Without A Trace Quotes & Sayings

Is it not a pity when some stylistic subtlety is lost without trace by the reader's inattention? — David Richards

I wanted someone to hold me close so I slide across and snuggled in tight and said, 'Hold me.' He did, and it was tender and truly sweet, but without a trace of that wild carnal edge you would have to cross if you want to get so close together you can't tell each other apart.

I pushed it. I said, 'I want to get closer. I want you to love who I am.' Love doesn't do much for the powers of explanation, but since Love has never asked for one itself, that seems fair enough. — Jim Dodge

Without a trace of irony I can say I have been blessed with brilliant enemies. I owe them a great debt, because they redoubled my energies and drove me in new directions. — E. O. Wilson

It was such a radiant smile, without a trace of shadow, that I couldn't help smiling myself. — Haruki Murakami

Priss tried to open her door, but it still didn't budge. "Unlock it."
Instead he pulled her around to face him. He started to blast her, but something funny happening. Instead of reading her the riot act, he stared into her eyes, then down at her mouth. His entire demeanor changed. He looked just as tense, but now for different, hotter reasons.
He still stared intently at her mouth when Priss heard the lock click open. She glanced down and saw that Trace had reached back for the door, all without breaking that disturbing, electrifying visual contact with her.
She met his gaze again, and softened. Damn, but resisting Trace wouldn't be easy, not if he kept looking at her like that. "You're coming in, too?"
"Yes." Suddenly, almost violently, he turned away from her and left the car. Still a gentleman, he strode around to her side and opened her door. "Let's get this night over with."
Well. That sounded insulting. — Lori Foster

She approached them all without a trace of sentimentality or condescension. The older Docklanders were accustomed to meeting middle-class do-gooders, who deigned to act graciously to inferiors. The Cockneys despised these people, used them for what they could get, and made fun of them behind their backs, but Sister Evangelina had no patronising airs and graces. — Jennifer Worth

Remember also that scars of all sorts are all right. Scars are wounds that have healed, not without a trace, but have healed nonetheless. Think of all the scar tissue around Christ's heart, Jesus our wounded healer. — William Sloane Coffin

INTERVIEWER
Do you believe in God?
ECO
Why does one love a certain person one day and discover the next day that the love is gone? Feelings, alas, disappear without justification, and often without a trace.
INTERVIEWER
If you don't believe in God, then why have you written at such great length about religion?
ECO
Because I do believe in religion. Human beings are religious animals, and such a characteristic feature of human behavior cannot be ignored or dismissed. — Umberto Eco

If you ever took an enema, you'd disappear off the face of this Earth without trace! — Lady Colin Campbell

Nothing. I have no way of getting in touch with Machiavelli."
Virginia produced her wooden flute and spun it in her fingers. "I don't know why you're so worried, Doctor. I can easily lull them to sleep with-"
Before she could finish her sentence a green-skinned, green-haired, fish-tailed woman had leapt straight up out of the sea, snatched the flute from Virginia's fingers and splashed back into the water on the opposite side of the boat, leaving her empty-handed.
Virginia Dare's scream was hideous. Flinging off her smoke-stained jacket and pulling off her shoes,she launched herself over the side of the boat and disappeared beneath the waves without a trace. — Michael Scott

If we allow our thoughts to arise and dissolve by themselves,
they will pass through our mind as a bird flies through the sky,
without leaving a trace. — Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

In two weeks, despite these notes, I shall no longer believe in what I am experiencing now. One must leave behind a trace of this journey which memory forgets. One must, when this is impossible, write or draw without responding to the romantic solicitations of pain, without enjoying suffering like music, tieing a pen to one's foot if need be, helping the doctors who can learn nothing from laziness. — Jean Cocteau

Like slavery, other human rights crimes have resulted in the loss of millions of lives. But only slavery, with its sadistic patience, asphyxiated memory, and smothered cultures, has hulled empty a whole race of people with inter-generational efficiency. Every artifact of the victims' past cultures, every custom, every ritual, every god, every language, every trace element of a people's whole hereditary identity, wrenched from them and ground into a sharp choking dust. It is a human rights crime without parallel in the modern world. For it produces its victims ad infinitum, long after the active stage of the crime has ended. — Randall Robinson

