Dust Off Your Crown Quotes

Pitiful and pitied by no one, why have I come to the ignominy of this detestable old age, who was ruler of two kingdoms, mother of two kings? My guts are torn from me, my family is carried off and removed from me. The young king [crown prince Henry, †1183] and the count of Britanny [prince Geoffrey, †1186] sleep in dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to be irremediably tormented by the memory of the dead. Two sons remain to my solace, who today survive to punish me, miserable and condemned. King Richard [the Lionheart] is held in chains [in captivity with Emperor Henry VI of Germany]. His brother, John, depletes his kingdom with iron [the sword] and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord has turned cruel to me and attacked me with the harshness of his hand. Truly his wrath battles against me: my sons fight amongst themselves, if it is a fight where where one is restrained in chains, the other, adding sorrow to sorrow, undertakes to usurp the kingdom of the exile by cruel tyranny. Good Jesus, who will grant that you protect me in hell and hide me until your fury passes, until the arrows which are in me cease, by which my whole spirit is sucked out?" [Third letter to Pope Celestine (1193)]

Do not apologize for wanting to be a wife and not a girlfriend. You encourage a man to think about his motives and his vision. If you have a "girlfriend" mindset you will do just about anything without a ring. You will play house, wear whatever and will not challenge him to measure up and step up to the plate. So, do not get mad if the guy runs off to dusty, trashy crowns who have low or no standards . Hold onto your standards because your future husband will be looking for a godly wife.

I would give you a crown if I could,” he said. “I would show you the world from the prow of a ship. I would choose you, Zoya. As my general, as my friend, as my bride. I would give you a sapphire the size of an acorn.” He reached into his pocket. “And all I would ask in return is that you wear this damnable ribbon in your hair on our wedding day.” She reached out, her fingers hovering over the coil of blue velvet ribbon resting in his palm. Then she pulled back her hand, cradling her fingers as if they’d been singed. “You will wed a Taban sister who craves a crown,” she said. “Or a wealthy Kerch girl, or maybe a Fjerdan royal. You will have heirs and a future. I’m not the queen Ravka needs.” “And if you’re the queen I want?” She shut her eyes. “There’s a story my aunt told me a very long time ago. I can’t remember all of it, but I remember the way she described the hero: ‘He had a golden spirit.’ I loved those words. I made her read them again and again. When I was a little girl, I thought I had a golden spirit too, that it would light everything it touched, that it would make me beloved like a hero in a story.” She sat up, drew her knees in, wrapped her arms around them as if she could make a shelter of her own body. He wanted to pull her back down beside him and press his mouth to hers. He wanted her to look at him again with possibility in her eyes. “But that’s not who I am. Whatever is inside me is sharp and gray as the thorn wood.” She rose and dusted off her kefta. “I wasn’t born to be a bride. I was made to be a weapon.” Nikolai forced himself to smile. It wasn’t as if he’d offered her a real proposal. They both knew such a thing was impossible. And yet her refusal smarted just as badly as if he’d gotten on his knee and offered her his hand like some kind of besotted fool. It stung. All Saints, it stung. “Well,” he said cheerfully, pushing up onto his elbows and looking up at her with all the wry humor he could muster. “Weapons are good to have around too. Far more useful than brides and less likely to mope about the palace. But if you won’t rule Ravka by my side, what does the future hold, General?” Zoya opened the door to the cargo hold. Light flooded in, gilding her features when she looked back at him. “I’ll fight on beside you. As your general. As your friend. Because whatever my failings, I know this: You are the king Ravka needs.

