Wringing Quotes & Sayings

Writing, as I experience it, means wringing out the heart/mind until it stops lying. — Jennifer Stone

What do I say to a whale, Galen?" I hiss.
"Tell him to come closer."
"No way."
"Fine. Tell him to back up."
I nod. "Right. Okay." I lace my fingers together to keep from wringing my hands raw. Even more than terror, I feel the insanity of the situation. I'm about to ask a fish the size of my house to make a U-turn. Because Galen, the man-fish behind me, doesn't speak humpback. "Uh, can you please back away from me?" I say. I sound polite, like I'm asking him to buy some Girl Scout cookies.
I feel better in the few moments afterward because Goliath doesn't move. It proves Galen doesn't know what he's talking about. It proves this whale can't understand me, that I'm not some Snow White of the ocean. Except that, Goliath does start to turn away.
I look back at Galen. "That's just a coincidence."
Galen sighs. "You're right. He probably mistook us for a relative or something. Tell him to do something else, Emma. — Anna Banks

Mediocrity is no answer to violence. In fact, it probably invites violence. At least the mediocre and the violent appear together as in the old Western movies - the ruffian outlaw band shooting up main street and the little white church with the little white schoolteacher wringing her hands. To cool violence you need rhythm, humor, tempering; you need dance and rhetoric. Not therapeutic understanding. — James Hillman

Creff was visibly agitated by the stranger's appearance at our door. Memory calls to mind the anxious wringing of his hands, resembling two furless pink badgers wrestling for each other's throats ... — K.W. Jeter

For all of my life it was the size of my rear that caused me the most hand-wringing, but in this nearly-50 zone it is my stomach that is the problem. It seems to have broken free from its moorings and there is no knowing how far it will roam. — Marian Keyes

Six days a week we wrestle with the world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sabbath we especially care for the seed of eternity planted in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to dominate the self. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

Lady Baskerville paced up and down wringing her hands. She required only an armful of weedy flowers to make a somewhat mature Ophelia. — Elizabeth Peters

Her voice sounded much cooler than she felt. Inside, her internal organs were grinding themselves into nervous pulp. Her intestines were gone. Her kidneys were disintegrating. Her stomach was wringing itself out, yanking on her trachea. — Rainbow Rowell

Do. Do? Oh, you never do anything except the things I tell you. You're always wringing your hands and looking sorry, but I always have to think of the things to do . — Winifred Holtby

God has a plan for our deliverance before our problems ever appear. He is not surprised when trouble comes. He is not in Heaven wringing His hands trying to figure out what to do. He's in control. Our part is to focus on Him and His mighty power, worshipping Him and praising Him for the manifestation of His solution and listening for a word of direction from Him. — Joyce Meyer

He's going to kill me," Peppone murmured, his jaw drooping, "or at least send out the order to have someone take care of me. Well," with a sigh, "might as well get rid of this body before the others wake up." He canted his head and mused to himself. "Maybe I should carve it up first."
"At long last," Bartleby cried, raising his eyes and wringing his hands, "somebody who has no regard for collective conscience and general morality. Oh, happy, happy morning!"
"Take care, Peppone," Danaco laughed, "if you have so little regard for life and the creatural condition, Bartleby will attach himself to you and never leave you for a moment. — Michelle Franklin

God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven time and time again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. — Martin Luther King Jr.

it may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. — Sarah Vowell

The thing is, Max," he said, tons of heart-wringing emotion in his eyes, "you're even more special than I always told you. You see, you were created for a reason. Kept alive for a purpose, a special purpose." You mean besides seeing how well insane scientists could graft avian DNA into a human egg? He took a breath, looking deep into my eyes. I coldly shut down every good memory I had of him, every laugh we'd shared, every happy moment, every thought that he was like a dad to me. "Max, that reason, that purpose is: You are supposed to save the world." 62 Okay, I couldn't help it. My jaw dropped open. I shut it again quickly. Well. This would certainly give weight to my ongoing struggle to have the bathroom first in the morning. — James Patterson

I was a jackass in many ways. I projected that cruelty towards others, that kid whose hand I was wringing. If I could have hurt a hundred weaklings - weaker than me, and I was already very weak - I would. I was dying to hurt somebody, to pay it forward. — Gary Shteyngart