Absence is worse than death. If you suddenly disappeared without a trace, it's like you had never lived. — Vaddey Ratner

I believe we accept too indifferently the fact of infantile amnesia - that is, the failure of memory for the first years of our lives - and fail to find in it a strange riddle. We forget of what great intellectual accomplishments and of what complicated emotions a child of four years is capable. We really ought to wonder why the memory of later years has, as a rule, retained so little of these psychic processes, especially as we have every reason for assuming that these same forgotten childhood activities have not glided off without leaving a trace in the development of the person, but that they have left a definite influence for all future time. — Sigmund Freud

The gods gave me a father who ruled over me and rid me of any trace of arrogance and showed me that one can live in a palace without bodyguards, extravagant attire, chandeliers, statues, and other luxuries. He taught me that it is possible to live instead pretty much in the manner of a private citizen without losing any of the dignity and authority a ruler must possess to discharge his imperial duties effectively. — Marcus Aurelius

I was learning the importance of names - having them, making them - but at the same time I sensed the dangers. Recognition was followed by oblivion, a yawning maw whose victims disappeared without a trace. — Josephine Baker

We women, me and you. Tell me something real. Don't just say I'm grown and ought to know. I don't. I'm fifty and I don't know nothing. What about it? Do I stay with him? I want to, I think. I want ... well, I didn't always ... now I want. I want some fat in this life."
"Wake up. Fat or lean, you got just one. This is it."
"You don't know either, do you?"
"I know enough to know how to behave."
"Is that it? Is that all it is?"
"Is that all what is?"
"Oh shoot! Where the grown people? Is it us?"
"Oh, Mama." Alice Manfred blurted it out and then covered her mouth.
Violet had the same thought: Mama. Mama? Is this where you got to and couldn't do it no more? The place of shade without trees where you know you are not and never again will be loved by anybody who can choose to do it? Where everything is over but the talking?
- Violet Trace and Alice Manfred — Toni Morrison

Maggie Smith has a unique sense of comedy, based on a somewhat ironic view of real life, making it both funnier and more sad. But perhaps her greatest ability, or at least the one that most intrigues me, is how she can convey deep and powerful emotion without a trace of sentimentality. — Julian Fellowes

[My grandmother] was so humble of heart and so gentle that her tenderness for others and her disregard for herself and her own troubles blended in a smile which, unlike those seen on the majority of human faces, bore no trace of irony save for herself, while for all of us kisses seemed to spring from her eyes, which could not look upon those she loved without seeming to bestow upon them passionate caresses. — Marcel Proust

The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers and not words. No explanations seemed necessary. They were not friends, Comrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Mathew, and they didn't trust each other. But they understood each other perfectly. They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiosity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly adult. They looked out at the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were mechanics who serviced different parts of the machine. — Arundhati Roy

What is a shadow? It is the self without a face or a name, all outline and no feature, the self on the verge of being erased. It is the incidental child of matter and light. Look how it spreads itself on the ground, weary but weightless, unable to leave a trace. — Conchitina Cruz

Now I've got nothing left to lose
You take your time to choose
I can tell you now without a trace of fear

That my love will be forever
And we'll die we'll die together
Lie, I will never
'Cause our love will be forever"
~Neutron Star Collision (Love is Forever) — Matthew J. Bellamy

I trace his face with my fingers, 'Let me see. A guy tells me that he would have thrown himself in front of a train if it wasn't for me and then drives seven hours straight, without whingeing once, on a wild-goose chase in search of my mother with absolutely no clue where to start. He is, in all probability, going to get court-martialled because of me, has put up with my moodiness all day long, and knows exactly what to order me for breakfast. It doesn't get any more romantic than that, Jonah. — Melina Marchetta

New love might replace an earlier love, but the old love is always there, no matter what. You live your life on two levels, probably to avoid falling through without a trace if a hole appears in one of them. — Henning Mankell

