Unoiled Quotes & Sayings

They were jet, those wings, as deep as the sky, as black as Eoduin's hair - no, blacker, for they were dull, unoiled. They gave off no sheen in the light, no gleam to the eye. They drank up the light and diminished it: they were wings of pure shadow. — Meredith Ann Pierce

The best part of our lives we pass in counting on what is to come. — William Hazlitt

Everything about the hawk is tuned and turned to hunt and kill. Yesterday I discovered that when I suck air through my teeth and make a squeaking noise like an injured rabbit, all the tendons in her toes instantaneously contract, driving her talons into the glove with terrible, crushing force. This killing grip is an old, deep pattern in her brain, an innate response that hasn't yet found the stimulus meant to release it. Because other sounds provoke it: door hinges, squealing breaks, bicycles with unoiled wheels - and on the second afternoon, Joan Sutherland singing an aria on the radio. Ow. I laughed out loud at that. Stimulus: opera. Response: kill. — Helen Macdonald

Only time itself can prove if a man is a genius or is simply insane. — James Morris Robinson

I am not Menda, though that is what my mother called me. I am Tehlu, lord above all. I have come to free you from demons and the wickedness of your own hearts. I am Tehlu, son of myself. Let the wicked hear my voice and tremble." And they did tremble. But some of them refused to believe. They called him a demon and threatened him. They spoke hard, frightened words. Some threw stones and cursed him, and spat toward him and his mother. Then Tehlu grew angry, and he might have slain them all, but Perial leaped forward and laid a restraining hand on his shoulder. "What more can you expect?" she asked him quietly. "From men who live with demons for their neighbors? Even the best dog will bite that has been kicked enough. — Patrick Rothfuss

Jared sidled up. He was not very good at sidling; he was more of a loomer. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Intentions must mature into commitments if we are to become persons with definition, with character, with substance. — Eugene H. Peterson