Heavens Quotes

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You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like there's nobody listening, And live like it's heaven on earth.
William W. Purkey
Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.
Benjamin Franklin Wade
I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.
Oscar Wilde
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..
John Milton (Paradise Lost (Hackett Classics))
When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off.
Stephen King (Storm of the Century)
When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
I heard what you said. I’m not the silly romantic you think. I don’t want the heavens or the shooting stars. I don’t want gemstones or gold. I have those things already. I want…a steady hand. A kind soul. I want to fall asleep, and wake, knowing my heart is safe. I want to love, and be loved.
Shana Abe
In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.
Friedrich Nietzsche
To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake (Auguries of Innocence)
I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, He will not ask, 'How many good things have you done in your life?' rather He will ask, 'How much love did you put into what you did?
Mother Teresa
Knock, And He'll open the door Vanish, And He'll make you shine like the sun Fall, And He'll raise you to the heavens Become nothing, And He'll turn you into everything.
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi
Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Lathe of Heaven)
All endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
I'm going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.
Jean-Paul Sartre (No Exit)
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.
Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.
Mae West (The Wit and Wisdom of Mae West)
Will smiled the way Lucifer might have smiled, moments before he fell from Heaven.
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.
Will Rogers
I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.
John Green (Looking for Alaska)
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle-earth.
George R.R. Martin
You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (A Man Without a Country)
Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.
John Milton (Paradise Lost (Hackett Classics))
Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.
Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet)
I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.
Abraham Lincoln
Holding anger is a poison...It eats you from inside...We think that by hating someone we hurt them...But hatred is a curved blade...and the harm we do to others...we also do to ourselves.
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
Heaven would never be heaven without you.
Richard Matheson (What Dreams May Come)
All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
Mark Twain
Damn me to hell or take me to heaven, but for Gods sake, do it now....
Nora Roberts (The Stanislaski Brothers: Mikhail and Alex (Stanislaskis #2 & 4))
When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.
Paulo Coelho (Eleven Minutes)
No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.
C.G. Jung
It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong. And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person. I’ve been in business without being a businesswoman, I’ve loved without being a woman made only for love. The two men I’ve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness. I’ve done my best, in regard to people and to life, without precepts, but with a taste for justice.
Coco Chanel
Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie)
Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.
Martin Luther King Jr.
The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man's.
Mark Twain
I am alone in the midst of these happy, reasonable voices. All these creatures spend their time explaining, realizing happily that they agree with each other. In Heaven's name, why is it so important to think the same things all together.
Jean-Paul Sartre (Nausea)
It's a match made in heaven...by a retarded angel.
Woody Allen
When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, 'I used everything you gave me.
Erma Bombeck
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern.
William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
Everyone forgets Icarus also flew.
Jack Gilbert (Refusing Heaven: Poems)
Fléctere si néqueo súperos Acheronta movebo - If I cannot move heaven, I will raise hell.
Virgil (The Aeneid)
Gus: "It tastes like..." Me: "Food." Gus: "Yes, precisely. It tastes like food, excellently prepared. But it does not taste, how do I put this delicately...?" Me: "It does not taste like God Himself cooked heaven into a series of five dishes which were then served to you accompanied by several luminous balls of fermented, bubbly plasma while actual and literal flower petals floated down around your canal-side dinner table." Gus: "Nicely phrased." Gus's father: "Our children are weird." My dad: "Nicely phrased.
John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
Okayyyyy,” Isabelle said in a low voice, “When did Brother Zachariah get hot?
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
My words fly up, my thoughts remain below: Words without thoughts never to heaven go.
William Shakespeare (Hamlet)
I'd found heaven and grabbed it as tightly as I could, but it was unraveling, an insubstantial thread sliding between my fingers, too fine to hold.
