily "We can still do some snooping since Mitra seems to be absent at the moment." Tria smiled "Snooping sounds good. — Charon Lloyd-Roberts

I warned you; I warned you I was the Senses Taker," sneered the Senses Taker. "I help people find what they're not looking for, hear what they're not listening for, run after what they're not chasing, and smell what isn't even there. And, furthermore," he cackled, hopping around gleefully on his stubby legs, "I'll steal your sense of purpose, take your sense of duty, destroy your sense of proportion - and, but for one thing, you'd be helpless yet."
"What's that?" asked Milo fearfully.
"As long as you have the sound of laughter," he groaned unhappily, "I cannot take your sense of humor - and, with it, you've nothing to fear from me. — Norton Juster

People think genius a fine thing if it enables a man to write an exciting poem, or paint a picture, But in its true sense, that of originality in thought and action, though no one says that it is not a thing to be admired, nearly all, at heart, think that they can do very well without it. Unhappily this is too natural to be wondered at. Originality is the one thing which unoriginal minds cannot feel the use of. They cannot see what it is to do for them: how should they? If they could see what it would do for them, it would not be originality. — John Stuart Mill

In the center of all rests the sun. For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place that this wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time? As a matter of fact, not unhappily do some call it the lantern; others, the mind and still others, the pilot of the world. Trismegistus calls it a "visible God"; Sophocles' Electra, "that which gazes upon all things." And so the sun, as if resting on a kingly throne, governs the family of stars which wheel around. — Nicolaus Copernicus

The trouble with me, he thought unhappily, is that I have been about the world long enough to know that God's plans for us, however infallibly good, may not take the form we expect and demand. — Ellis Peters

I'm the only American alive or dead who presided unhappily over the removal of a vice president and a president. — Alexander Haig

Most interesting," said Summerlee, bending over my shin. "An enormous blood-tick, as yet, I believe, unclassified." "The first-fruits of our labors," said Challenger in his booming, pedantic fashion. "We cannot do less than call it Ixodes Maloni. The very small inconvenience of being bitten, my young friend, cannot, I am sure, weigh with you as against the glorious privilege of having your name inscribed in the deathless roll of zoology. Unhappily you have crushed this fine specimen at the moment of satiation. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Septimus was suddenly horribly afraid that the Antidote would not work. He glanced nervously at Marcia, who whispered, "It will work, Septimus. You must believe in it."
Physik isn't like Magyk," said Septimus unhappily. "It doesn't matter whether you expect it to work or not. Either it does or it doesn't."
"I doubt that very much," said Marcia. "A little belief in something always helps. — Angie Sage

Democracy: stored up in heaven; but unhappily has not yet been communicated to us. — Bernard Crick

On the morrow the horizon was covered with clouds- a thick and impenetrable curtain between earth and sky, which unhappily extended as far as the Rocky Mountains. It was a fatality! — Jules Verne

The gesture of rejection with which I was forever met did not mean: 'I do not love you,' but: 'You cannot love me, much as you would like; you are unhappily in love with your love for me, but your love for me is not in love with you.' It is consequently incorrect to say that I have known the words, 'I love you'; I have known only the expectant stillness that should have been broken by my 'I love you,' that is all that I have known, nothing more. — Franz Kafka

The genres, it is thought, have other designs on us. They want to entertain, as opposed to rubbing our noses in the daily grit produced by the daily grind. Unhappily for realistic novelists, the larger reading public likes being entertained. — Margaret Atwood

Thomas," Inez interrupted with exasperation. "I'm trying to tell you I love you." "You do?" he asked, a smile spreading halfway across his face. "But then why did you tell Terri that you wanted to delay the turn?" "It wasn't you. It was because of the pain involved," she said with a grimace and then admitted, "I don't like pain, Thomas. I mean I'm practically phobic about it. My whole life, I've avoided any situation that might involve pain. My dentist even has to gas me to fill a cavity." Inez shrugged unhappily. "I probably would have delayed and put it off as long as I possibly could if you hadn't had to change me to save my life. In truth, Blondie probably did us both a favor by precipitating the events that forced you to turn me. — Lynsay Sands

The bad end unhappily; the good, unluckily. That is what tragedy means. — Tom Stoppard

I will wake up as Chocolate-mint Person, I will stumble to the door, unhappily attracting sand and feathers on the way; I will stand on the lawn; I will look up at the stars and bleat, "Stars! I am having trouble with my comforter! You are so serene! How can I be serene like you?" They will look at each other knowingly, for they have answered this question millions of times. And then they will twinkle back to me, "Person, you will never be like a star. Things for you will always float away and spill and melt. The closest thing to serenity for you, is laughing." I will recognize this as true. I will stand there, just another sandy, feathery, chocolate-mint person laughing on the lawn. — Amy Leach