Thirty, thirty-five, forty, all had come to visit her like admonitory relatives, and all had slipped away without a trace, without a sound, and now, once again, she was waiting. — Evan S. Connell

How those fires burned that are no longer, how the weather worsened, how the shadow of the seagull vanished without a trace. Was it the end of a season, the end of a life? Was it so long ago it seems it might never have been? What is it in us that lives in the past and longs for the future, or lives in the future and longs for the past? (from "No Words Can Describe It") — Mark Strand

To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? — W.G. Sebald

The sands of time are quicksands, said Adam One. So much can sink into them without a trace. And what a blessing when those things that sink away are needless worries. — Margaret Atwood

We don't vanish without a trace. We are not like animals, content with burrows in the ground. We are not very skilled at survival without clothing or tools. Our feet are soft, our skin is easily cooled, and our stomachs are too weak to drink water straight from a stream. We must create in order to survive. We build cities, aqueducts, and shields, for we must in order to have an edge over the beasts of the field. And so, wherever humans have tread their covered feet, their path never vanishes without a trace. — Jennifer Arnett

Every woman while she would be ready to die of shame if surprised in the act of generation, nonetheless carries her pregnancy without a trace of shame and indeed with a kind of pride. The reason is that pregnancy is in a certain sense a cancellation of the guilt incurred by coitus; thus coitus bears all the shame and disgrace of the affair, while pregnancy, which is so intimately associated with it, stays pure and innocent and is indeed to some extent sacred. — Arthur Schopenhauer

For years, I've been wondering what could happen to nuclear submarines when they dive and disappear from the surface of the earth for months, without a trace. No one really knows where they are. — Guy Hamilton

But you can't truly hate a man without loving him first, and there's always a trace of that love left over. — Joe Abercrombie

No, and in fact I get a bit frustrated, because I'm actually quite good at one-liners, and I've had hundreds of them over the years, and they sink without trace, and I get very frustrated. Every party conference I really work on the speeches, and I always have two or three things I'm quite proud of, and no one ever remembers them. — Vince Cable

If I wanted to order a ring for myself, the inscription I should choose would be: "Nothing passes away." I believe that nothing passes away without leaving a trace, and that every step we take, however small, has significance for our present and our future existence. — Anton Chekhov

When a legislator succeeds, after persevering efforts, in exercising an indirect influence upon the destiny of nations, his genius is lauded by mankind, whilst, in point of fact, the geographical position of the country which he is unable to change, a social condition which arose without his co-operation, manners and opinions which he cannot trace to their source, and an origin with which he is unacquainted, exercise so irresistible an influence over the courses of society that he is himself borne away by the current, after an ineffectual resistance. Like the navigator, he may direct the vessel which bears him along, but he can neither change its structure, nor raise the winds, nor lull the waters which swell beneath him. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Howard Altmann has found a way to make language transform itself. If the elusive moment between I and Thou could speak, it might be one of his quietly amazing lines-'you ask the silence to invert itself / like a gymnast in the dark ... ' Without a trace of rhetoric, In This House reminds us of the power of poetry: to show us how to live in a world in which we are strangers. It's a thrill to come close to such an original and deeply realized art. — Dennis Nurkse

Be that your cousin has influenced you in some way - but as for our Junior Surgeon," he turned to Carausius, "I remember that when first he was posted here, you yourself, Caesar, were not too sure of his good faith. This is surely some plot of Maximian's, to cast doubt and suspicion between the Emperor of Britain and the man who, however unworthily, serves him to the best of his ability as chief minister." Justin stepped forward, his hands clenched at his sides. "That is a foul lie," he said, for once without a trace of his stutter. "And you know it, Allectus; none better." "Will you grant me also a space to speak?" Carausius said quietly, and silence fell like a blight on the lamplit chamber. He looked round at all three of them, taking his time. "I remember my doubts, Allectus. I remember also that the — Rosemary Sutcliff

