What A Evening Quotes & Sayings

But I would like to think for a moment about a man who in the morning teaches his students that a false attribution of a Watteau drawing or an inaccurate transcription of a fourteenth-century epigraph is a sin against the spirit and in the afternoon or evening transmits to the agents of Soviet intelligence classified, perhaps vital information given to him in sworn trust by his countrymen and intimate colleagues. What are the sources of such scission? How does the spirit mask itself? — George Steiner

I was ordered to go for flowers, that my mistress's house might be decorated for an evening party. I spent the day gathering flowers and weaving them into festoons, while the dead body of my father was lying within a mile of me. What cared my owners for that? he was merely a piece of property. Moreover, they thought he had spoiled his children, by teaching them to feel that they were human beings. This was blasphemous doctrine for a slave to teach; presumptuous in him, and dangerous to the masters. — Harriet Ann Jacobs

What exactly was her love worth? A few weeks of sadness? All right. And what is sadness? A bit of depression, a bit of languishing. And what is a week of sadness? No one is ever sad all of the time. She would be sad for a few minutes in the daytime, a few minutes in the evening; how many minutes in all? How many minutes of sadness did her love merit? How many minutes of sadness did he rate?
Jaromil imagined his death, and he imagined the redhead's subsequent life, a life unconcerned and unchanged, coldly and cheerfully rising up above his nonbeing. — Milan Kundera

To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk, - to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a "too easy chair" to take a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my circumstances, as it would be under his. — Charlotte Bronte

Foreshadow, plot buster or red herring ... only time will tell: P69
Cassie waited; in the evening light through the window her eyes looked huge, opaque and watchful. I knew she was giving me a chance to say, Fuck the hair clip, let's forget we ever found it. Even now the temptation, tired and profitless though it may be, is to wonder what would have happened if I had. — Tana French

The years passed unnoticed and unremembered, and one autumn morning I found myself suddenly forty-five years old. It was a time for weighing youthful hopes against mature accomplishment, for it was quite certain that I had by then done all I was ever going to do. Sitting alone at my desk that evening of my forty-fifth birthday I asked that least original of introspective questions: Where had it all gone? And the somewhat less banal question: What, after all, had it been? My — Trevanian

Caviar is to dining what a sable coat is to a girl in evening dress. — Ludwig Bemelmans

Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends! — Albert Camus

While her own taste was, frankly, pedestrian, Lady Maccon did enjoy seeing what all the peacocks had arranged to drape themselves with. In the better parts of London, one could run into almost anything: the latest evening gowns from Paris, floating dresses to the extremes of practicality from the Americas, and the fullest, most complex cravat ties imaginable. One could witness a veritable cornucopia of visual delights merely by driving through the crowded streets. If — Gail Carriger

I shall think soon that what people say is true: every woman is possessed by her own peculiar devil of curiosity — Nikolai Gogol

That evening, after Romer had left so peremptorily, she had gone through to the salon to talk to her father. A job for the British government, she told him. £500 a year, a British passport. He feigned surprise but it was obvious that Romer had briefed him to a certain extent.
'You'd be a British citizen, with a passport,' her father said, his features incredulous, almost abjectly so - as if it were unthinkable that a nonentity such as he should have a daughter who was a British citizen. 'Do you know what I would give to be a British citizen?' he said, all the while with his left hand miming a sawing motion at his right elbow. — William Boyd

There was nothing like an extra helping of guilt to cool a man's blood.And it was guilt as much as the hot food and the glass of good wine that got Brian through the evening in the Grant kitchen. The size of it left little room for lust, considering.
There was Adelia Grant giving him a warm greeting as if he was welcome to swing in for dinner anytime he had the whim, and Travis getting out an extra plate himself-as if he waited on employees five days a week-and saying that there was plenty to go around as Brendon had other plans for dinner.
Before he knew it, he was sitting down, having food heaped in front of him and being asked how his day had been.And not in a way that expected a report.
He didn't know what to do about it. He liked these people, genuinely liked them. And there he was lusting after their daughter. An alley mutt after a registered purebred. — Nora Roberts

Writing is making love under a crescent moon: I see shadows of what's to come, and it's enough; I have faith in what I can't see and it's substantiated by a beginning, a climax, an ending. And if it's an epic novel in hand, I watch the sunrise amid the twigs and dewing grass; the wordplay is what matters.
Simply put, I'm in love, and any inconvenience is merely an afterthought.
The sun tips the horizon; the manuscript is complete. The author, full of profound exhaustion, lays his stylus aside. His labor of love stretches before him, beautiful, content, sleeping, until the next crescent moon stars the evening sky. — Chila Woychik