All men, if they work not as in the great taskmaster's eye, will work wrong, and work unhappily for themselves and for you. — Thomas Carlyle

I concluded that, unhappily, I'd been born into a world dominated by a rampaging monster called 'law' that was both all-powerful and all-stupid — Michio Kaku

Unhappily children do hurt flies — Jean Rhys

But with every word she was drawing further and further into herself, so he gave that up, and only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, toward that lost voice across the room. — F Scott Fitzgerald

There is a tone of morality throughout the rural districts of England, which is unhappily wanting in the large towns and the centres of particular manufactures. — Henry Mayhew

And we may be led, then, upward through more
Powerful forms of poetry, past columns
With peeling posters on them, to the country of indifference.
Meanwhile if the swell diapasons, blooms
Unhappily and too soon, the little people are nonetheless real. — John Ashbery

Make up your mind that you will be happy whether you are rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, happily married or unhappily married, young or old, smiling or crying. Don't wait for yourself, your family, or your surroundings to change before you can be happy within yourself. Make up your mind to be happy within yourself, right now, whatever you are, or wherever you are. — Paramahansa Yogananda

In all provinces of life, it is unhappily the case, that whatever is to be accomplished by a number of co-operating men and circumstances cannot long continue perfect. Of an acting company as well as of a kingdom, of a circle of friends as well as of an army, you may commonly select the moment when it may be said that all was standing on the highest pinnacle of harmony, perfection, contentment, and activity. But alterations will ere long occur; the individuals that compose the body often change; new members are added; the persons are no longer suited to the circumstances, or the circumstances to the persons; what was formerly united quickly falls asunder. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily.. — Bernhard Schlink

Who you get, and how it works out- there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice of a mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily. — Ian McEwan

Well, history isn't ever going to end, happily or unhappily. And history is ending every second - happily for some of us, unhappily for others, happily one second, unhappily the next. History is always ending and always not ending, and both ways there is nothing to wait for — Tom Robbins

It is not clear that married people are, on average, happier than those who never married, because unhappily married people are the least happy group of all and they pull down the average. — Jonathan Haidt

Man's primary purpose is not to be happy but to continue to live, to continue to travel - happily or unhappily - on the path of life! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

He heard the sob she tried to swallow back and thought unhappily that if all the storybooks were right, that there was nobility to be found in adversity and character to be built in tribulation, then he was doing a piss-poor job of both finding and building. — Anonymous

He was ... seeking to serve at once with all the strength of is soul ... and ready to sacrifice everything ... Though these young men unhappily fail to understand that the sacrifice of life is, in many cases, the easiest of all sacrifices, and that to sacrifice, for instance, five or six years of their seething youth to hard and tedious study, if only to multiply tenfold their powers of serving the truth and the cause they have set before them as their goal-such a sacrifice is beyond the strength of many of them. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics. — Sidney Altman

It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public. — George Henry Lewes

In all matrimonial associations there is, I believe, one constant factor - a desire to deceive the person with whom one lives as to some weak spot in one's character or in one's career. For it is intolerable to live constantly with one human being who perceives one's small meannesses. It is really death to do so - that is why so many marriages turn out unhappily. — Ford Madox Ford

This awakening of a new interest - this passing from the supposition that we hold the right opinions on a subject we are careless about, to a sudden care for it, and a sense that our opinions were ignorance - is an effectual remedy for ennui, which, unhappily, cannot be secured on a physician's prescription; — George Eliot

Character halts without aid of the imagination, which our classes in Shakespeare and Browning, music and drawing, recognize not only as amusement and by-play of the mind, but a co-ordinate power. Its work is unhappily styled fiction; for to idealize is to realize. — C. A. Bartol

I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves. [in response to Rousseau's "The Social Contract"] — Voltaire

A man may be a great statesman, and yet dislike his wife, and like somebody else's. A man may be a great hero, and yet he may have an unseemly passion, or an unpaid tailor. But the British public does not understand this ... It thinks, unhappily or happily as you may choose to consider, that genius should keep the whole ten commandments. Now, genius is conspicuous for breaking them. — Ouida

We Brazilians, happily or unhappily, leave a lot to the last minute. — Romario

As for the spirit of poverty, I do not remember any moment when it was not in me, although only to that unhappily small extent compatible with my imperfection. I fell in love with Saint Francis of Assisi as soon as I came to know about him. I always believed and hoped that one day Fate would force upon me the condition of a vagabond and a beggar which he embraced freely. Actually I felt the same way about prison. — Simone Weil

