Invisible Crown Quotes

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Maybe there were people who lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
Inej almost felt sorry for her. Dunyasha really believed she was the Lantsov heir, and maybe she was. But wasn’t that what every girl dreamed? That she’d wake and find herself a princess? Or blessed with magical powers and a grand destiny? Maybe there were people who lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is around us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to gaurd us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognize our innocence, and God waits ony a speration of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward.
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
Annabeth has my number,’ Sadie said. ‘Which, honestly, brother, is a much easier solution than writing invisible hieroglyphs on your friend’s hand. What were you thinking?
Rick Riordan (The Crown of Ptolemy (Demigods & Magicians, #3))
But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
The more powerful the class, the more it claims not to exist, and its power is employed above all to enforce this claim. It is modest only on this one point, however, because this officially nonexistent bureaucracy simultaneously attributes the crowning achievements of history to its own infallible leadership. Though its existence is everywhere in evidence, the bureaucracy must be invisible as a class. As a result, all social life becomes insane.
Guy Debord (The Society of the Spectacle)
Tiffany found her mind filling up with an invisible gray mist, and in that thought there was nothing but grief. She could feel herself trying to push back time, but even the best witchcraft could not do that.
Terry Pratchett (The Shepherd's Crown (Discworld, #41; Tiffany Aching, #5))
But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
...you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement: the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence ... and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness--to glory?
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence... and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness — to glory?
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
Knock it off, you two.’ Annabeth handed her scroll to Sadie. ‘Carter, let’s trade. I’ll try your khopesh ; you try my Yankees cap.’ She tossed him the hat. ‘I’m usually more of a basketball guy, but …’ Carter put on the cap and disappeared. ‘Wow, okay. I’m invisible, aren’t I?’ Sadie applauded. ‘You’ve never looked better, brother dear.’ ‘Very funny.’ ‘If you can sneak up on Setne,’ Annabeth suggested, ‘you might be able to take him by surprise, get the crown away from him.’ ‘But you told us Setne saw right through your invisibility,’ Carter said. ‘That was me ,’ Annabeth said, ‘a Greek using a Greek magic item. For you, maybe it’ll work better – or differently, at least.’ ‘Carter, give it a shot,’ I said. ‘The only thing better than a giant chicken man is a giant invisible chicken man.
Rick Riordan (The Crown of Ptolemy (Demigods & Magicians, #3))
But wasn't that what every girl dreamed? That she would wake and find herself a princess? ... But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary.... When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
Ten feet to my left, Sadie smacked a vulture with her staff. The bird exploded into white sand. Annabeth jogged toward us, giving me one of those annoyed expressions like, If you get yourself killed, I’m going to murder you. Carter, being invisible, was nowhere to be seen.
Rick Riordan (The Crown of Ptolemy (Demigods & Magicians, #3))
Maybe there were people that lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
By the way, I’ve been homeless for the past two years. Some of you may think, Aw, how sad. Others may think, Ha, ha, loser! But if you saw me on the street, ninety-nine percent of you would walk right past like I’m invisible. You’d pray, Don’t let him ask me for money.
Rick Riordan (The Crown of Ptolemy (Demigods & Magicians, #3))
Maybe there were people who lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
It was as if a giant invisible hand had reached down to the Crown, closing to gather in every building, crushing them all while pushing down into the hill.
Steven Erikson (Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2))
I believed in the spirits that lived in everything around me: the water, the birds, the air itself. It was all alive and beautiful and just as divine as any invisible god.
Mara Rutherford (Crown of Coral and Pearl (Crown of Coral and Pearl, #1))
But the most rare are the ones that are both invisible to us and to others. Those we are blind to. They may be our greatest weakness of all.
Jeff Wheeler (The Hollow Crown (Kingfountain, #4))
Carter, give it a shot,” I said. “The only thing better than a giant chicken man is a giant invisible chicken man.
Rick Riordan (The Crown of Ptolemy (Demigods & Magicians, #3))
Isn't that what every girl dreamed? That she'd wake and find herself a princess? Or blessed with magical powers and a grand destiny. Maybe there were people who lived those lives, maybe this girl was one of them but what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns, we learn to ring magic from the ordinary, that's how you survived when you weren't chosen, when there was no royal bloods in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
Some we know about ourselves, and they are obvious to others too. Then we have faults that we are blind to ourselves, but are plain to everyone else. Some weaknesses we deliberately conceal from others. But the most rare are the ones that are both invisible to us and to others.
Jeff Wheeler (The Hollow Crown (Kingfountain, #4))
No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don't love me I would rather die than live — I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest — " "Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness — to glory?
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
Next morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of mighty bulk, and striving in the Pequod's gurgling track, pushed her on like giants' palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded so, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world boomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the invisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place; where his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned Babylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a crucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
There’s an invisible thread of red silk,” Ming Lee said, “that the gods tie to the fingers of two people whose destinies are meant to be joined. The thread brings them together eventually, no matter how far apart they are. No matter what hardships they face, no matter how much strain is put on that thread, it will not break.