So many times you will see people wringing their hands and saying 'I want to know what my mission in life is,' all the while they are cutting people off on the highway, refusing to give time to people, punishing their mate for having hurt their feelings or lying about what they did. — Richard N. Bolles

I am no ecological Pollyana. I have borne, and will continue to bear, feelings of wholehearted melancholy over the ecological state of the earth. How could I not? How could anyone not? But I am unwilling to become a hand-wringing nihilist, as some environmental 'realists' seem to believe is the more mature posture. Instead, I choose to dwell, as Emily Dickinson famously suggested, in possibility, where we cannot predict what will happen but we make space for it, whatever it is, and realize that our participation has value. This is grown-up optimism, where our bondedness with the rest of creation, a sense of profound interaction, and a belief in our shared ingenuity give meaning to our lives and actions on behalf of the more-than-human world. — Lyanda Lynn Haupt

Oh, don't go on like that!" cried the poor Queen, wringing her hands in despair. "Consider what a great girl you are. Consider what a long way you've come today. Consider what o'clock it is. Consider anything, only don't cry!"
Alice could not help laughing at this, even in the midst of her tears. "Can you keep from crying by considering things?" she asked.
"That's that way it's done," the Queen said with great decision: "nobody can do two things at once, you know. — Lewis Carroll

You have to take risks on policy. You can't be a politician, wringing your hands, worried about what the public opinion polls are saying or worried about the negative attacks. If you believe in something, go fight for it. — Scott Pelley

Devil's Snare, Devil's Snare . . . what did Professor Sprout say? - it likes the dark and the damp - " "So light a fire!" Harry choked. "Yes - of course - but there's no wood!" Hermione cried, wringing her hands. — J.K. Rowling

Inside, in the servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing — Oscar Wilde

LANCE (to the audience) Nay, 'twill be this hour ere I have done weeping. All the kind of the Lances have this very fault. I have received my proportion, like the prodigious son, and am going with Sir Proteus to the Imperial's court. I think Crab, my dog, be the sourest-natured dog that lives. My mother weeping, my father wailing, my sister crying, our maid howling, our cat wringing her hands, and all our house in a — William Shakespeare

Rune the Insatiable. he buffed his black claws. "Wringing orgasms and breaking hearts for eons. — Kresley Cole

Men die nightly in their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors ... on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer themselves to be revealed. — Edgar Allan Poe

The rain wasn't the usual glittering silver, but dark and dirty, as if nature were a scrubwoman wringing out a filthy mop. — Dean Koontz

You'll never get anything done by sitting on your hands or by wringing them. Try getting them dirty for a change and you'll be surprised by how much you can accomplish. — Belva Rae Staples

I do not attach
any exaggerated importance to my poetical works. Life is
there to be lived rather than to be written about. My aim
is to search out the manifold experience that it offers,
wringing from each moment what of emotion it presents.
I look upon my writing as a graceful accomplishment
which does not absorb but rather adds pleasure to
existence. And as for posterity - damn posterity. — W. Somerset Maugham

When he was left alone, when he had pulled out one stop after another (for the work required it), Stanley straightened himself on the seat, tightened the knot of the red necktie, and struck. The music soared around him, from the corner of his eye he caught the glitter of his wrist watch, and even as he read the music before him, and saw his thumb and last finger come down time after time with three black keys between them, wringing out fourths, the work he had copied coming over on the Conte di Brescia, wringing that chord of the devil's interval from the full length of the thirty-foot bass pipes, he did not stop. The walls quivered, still he did not hesitate. Everything moved, and even falling, soared in atonement.
He was the only person caught in the collapse, and afterward, most of his work was recovered too, and it is still spoken of, when it is noted, with high regard, though seldom played. — William Gaddis

The world can use more light and less noise. More solvers and fewer blamers. More folks showing a better way and fewer folks complaining about how much better things used to be. More folks offering help and fewer folks wringing their hands about the problems. More hope bringers and fewer hope killers. — Steve Goodier