Burns immediately left the class, and going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns' eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression. "Hardened girl!" exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; "nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits: carry the rod away." Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek. — Charlotte Bronte

what good is safety if she has to grow up in a world where people disappear without a trace because they pray to a different God? — Kristin Hannah

Why it is that animals, instead of developing in a simple and straightforward way, undergo in the course of their growth a series of complicated changes, during which they often acquire organs which have no function, and which, after remaining visible for a short time, disappear without leaving a trace ... To the Darwinian, the explanation of such facts is obvious. The stage when the tadpole breathes by gills is a repetition of the stage when the ancestors of the frog had not advanced in the scale of development beyond a fish. — Francis Maitland Balfour

In that sleep and in sleeps to follow the judge did visit. Who would come other? A great shambling mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go. Whoever would seek out his story through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to beat upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing. — Cormac McCarthy

Look at his toes. He, let's be frank, has two left feet.' 'Verily,' Chamberlain Le Goff confirmed without a trace of amazement. 'There are plenty of tapestries like that in Beauclair. The master who wove them was a true master. But he drank an awful lot. As artists do. — Andrzej Sapkowski

night and day, a hundred billion neutrinos from the Sun pass through each square inch of your body, every second, without a trace of interaction with your body's atoms. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Does anyone swim in there?"
"Everyone does." Without thinking, he added, "I can bring you back sometime when we're not so pressed for - " Trace caught himself before finishing that awesome thought. Pressed for time or not, the odds of him ever returning here with Priss were slim to none.
Gaze cynical, Priss looked at him over her shoulder. "Yeah, right. Maybe we'll do that." She turned to face him. "Sometime when we're not at odds, when we're not dealing with a madman who enjoys selling women, when you haven't just drugged me earlier in the day?"
Trace rubbed the back of his neck. "All of the above. — Lori Foster

You sound like a control freak." The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
"Oh, I exercise control in all things, Miss Steele," he says without a trace of humor in his smile. — E.L. James

Avoid people who hurt from an impulse. I mean people who have this tendency to relish their capacity to hurt the good souls of this world, and who after hurting, wake up the next day without a trace of despondent brooding, and then move on with life never thinking that they should show some remorse or try to repent. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

The non-artists among us are always terribly busy, but finally disappear without a trace. — Helen Vendler

We could do muscles first, then brains,: Aislin suggests.
"It's not all genetic, you know: he would have to work out."
"Make him right and I'll work him out," she says with a trace of her confident leer.
"Without a brain?"
She sighs. "They're better off without one. — Michael Grant

But India did not pass me by without a trace: it left tracks which lead me from one infinity to another infinity. — Carl Jung

O youth! youth! you have no concerns, you possess, as it were, all the treasures of the universe, even grief is a comfort to you, even sadness suits your looks, you are self-assured and bold, you say: 'Look, I'm the only one alive!' while the very days of your life run away and vanish without a trace and without number and everything in you disappears like wax, like snow in the hear of the sun... And perhaps the entire et of your charm consists not in the possibility of doing everything, but in the possibility of thinking perhaps it consists precisely in the fact that you want only to scatter on the wind energies that you wouldn't know how to use for anything else, perhaps it consists in the fact that each one of us seriously regards himself as a spendthrift and seriously considers that he has the right to say: 'Oh, the things I could have done if only I hadn't wasted my time! — Ivan Turgenev

I looked into his sandy brown eyes, at one with the hair. At the business- like outward presentation of the man who daily printed sneers, innuendo, distrust and spite and spoke without showing a trace of them. 'Off the record,' I said,'bash his face in'. — Dick Francis

Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace. — Farley Mowat

[A] history of Islam's origins cannot be written without reference to the origins of Judaism and Christianity - and [ ... ] a history of the origins of Judaism and Christianity cannot be written without reference to the world that incubated them both. The vision of God to which both rabbis and bishops subscribed, and which Muhammad's followers inherited, did not emerge out of nowhere. The monotheisms that would end up established as state religions from the Atlantic to central Asia had ancient, and possibly unexpected, roots. To trace them is to cast a searchlight across the entire civilisation of late antiquity. — Tom Holland

