Vespers Quotes & Sayings

Our large trading cities bear to me very nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotional music, and in which the worship of Mammon and Moloch is conducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety; the merchant rising to his Mammon matins, with the self-denial of an anchorite, and expiating the frivolities into which he maybe beguiled in the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. — John Ruskin

Logically enough, the office and the nunnery have been singularly popular in the imaginations of pornographers. We should not be surprised to learn that the erotic novels of the early modern period were overwhelmingly focused on debauchery and flagellation amongst clergy in vespers and chapels, just as contemporary Internet pornography is inordinately concerned with fellatios and sodomies performed by office workers against a backdrop of work stations and computer equipment. — Alain De Botton

With the passage of days in this godly isolation [desert], my heart grew calm. It seemed to fill with answers. I did not ask questions any more; I was certain. Everything - where we came from, where we are going, what our purpose is on earth - struck me as extremely sure and simple in this God-trodden isolation. Little by little my blood took on the godly rhythm. Matins, Divine Liturgy, vespers, psalmodies, the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening, the constellations suspended like chandeliers each night over the monastery: all came and went, came and went in obedience to eternal laws, and drew the blood of man into the same placid rhythm. I saw the world as a tree, a gigantic poplar, and myself as a green leaf clinging to a branch with my slender stalk. When God's wind blew, I hopped and danced, together with the entire tree. — Nikos Kazantzakis

You were there teaching me to squander, so that one day we might have nothing left except this love of You. But You are too good to me. When I ask You for Pain, You give me peace. Give it him too. Give him my peace-he needs it more. — Graham Greene

A single three-bladed fan turned slowly in the centre of the ceiling, barely disturbing the scorching air which filled the small prefabricated hut like an oven... — Kevin Cowdall

They were submerged in wild strawberry hunts, swimming and water skiing, horse rides, sing alongs, and nature walks on miles of trails disappearing into the saintly aspens. Awards hung from cabins' flag poles, and each day ended with camp fire vespers at sunset with Logan's Bible stories and more singing. The exhausted, happy youngsters were packed, day after day, and long into the night, with sugar-coated cereals, candy, soft drinks, and God. — Dianne Kozdrey Bunnell

Indeed, said the monk, a mass, a matins, and vespers well rung are half-said. — Francois Rabelais

What discordant vespers do the tinker's goods chime through the long twilight and over the brindled forest road, him stooped and hounded through the windy recrements of day like those old exiles who divorced of corporeality and enjoined ingress of heaven or hell wander forever the middle warrens spoorless increate and anathema. Hounded by grief, by guilt, or like this cheerless vendor clamored at heel through wood and fen by his own querulous and inconsolable wares in perennial tin malediction. — Cormac McCarthy

The degree to which your Consciousness expands, is the degree to which you understand yourself and the universe. — Gina Charles

When I began we did not really have a lot of First Amendment law. It is really surprising to think of it this way, but a lot of the law - most of the law that relates to the First Amendment freedom of the press in America - is really within living memory. — Floyd Abrams

Words are pretty, but anyone can talk. Pay attention to the people who perform. — Pat Conroy

He loved three things
in this life:
Vespers, white peacocks,
And old maps of America,
Didn't love children crying,
Raspberries with tea,
Or feminine hysteria
... And I
was his wife. — Anna Akhmatova

About f-f-ace!" she said to the horse, flailing with her boots. "Into the barn, please. It's time for some tasty hay! Haaaaaaay! — Peter Lerangis

If wish to be free from evil of sin, we must study the Scriptures. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Harp of the North, farewell! The hills grow dark,
On purple peaks a deeper shade descending;
In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark,
The deer, half seen, are to the covert wending.
Resume thy wizard elm! the fountain lending,
And the wild breeze, thy wilder minstrelsy;
Thy numbers sweet with nature's vespers blending,
With distant echo from the fold and lea,
And herd-boy's evening pipe, and hum of housing bee. — Walter Scott

Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer: matins around midnight; lauds around three A.M.; prime, the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about six A.M.; vespers at six in the evening; and compline at bedtime. — Barbara W. Tuchman