I would choose you." The words were out before he thought better of them, and there was no way to pull them back. Silence stretched between them. Perhaps the floor will open and I'll plummet to my death, he thought hopefully. "As your general?" Her voice careful. She was offering him a chance to right the ship, to take them back to familiar waters. And a fine general you are. There could be no better leader. You may be prickly, but that what Ravka needs. So many easy replies. Instead he said, "As my queen." He couldn't read her expression. Was she pleased? Embarrassed? Angry? Every cell in his body screamed for him to crack a joke, to free both of them from the peril of the moment. But he wouldn't. He was still a privateer, and he'd come too far. "Because I'm a dependable soldier," she said, but she didn't sound sure. It was the same cautious, tentative voice, the voice of someone waiting for a punch line, or maybe a blow. "Because I know all of your secrets." "I do trust you more than myself sometimes- and I think very highly of myself." Hadn't she said there was no one else she'd choose to have her back in a fight? But that isn't the whole truth, is it, you great cowardly lump. To hell with it. They might all die soon enough. They were safe here in the dark, surrounded by the hum of engines. "I would make you my queen because I want you. I want you all the time." She rolled on to her side, resting her head on her folded arm. A small movement, but he could feel her breath now. His heart was racing. "As your general, I should tell you that would be a terrible decision." He turned on to his side. They were facing each other now. "As your king, I should tell you that no one could dissuade me. No prince and no power could make me stop wanting you." Nikolai felt drunk. Maybe unleashing the demon had loosed something in his brain. She was going to laugh at him. She would knock him senseless and tell him he had no right. But he couldn't seem to stop. "I would give you a crown if I could," he said. "I would show you the world from the prow of a ship. I would choose you, Zoya. As my general, as my friend, as my bride. I would give you a sapphire the size of an acorn." He reached in to his pocket. "And all I would ask in return is that you wear this damnable ribbon in your hair on our wedding day." She reached out, her fingers hovering over the coil of blue velvet ribbon resting in his palm. Then she pulled back her hand, cradling her fingers as if they'd been singed. "You will wed a Taban sister who craves a crown," she said. "Or a wealthy Kerch girl, or maybe a Fjerdan royal. You will have heirs and a future. I'm not the queen Ravka needs." "And if you're the queen I want?" ... She sat up, drew her knees in, wrapped her arms around them as if she would make a shelter of her own body. He wanted to pull her back down beside him and press his mouth to hers. He wanted her to look at him again with possibility in her eyes. "But that's not who I am. Whatever is inside me is sharp and gray as the thorn wood." She rose and dusted off her kefta. "I wasn't born to be a bride. I was made to be a weapon." Nikolai forced himself to smile. It wasn't as if he'd offered her a real proposal. They both knew such a thing was impossible. And yet her refusal smarted just as badly as if he'd gotten on his knee and offered her his hand like some kind of besotted fool. It stung. All saints, it stung. "Well," he said cheerfully, pushing up on his elbows and looking up at her with all the wry humour he could muster. "Weapons are good to have around too. Far more useful than brides and less likely to mope about the palace. But if you won't rule Ravka by my side, what does the future hold, General?" Zoya opened the door to the Cargo hold. Light flooded in gilding her features when she looked back at him. "I'll fight on beside you. As your general. As your friend. Because whatever my failings, I know this. You are the king Ravka needs.

BRIDE SONG Too late for love, too late for joy, Too late, too late! You loitered on the road too long, You trifled at the gate: The enchanted dove upon her branch Died without a mate; The enchanted princess in her tower Slept, died, behind the grate; Her heart was starving all this while You made it wait. Ten years ago, five years ago, One year ago, Even then you had arrived in time, Though somewhat slow; Then you had known her living face Which now you cannot know: The frozen fountain would have leaped, The buds gone on to blow, The warm south wind would have awaked To melt the snow. Is she fair now as she lies? Once she was fair; Meet queen for any kingly king, With gold-dust on her hair, Now these are poppies in her locks, White poppies she must wear; Must wear a veil to shroud her face And the want graven there: Or is the hunger fed at length, Cast off the care? We never saw her with a smile Or with a frown; Her bed seemed never soft to her, Though tossed of down; She little heeded what she wore, Kirtle, or wreath, or gown; We think her white brows often ached Beneath her crown, Till silvery hairs showed in her locks That used to be so brown. We never heard her speak in haste; Her tones were sweet, And modulated just so much As it was meet: Her heart sat silent through the noise And concourse of the street. There was no hurry in her hands, No hurry in her feet; There was no bliss drew nigh to her, That she might run to greet. You should have wept her yesterday, Wasting upon her bed: But wherefore should you weep today That she is dead? Lo we who love weep not today, But crown her royal head. Let be these poppies that we strew, Your roses are too red: Let be these poppies, not for you Cut down and spread.