I don't have custody. Wayne is just - We're on good terms about our son. It's not an issue." "Got a number where we can reach him?" "Yes, but he's on a plane right now. He visited for the Fourth. He's headed back this evening." "You sure about that? How do you know he boarded the plane?" "I'm sure he had nothing to do with this, if that's what you're asking. We're not fighting over our son. My ex is the most harmless and easygoing man you've ever met." "Oh, I don't know. I've met some pretty easygoing fellas. I know a guy up in Maine who leads a Buddhist-themed therapy group, teaches people about managing their temper and addictions through Transcendental Meditation. The only time this guy ever lost his composure was the day his wife served him with a restraining order. First he lost his Zen, then he lost two bullets in the back of her head. But that Buddhist-themed therapy group he runs sure is popular on his cell block in Shawshank. Lotta guys with anger-management issues in there. — Joe Hill

We cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what in the morning was true will in evening become a lie. — Carl Jung

The orange turns to dull bronze light and continues to show what it has shown all day long, but now it seems to show it without enthusiasm. Across those dry hills, within those little houses in the distance are people who've been there all day long, going about the business of the day, who now find nothing unusual or different in this strange darkening landscape, as we do. If we were to come upon them early in the day they might be curious about us and what we're here for. but now in the evening they'd just resent our presence. The workday is over. It's time for supper and family and relaxation and turning inward at home. We ride unnoticed down this empty highway through this strange country I've never seen before, and now a heavy feeling of isolation and loneliness becomes dominant and my spirits wane with the sun. — Robert M. Pirsig

Zack drew alongside her, leaning down to murmur in her ear. Mollie, I'm not leaving you again. If the city burns to the ground for a second time. If an earthquake splits the land in two or a plague saps us dry . . . I am not leaving. I'll show up at your doorstep every morning and every evening for the rest of the year if that's what it takes. — Elizabeth Camden

Sometimes in the evening on Summer days,
Even when there's not a breeze at all, it seems
Like there's a light breeze blowing for a minute
But the trees are unmoving
In every leaf of their leaves
And our feelings have had an illusion,
An illusion of what would please them... — Alberto Caeiro

Well, I make that one murder victim, one police interrogation and one conversation with a ghost," George said. "Now that's what I call a busy evening."
Lockwood nodded. "To think some people just watch television. — Jonathan Stroud

People make the mistake of assuming far too many things about armies,' Lefevre told me one evening. 'They assume, for a start, that generals know what they are doing and know what is going on. They assume that orders pass down from top to bottom in a smooth and regulated fashion. And above all they assume that wars start only when people decide to start them.' 'You are going to tell me that is not the case?' 'Wars begin when they are ready, when humanity needs a bloodletting. Kings and politicians and generals have little say in it. You can feel it in the air when one is brewing. There is a tension and nervousness on the face of the least soldier. They can smell it coming in a way politicians cannot. The desire to hurt and destroy spreads over a region and over the troops. And then the generals can only hope to have the vaguest notion of what they are doing. — Iain Pears

I am not usually such a sluggard," he said, as we walked quickly along
the street, "but yesterday evening I got a novel. I ought not to read
novels. When I do, I am apt to make a single mouthful of it; and that is
what I did last night. I started the book at nine and finished it at two
this morning; and the result is that I am as sleepy as an owl even now. — R. Austin Freeman

There's a pause so yawning I can't help but think about what it would be like to lean in and kiss her, but if I'm getting the signals wrong then I'm about to destroy the best run we've had all evening. It's been at least ten minutes since I've done or said anything stupid. — Leanne Hall

The sky this evening bloomed
like a broken purple flower,
like a ripped-in-half and
colour-bleeding-everywhere
flower, like a lavender only
just discovering what it means
to be a lavender.

Like a lavender only just discovering
how to fit into itself. Only just
discovering what it means
to be alive.

We are like this, too. — Darshana Suresh

At first he had appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon the violin part, delicate, unyielding, substantial and governing the whole, he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at a given moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to collect, to treasure in his memory the phrase or harmony - he knew not which - that had just been played, and had opened and expanded his soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of evening, has the power of dilating our nostrils. — Marcel Proust

A dark purple sky filled with the first few evening stars made her feel small. She smiled; that was what she expected from the sky. All her life, she'd gone out at night and stood beneath that blue velvet darkness. It was her temple, the true house of God, and it never failed to remind her of her place. — Kristin Hannah

After a minute I leaned back, elbows on the table, and looked up for the twinkle of the first star in the evening sky. When we were little, it was a ritual Finn and I did on the front porch. He'd make his wish silently, and I would too, but I never could keep a secret; and I'd tell him what I wished every time. He'd always tell me it wouldn't come true, but I didn't believe him. I'd had plenty of them come true, from a new box of crayons showing up out of nowhere to a bag of candy left on my bed. It had been a while, though, and the only thing I'd wish for now was impossible. I found the first star in a patch of burnt-orange sky, above the crinkly purple mountains in the distance, and then I wished my brother back anyway. — Jessi Kirby

They hung over the town, muted red, dark-pink, surrounded by every conceivable nuance of gray. The setting was wild and beautiful. Actually everyone should be in the streets, I thought, cars should be stopping, doors should be opened and drivers and passengers emerging with heads raised and eyes sparkling with curiosity and a craving for beauty, for what was it that was going on above our heads? However, a few glances at most were cast upward, perhaps followed by isolated comments about how beautiful the evening was, for sights like this were not exceptional, on the contrary, hardly a day passed without the sky being filled with fantastic cloud formations, each and every one illuminated in unique, never-to-be-repeated ways, and since what you see every day is what you never see, we lived our lives under the constantly changing sky without sparing it a glance or a thought. — Karl Ove Knausgard