You feel perfect," Hunter grunted, slamming up and wringing a strangled moan from me. "You are perfect for me, only me. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The U. S. is headed toward a period of business depression ... beginning within the next two years, which may exceed that which preceded the War ... The only thing that will save us is a new gold policy or the discovery of a new process or additional gold fields. If the fall [of gold production] is not prevented by design or accident we shall throttle business, wringing out all profits and experiencing all the evils of deflation. — Irving Fisher

I've definitely had my share of calls where I just laugh. Someone came to me once and wanted to do a signature Hawk cologne. I was like, 'Of what? Sweaty pads? Am I wringing out my pads into a little perfume bottle?' — Tony Hawk

Yoga is more a state than a methodology. A state where there is nothing missing. You don't feel like you have to grab this or grab that in order to be complete or full. From wringing out the body and the mind, from sitting in meditation, from studying scripture, from selfless service. — Colleen Saidman

I had always thought that wringing one's hands was a fictional gesture - the obscure outcome, perhaps, of some medieval ritual; but as I took to the woods, for a spell of despair and desperate meditation, this was the gesture ("look, Lord, at these chains!") that would have come nearest to the mute expression of my mood. — Vladimir Nabokov

Truth is, we're a lot better off, and a lot closer to experiencing real, feel-good moments, when we're wringing ourselves out for the glory of God and fulfilling our daily tasks - at work, at home, in ministry, anywhere. What did Vince Lombardi say in that famous speech: I firmly believe that any man's finest hour - his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear - is that moment when he has worked his heart out in a good cause and lies exhausted on the field of battle - victorious. — Matt Chandler

There's a lot of hand-wringing going on about the death of journalism and particularly the death of investigative journalism. What I see is that there is more need than ever to have experienced information processors - people who can look through this mass of data. — Heather Brooke

I am a stranger to half measures. With life I am on the attack, restlessly ferreting out each pleasure, foraging for answers, wringing from it even the pain. I ransack life, hunt it down. I am the hungry peasants storming the palace gates. I will have my share. No matter how it tastes. — Marita Golden

[on the Victim Mentality] It takes a great level of intelligence to maintain a thinking process as stupid as this. Because it is such a great undertaking, we take pride in it. It highlights our intellect. Too bad it also highlights our lack of wisdom. For all our twisting, wringing, stretching, and stuffing, we only contort ourselves. — David G. Allen

This is your idea of a bribe?" Solomon's brow was still lifted.
The Captain laughed roundly. They let her stand there, feeling hopelessly foolish.
"Don;t you want me?" she murmured, almost convincingly.
"Turn around, girl," Solomon spat out.
Now it was she who felt dirty. Roxanne managed to cover herself before the Captain laid his hands on her to drag her out.
Wait!" she cried.
The worst thing Roxanne had ever had to do was beat the body of a filthy, drunken man off her mother with Claude standing nearby, wringing his hands as he witnessed the scene. This was so much worse. This...this would haunt her forever. But she had no choice.
"Wait, please. I do have one more thing." She spoke quickly enough that she could not turn back.
"If you spare my brother," she began, "I'll give you the name of a witch."
This got Solomon's attention. "Now that is worth something. — Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

And I know I'm supposed to feel guilty for wanting people to buy my books ... and books in general? Novels and poetry, they belong to the realm of art. How dirty of us to try to hawk art! But, after a decade of hand-wringing and apologies, I can't quite muster the guilt anymore. — Julianna Baggott

When the locked door opens, and there comes in a young woman, deadly pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to the fire, and sits down in the chair we have left there, wringing her hands. — Charles Dickens

What a blessing 'terrorism' is for the state! It's the ideal distraction from the day-to-day reality of the state's chief activity: wringing from its subjects the wealth they produce. Last September (2001) a handful of fanatics, armed only with box-cutters, provided a new rationale for the trillion -dollar swindle. A bonanza! I don't know what these 'terrorists' thought they were achieving: Making the infidel respect Allah? If so, they were wrong. You might as well try to make the U.S. government respect the U.S. Constitution. — Joseph Sobran

