Aura (novel) Quotes

As I began to assess her, I have to say to be in Mirza Almazan’s presence was a strange feeling. She gave off a powerful aura of high spirt, intellect, and strength. I took it all in and literally basked in it.

She had a way about her that spoke of homemade bread, and caring for people, and the kind of patience that women have when they help a ewe birth a lamb, or stay up in the night with a baby calf bawling for its momma.

Russell, the gallant knight, with sureness of spirit and the smile of the gods, was carrying the woman who raised him into the rainy night. I was Paladin, Tristan and King David.

But you see, my dear Guardian, everyone is the villain in someone else’s story...

And on bad days, when his aura of sadness blazed like an alarm he couldn’t turn off, I felt like I was doing everything wrong.

In that room on Via Clelia, I manage to create a world that corresponded to nothing outside it. My books, my city, myself. All I had to do then was let the novels I was reading lend their aura to this street and drop an illusory film over this buildings, a film that washed down Via Clelia like a sheet of rainwater, casting a shimmering spell on this hard, humdrum, here-and-now area of lower-middle-class Rome.

His wealth, his upbringing, his reputation, well known among the students, as a young militant on the left, his sociability, even his courage when he delivered carefully measured speeches against powerful people within and outside the university—all this had given him an aura that automatically extended to me, as his fiancée or girlfriend or companion, as if the pure and simple fact that he loved me were the public sanctioning of my talents.

Three thousand Blessings Lanterns rose into the night behind the man who had turned to gaze at him. Robes redder than maple, skin as white as snow. A face so handsome that one couldn’t bear to stare for long. There was still a wildness about him and a feral aura on his brow—and a pride that could never be felled.

Hate is what will obliterate the brightest of the stars that shine inside your heart.

The other night out at the bars, I learned that Nietzsche wrote on a typewriter. It is unbelievable to me, and I no longer feel that his philosophy has the same validity or aura of truth that it formerly did. No other detail of his life situating him so squarely in the modern age could have affected me as much as learning this. He typed Zarathustra? Goddamnit, the man had no more connection to the truth than a stenographer!

About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread 1984: there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The usual distinctions between forgotten details and a vivid general impression mean nothing here, for the book is written out of one passionate breath, each word is bent to a severe discipline of meaning, everything is stripped to the bareness of terror. Kafka's The Trial is also a book of terror, but it is a paradigm and to some extent a puzzle, so that one may lose oneself in the rhythm of the paradigm and play with the parts of the puzzle. Kafka's novel persuades us that life is inescapably hazardous and problematic, but the very 'universality' of this idea helps soften its impact: to apprehend the terrible on the plane of metaphysics is to lend it an almost soothing aura.

Il existe certaines similitudes entre le développement des flippers et l'ascension de Hitler. Dans les deux cas, leur apparition avait quelque chose de louche. On crut d'abord qu leur naissance ne produirait que de simples bulles sur l'écume du temps. Et c'est en raison de la vitesse de leur évolution plus que pour leur existence elle-même qu'ils acquirent leur aura mythique. Cette évolution s'appuyait sur trois facteurs : la technologie, les capitaux, et, enfin, les instincts primitifs des hommes.

An autumn evening... An autumn evening, I ran hurriedly, made my way I did to that special bench in the park, Where in a likewise special week, I used to meet my Amily. My dear Amily with her mischievious eyes, Hear songs do my ears, whenever she speaks. With her fragrance and aura of jasmine, Feel I do that I am in heaven. Words spoken between us are of course less, but the thoughts that we share are, a lot. See each other we do, very less. Yet an urge to keep seeing each other, we have got. As I sat on the bench today, waiting for her, I wondered how today she would be. Would she dress grand or just come casually, in a simple manner and her hair let out freely. After a while, glance I did at the time. “Why hadn't she come by now?” Did she meet with trouble on the way that she came? Or didn't it cross her mind what the time was now? Then my worries were put to rest, When I saw her in front of me. I smiled at the way, that she had dressed for me. Wearing a dress of my favourite colour, and herself appearing royal with grandeur, she came slowly towards me, with doubt in her eyes, as her eyes enquired if she looked good that way? I smiled again and gestured that she looked like a princess. Then I offered my hand, to walk the rest of the day. So holding each other's hands, we walked gently, with our minds out of the world and lost in our own dreams; Just the two of us, me and my Amily.