What occurred did so because I was open to it, and not because fate and I met at a certain angle. I had plenty of time to think about this later. I thought about it so much that the events of that evening sometimes ran along under my mood like a secret river, in the way that all buried truths rushed along quietly in some hidden place. — Rachel Kushner

I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it. — Twyla Tharp

There are two ways to deal with a major setback: one is to pause, take a deep breath, clear your mind and go home, distract yourself for the evening, and come back fresh the next day to start over. The other is to immediately resubmerge, put your head under and dive to the bottom, work an hour longer than you did last night, and stay in the moment of what went wrong. While the first way is a good path toward adequacy, it is the second way that leads to important discoveries. One — Hope Jahren

The days had become a confusion of catastrophes; what seemed impossible in the afternoon was blunt fact by the evening. — David Benioff

Small said, "But what about when we are dead and gone, will you love me then, does love go on?"
... Large (replied) "Look at the stars, how they shine and glow, some of the stars died a long time ago. Still they shine in the evening skies, for you see ... love like starlight never dies ... — Debi Gliori

And at last, in the evening, one after another the sounds die out, and the harmony falters, and silence falls. With the sunset sharpness was lost and, like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep, darkly here without a light to it, save what came green suffused through leaves, or pale on the white flowers by the window. [Lily — Virginia Woolf

I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to extract a contributory emotion from me. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Everything I see reminds me that in a few days I shall no longer see it ... It's horrible ... I shall see nothing more ... nothing of what exists ... the smallest objects that we use ... glasses ... plates ... beds where people sleep so comfortably ... carriages. It's so lovely, going out in a carriage, in the evening ... How much I enjoyed all that! — Guy De Maupassant

And the purple parted before it, snapping back like skin after a slash, and what it let out wasn't blood but light: amazing orange light that filled her heart and mind with a terrible mixture of joy, terror, and sorrow. No wonder she had repressed this memory all these years. It was too much. Far too much. The light seemed to give the fading air of evening a silken texture, and the cry of a bird struck her ear like a pebble made of glass. A cap of breeze filled her nostrils with a hundred exotic perfumes: frangipani, bougainvillea, dusty roses, and oh dear God, night-blooming cereus ... And rising above one horizon came the orange mansion of the moon, bloated and burning cold, while the sun sank below the other, boiling in a crimson house of fire. She thought that mixture of furious light would kill her with its beauty. — Stephen King

That night for the first time in my life I realized that it is the physical presence of people and their spirits that gives a town life. With the absence of so many people, the town became scary., the night darker, and the silence unbearably agitating. Normally, the crickets and the birds sang in the evening before the sun went down. But this time they didn't, and the darkness set in very fast. The mood wasn't in the sky; the air was stiff, as if nature itself was afraid of what was happening. — Ishmael Beah

This is the part where you apologize to me," I said, getting angry. "You guys screwed up and this is where you make me feel better about it." I like to use this tactic on people. It can work. When someone is being rude, abusing their power, or not respecting you, just call them out in a really obvious way. Say, "I can't understand why you are being rude because you are the concierge and this is the part of the evening where the concierge helps me." Act like they are an actor who has forgotten what part they are playing. It brings the attention back to them and gives you a minute to calm down so you don't do something silly like burst into tears or break their stupid fucking glasses. — Amy Poehler

I want what you're throwing away. I want someone in my life who loves me-warts and all. I want someone to smile at me first thing in the morning. I want someone to give a damn whether I come home in the evening. — Karen Keast

The year was 1996, and the date was July 5. It was a Friday night and I had just turned 21 two days prior, which, by the way, was a miracle unto itself. Due to the violent life I was living, this was a milestone and something worth celebrating. But on this beautiful summer evening, I was not in a celebratory mood. Rather, I was in a predatory mood and that was what I was doing: lying and waiting for my prey to arrive. — Drexel Deal

Who is it? Who walks under the trees of the quay? Who is quite lost? Who is past saving? Over whose grave does the grass grow? Dreams have arrived, upstream they came. They came, they climb up the walls of the quay on a ladder. One stops makes conversation with them, they know a number of things, but what they don't know is where they come from. It is quite warm this autumn evening. They turn toward the river and raise their arms. Why do you raise your amrs instead of clasping us in them? — Franz Kafka

The aim of the sinless One consists in acting without causing sorrow to others, although he could attain to great power by ignoring their feelings. The aim of the sinless One lies in not doing evil unto those who have done evil unto him. If a man causes suffering even to those who hate him without any reason, he will ultimately have grief not to be overcome. The punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed of themselves by doing them a great kindness. Of what use is superior knowledge in the one, if he does not endeavour to relieve his neighbour's want as much as his own? If, in the morning, a man wishes to do evil unto another, in the evening the evil will return to him. — Leo Tolstoy