Frederick Douglass, former slave, extraordinary speaker and writer, wrote in his Rochester newspaper the North Star, January 21, 1848, of "the present disgraceful, cruel, and iniquitous war with our sister republic. Mexico seems a doomed victim to Anglo Saxon cupidity and love of dominion." Douglass was scornful of the unwillingness of opponents of the war to take real action (even the abolitionists kept paying their taxes): The determination of our slaveholding President to prosecute the war, and the probability of his success in wringing from the people men and money to carry it on, is made evident, rather than doubtful, by the puny opposition arrayed against him. No politician of any considerable distinction or eminence seems willing to hazard his popularity with his party . . . by an open and unqualified disapprobation of the war. None seem willing to take their stand for peace at all risks; and all seem willing that the war should be carried on, in some form or other. — Howard Zinn

Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty. — Herbert Gold

No Christian has the right to go around wringing his hands, wondering what we are to do in the face of the present world situation. The Scripture says that in the midst of persecution, confusion, wars, and rumors of wars, we are to comfort one another with the knowledge that Jesus Christ is coming back in triumph, glory, and majesty. — Billy Graham

WITH THE EMBERS STILL BURNING:
The scientific community has done a pronounced amount of hand-wringing about its involvement in the atomic bomb's creation, and a disproportionately absent amount of the soul-searching with respects to its creation of the science of eugenics. The 450,000 deaths due to the bomb are relatively small in the shadow of the many millions dead as a result of National Socialism's eugenic campaign. The casualties of The Holocaust are the casualties of the science of eugenics, which so many scientists had actively campaigned for leading up to World War II. Yet, the scientific community has confronted its complicity with collective silence and sometimes outright censorship. — A.E. Samaan

You can't prepare for everything life's going to throw at you. And you can't avoid danger. It's there. The world is a dangerous place, and if you sit around wringing your hands about it, you'll out on all the adventure. — Jeannette Walls

Despite all the public hand-wringing about negative advertising, political veterans will tell you that it persists because, more often than not, it works. But tearing down the other guy has another attraction: It can be a substitute for building much of a case for what the mudslinger will do once in office. — Robert Dallek

She had thought that 'depression' would be like sitting in a rocking chair and not being able to make it move. She had thought it would descend over her like a fog, turning things fuzzy, coloring them gray. But depression was active, it paced back and forth wringing its hands. She couldn't stop thinking; she couldn't find her way free from apprehension. — Elin Hilderbrand

But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. Mankind was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The deals of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! — Charles Dickens

I am late,' she said, 'I know that I am late. So many little things have to be done when you are alone, and I am not yet accustomed to being alone,' she added with a pretty little sob which reminded me of a cut-glass Victorian tear-bottle. She took off thick winter gloves with a wringing gesture which made me think of handkerchiefs wet with grief, and her hands looked suddenly small and useless and vulnerable. — Graham Greene

The chaos surrounding her was confusing. Everyone was suddenly talking at the same time. Perhaps she should try to swoon after all, Christine considered. No, the settee was already taken, and the floor didn't look all that appealing. She settled on wringing her hands. It was the best she could do to look upset. — Julie Garwood

The Irish have a flair for wringing from death the last drop of emotion and they do not quite understand those who react otherwise. — Dervla Murphy

In the streets we occasionally glimpsed familiar T-shirts within our circles of friends, though we had an unspoken agreement not to mention it. On the weekends we spent our mornings scrubbing the stains from our new old clothes, wringing out each other's memories. — Sara Novic

What is nobler than a man wresting and wringing his bread from the stubborn soil by the sweat of his brow and the break of his back for his wife and children! — William Morris Hunt

When we focus on people and life instead of material possessions and mere wants, there's not much room for emotional hand-wringing. Instead, there's more space to weigh what we value in our lives and to acknowledge what really counts. Chapter 9 Simplicity Laura Ingalls in The Long Winter — Erin Blakemore

Some people are natural inventors who prefer to work without the pressure and expectations of the later business phases. Others are ambitious and see innovation as a path toward senior management. Still others are particularly skilled at the management of running an established business, outsourcing, and bolstering efficiencies and wringing out cost reductions. People should be allowed to find the kinds of jobs that suit them best. — Eric Ries

I can't recite the chronology or elaborate on the facts. I can't explain the reasons or defend how we lived our lives. What I can tell you is how the events of 1933 sowed the seeds that fundamentally changed our future, that there was little hand-wringing or emotion, that circumstances were beyond control, that there was no recourse or appeal. I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal.