There was something infinitely impressive about the man, tall, slender, gray-haired, blue-eyed, soft-spoken. He had the looks of the doctors one read about in women's novels. There was something so basically kind and gentle about him, yet something powerful as well. The aura of a highly trained racehorse always straining at the reins, aching to go faster, farther . . . to do more . . . to fight time . . . to conquer odds beyond hope . . . to steal back just one life . . . one man . . . one woman . . . one child . . . one more. And often he won. Often. But not always. And that irked him. More than that, it pained him. It was the cause for the lines beside his eyes, the sorrow one saw deep within him. It wasn't enough that he wrought miracles almost daily. He wanted more than that, better odds, he wanted to save them all, and there was no way he could.

The Bostonians is special because it never was ‘titivated’ for the New York edition, for its humour and its physicality, for its direct engagement with social and political issues and the way it dramatized them, and finally for the extent to which its setting and action involved the author and his sense of himself. But the passage above suggests one other source of its unique quality. It has been called a comedy and a satire – which it is. But it is also a tragedy, and a moving one at that. If its freshness, humour, physicality and political relevance all combine to make it a peculiarly accessible and enjoyable novel, it is also an upsetting and disturbing one, not simply in its treatment of Olive, but also of what she tries to stand for. (Miss Birdseye is an important figure in this respect: built up and knocked down as she is almost by fits and starts.) The book’s jaundiced view of what Verena calls ‘the Heart of humanity’ (chapter 28) – reform, progress and the liberal collectivism which seems so essential an ingredient in modern democracy – makes it contentious to this day. An aura of scepticism about the entire political process hangs about it: salutary some may say; destructive according to others. And so, more than any other novel of James’s, it reminds us of the literature of our own time. The Bostonians is one of the most brilliant novels in the English language, as F. R. Leavis remarked;27 but it is also one of the bleakest. In no other novel did James reveal more of himself, his society and his era, and of the human condition, caught as it is between the blind necessity of progress and the urge to retain the old. It is a remarkably experimental modern novel, written by a man of conservative values. It is judgemental about people with whom its author identified, and lenient towards attitudes hostile to large areas of James’s own intellectual and personal inheritance. The strength of the contradictions embodied in the novel are a guarantee of the pleasure it has to give.

At those moments I saw myself suddenly for what I was: a slave, willing to always do what he wanted, careful not to exaggerate in order not to get him in trouble, not to displease him. I wasted my time cooking for him, washing the dirty clothes he left in the house, listening to all his troubles at the university and in the many responsibilities that he was accumulating, thanks to the aura of good feeling that surrounded him and the small powers of his father-in-law; I always welcomed him joyfully, I wanted him to be happier with me than in the other house, I wanted him to relax, to confide, I felt sorry that he was continuously overwhelmed by obligations; I even wondered if Eleonora might love him more than I did, since she accepted every insult just to feel that he was still hers. But sometimes I couldn’t stand it anymore and I yelled at him, despite the risk that the girls might hear: Who am I for you, tell me why I’m in this city, why I wait for you every night, why I tolerate this situation.

Patrick Vlaskovits, who was part of the initial conversation that the term “growth hacker” came out of, put it well: “The more innovative your product is, the more likely you will have to find new and novel ways to get at your customers.”12 For example: 1. You can create the aura of exclusivity with an invite-only feature (as Mailbox did). 2. You can create hundreds of fake profiles to make your service look more popular and active than it actually is—nothing draws a crowd like a crowd (as reddit did in its early days). 3. You can target a single service or platform and cater to it exclusively—essentially piggybacking off or even stealing someone else’s growth (as PayPal did with eBay). 4. You can launch for just a small group of people, own that market, and then move from host to host until your product spreads like a virus (which is what Facebook did by starting in colleges—first at Harvard—before taking on the rest of the population). 5. You can host cool events and drive your first users through the system manually (as Myspace, Yelp, and Udemy all did). 6. You can absolutely dominate the App Store because your product provides totally new features that everyone is dying for (which is what Instagram did—twenty-five thousand downloads on its first day—and later Snapchat). 7. You can bring on influential advisors and investors for their valuable audience and fame rather than their money (as About.me and Trippy did—a move that many start-ups have emulated). 8. You can set up a special sub-domain on your e-commerce site where a percentage of every purchase users make goes to a charity of their choice (which is what Amazon did with Smile.Amazon.com this year to great success, proving that even a successful company can find little growth hacks). 9. You can try to name a Planned Parenthood clinic after your client or pay D-list celebrities to say offensive things about themselves to get all sorts of publicity that promotes your book (OK, those stunts were mine).

Gold and power and authority were too great of gods to be ignored.