A Blessing; May the light of your soul guide you; May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart; May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul; May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work; May your work never weary you; May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration and excitement; May you be present in what you do. May you never become lost in the bland absences; May the day never burden; May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities and promises; May evening find you gracious and fulfilled; May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected; May your soul calm, console and renew you. — John O'Donohue

Left alone in the room with Gavin, Alex let out a sigh. "I fear I won't be able to find a way out of this. How did his even happen? I went out of my way to avoid attracting suitors last night."
Leaning back in his chair, Gavin leveled Alex with a serious look. "You've learned your first lesson, Minx. Men chase that what seems unattainable."
"No. What I learned was that mean are gluttons for punishment. Why 'chase' me when they could catch any number of eligible young females from last evening?"
"Silly girl ... because chasing you makes for more of a challenge
and more of a reward. — Sarah MacLean

There were weekends and evening hours. A lot of time went in to defend what proved to be a deceitful action. — F. Thomson Leighton

Only the individual who is solitary is like a thing placed under profound laws, and when he goes out into the morning that is just beginning, or looks out into the evening that is full of happening, and if he feels what is going on there, then all status drops from him as from a dead man, though he stands in the midst of sheer life. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Success, instead of giving freedom of choice, becomes a way of life. There's no country I've been to where people, when you come into a room and sit down with them, so often ask you, "What do you do?" And, being American, many's the time I've almost asked that question, then realized it's good for my soul not to know. For a while! Just to let the evening wear on and see what I think of this person without knowing what he does and how successful he is, or what a failure. We're ranking everybody every minute of the day. — Arthur Miller

If I so do my best, may this story be recorded and printed and zipped and zapped into hands and eyes and ears and minds and hearts everywhere, and may it no longer be my story but belong to each reader who drinks it in, to make them bigger or smaller as needed; to fill in those tiny holes and smooth over the rough places; to make them sigh and laugh and dream and wonder; to pass a lonely afternoon or enliven a dull evening; to in every regard do just what a story is supposed to do, which is become whatever each reader needs most at that moment. — Shannon Hale

[T]horoughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. - Carl Jung, Stages of Life — Marianne Williamson

Some mornings, she'd wake and vow, Today, I will get it right. I won't be such an awful mess of a girl. I won't lose my temper or make unkind remarks. I won't go too far with a joke and feel the room go quiet with disapproval. I'll be good and kind and sensible and patient. The sort everyone loves. But by evening, her good intentions would have unraveled. She'd say the wrong thing or talk a little too loudly. She'd take a dare she shouldn't, just to be noticed. Perhaps Mabel was right, and she was selfish. But what was the point of living so quietly you made no noise at all? "Oh, Evie, you're too much," people said, and it wasn't complimentary. Yes, she was too much. She felt like too much inside all the time. So why wasn't she ever enough? — Libba Bray

For the first time in her life, she read voraciously. Anything that was on Joe's bookshelves she considered to have a worthy seal of approval. She tried authors she'd never heard of and authors she'd always meant to read. Every now and then she read passages twice, three times even, enjoying the wordcraft, the drama - but imagining that Joe had liked the book and wondering when he might be back and if there would be dinners they could share to discuss books they'd both read. [ ... ] Tess was well aware it was escapiscm but what a way to pass another evening on her own. — Freya North

Why aren't you excited?' Nelly asked.
'No reasons. Balls just aren't my idea of fun.'
'Why, you don't want to meet your prince charming?'
Ginny looked up. 'Because though I may meet my prince charming, it won't matter. My prince charming has already been decided for me, whether my heart agrees or not.'
Nelly fell silent, pondering what Ginny had said. 'It's about Christian, is it not?'
'Yes Nelly, it is.'
'Well who cares about Christian? Tonight is the night to have fun, to be free!Tonight is about Ginny, not Christian. Don't let Christian ruin your evening! Dance with as many boys as possible, lose your heart more than once, why, so you have stories to tell! Christian, for tonight at least, doesn't exist. Remember that. It takes two to dance a waltz. — Darby Browne

Nicole did what she'd been taught since she was little and her parents had moved into an all-white neighborhood: She smiled and made herself as friendly and non threatening as possible. Its what she did when she met the parents of her friends. There was always that split second- something almost felt rather than seen- when the parents' faces would register a tiny shock, a palpable discomfort with Nicole's 'otherness.' And Nicole would smile wide and say how nice it was to come over. She would call the parents Mr. or Mrs., never by their first names. Their suspicion would ebb away, replaced by an unspoken but nonetheless palpable pride in her 'good breeding,' for which they should take no credit but did anyway. Nicole could never quite relax in these homes. She'd spend the evening perched on the edge of the couch, ready to make a quick getaway. — Libba Bray

After returning home from a long day at work, start your evening off with your spouse (the second you walk through the door) with a positive part of your day or ask about something positive that happened in theirs, as opposed to the all-too-common, "I'm exhausted. Today was quite a day." Your power lead could even be a quiet kiss with someone you love, followed by a sincere, "I'm so glad to see your face." You never know what might happen if you start off with that! I — Michelle Gielan