Ode to a Cluster of Violets Crisp cluster plunged in shadow. Drops of violet water and raw sunlight floated up with your scent. A fresh subterranean beauty climbed up from your buds thrilling my eyes and my life. One at a time, flowers that stretched forward silvery stalks, creeping closer to an obscure light shoot by shoot in the shadows, till they crowned the mysterious mass with an intense weight of perfume and together formed a single star with a far-off scent and a purple center. Poignant cluster intimate scent of nature, you resemble a wave, or a head of hair, or the gaze of a ruined water nymph sunk in the depths. But up close, in your fragrance’s blue brazenness, you exhale the earth, an earthly flower, an earthen smell and your ultraviolet gleam in volcanoes’ faraway fires. Into your loveliness I sink a weathered face, a face that dust has often abused. You deliver something out of the soil. It isn’t simply perfume, nor simply the perfect cry of your entire color, no: it’s a word sprinkled with dew, a flowering wetness with roots. Fragile cluster of starry violets, tiny, mysterious planet of marine phosphorescence, nocturnal bouquet nestled in green leaves: the truth is there is no blue word to express you. Better than any word is the pulse of your scent. Pablo Neruda, Odes to Common Things. (Bulfinch; Bilingual edition May 1, 1994) Originally published 1961.

I would choose you." The words were out before he thought better of them, and there was no way to pull them back. Silence stretched between them. Perhaps the floor will open and I'll plummet to my death, he thought hopefully. "As your general?" Her voice careful. She was offering him a chance to right the ship, to take them back to familiar waters. And a fine general you are. There could be no better leader. You may be prickly, but that's what Ravka needs. So many easy replies. Instead he said, "As my queen." He couldn't read her expression. Was she pleased? Embarrassed? Angry? Every cell in his body screamed for him to crack a joke, to free both of them from the peril of the moment. But he wouldn't. He was still a privateer, and he'd come too far. "Because I'm a dependable soldier," she said, but she didn't sound sure. It was the same cautious, tentative voice, the voice of someone waiting for a punch line, or maybe a blow. "Because I know all of your secrets." "I do trust you more than myself sometimes- and I think very highly of myself." Hadn't she said there was no one else she'd choose to have her back in a fight? But that isn't the whole truth, is it, you great cowardly lump. To hell with it. They might all die soon enough. They were safe here in the dark, surrounded by the hum of engines. "I would make you my queen because I want you. I want you all the time." She rolled on to her side, resting her head on her folded arm. A small movement, but he could feel her breath now. His heart was racing. "As your general, I should tell you that would be a terrible decision." He turned on to his side. They were facing each other now. "As your king, I should tell you that no one could dissuade me. No prince and no power could make me stop wanting you." Nikolai felt drunk. Maybe unleashing the demon had loosed something in his brain. She was going to laugh at him. She would knock him senseless and tell him he had no right. But he couldn't seem to stop. "I would give you a crown if I could," he said. "I would show you the world from the prow of a ship. I would choose you, Zoya. As my general, as my friend, as my bride. I would give you a sapphire the size of an acorn." He reached in to his pocket. "And all I would ask in return is that you wear this damnable ribbon in your hair on our wedding day." She reached out, her fingers hovering over the coil of blue velvet ribbon resting in his palm. Then she pulled back her hand, cradling her fingers as if they'd been singed. "You will wed a Taban sister who craves a crown," she said. "Or a wealthy Kerch girl, or maybe a Fjerdan royal. You will have heirs and a future. I'm not the queen Ravka needs." "And if you're the queen I want?"... She sat up, drew her knees in, wrapped her arms around them as if she would make a shelter of her own body. He wanted to pull her back down beside him and press his mouth to hers. He wanted her to look at him again with possibility in her eyes. "But that's not who I am. Whatever is inside me is sharp and gray as the thorn wood." She rose and dusted off her kefta. "I wasn't born to be a bride. I was made to be a weapon." Nikolai forced himself to smile. It wasn't as if he'd offered her a real proposal. They both knew such a thing was impossible. And yet her refusal smarted just as badly as if he'd gotten on his knee and offered her his hand like some kind of besotted fool. It stung. All saints, it stung. "Well," he said cheerfully, pushing up on his elbows and looking up at her with all the wry humour he could muster. "Weapons are good to have around too. Far more useful than brides and less likely to mope about the palace. But if you won't rule Ravka by my side, what does the future hold, General?" Zoya opened the door to the Cargo hold.Light flooded in gilding her features when she looked back at him. "I'll fight on beside you. As your general. As your friend. Because whatever my failings, I know this. You are the king Ravka needs.