Let me tell something... My kin may be insentient, as you proclaimed, but I have read our history. I know what we used to be afraid of. We all feared that by breaking down, we wouldn't be able to rise and thrive again. But you know what they say? It is the broken ones that always become masters at mending... It is the bird with the broken wings that sings the sweetest and most beautiful songs...

Let me tell you something... My kin may be insentient, as you proclaimed, but I have read our history. I know what we used to be afraid of. We all feared that by breaking down, we wouldn't be able to rise and thrive again. But you know what they say? It is the broken ones that always become masters at mending... It is the bird with the broken wings that sings the sweetest and most beautiful songs...

At least I knew that, even though fear was the one that could keep people up for endless nights to come, still integrity and faith could make them a fine pillow.

It always seemed hard to keep track of time in the Forests of the Fiendish as trees were always hiding the sky above. Only one rule applied here; the thicker the darkness, the deadlier the beasts.

Have you ever dared to look straight into the sun? Have you ever been that valiant, to begin with? Can you recall that intense sensation? How that bright light almost blinds you, letting you see only little twinkling stars, that golden flash and nothing more?

You do not change people, dearie. It's the people that change themselves.

It is the unknown we fear. The fact that we won't have anyone by our side to help us face whatever it is that generated that fear in the first place. To tell us that it is all right not to be strong and brave and indestructible all the time.

People are afraid of the things they don't understand. Don't let them impose their way of thinking on you. And above all... Don't let them steal your happiness! If that's what makes you happy, pursue it!

He experienced while sleeping the unsettling sensation of full waking consciousness, completely aware that he was moving through a dream. Although unable to control the dream’s flow of events, he had learned to shift the focus of his attention and see more of what was happening around him. The explicit content of the dream itself was not on the face of it so frightening, but there crept in around its borders an aura of menace and a potency of light and sound and color so overhelming that each night had woken out of it in a pool of sweat, heart thundering, eyes raw and stinging from involuntary tears

How can I put the Auras back in the chest?” I asked, terror boiling inside my stomach. “You can’t. Not if those that were or will be struck by them won’t be eager to express their feelings and let you help them. You do not change people, dearie. It’s the people that change themselves. You’re the Guardian, but they’re the bearers,” the Oracle whispered. “I’m no Guardian. I’m doomed!” I said and I knew that this was true.

forbidding, the cold metal glimmering with a strange, murderous aura. The bugle call that issued from it was indescribably sorrowful, the mournful note reverberating on and on until it resonated throughout the entirety of Yanhui Town. It was as though the souls of those who had died in battle over millennia had all awoken from their slumber and joined their voices in song. The giant kite followed the underground river steadily into town, the water splashing loudly against its sides. The voice of the messenger rang out once again. “EXTINGUISH THE LIGHTS.” The giant kite responded

she closed her eyes and let the chanting of the psalms take over her heart and mind. She didn’t try to follow along or understand anything with her conscious mind. She opened the ears of her heart and welcomed the vision forming in her imagination. She saw the darkness of the universe splashed with a glitter of colors, swirling around in a vortex. She heard chanting reaching up and over all in a flood of love. Love was the moving force of the vision. Then the swirl of glitter came to earth and entered the church through the open doors. It swooped over her, touching her chest briefly, then visited the chests of all the others in the room, monks and worshipers alike. The touch of Love imparted colorful auras to all the people, then it swept out the door on its way to touch the rest of the world, Therese thought. When she opened her eyes, the monks had gone, and her eyes were wet with tears. ​“Thank you, Beloved,” she whispered and hurried to her room to journal the vision.

The sky had turned into the deep of our minds, the sea was now reaching the highest peaks of our fears as we were diving down, like tiny bullets cutting the water. Everywhere around was blue and black and all the shades in between. Reborn as dolphins, we could cross the sea without breathing, without slowing down, the three of us were holding to the trail Aura was leaving behind, virtually attached to it, led by its charted course.

Ela levou o cigarro à boca, me seduzindo com a dança das chamas. Meus olhos não conseguiram se desviar, capturados por sua aura sombria. A maneira como ela tragou o cigarro foi como uma provocação, um convite audacioso para um jogo perigoso. Eu senti a tensão no ar, como uma corrente elétrica entre nós. Cada gesto dela era um feitiço, e eu estava preso em sua teia, ansioso por ser consumido por sua escuridão.

I could just... feel it. I could feel my soul intertwining with his, finding a home in his presence. I could feel my heart skipping a beat, trying to spring out of my chest to chase after him, to love his heart in return the same way that he did mine. I could feel the universe fighting for us, fighting for us to be, pushing us together, even when I wanted to be as far away from him as possible. I could feel it. I could feel everything, even though it was simply asomatous. Despite lacking physicality, his love could not be denied by one who had eyes to see the sight and feel the aura of what was right in front of them.