I am one of the few goyim who have ever actually tackled the Talmud. I suppose you now expect me to add that it is a profound and noble work, worthy of hard study by all other goyims. Unhappily, my report must differ from this expectation. It seems to me, save for a few bright spots, to be quite indistinguishable from rubbish. — H.L. Mencken

The Prince found Buttercup waiting unhappily outside his chamber doors.
It's my letter,' she began. 'I cannot make it right.'
Come in, come in,' the Prince said gently. 'Maybe we can help you.' She sat down in the same chair as before. 'All right, I'll close my eyes and listen; read to me.'
Westley, my passion, my sweet, my only my own. Come back, come back. I shall kill myself otherwise. Yours in torment, Buttercup.' She looked at Humperdinck. 'Well? Do you think I'm throwing myself at him? — William Goldman

Two hundred pounds of male muscle was on her bed, which she could honestly say was a first. The fact that he was large and muscular wasn't really the big deal, but the fact that he was male, because at twenty-eight years old, she was very unhappily a virgin. It was something that she'd definitely never expected to happen to her and the one thing that she would give anything to change. — R.L. Mathewson

Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it. — Charles Lamb

Unhappily we have to pay in life for everything worthwhile. If we want experience, depth and an understanding of life's infinite phases we have to suffer shock and sorrow and then, if we are strong enough to rise above them, life is a curious bittersweet affair. Too much of its bitter aspect is of course terrible, but too much of unalloyed sweetness can also be bad enough. — Pamela Hicks

EUCHARIST, n. A sacred feast of the religious sect of Theophagi. A dispute once unhappily arose among the members of this sect as to what it was that they ate. In this controversy some five hundred thousand have already been slain, and the question is still unsettled. — Ambrose Bierce

We all knew she needed help.
But none of us knew how.
And none of us could swallow our pride and just ask her what she needed.
I don't know why.
Maybe we were too ashamed we didn't know how to approach our own mother.

So we let the years slip unhappily past us and hoped we would never inherit the misery embedded in her soul.

But I did.

And I didn't know how to say it aloud.
And I still don't. — Stacy Morris

Dying is only one thing to be sad over ... Living unhappily is something else. — Morrie Schwartz.

Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain? — Bernhard Schlink

An unhappily married woman is necessarily a bad cook. — Ann-Marie MacDonald

No country or people who are slaves to dogma and the dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded — Jawaharlal Nehru

To be enlightened is to be aware, always, of total reality in its immanent otherness - to be aware of it and yet remain in a condition to survive as an animal. Our goal is to discover that we have always been where we ought to be. Unhappily we make the task exceedingly difficult for ourselves. — Aldous Huxley

I'd rather be happily single than unhappily married. — Heather Graham

Well, I guess I'll become a thief, then," said Pica unhappily. "though I don't think I'll be much good. I'm a pacifist, you see? — Keith Miller

We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him, and science gives today the only world picture which we can consider as valid. It gives an understanding of the inside of the atom and of the whole universe, or the peculiar properties of the chemical substances and of the manner in which genes duplicate in biology. An educated layman can, of course, not contribute to science, but can enjoy and participate in many scientific discoveries which as constantly made. Such participation was quite common in the 19th century, but has unhappily declined. Literacy in science will enrich a person's life. — Hans Bethe

He ordered Ronan to put on some terrible music
Ronan was always too happy to oblige in this department
and then he abused the Camaro at every stoplight on the way out of town. "Put your back into it!" Gansey shouted breathlessly. He was talking to himself, of course, or to the gearbox. "Don't let it smell fear on you!" Blue wailed each time the engine revved up, but not unhappily. Noah played the drums on the back of Ronan's headrest. Adam, for his part, was not wild, but he did his best not to appear unwild, so as not to ruin it for the others. — Maggie Stiefvater

Only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, towards that lost voice across the room. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Tradition is not something a man can learn; not a thread he picks up when he feels like it; any more than a man can choose his own ancestors. Someone lacking a tradition who would like to have one is like a man unhappily in love. — Talal Asad

After the example of his fellow-doctors, cured all the illnesses of his patients, except those of which they died
a habit unhappily acquired by all the members of all the faculties in whatever country they may practise. — Jules Verne

I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness. — Bertrand Russell

Unhappily the habit of being offensive 'without meaning it' leads usually to a way of making amends which the injured person cannot but regard as a being amiable without meaning it. — George Eliot