We need to get to the Chakara Forest,” I said, turning to Kamala. She had not moved once since I sank into that memory. She had not laughed, nor gnashed her awful teeth, claggy with blood. “You changed,” she said slowly. “What?” Kamala whinnied. “You looked different. Shade-play, shadow-play against my eyes. Trust me, false queen”--she paused--“maybe queen, I know shadows.” “What did I look like?” “Like ink-spills and umbra, cloudless nights and winter mornings. Lovely, lovely,” said Kamala in her singsong voice. “But you wore no crown of blackbuck horns and something swirled across your skin. I almost tried to taste it, but I did not want to get swatted by a maybe-deity. Maybe-deity! Maybe-deity! Oh, what a song.” I glanced at my arm, ignoring Kamala as she pranced about in a circle, tossing her head and singing maybe-deity so loudly it might summon thunder. There was nothing on me but the crust of sea-salt and dried ash. I dusted it off. Kamala’s words put flesh on the bones of my hope. Still, that didn’t give me as much comfort as I’d like. I was asking a flesh-eating demon for comfort.

The best thing to do," said one of the malingerers, "is to sham madness. In the next room there are two other men from the school where I teach and one of them keeps shouting day and night : 'Giordano Bruno's stake is still smoldering ; renew Galileo's trial !'” “I meant at first to act the fool too and be a religious maniac and preach about the infallibility of the Pope, but finally I managed to get some cancer of the stomach for fifteen crowns from a barber down the road." "That's nothing," said another man. "Down our way there's a midwife who for twenty crowns can dislocate your foot so nicely that you're crippled for the rest of your life.” “My illness has run me into more than two hundred crowns already," announced his neighbor, a man as thin as a rake. "I bet there's no poison you can mention that I haven't taken. I'm simply bung full of poisons. I've chewed arsenic, I've smoked opium, I've swallowed strychnine, I've drunk vitriol mixed with phosphorus. I've ruined my liver, my lungs, my kidneys, my heart—in fact, all my insides. Nobody knows what disease it is I've got." "The best thing to do," explained someone near the door, "is to squirt paraffin oil under the skin on your arms. My cousin had a slice of good luck that way. They cut off his arm below the elbow and now the army'll never worry him any more.” “Well," said Schweik, "When I was in the army years ago, it used to be much worse. If a man went sick, they just trussed him up, shoved him into a cell to make him get fitter. There wasn't any beds and mattresses and spittoons like what there is here. Just a bare bench for them to lie on. Once there was a chap who had typhus, fair and square, and the one next to him had smallpox. Well, they trussed them both up and the M. O. kicked them in the ribs and said they were shamming. When the pair of them kicked the bucket, there was a dust-up in Parliament and it got into the papers. Like a shot they stopped us from reading the papers and all our boxes was inspected to see if we'd got any hidden there. And it was just my luck that in the whole blessed regiment there was nobody but me whose newspaper was spotted. So our colonel starts yelling at me to stand to attention and tell him who'd written that stuff to the paper or he'd smash my jaw from ear to ear and keep me in clink till all was blue. Then the M.O. comes up and he shakes his fist right under my nose and shouts: 'You misbegotten whelp ; you scabby ape ; you wretched blob of scum ; you skunk of a Socialist, you !' Well, I stood keeping my mouth shut and with one hand at the salute and the other along the seam of my trousers. There they was, running round and yelping at me. “We'll knock the newspaper nonsense out of your head, you ruffian,' says the colonel, and gives me 21 days solitary confinement. Well, while I was serving my time, there was some rum goings-on in the barracks. Our colonel stopped the troops from reading at all, and in the canteen they wasn't allowed even to wrap up sausages or cheese in newspapers. That made the soldiers start reading and our regiment had all the rest beat when it came to showing how much they'd learned.