After that, he was still. They could hear church bells chiming in the distance. Somewhere Vespers was being rung, people were at Mass, life was going on. Andre had not thought there was a need for words of farewell, not between them. But now he found himself approaching the bed, suddenly afraid that he'd waited too long. "Richard." He held his breath then, until the other man opened his eyes. "Listen to me," he said hoarsely. "You will not be forgotten. A hundred years from now, men will be sitting around campfires and telling the legends of the Lionheart."
The corner of Richard's mouth twitched. "Only ... a hundred years?" he whispered, and Andre and Eleanor saw his last smile through a haze of hot tears. — Sharon Kay Penman

Life is beautiful, but we often forget and decorate it with ugliness. — Debasish Mridha

Damien Vesper Didn't plan on killing anyone today — Rick Riordan

It was Rome, on the fifteenth of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. — Edward Gibbon

May we learn to intercede so whole-heartedly that Jesus Christ will be abundantly satisfied with us as intercessors. — Oswald Chambers

Nooooooooooo!" Screaming the word, Amy and Dan moved as one.
Time slowed down, which, Dan knew from experience, often happened when you were in midair. By the time they leaped onto the hood of Fiske's car (oops, dents), and Dan had ripped off a windshield wiper to use as a weapon (probably not the best idea, but hey, he was improvising), Scarey Harley Dude had turned around.
He strode off in his motorcycle boots, moving swiftly to his bike without seeming to hurry. His helmet back on, sunglasses adjusted, he roared off straight into the road, weaving through the thick traffic like smoke.
Amy's face was squashed against the windshield. Dan held the wiper aloft like a club.
And Evan Tolliver stood on the sidewalk, blinking at them.
Dan waved the windshield wiper at him. "Hey, bro. We didn't want to miss our ride. — Jude Watson

Come on," she said, smiling for the first time since she'd stepped on the plane. "We need to get to the bus before Ian plugs his iPod into the speakers."
Dan shuddered. "I'd rather face a thousand Vespers than listen to Beethoven. — Clifford Riley

Looking out the window, I wondered how many of those kids had parents who were losing it, or parents who were gone, taken off without a forwarding address, or parents who had buried themselves alive, who could argue and chop wood and make asses of themselves without being fully conscious. How many of them believed what they were saying when they blathered on about what college they'd go to and what they'd major in and how much they'd earn and what car they'd buy. They repeated that stuff over and over like an incantation that, if pronounced exactly right, would open the door to the life of their dreams. If they looked at their parents, at their crankiness and their therapy and their prescriptions and their ragged collections of kids, step-kids, half-kids, quarter-kids, and the habits that had started in secret but now owned them, body and soul, then they might curse that spell. — Laurie Halse Anderson

You may not be interested in strategy, but strategy is interested in you. — Leon Trotsky

Vespers In which the rest of the abbey is visited, William comes to some conclusions about Adelmo's death, there is a conversation with the brother glazier about glasses for reading and about phantoms for those who seek to read too much. At — Umberto Eco

You see?" Damien leaned over his desk and spread out half a dozen charcoal sketches. "These are only quick studies of course. But my agent in Florence tells me this artist, Leonardo, is a master and also quite an inventor of mechanical devices
which, as you know, are my passion. Leonardo just completed a portrait of Lisa de Giocondo. He calls it the Mona Lisa. I thought I might commission him to do a portrait of me, and while he's here, I can pick his mind for mechanical secrets. How does that sound?"
"Expensive," Gideon murmured. — Rick Riordan

If you LIKE your email provider, you can KEEP your email provider. Period. — Hillary Clinton

Don't have to see," the pilot grunted. "Olga knows the way."
"Funny name for an aircraft," Grace commented. "Is it after your wife?"
"My gun."
Grace stared at him. "You named your plane after a gun?"
"It was a very good gun. — Gordon Korman

I think I'm a songwriter. I grab an instrument to make my body a song, but I'm not a player as such, maybe a little more on guitar, but certainly not piano. — P.J. Harvey

Lesson for the day, kids: hangovers are real, and they are the opposite of fun. — Jeff Sampson

Every man worships the dollar, and is down before his shrine from morning to night ... Other men, the world over, worship regularly at the shrine with matins and vespers, nones and complines, and whatever other daily services may be known to the religious houses; but the New Yorker is always on his knees. — Anthony Trollope