How peaceful it was, with the light evening breeze stirring the small leaves of the grapevine that clustered around the electric bulb, making the shadows move and change on the yellow mat below. For a moment he pushed aside the thought of money. From time to time the dark water beside them rippled audibly, as if a tiny fish had come to the surface for an instant and then darted beneath. It was in peaceful moments such as this, his father had said, that men were given to know just a little of what paradise was like, so that they might yearn for it with all their soul,and strive during their time on earth to be worthy of going there. — Paul Bowles

Many were the tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so much beloved. "Dear, dear Norland!" said Marianne, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there; "when shall I cease to regret you! - when learn to feel a home elsewhere! - Oh! happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more! - And you, ye well-known trees! - but you will continue the same. - No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer! - No; you will continue the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade! - But who will remain to enjoy you? — Jane Austen

I know no surer way of shaking off the dreary crust formed about the soul by the trying to do one's duty or the patient enduring of having somebody else's duty done to one, than going out alone, either at the bright beginning of the day, when the earth is still unsoiled by the feet of the strenuous and only God is abroad; or in the evening, when the hush has come, out to the blessed stars, and looking up at them wonder at the meanness of the day just past, at the worthlessness of the things one has struggled for, at the folly of having been so angry, and so restless, and so much afraid. Nothing focusses life more exactly than a little while alone at night with the stars. What are perfunctory bedroom prayers hurried through in an atmosphere of blankets, to this deep abasement of the spirit before the majesty of heaven? And as a consecration of what should be yet one more happy day, of what value are those hasty morning devotions, — Elizabeth Von Arnim

And some day there will be nothing left of everything that has twisted my life and grieved it and filled me so often with such anguish. Some day, with the last exhaustion, peace will come and the motherly earth will gather me back home. It won't be the end of things, only a way of being born again, a bathing and a slumbering where the old and the withered sink down, where the young and new begin to breathe. Then, with other thoughts, I will walk along streets like these, and listen to streams, and overhear what the sky says in the evening, over and over and over. — Hermann Hesse

She was tired in her bones, but she rallied her energy one last time and told him of they years in Rifthold, of stealing Asterion horses and racing across the desert, of dancing until dawn with the courtesans and thieves and all the beautiful, wicked creatures in the world. And then she told him about losing Sam, and of that first whipping in Endovier, when she'd spat blood in the Chief Overseer's face, and what she had seen and endured in the following year. She spoke of the day she had snapped and sprinted for her own death. Her heart grew heavy when at last she got to the evening when the Captain of the Royal Guard prowled into her life, and a tyrant's son had offered her a shot at freedom. She told him what she could about the competition and how she'd won it, until her words slurred and her eyelids drooped. — Sarah J. Maas

It was strange to be outside on a summer's evening. Rachel breathed in the scent of the delicate white flowers on the star jasmine and looked up at the sky. She saw what at first she thought was a bird, then realised it was a bat, and beyond that, in the sky, she saw thousands of stars. — Mary Grand

Little sleep, no investment portfolio, no family around, no hot water. On an evening a few days after arriving in Cange, I wondered aloud what compensation he got for these various hardships. He told me, "If you're making sacrifices, unless you're automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you're trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don't have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence." He went on, and his voice changed a little. He didn't bristle, but his tone had an edge: "I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can't buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent. Comma." This was for me one of the first of many encounters with Farmer's — Tracy Kidder

Imagine, if you can, what the rest of the evening was like. How they crouched by the fire which blazed and leaped and made much of itself in the little grate. How they removed the covers of the dishes, and found rich, hot savory soup, which was a meal in itself, and sandwiches and toast and muffins enough for both of them. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

As I savored the meal, I struggled against the dark force that kept tugging at me, telling me I was never going to leave; adhering to my consciousness like sap, or tar, or glue; enveloping me in a sticky sickness that drained my vitality. I felt myself growing old as I sat there, the joints stiffening, the bones aching, the sense of identity melting away like a forgotten candle left to burn itself out. As I settled back into my cot for the evening hibernation, I understood I had been captured. I realized my spirit was ensnared. I knew what must be done. Whatever the cost, I told myself, I would be back on the road at dawn. — Steven Hubbell

Comedy is the only form of entertainment where the audience doesn't know what to expect. In an evening, you might get ten comics doing ten different things. That's not what happens when you go to hear music. There isn't a classical performance followed by a hoedown followed by rap. — Jon Stewart

As I've gotten older, I have taught myself to act "normal." I can do it well enough to fool the average person for a whole evening, maybe longer. But it all falls apart if I hear something that elicits a strong emotional reaction from me that is different from what people expect. In an instant, in their eyes, I turn into the sociopathic killer I was believed to be forty years ago. — John Elder Robison

If you can get the other party to reveal their problems, pain, and unmet objectives - if you can get at what people are really buying - then you can sell them a vision of their problem that leaves your proposal as the perfect solution. Look at this from the most basic level. What does a good babysitter sell, really? It's not child care exactly, but a relaxed evening. A furnace salesperson? Cozy rooms for family time. A locksmith? A feeling of security. Know the emotional drivers and you can frame the benefits of any deal in language that will resonate. — Chris Voss