Feyre,' he said, his voice hoarse. As if he'd been screaming. 'Yes,' I said. He studied my face- the taloned hand at my throat. And released me immediately. I lay there, staring up at where he now knelt on the bed, rubbing his hands over his face. My traitorous eyes indeed dared to look lower than his chest- but my attention snagged on the twin tattoos on each of his knees: a towering mountain crowned by three stars. Beautiful- but brutal, somehow. 'You were having a nightmare,' I said, easing into a sitting position. Like some dam had been cracked open inside me, I glanced at my hand- and willed it to vanish into shadow. It did. Half a thought scattered the darkness again. His hands, however, still ended in long, black talons- and his feet... they ended in claws, too. The wings were out, slumped down behind him. And I wondered how close he'd been to fully shifting into that beast he'd once told me he hated. He lowered his hands, talons fading into fingers. 'I'm sorry.' 'That's why you're staying here, not at the House. You don't want others seeing this.' 'I normally keep it contained to my room. I'm sorry it woke you.' I fisted my hands in my lap to keep from touching him. 'How often does it happen?' Rhys's violet eyes met mine, and I knew the answer before he said, 'As often as you.' I swallowed hard. 'What did you dream of tonight?' He shook his head, looking toward the window- to where snow had dusted the nearby rooftops. 'There are memories from Under the Mountain, Feyre, that are best left unshared. Even with you.' He'd shared enough horrific things with me that they had to be... beyond nightmares, then. But I put a hand on his elbow, naked body and all. 'When you want to talk, let me know. I won't tell the others.' I made to slither off the bed, but he grabbed my hand, keeping it against his arm. 'Thank you.' I studied the hand, the ravaged face. Such pain lingered there- and exhaustion. The face he never let anyone see. I pushed up onto my knees and kissed his cheek, his skin warm and soft beneath my mouth. It was over before it started, but- but how many nights had I wanted someone to do the same for me? His eyes were a bit wide as I pulled away, and he didn't stop me as I eased off the bed. I was almost out the door when I turned back to him. Rhys still knelt, wings drooping across the white sheets, head bowed, his tattoos stark against his golden skin. A dark, fallen prince.

Be You [Verse] Standin' at the crossroads burnin' in the sun Dust in my boots heart on the run Grit in my teeth fire in my veins Be who you are don't play no games [Verse 2] Voices in the dark shadows on the wall Be the change you wish to see stand tall False love fades but truth stays bright Better hated for real than loved in the night [Chorus] Be who you are shout from the hills Be who you are shake off them chills Sing your song loud bang on those drums Be who you are let the wild winds hum [Verse 3] Roads twist and turn dreams take flight Stars burn bright in the cold Cold night Chains of the world break 'em down Be who you are find your own crown [Bridge] Feel the heartbeat thunder in your chest Rumble through the night never settle for less Voices might whisper they might scream Be who you are chase your wildest dream [Chorus] Be who you are shout from the hills Be who you are shake off them chills Sing your song loud bang on those drums Be who you are let the wild winds hum

Did you know God can work with that? He can work with a person who is intentional about living for Him. He can work with someone who repents daily of their sins. He can work with someone who really is trying to change. So, miss "know it all," let go of your control.

America’s Sweetheart, it’s time to dust off your crown. We have a feeling you’ll be putting it on again real soon. And, girl, we’d say you earned it.

I Yours truly, the world won’t come to a standstill because you’re hurt. Just pick yourself up from where you left YOU, shake off the dust, where your crown with a smile and evolve. Not easy as it sounds but you’ve got to try & the time to do that is now.