Was there anything in it?” she asked, not bothering to wipe the tear tracing the rim of her nose. “Our summer here, all those long walks and even longer conversations? When you kissed me that night, did it mean anything to you?” When he did not answer, she took three paces in his direction. “I know how proud you must be of those enigmatic silences, but I believe I deserve an answer.” She stood between his icy silence and the heated aura of the fire. Scorched on one side, bitterly cold on the other— like a slice of toast someone had forgotten to turn. “What sort of answer would you like to hear?” “An honest one.” “Are you certain? It’s my experience that young ladies vastly prefer fictions. Little stories, like Portia’s gothic novel.” “I am as fond of a good tale as anyone,” she replied, “but in this instance, I wish to know the truth.” “So you say. Let us try an experiment, shall we?” He rose from his chair and sauntered toward her, his expression one of jaded languor. His every movement a negotiation between aristocratic grace and sheer brute strength. Power. He radiated power in every form— physical, intellectual, sensual— and he knew it. He knew that she sensed it. The fire was unbearably warm now. Blistering, really. Sweat beaded at her hairline, but Cecily would not retreat. “I could tell you,” he said darkly, seductively, “that I kissed you that night because I was desperate with love for you, overcome with passion, and that the color of my ardor has only deepened with time and separation. And that when I lay on a battlefield bleeding my guts out, surrounded by meaningless death and destruction, I remembered that kiss and was able to believe that there was something of innocence and beauty in this world, and it was you.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips. Almost. Warm breath caressed her fingertips. “Do you like that answer?” She gave a breathless nod. She was a fool; she couldn’t help it. “You see?” He kissed her fingers. “Young ladies prefer fictions.” “You are a cad.” Cecily wrenched her hand away and balled it into a fist. “An arrogant, insufferable cad.” “Yes, yes. Now we come to the truth. Shall I give you an honest answer, then? That I kissed you that night for no other reason than that you looked uncommonly pretty and fresh, and though I doubted my ability to vanquish Napoleon, it was some balm to my pride to conquer you, to feel you tremble under my touch? And that now I return from war, to find everything changed, myself most of all. I scarcely recognize my surroundings, except . . .” He cupped her chin in his hand and lightly framed her jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “Except Cecily Hale still looks at me with stars in her eyes, the same as she ever did. And when I touch her, she still trembles.” Oh. She was trembling. He swept his thumb across her cheek, and even her hair shivered. “And suddenly . . .” His voice cracked. Some unrehearsed emotion pitched his dispassionate drawl into a warm, expressive whisper. “Suddenly, I find myself determined to keep this one thing constant in my universe. Forever.” -Cecily & Luke

The woman was not what would be termed an exquisite, or what his grandfather’s generation would have styled ‘a diamond of the first water.’ There was something too primal in her features and her bearing, and her aura shimmered with power. She was a sunset on a mountain peak, or the eerie colors in the sky in the far north of Scotland. She was a vein of gold still glittering inside the rock, her treasure clear but held close, in her own keeping. She would never belong to anyone but herself, and that made him long for her to share that self with him—in every conceivable way.

A fetish is a fetish because of its aura of unattainability. What if part of me refused love as much as I ached for it? What if I wanted to destroy myself as much as I wanted to be saved?

Though it lay several miles to the west, she felt the high school as she passed by. Without even laying eyes on that place, she could feel it like an ache. Some institutional slab of crap architecture with that sixties-era authoritarian aura to its brick Lego look. She marveled at the power the American high school experience holds on the imagination. She’d always noticed how people tended to view their high school days as foundational even if they didn’t realize it. Get them talking about those years, and they suddenly had all these stories of dread and wonder you could wrap whole novels around.

Surely we had our flaws as kin, too, for nobody’s perfect, but we at least showed respect, honour, candour...

Do you remember how our mothers kept telling us that we should be proud of who we were because we’d have to live with that self every single day for the rest of our lives? How we should always be the masters of our thoughts, embrace everything, both positive and negative, but never let our judgement be clouded, still learn from our mistakes and experiences?

Sorrow? So that was it then? All I knew about this emotion was how it used to turn life into nightmare eons ago, just like a thorn could steal away a rose’s beauty.

Energetically, I am large. There is an informational or energetic field around me, inside of which I live. It’s about the size of the dwelling where I reside. That’s why I am not quite comfortable when people are constantly wandering inside my field.