Ralph Webster, A Smile in One Eye: a Tear in the Other — Ralph Webster

She stood in the middle of the room, wringing her hands, trying to hold back the tears and losing the fight. Yes, she had been mad at him. Yes, she had wanted to cause him bodily harm. But she hadn't wanted him killed! — Kristi Ann Hunter

I'm so sorry," she says, and she's wringing her hands, looking away from me. "I'm so, so sorry."
I notice what she's wearing.
It's a dark-green dress with fitted sleeves; a simple cut made of stretch cotton that clings to the soft curves of her figure. It complements the flecks of green in her eyes in a way I couldn't have anticipated. It's one of the many dresses I chose for her. I thought she might enjoy having something nice after being caged as an animal for so long. And I can't quite explain it, but it gives me a strange sense of pride to see her wearing something I picked out myself.
"I'm sorry," she says for the third time.
I'm again struck by how impossible it is that she's here. In my bedroom. Staring at me without my shirt on. Her hair is so long it falls to the middle of her back; I have to clench my fists against this unbidden need to run my hands through it. She's so beautiful. — Tahereh Mafi

For its speculations to be taken seriously, dystopian fiction must be part of a discussion of contemporary society, a projection of ongoing political failures perhaps, or the wringing of present jeopardy for future disaster. — Sarah Hall

He was as obsequious as a Japanese ivy plant. Wringing his hands as if he hoped to squeeze the milk of human kindness from his fingernails, ... — Philip Kerr

I'm sick of reading a bunch of hand-wringing bullshit intended to please your circle of friends, or assuage one's guilt of some kind or another. Take a position, have a point of view and fucking live or die with the consequences or don't write. — Kenyon Farrow

Sometimes ... sometimes keeping alive is too tiring," she whispered, wringing her hands. Before he knew what he was doing, he pressed his lips against her brow. "Don't ever say that. Ever. — Melina Marchetta

Yes, she is as pure as the day I'd left her, and a bloody good thing, or I'm not sure I could have faced her without wringing her neck. Strange, but true: I have a mad possessive streak when it comes to that woman, and the thought of another man touching what I truly consider mine drives me insane. But she's completely pure and untouched, and so she gets to live for what I have planned. — Kristina Weaver

servants' part of the house, the half-clad domestics were talking in low whispers to each other. Old Mrs. Leaf was crying and wringing her hands. Francis was as pale as death. After about a quarter of an hour, he got the coachman and one of the footmen and crept upstairs. They knocked, but there was no reply. They called out. Everything was still. Finally, after vainly trying to force the door, they got on the roof and dropped down on to the balcony. The windows yielded easily--their bolts — Oscar Wilde

I remember thinking with a queer detached portion of my mind that here was someone wringing her hands. One reads about it and one never sees it, and now here it was. — Mary Stewart

God is the God of 'right now.' He doesn't want you sitting around regretting yesterday. Nor does He want you wringing your hands and worrying about the future. He wants you focusing on what He is saying to you and putting in front of you ... right now. — Priscilla Shirer

He made writing look easy and critics hate that. They like evidence of a struggle, of creative agony, wringing the masterpiece out of one's guts. After all, most critics think of themselves as writers, or had attempted to become writers. This leads to the bizarre situation in which failed writers pass judgment on writers who actually write for a living. — Jessica Zafra

The ultimate in futility is owning important jewelry. Insurers often insist on the wearing of paste replicas because necks with real rocks around 'em risk wringing. — Malcolm Forbes

Academics have given up trying to recover an honest picture of the past and have decided that their history-writing should be simply an instrument of moral hand-wringing. — Gordon S. Wood

I slowed my pace. Years of hauling water, wringing out clothes, scrubbing floors, emptying chamber pots, with no chance of beauty or color or light in my life, stretched before me like a landscape of flat land where, a long way off, the sea is visible but can never be reached. — Tracy Chevalier

Ella squeezed, wringing a groan from his throat that echoed the torments of the damned. Usually, though, the damned didn't lean into the torment in a silent entreaty for more. Or so she assumed. She didn't think hell was likely to be kinky. — Christine Warren