Don't you remember what your grandfather used to say? That thing about pots and people?"
"That pots were like people," Alex replied flatly, thinking back to his grandfather carrying a tray of wet freshly thrown clay pots across the studio in ancient Athens. "He said you couldn't tell how well they'd turn out until they'd been fired in the kiln."
"Well then?"
"Well then, what?" muttered Alex. "Some pots shatter in the heat, Aries. I should know. I was the one who had to sweep them up every evening. Sometimes it's better not to go near the fire."
"Well, that's the spirit I must say!" huffed Aries. "Thank you very much! — Julia Wills

What, however, left a deep impression on me was the reading of the Ramayana before my father. During part of his illness my father was in Porbandar. There every evening he used to listen to the Ramayana. — Mahatma Gandhi

The brick is neither here nor there,' interrupted the stranger in an imposing fashion, 'it never merely falls on someone's head from out of nowhere. In your case, I can assure you that a brick poses no threat whatsoever. You will die another kind of death.
'And you know just what that will be?' queried Berlioz with perfectly understandable irony, letting himself be drawn into a truly absurd conversation. 'And can you tell me what that is?'
'Gladly,' replied the stranger. He took Berlioz's measure as if intending to make him a suit and muttered something through his teeth that sounded like 'One, two.. Mercury in the Second House ... the moon has set ... six-misfortune ... evening-seven ... ' Then he announced loudly and joyously, 'Your head will be cut off! — Mikhail Bulgakov

I'm a woman for all seasons. I mix 'n' match, do designer and high street - keep all my good pieces. I design all my evening and cocktail dresses most of the time as I dislike what is out there. — Joan Collins

Oh, there are plenty of people," the Duc used to observe, "who never misbehave save when passion spurs them to ill; later, the fire gone out of them, their now calm spirit peacefully returns to the path of virtue and, thus passing their life going from strife to error and from error to remorse, they end their days in such a way there is no telling just what roles they have enacted on earth. Such persons," he would continue, "must surely be miserable: forever drifting, continually undecided, their entire life is spent detesting in the morning what they did the evening before. Certain to repent of the pleasures they taste, they take their delight in quaking, in such sort they become at once virtuous in crime and criminal in virtue. — Marquis De Sade

I haven't been here long, but, nevertheless, all the same, what I've managed to observe and verify here arouses the indignation of my Tartar blood. By God, I don't want such virtues! I managed to make a seven-mile tour here yesterday. Well, it's exactly the same as in those moralizing little German picture books: everywhere here each house has its Vater, terribly virtuous and extraordinarily honest. So honest it's even frightening to go near him. I can't stand honest people whom it's frightening to go near. Each such Vater has a family, and in the evening they all read edifying books aloud. Over their little house, elms and chestnuts rustle. A sunset, a stork on the roof, and all of it extraordinarily poetic and touching ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ashram Cat
When the guru sat down to worship each evening, the ashram cat would get in the way and distract the worshipers. So he ordered the cat be tied up during evening worship. Long after the guru died, the cat continued to be tied up during evening worship. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the ashram so that it could be dutifully tied up during evening worship. Centuries later, learned treatises were written by the guru's disciples on the essential role of a cat in all properly conducted worship.
That's often the way we operate in the church. We don't ask the right questions, and we overlay our past experiences-or reactions
against them-on what we think we should do for the future. — Mark Pierson

WALLY: . . . That may be why I never understand what's going on at a party, and I'm always completely confused. I mean, we'll come home, and Debby will describe some incredible incident, and I won't have even noticed it. Everything passes in a kind of trance. You know, Debby once said after one of these New York evenings that she thought she'd traveled a greater distance just by journeying from her origins in the suburbs of Chicago to that New York evening than her grandmother had traveled in making her way from the steppes of Russia to the suburbs of Chicago. — Wallace Shawn

There was one special thing you promised me at the beginning of the affair, and which you have certainly given me by the end of it."
"What do you mean?" cried the chaotic Gregory. "What did I promise you?"
"A very entertaining evening," said Syme, and he made a military salute with his sword-stick as the steamboart slid away. — G.K. Chesterton

Good evening, London. I would introduce myself, but truth to tell, I do not have a name. You can call me "V". Since mankind's dawn, a handful of oppressors have accepted the responsibility over our lives that we should have accepted for ourselves. By doing so, they took our power. By doing nothing, we gave it away. We've seen where their way leads, through camps and wars, towards the slaughterhouse. In anarchy, there is another way. With anarchy, from rubble comes new life, hope reinstated. They say anarchy's dead, but see ... reports of my death were ... exaggerated. Tomorrow, Downing Street will be destroyed, the Head reduced to ruins, an end to what has gone before. Tonight, you must choose what comes next. Lives of our own, or a return to chains. Choose carefully. And so, adieu. — Alan Moore