Speculation was now news. News had been confused with fact. Fact had been replaced by expert opinion. People had been replaced by their biographies. Ability had been replaced by disability. Thinking had been replaced by psychology. History had been reduced to story. And while the news media pumped out a new story every week on things that could kill you, Hollywood simultaneously created stories that showed that everything could be prevailed over. Meaning, he said, was so malleable that it could be turned inside out, and no one would know the difference - and it would - and, just like the universe that had expanded to its maximum size, everything that had ever been would happen in reverse and revert back to its original form until existence would disappear without leaving a trace of itself as the Big Bang backfired. — John M. Keller

I slipped through every school I went to without leaving a trace. I was in no team; I was never a prefect. I was totally mediocre - well, I probably still am - but at places like Summer Fields and Eton, it's all about sport and doing your bit, and I always preferred to watch telly or read a book than run round a field. — Tom Parker Bowles

If we dissolve without a trace, will the real world even care? — Owl City

A man dies ... only a few circles in the water prove that he was ever there. And even they quickly disappear. And when they're gone, he's forgotten, without a trace, as if he'd never even existed. And that's all. — Wolfgang Borchert

Common sense dictates that a trace gas needed for life on the planet would not be the cause for destroying life on the planet. Common sense dictates that what has happened before without man can happen again with man. Common sense would dictate that you not believe me, or any one else, but go look for YOURSELF. — Joe Bastardi

We went to the door and I let Asha in. I expected an uberawkward moment when he and Vayl met. But Asha took care of that problem right away. "So you belong to Jasmine," he said in his melancholy voice. It somehow delivered Vayl his deepest condolences without bearing a trace of malice toward me. — Jennifer Rardin

How did you merit so much devotion so quickly?' I asked, making no attempt to keep the sarcasm from my voice.
'I show them Heaven', said she, without a trace of irony. 'People are so desperate for light'. — Rachel Hartman

The person who did all of these things has gone away, vanished without a trace in the ecstasy of existence. — Frederick Lenz

They weren't on a yacht that was devoured by a hurricane. Yet they vanished. They weren't in a private plane that dropped off the radar in a remote area. Yet they vanished. They're home wasn't washed away in a flood, they weren't on the run from the law and didn't owe the mafia a bunch of money but they vanished, without reason and without a trace.
The Prophet of Life From The Family That Vanished — The Prophet Of Life

You're a bad person, Ellie," he said without a trace of irony.
"I'm not bad. The world is bad and I'm just trying to survive in it. — Karina Halle

In this modern world of ours many people seem to think that science has somehow made such religious ideas as immortality untimely or old fashioned. I think science has a real surprise for the skeptics. Science, for instance, tells us that nothing in nature, not even the tiniest particle, can disappear without a trace. Nature does not know extinction. All it knows is transformation. If God applies this fundamental principle to the most minute and insignificant parts of His universe, doesn't it make sense to assume that He applies it to the masterpiece of His creation, the human soul? — Wernher Von Braun

Women are hard to keep track of, most of them. They slip into other names, and sink without a trace. — Margaret Atwood

There was a scavenging peasant moving about, whistling as he worked, with an outsize gunny sack on his back. The whitened knuckles of the hand which gripped the sack revealed his determined frame of mind; the whistling, which was piercing but tuneful, showed that he was keeping his spirits up. The whistle echoed around the field, bouncing off fallen helmets, resounding hollowly from the barrels of mud-blocked rifles, sinking without trace into the fallen boots of the strange, strange crops, whose smell, like the smell of unfairness, was capable of bringing tears to the buddha's eyes. The crops were dead, having been hit by some unknown blight ... and most of them, but not all, wore the uniforms of the West Pakistani Army. Apart from the whistling, the only noises to be heard were the sounds of objects dropping into the peasant's treasure-sack: leather belts, watches, gold tooth-fillings, spectacle frames, tiffin-carriers, water flasks, boots. — Salman Rushdie