Maggie Stiefvater (Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1))
Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Alfred Tennyson (Idylls of the King and a Selection of Poems)
The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
Earth's crammed with heaven... But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (Aurora Leigh)
Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
Blue does not go with everything," Will told her. "It does not go with red, for instance." "I have a red and blue striped waistcoat," Henry interjected, reaching for the peas. "And if that isn't proof that those two colors should never be seen together under Heaven, I don't know what is.
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt! May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agised as in that hour left my lips: for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
Good luck explaining to God that you used to spank one of his heavenly beings." Mom gave a startled laugh. "Sophie!" "What? You did. I hope you like hot weather, Mom, that's all I'm saying.
Rachel Hawkins (Hex Hall (Hex Hall, #1))
When the Day of Judgment dawns and people, great and small, come marching in to receive their heavenly rewards, the Almighty will gaze upon the mere bookworms and say to Peter, “Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them. They have loved reading.
Virginia Woolf
True friends share everything, except the past before they met.
Mary Renault (Fire from Heaven (Alexander the Great, #1))
There are memories that time does not erase... Forever does not make loss forgettable, only bearable.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
The path to paradise begins in hell.
Dante Alighieri
You're beautiful in battle," said Dimitri. His cold voice carried to me clearly, even above the roar of combat. "Like an avenging angel come to deliver the justice of heaven." "Funny," I said, shifting my hold on the stake. "That is kind of why I'm here." "Angels fall, Rose.
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
Radar threw his books into his locker and shut it. Then the din of conversation around us quieted just a bit as he turned his eyes toward the heavens and shouted, "IT IS NOT MY FAULT THAT MY PARENTS OWN THE WORLD'S LARGEST COLLECTION OF BLACK SANTAS.
John Green (Paper Towns)
Heroes aren't always the ones who win," she said. "They're the ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. They don't give up. That's what makes them heroes.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
Did Brother Zachariah just steal our cat?
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
Summer romances end for all kinds of reasons. But when all is said and done, they have one thing in common: They are shooting stars-a spectacular moment of light in the heavens, a fleeting glimpse of eternity. And in a flash, they're gone.
Nicholas Sparks
The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.
Allen Ginsberg (Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems)
Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.
C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity)
I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now...Come further up, come further in!
C.S. Lewis (The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia, #7))
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats (The Wind Among the Reeds)
Listen to God with a broken heart. He is not only the doctor who mends it, but also the father who wipes away the tears.
Criss Jami
Temper us in fire, and we grow stronger. When we suffer, we survive.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
There are no random acts...We are all connected...You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind...
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake. Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true? We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La. They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to middle Earth.
George R.R. Martin
You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself.
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
Clary,” Jocelyn said. “I want you to meet Tessa Gray.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
You're pining," said Jace. Alec shrugged. "Look who's talking. 'oh I love her. Oh, she's my sister. Oh why, why, why—
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
Brother Zachariah,” Isabelle said. “Months January through December of the Hot Silent Brothers Calendar. What’s he doing here?” “There’s a Hot Silent Brothers Calendar?” said Alec. “Do they sell it?
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.
William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)
I did not make a pie,” Alec repeated, gesturing expressively with one hand, “for three reasons. One, because I do not have any pie ingredients. Two, because I don’t actually know how to make a pie.” He paused, clearly waiting. Removing his sword and leaning it against the cave wall, Jace said warily, “And three?” “Because I am not your bitch,” Alec said, clearly pleased with himself.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, And too often is his gold complexion dimm'd: And every fair from fair sometimes declines, By chance or natures changing course untrimm'd; By thy eternal summer shall not fade, Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Sonnets)
I think they’ll probably put that on my gravestone. ‘He Was Heterosexual and Had Low Expectations.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. "Dante's my friend.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz (Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Aristotle and Dante, #1))
Alec looked down at the shattered pieces in disbelief. “You BROKE my PHONE.” Jace shrugged. “Guys don’t let other guys keep calling other guys. Okay, that came out wrong. Friends don’t let friends keep calling their exes and hanging up. Seriously. You have to stop.” Alec looked furious. “So you broke my brand new phone? Thanks a lot.” Jace smiled serenely and lay back on the grass. “You’re welcome.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
Anne Frank (The Diary of a Young Girl)
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, NIV)
Anonymous (Study Bible: NIV)
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover and the poet Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold, That is, the madman: the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt: The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name.