Horace, fit, and athletic and light on his feet, gave their guards the fewest opportunities to beat him, although on one occasion an angry Tualaghi, furious that Horace misunderstood an order to kneel, slashed his dagger across the young man's face, opening a thin, shallow cut on his right cheek. The wound was superficial but as Evanlyn treated it that evening, Horace shamelessly pretended that it was more painful than it really was. He enjoyed the touch of her ministering hands. Halt and Gilan, bruised and weary, watched as she cleaned the wound and gently pated it dry. Horace did a wonderful job of pretending to bear great pain with stoic bravery. Halt shook his head in disgust.
"What faker," he said to Gilan. The younger Ranger nodded.
"Yes. He's really making a meal of it isn't he?" He paused, then added more ruefully, "Wish I'd thought of it first. — John Flanagan

She knew how to hit to a hair's breadth that moment of evening when the light and the darkness are so evenly balanced that the constraint of day and the suspense of night neutralize each other, leaving absolute mental liberty ... At times her whimsical fancy would intensify natural processes around her till they seemed a part of her own story. Rather they became a part of it; for the world is only a psychological phenomenon, and what they seemed, they were. The midnight airs and gusts, moaning amongst the tightly wrapped buds and bark of the winter twigs, were formulae of bitter reproach. A wet day was the expression of irremediable grief at her weakness in the mind of some vague ethical being whom she could not class definitely as the God of her childhood, and could not comprehend as any other. — Thomas Hardy

What will become of us in twenty years' time?" we asked ourselves one evening. Thirty years have passed now. Raymond was guillotined: "Anarchist gangster" (so the newspapers). I came across Jean again in Brussels, a worker and a trade-union organizer, still a fighter for liberty after ten years in jail. Luce has died of tuberculosis, naturally. For my part, I have undergone a little over ten years of various forms of captivity, agitated in seven countries, and written twenty books. I own nothing. On several occasions a Press with a vast circulation has hurled filth at me because I spoke the truth. Behind us lies a victorious revolution gone astray, several abortive attempts at revolution, and massacres in so great a number as to inspire a certain dizziness. And to think that it is not over yet. — Victor Serge

The death agony of the barricade was about to begin.
For, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls; ferocious walls, doors closed, windows closed, shutters closed.
A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a facade is a wall. This wall hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. What dismal things are closed houses. — Victor Hugo

I bargained with Life for a penny, and Life would pay no more. However I begged at the evening when I counted my scanty store. For Life is a just employer, he gives you what you ask. But once you have set the wages, why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menial's hire, only to learn, dismayed, that any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have willingly paid. — Jessie Belle Rittenhouse

Sometimes, in a summer morning,
having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise
till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,
in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or
flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at
my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant
highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons
like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the
hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but
so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals
mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I
minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some
work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing
memorable is accomplished. — Henry David Thoreau

What was he to do this evening to pass the time? He might as well go to the Rainbow, and hear the talk about the cock-fighting: everybody was there, and what else was there to be done? Though, for his own part, he did not care a button for cock-fighting. Snuff, the brown spaniel, who had placed herself in front of him, and had been watching him for some time, now jumped up in impatience for the expected caress. But Godfrey thrust her away without looking at her, and left the room, followed humbly by the unresenting Snuff - perhaps because she saw no other career open to her. — George Eliot

The essence of the evening was captured by a question from the audience. Someone asked: "What would it take to change your worldview?" My answer was simple: Any single piece of evidence. If we found a fossilized animal trying to swim between the layers of rock in the Grand Canyon, if we found a process by which a new huge fraction of a radioactive material's neutrons could become protons in some heretofore fantastically short period of time, if we found a way to create eleven species a day, if there were some way for starlight to get here without going the speed of light, that would force me and every other scientist to look at the world in a new way. However, no such contradictory evidence has ever been found - not any, not ever. — Bill Nye

Our innate imbalances are further aggravated by practical demands. Our jobs make relentless calls on a narrow band of our faculties, reducing our chances of achieving rounded personalities and leaving us to suspect (often in the gathering darkness of a Sunday evening) that much of who we are, or could be, has gone unexplored. Society ends up containing a range of unbalanced groups, each hungering to sate its particular psychological deficiency, forming the backdrop against which our frequently heated conflicts about what is beautiful plays themselves out. — Alain De Botton

What is so exquisite is that not a word has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones that this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me. — Leo Tolstoy

After she knocked, she walked into the room with confidence she didn't feel, her head up, her spine straight, her unease camo'd by a combo of posture and professional focus. "How are you this evening?" she said, as she looked the patient right in the eye.
The instant his amethyst stare met hers, she couldn't have told a soul what had just come out of her mouth or whether he replied. Rehvenge, son of Rempoon, sucked the thought right out of her head, sure as if he'd drained the tank of her brain's generator and left her with nothing to catch a mental spark off of.
And then he smiled.