Now I was also trying to understand how someone could end such intense desire without leaving a trace. If you had really loved something, wouldn't a little bit of it always linger? A couple of houseplants? A dinky Home Depot Phalaenopsis in a coffee can? I personally have always found giving up on something a thousand times harder than getting it started, but evidently Laroche's finishes were downright and absolute, and what's more, he also shut off any chance of amends. — Susan Orlean

That's what scares me the most, Paul. That I'll just pass through life and all the people I know will just disappear, without a trace, without me ever telling them how much they mean to me, no matter how small the time spent was or how great the friendship was. That they'll be gone and they'll forget me and I'll end up with nothing."
I saw in my head Charley laughing, Charley sticking his head out the window and screaming, Charley playing a video game so intensely he was a foot from the screen. Moments flashed before my eyes in a quick, unrelenting sequence.
I shook my head. "I know. Believe me, I know. — J.C. Joranco

These books sank without a trace, or faded fast, because they tell the sort of truths that Madison and Jefferson believed our Constitution should protect - truths that the people have the right to know, and needs to know, about our government and other powers that keep us in the dark. — Christopher Simpson

If tone is granted to be subjected to control, why not line also, which has equal emotional significance? And if line, why not shapes and forms? And if shapes and forms, why not allow elision or emphasis of detail? And if all these things are allowed, what becomes of the record of actuality ? ... Sunk without a trace! — William Mortensen

The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window lay mute, dark, hungry Moscow. Her food stores were empty, and people had even forgotten to think of such things as game and vodka.
And thus it turned out that the only true life is one that resembles the life around us and drowns in it without leaving a trace, that isolated happiness is not happiness, so that duck and alcohol, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not alcohol and a duck at all. — Boris Pasternak

Indicating his twisted legs without a trace of self-pity or bitterness, as if they belonged to all of us, he casts his arms wide to the sky and the snow mountains, the high sun and dancing sheep, and cries, 'Of course I am happy here! It's wonderful! Especially when I have no choice!' In its wholehearted acceptance of what is;I feel as if he had struck me in the chest. Butter tea and wind pictures, the Crystal Mountain, and blue sheep dancing on the snow-it's quite enough!
Have you seen the snow leopard?
No! Isn't that wonderful? — Peter Matthiessen

What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero. — Pablo Picasso

From lips indifferent of her death I heard,
Indifferently I listened to it, too,'
were echoing in my heart. O youth, youth! little dost thou care for anything; thou art master, as it were, of all the treasures of the universe - even sorrow gives thee pleasure, even grief thou canst turn to thy profit; thou art self-confident and insolent; thou sayest, 'I alone am living - look you!' - but thy days fly by all the while, and vanish without trace or reckoning; and everything in thee vanishes, like wax in the sun, like snow ... . And, perhaps, the whole secret of thy charm lies, not in being able to do anything, but in being able to think thou wilt do anything; lies just in thy throwing to the winds, forces which thou couldst not make other use of; in each of us gravely regarding himself as a prodigal, gravely supposing that he is justified in saying, 'Oh, what might I not have done if I had not wasted my time! — Ivan Turgenev

They vanished in the same forest without a trace. Not one of them was ever found or heard from again.'
'And you suspect what?' Scully asked. 'Bigfoot maybe?'
'Not likely,' Mulder answered deadpan. 'That's a lot of flannel to choke down. Even for Bigfoot.'
Scully sighed. She should have known better than to joke about Bigfoot to Mulder. Bigfoot wasn't a joke to him. — Les Martin

On the whole, mental archaeology was a sordid digging proposition. The evil men did endured, the good was infinitely more ephemeral. You could generally find out whether a man had been a horse-thief, or an embezzler or a wife-beater, if you worked hard enough, but acts of kindness, of charity, a gay spirit, vanished without leaving a trace. — Helen Kieran Reilly

There are books which we read early in life, which sink into our consciousness and seem to disappear without leaving a trace. And then one day we find, in some summing-up of our life and put attitudes towards experience, that their influence has been enormous. — Anais Nin