Unhappily, law is by no means confined to its own department. Nor is it merely in some indifferent and debatable views that it has left its proper sphere. It has done more than this. It has acted in direct opposition to its proper end; it has destroyed its own object; it has been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought to have established, in effacing amongst Rights, that limit which was its true mission to respect; it has placed the collective force in the service of those who wish to traffic, without risk, and without scruple, in the persons, the liberty, and the property of others; it has converted plunder into a right, that it may protect it, and lawful defense into a crime, that it may punish it. — Anonymous

We're too insignificant and small to really be able to do anything, except cry, not unhappily, but an inner cry, a feeling of reaching to God: — Frederick Lenz

The questions which for years were in dispute between the State and General Government, and which unhappily were not decided by the dictates of reason, but referred to the decision of war, having been decided against us, it is the part of wisdom to acquiesce in the result, and of candor to recognize the fact. — Robert E.Lee

Given that the 'common sense' of many contemporary philosophers is shaped and supplemented by ideas from classical physics, the locus of most metaphysical discussions is an image of the world that sits unhappily between the manifest image and an out of date scientific image.11 — James Ladyman

We do a lot of shows for young people who have probably never been to the theater before and they are learning about the Holocaust, which unhappily, many of them do not know about. — Linda Lavin

My one true love. My deformed or mutilated or diseased prince charming. My unhappily ever after. My hideous future. The monstrous rest of my life. — Chuck Palahniuk

This success permits us to hope that after thirty or forty years of observation on the new Planet [Neptune], we may employ it, in its turn, for the discovery of the one following it in its order of distances from the Sun. Thus, at least, we should unhappily soon fall among bodies invisible by reason of their immense distance, but whose orbits might yet be traced in a succession of ages, with the greatest exactness, by the theory of Secular Inequalities.
[Following the success of the confirmation of the existence of the planet Neptune, he considered the possibility of the discovery of a yet further planet.] — Urbain Le Verrier

Unhappily, no man exists who has not in his own person become, to some amount, a stockholder in the sin, and so made himself liable to a share in the expiation. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

And so they lived unhappily ever after'. — Aldous Huxley

I find myself by default an atheist but fairly unhappily so. It would be bloody marvelous if there was a god. — Marcus Brigstocke

What, exactly, she had been protesting was subject to interpretation. To the poorest, her self-immolation was a response to enervating poverty. To the disabled, it reflected the lack of respect accorded the physically impaired. To the unhappily married, who were legion, it was a brave indictment of oppressive unions. Almost no one spoke of envy, a stone slab, a poorly made wall, or rubble that had fallen into rice. — Katherine Boo

So, anything that avoids a conflict that could draw in, unhappily again, outside powers such as the United States or revisit, for example, Japan's interests in the Taiwan area would be the last thing that anyone would want. — William Kirby

The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means. — Richard Dawkins

My verses, I cannot say poems ... I was following in the exquisite footsteps of Miss Millay, unhappily in my own horrible sneakers. — Dorothy Parker

It takes, unhappily, no more than a desk and writing supplies to turn any room into a confessional. — Thomas Pynchon

We have been happily borne - or perhaps have unhappily dragged our weary way - down the long and crooked streets of our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood, rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given a thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to penetrate them with our vision or our understanding. But there is where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards away from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous number of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in these fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! And all of a sudden the fateful gate swings quickly open, and four white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but nonetheless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap, ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate to our past life, is slammed shut once and for all.
That's all there is to it! You are arrested! — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life. — James Baldwin

The misery of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily; in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum-total of the unhappiness of a man's life are easily counted and distinctly remembered. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

One only realizes the extent of his love when he thinks he has lost the one he loves; and unhappily, very often only begins to love when he feels his love is not returned. — Waguih Ghali

Be sure that if you are unhappily celebrated for either beauty, wit, intellect, or all three together, half society wishes you dead already, and the other half tries to make you as wretched as possible while you are alive. — Marie Corelli

It seems if you are Vorkosigan enough, you can even get away with murder." Ekaterin stiffened unhappily. Miles hesitated a fractional moment, considering responses: explanation, outrage, protest? Argument in a hallway with a half-potted fool? No. I am Aral Vorkosigan's son, after all. Instead, he stared up unblinkingly, and breathed, "So if you truly believe that, why are you standing in my way?" Vormurtos's inebriated sneer drained away, to be replaced by a belated wariness. With an effort at insouciance that he did not quite bring off, he unfolded himself, opening his hand to wave the couple past. When Miles bared his teeth in an edged smile, he backed up an extra and involuntary step. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Work and wine, maintaining sanity for unhappily married women everywhere. — Claire Contreras