-Ehlena's thoughts — J.R. Ward

Who are you?" I asked.
"Are we playing that game again?" she asked me with a nice smile. "Lana, sorry to disappoint you, but I really am in a hurry, so I will have to take a rain check on this. We can play later this evening, if you don't mind!"
"What game? I really mean it, who are you and why am I here?" I must have looked like I had really freaked out, and for a moment, she looked at me seriously. But then, she gave me another nice smile and kissed me on my cheek and said "Really babe, as much as I appreciate your playful morning mood, I really don't have time now. I have a big job interview today, remember? — Nico J. Genes

Here is an oral tradition, legends passed from mouth to mouth, a communal myth created invariably at the base of the mango tree in the evening's profound darkness, in which only the trembling voices of old men resound, because the women and children are silent, raptly listening. That is why the evening hour is so important: it is the time when the community contemplates what it is and whence it came. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

A handful of us determine what will be on the evening news broadcasts, or, for that matter, in the New York Times or Washington Post or Wall Street Journal. Indeed it is a handful of us with this awesome power.And those [news stories] available to us already have been culled and re-culled by persons far outside our control. — Walter Cronkite

When you are old, at evening candle-lit
beside the fire bending to your wool,
read out my verse and murmur, "Ronsard writ
this praise for me when I was beautiful."
And not a maid but, at the sound of it,
though nodding at the stitch on broidered stool,
will start awake, and bless love's benefit
whose long fidelities bring Time to school.
I shall be thin and ghost beneath the earth
by myrtle shade in quiet after pain,
but you, a crone, will crouch beside the hearth
mourning my love and all your proud disdain.
And since what comes to-morrow who can say?
Live, pluck the roses of the world to-day. — Pierre De Ronsard

All that evening he talked to the Candle of Arras, in a low confidential tone. When you get down to it, he thought, there's not much difference between politics and sex; it's all about
power. He didn't suppose he was the first person in the world to make this observation. It's a question of seduction, and how fast and cheap you can effect it: if Camille, he thought, approximates to one of those little milliners who can't make ends meet - in other words, an absolute pushover - then Robespierre is a Carmelite, mind set on becoming Mother Superior. You can't corrupt her; you can wave your cock under her nose, and she's neither shocked nor interested: why should she be, when she hasn't the remotest idea
what it's for? — Hilary Mantel

Every week, as an 11-year-old kid, I would tune in to what was really the first American Idol-type program, a radio show called 'Major Bowes' Amateur Hour.' The winning group on the evening of September 8, 1935, was called the Hoboken Four, and their spokesman was Frank Sinatra, then aged 19. — Tony Bennett

The man looked up and Tanya was staring at him through watery eyes.
"Now you know. I don't see how it changes anything."
"It doesn't. You're still a diamond in a field of mud."
Tanya smirked.
"And what about you?"
"I don't know what I am."
"What do you want to be?"
"It's not that easy. — Luke Taylor

But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a neighborhood to a great city,
to live on an inclined plane.I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy,
nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea,
and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived. — Henry David Thoreau

Closed door means knock," Elena said to Clay, shooing him out.
You've been in here for two hours," he said. "She can't need that much work." He frowned as he examined my outfit. "What the hell is she? A tree?"
"A dryad," Elena said, cuffing him in the arm.
"Oh, my god," Jamie said, surveying my outfit. "We forgot the bag!"
"Bag?" Clay said. "What does a dryad need with-"
"An evening bag," Cassandra said. "A purse."
"She's got a purse. It's right there on the bed."
"That's a day purse," Cassandra snapped.
"What, do they expire when the sun goes down? — Kelley Armstrong

It was the kind of summer evening that made Ursula want to be alone. 'Oh,' Izzie said, 'You're at an age when a girl is simply consumed by the sublime.' Ursula wasn't sure what she meant ('No one is ever sure what she means,' Sylvie said) but she thought she understood a little. There was a strangeness in the shimmering air, a sense of imminence that made Ursula's chest feel full, as if her heart was growing. It was a kind of high holiness - she could think of no other way of describing it. Perhaps it was the future, she thought, coming nearer all the time. — Kate Atkinson

I stand still for a long time, holding the note, and let it all sink in. Her leaving is almost palpable like a gale-force wind that's rolled into my life in the span of a single evening and left behind all this incalculable destruction, both inside and out. Yes, the tempest has passed, but the air around me feels different. I can hardly breathe. Nothing is the same without her. As the lone survivor of her particular storm, I begin to wonder just exactly what I'm supposed to do now. — Katherine Owen

Tell me my little children, what crime has this lizard committed that it must die this evening?" There was silence. In raising my head like a joke, I tried to laugh. That was the same time I realized that grandma was dead serious with us.Pg.26 — Obehi Peter Ewanfoh

Sitting cross-legged on her bed, I watch her take out her gear. She's been smoking so much the room stinks of it. Over the last few weeks, I've seen her do it so often I've resisted the urge. It's surreal, like I'm watching me from outside my body. My willpower is fragile at the best of times, but my resolve is always weaker in the evening.
I feel a dread and a revulsion for what I'm about to do, but there's a stronger feeling, an unutterable longing. I crack.
'Give us a line,' I say. — Christine Lewry