God help me, how Tolstoy sweats over drying up people's sources of life, of wild and joyful life, drying them up and making the world fat with the love of God and everyman ... But the man is old, after all, his fountains of life run dry, without a trace remaining of human affections ... Only someone who has become slow and watertight with old age, satiated and hardened with pleasure, will go to youth and say, Renounce! ... And yet the youth renounces nothing, but sins royally for forty years. Such is the course of nature! — Knut Hamsun

Joe had run away, escaped without a trace, and come here to hide. But now he was ready to come home. The problem was that he didn't know how to do it. — Michael Chabon

Superb accuracy in water measurement, Jessica thought. And she noted that the walls of the meter trough held no trace of moisture after the water's passage. The water flowed off those walls without binding tension. She saw a profound clue to Fremen technology in the simple fact: they were perfectionists. — Frank Herbert

Die young, and I shall accept your death-but not if you have lived without glory, without being useful to your country, without leaving a trace of your existence: for that is not to have lived at all. — Napoleon Bonaparte

She said I could come back to her room if I liked. 'I'll check if you've got testicular cancer,' she said without a trace of humour.

It kind of killed the mood. — Peter Moore

Something about the fall, the freshness of the pain, had been restorative. It was honest pain, clear pain, a pain without shame or filth, and it was a different sensation than he had felt in years ... before he was conscious of what he was doing, he was tossing himself against the brick wall, and as he did so, he imagined he was knocking out of himself every piece of dirt, every trace of liquid, every memory of the past few years. He was resetting himself; he was returning himself to something pure; he was punishing himself for what he had done. After that, he felt better, energized. — Hanya Yanagihara

He wondered where his mind had wandered this time, what life it had lived as a trail of neurons sped through networks of possibilities particle-fast, too rapid to catch without a hadron collider, causing super quarks of weirdness and leaving him with only a vague after-image like a melting dream. He had to accept that he couldn't catch all his thoughts, all the things going on in his body, the processes which slipped by in the background just leaving a shadow, an itch, the grain of sand that probably wouldn't become a pearl, a blazing after-trace that lives a second then is gone forever. All those possibilities occurring in a second of frantic life: it never ceased to amaze him. The world was an incredible and beautifully constructed thing.
However, there wasn't really time for a wank. — Karl Drinkwater

A woman's hand, your hand in its starry paleness only to help you walk downstairs, refracts its beam into my own. Its slightest touch branches out inside me and in a moment will trace above us those delicate canopies where the inverted sky stirs its blue leaves with misty aspen or willow. As for me, to what do I actually owe this remission of a pain that so many others suffer because of less guilt than I feel today? Before I met you I'd known misfortune, despair. Before I met you, come on, those words mean nothing. You know very well that when I first laid eyes on you I recognized you without the slightest hesitation. And from what borders did you come, so fearfully protected against everyone, what initiation to which no one or almost no one was admitted has consecrated what you are. — Andre Breton

I was afraid. Of getting hurt in other ways. To be truthful, I still am."
His thumb stroked her cheek. "I would never hurt you."
"I don't think you can promise me that." She squeezed his bruised fingers. "But it makes things a bit more equal, to know that I can hurt you, too."
His gaze fell to her lips. He said simply, without any trace of irony, "You are killing me. — Tessa Dare

When you train your thoughts to dissolve as they arise, they will cross your mind like a bird crosses the sky
without leaving a trace. — Julietta Suzuki

Who're you going with, then?" said Ron.
"Angelina," said Fred promptly, without a trace of embarrassment.
"What?" said Ron, taken aback. "You've already asked her?"
"Good point," said Fred. He turned his head and called across the common room, "Oi! Angelina!"
Angelina, who had been chatting with Alicia Spinnet near the fire, looked over at him.
"What?" She called back.
"Want to come to the ball with me?"
Angelina gave Fred a sort of appraising look.
"All right, then," she said, and she turned back to Alicia and carried on chatting with a bit of a grin on her face.
"There you go," said Fred to Harry and Ron, "piece of cake. — J.K. Rowling