William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
We shouldn’t,” protested Isabelle. “The Clave has a plan.” “The Clave has the collective intelligence of a pineapple,” said Jace. Alec blinked up at them. “Jace is right.” Isabelle turned on her brother. “What do you know? You weren’t even paying attention.” “I was,” Alec said, injured. “I said Jace was right.” “Yeah, but there’s like a 90% chance of me being right most of the time, so that’s not proof you were listening,” said Jace. “That’s just a good guess.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of ANNABEL LEE; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me. I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea; But we loved with a love that was more than love- I and my Annabel Lee; With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven Coveted her and me. And this was the reason that, long ago, In this kingdom by the sea, A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling My beautiful Annabel Lee; So that her highborn kinsman came And bore her away from me, To shut her up in a sepulchre In this kingdom by the sea. The angels, not half so happy in heaven, Went envying her and me- Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know, In this kingdom by the sea) That the wind came out of the cloud by night, Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee. But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those who were older than we- Of many far wiser than we- And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee. For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes Of the beautiful Annabel Lee; And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride, In the sepulchre there by the sea, In her tomb by the sounding sea.
Edgar Allan Poe
25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying 'Where is the flaming sword that was given unto thee?' 26 And the Angel said, 'I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.' 27 And the Lord did not ask him again.
Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)
Magnus rolled onto his back and put his feet up on the arm of the sofa. “What do you care if Alec’s miserable?” “What do I care?” Jace said, so loudly that Chairman Meow rolled off the couch and landed on the floor. “Of course I care about Alec; he’s my best friend, my parabatai. And he’s unhappy. And so are you, by the look of things. Takeout containers everywhere, you haven’t done anything to fix up the place, your cat looks dead —“ “He’s not dead.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
Black for hunting through the night For death and mourning the color's white Gold for a bride in her wedding gown And red to call the enchantment down White silk when our bodies burn Blue banners when the lost return Flame for the birth of a Nephilim And to wash away our sins. Gray for the knowledge best untold Bone for those who don't grow old Saffron lights the victory march Green to mend our broken hearts Silver for the demon towers And bronze to summon wicked powers -Shadowhunter children's rhyme
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.
Steve Jobs
Falling in love, we said; I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion: so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh. And sometimes it happened, for a time. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done; and you would know too why your friends had been evasive about it, at the time. There is a good deal of comfort, now, in remembering this.
Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale)
Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!
Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)
There are a hundred trillion cells in the human body, and every single one of the cells of my body loves you. We shed cells, and grow new ones, and my new cells love you more than the old ones, which is why I love you more every day than I did the day before. It’s science. And when I die and they burn my body and I become ashes that mix with the air, and part of the ground and the trees and the stars, everyone who breathes that air or sees the flowers that grow out of the ground or looks up at the stars will remember you and love you, because I love you that much.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))
No killing,” Jordan said. “We’re trying to make you feel peaceful, so you don’t go up in flames. Blood, killing, war, those are all non-peaceful things. Isn’t there anything else you like? Rainforests? Chirping birds?” “Weapons,” said Jace. “I like weapons.” “I’m starting to think we have a problematic issue of personal philosophy here.” Jace leaned forward, his palms flat on the ground. “I’m a warrior,” he said. “I was brought up as a warrior. I didn’t have toys, I had weapons. I slept with a wooden sword until I was five. My first books were medieval demonologies with illuminated pages. The first songs I learned were chants to banish demons. I know what brings me peace, and it isn’t sandy beaches or chirping birds in rainforests. I want a weapon in my hand and a strategy to win.” Jordan looked at him levelly. “So you’re saying that what brings you peace … is war.” “Now you get it.
Cassandra Clare (City of Heavenly Fire (The Mortal Instruments, #6))