Where there is a true art and genuine virtuosity the artist can paint an incomparable masterpiece without leaving even a trace of his identity. — Orhan Pamuk

Only the passionate were immortal, it seemed. If you fought, screwed, screamed, laughed, or otherwise experienced life intensely, for better or worse, you left a record. Those who lived a quiet, well-behaved, well-tempered life? Gone without a trace. — Magnus Flyte

If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff, even though he be a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry. But if he sees a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear. If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing. And all because there is somebody in the boat. Yet if the boat were empty, he would not be shouting, and not angry. If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world, no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you ... . Who can free himself from achievement, and from fame, descend and be lost amid the masses of men? He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like Life itself with no name and no home. Simple is he, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool. His steps leave no trace. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation. Since he judges no one, no one judges him. Such is the perfect man: His boat is empty. — Osho

Five-Year," a term given to cash minted before 2023. That was the last year cash was produced without embedded chips that could trace every use of the currency as if it was a debit or credit card. — Gary A. Ballard

My happiest hours are those in which I think nothing, want nothing, when I do not even dream, but lose myself in some spurious vegetable torpor, moss growing on the surface of life. Without a trace of bitterness I savour my absurd awareness of being nothing, a mere foretaste of death and extinction. — Fernando Pessoa

We don't actually fear death, we fear that no one will notice our absence, that we will disappear without a trace. — T. S. Eliot

What is the scariest thing that can happen? A child can disappear without a trace. A man could follow you at night. Someone could hide behind your bedroom door. There is a small throw rug in the room. There is a wooden chair by the darkening window. There is someone hiding behind my bedroom door. Anything solid in my neck snaps, and I'm screaming, looking into this hideous face, like some dark mold, a toxic messy thing. There — Samantha Hunt

Moreover, our certitudes were closely bound to a given set of symbols. Change the well defined Latin term for an undefined Greek one and every bishop and every priest found himself at a loss. We knew the catechism by heart; mention catechesis and we are no longer sure who made us and why. We could manage a dogmatic sermon all right but just listen to our homilies! We were absolutely firm about confession and contrition; all our firmness vanished at the one word METANOIA. We knew exactly what the Mass was; the Eucharist is hazy. Even the Consecration and the Real Presence have been engulfed in the mist of ANAMNESIS. All this is patently true, is undeniable. We had received a solid theological training in our seminaries. It did not stand the test. It collapsed overnight without leaving track or trace. — Bryan Houghton

All Hell is smaller than one pebble of your earthly world: but it is smaller than one atom of this world, the Real World. Look at yon butterfly. If it swallowed all Hell, Hell would not be big enough to do it any harm or to have any taste'
'It seems big enough when you're in it, Sir.'
'And yet all loneliness, angers, hatreds, envies, and itchings that it contains, if rolled into one single experience and put into the scale against the least moment of the joy that is felt by the least in Heaven, would have no weight that could be registered at all. Bad cannot succeed even in being bad as truly as good is good. If all Hell's miseries together entered the consciousness of yon wee yellow bird on the bough there, they would be swallowed up without trace, as if one drop of ink had been dropped into that Great Ocean to which your terrestrial Pacific is only a molecule'
'I see,' said I at last. 'She couldn't fit into Hell. — C.S. Lewis

I believe that nothing passes without a trace and that each of our smallest steps has significance for the present and the future. — Anton Chekhov

How strange," she said, "not to recognize one's own face."
"You have no cause for complaint," Grant said huskily. Even bruised and pale and ravaged, her face was incomparable.
"Do you think so?" She stared into the looking glass without a trace of self-satisfactionshe had displayed at the ball. *That* Vivien had had no doubt of her many attractions. This woman was far less confident.
"Everyone thinks so. You're known as one of the great beauties of London."
"I don't see why." Catching his skeptical expression, she added, "Truly, I'm not fishing for compliments, it's just... seems a very ordinary face." She produced a comical, clownish expression, like a child experimenting with her reflection. A shaken laugh escaped her. "It doesn't seem to belong to me. — Lisa Kleypas