Kate Quinn (The Phoenix Crown)
Now directly above her, transiting the meridian, was the new crescent moon. No longer a chalky white, it was as silver as a piece of polished jewelry, somehow shining and sparkling despite the fact that it should have been nearly invisible that close to the sun, traveling through his bright day. "Oh, how pret---" Rapunzel started to say, but then she was distracted because her hair began to glow. Just like when she killed the chickens-- but more. Brilliantly, with the white light of the diamonds of her (Flynn's) crown, with the whiteness she imagined the foam of a midnight sea would look like. She picked up a hank of hair and let it hang from her hands; it was like holding molten silver chains or all the distant rivers seen from her tower, gathered up together by some unimaginable fairy-tale giant.
Liz Braswell (What Once Was Mine)
Who else could walk on air like that, who else would have a glowing heart? True, there was no blue dress, no crown; her dress looked black. But it was dark. Maybe the crown was there and I couldn’t see it. Anyway she could have different clothes, different dresses. None of that matters, because she came to get me. She didn’t want me freezing in the snow. She is still with me, invisible, wrapping me in warmth and painlessness, she has heard
Margaret Atwood (Cat's Eye)
It is the essence of poetry to spring, like the rainbow daughter of Wonder, from the invisible, to abolish the past, and refuse all history. Malone, Warburton, Dyce, and Collier, have wasted their oil. The famed theatres, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, the Park, and Tremont, have vainly assisted. Betterton, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, and Macready, dedicate their lives to this genius; him they crown, elucidate, obey, and express. The genius knows them not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Embracing our Queen demands that we sacrifice old, outdated versions of ourselves which can be petrifying. Embracing your Queen is a choice, it is a sacred claiming of your realm and choosing the real estate of your story. It is trading in your running shoes for slippers, a bow and arrow for a crown and invisibility for sovereignty. Allowing yourself to be brave and uncertain, giving yourself divine permission to be seen, heard, celebrated, and criticised.
Tanya Valentin (When She Wakes, She Will Move Mountains - 5 Steps to Reconnecting With Your Wild Authentic Inner Queen)
But wasn't that what every girl dreamed? That she'd wake up and find herself a princess? Maybe there were people who lived those lives. Maybe this girl was one of them. But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren't chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
But wasn't that what every girl dreamed? That she'd wake and find herself a princess? Or blessed with magical powers and a grand destiny? Maybe there were people out there who lived those lives... But what about the rest of us? What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren't chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
I never "toured" that courtyard again. We avoid places where we've endured pain, but the opposite is true, too. Extreme kindness can be repaid only with ingratitude. What if the miracle won't repeat itself and life's greatest consolation-remembering the kindness shown to us-disappears? Those little faces won't be there, and the green sweater won't be offered. This way, they are always with me. The crown of hungry children, the dark stairs, the open door, the outstretched hand, and someone's mother, crying, her face invisible against the light.
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya (The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia)
You think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement: the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are comissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognize our innocence, and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness--to glory?
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
The sun goes down and it's night-time in New Orleans. The moon rises, midnight chimes from St. Louis cathedral, and hardly has the last note died away than a gruesome swampland whistle sounds outside the deathly still house. A fat Negress, basket on arm, comes trudging up the stairs a moment later, opens the door, goes in to the papaloi, closes it again, traces an invisible mark on it with her forefinger and kisses it. Then she turns and her eyes widen with surprise. Papa Benjamin is in bed, covered up to the neck with filthy rags. The familiar candles are all lit, the bowl for the blood, the sacrificial knife, the magic powders, all the paraphernalia of the ritual are laid out in readiness, but they are ranged about the bed instead of at the opposite end of the room as usual. The old man's head, however, is held high above the encumbering rags, his beady eyes gaze back at her unflinchingly, the familiar semicircle of white wool rings his crown, his ceremonial mask is at his side. 'I am a little tired, my daughter,' he tells her. His eyes stray to the tiny wax image of Eddie Bloch under the candles, hairy with pins, and hers follow them. 'A doomed one, nearing his end, came here last night thinking I could be killed like other men. He shot a bullet from a gun at me. I blew my breath at it, it stopped in the air, turned around, and went back in the gun again. But it tired me to blow so hard, strained my voice a little.' A revengeful gleam lights up the woman's broad face. 'And he'll die soon, papaloi?' 'Soon,' cackles the weazened figure in the bed. The woman gnashes her teeth and hugs herself delightedly. ("Papa Benjamin" aka "Dark Melody Of Madness")
Cornell Woolrich (The Fantastic Stories of Cornell Woolrich (Alternatives SF Series))
Again, I call to mind that distant moment in [the prison at] Hermanice when on a hot, cloudless summer day, I sat on a pile of rusty iron and gazed into the crown of an enormous tree that stretched, with dignified repose, up and over all the fences, wires, bars and watchtowers that separated me from it. As I watched the imperceptible trembling of its leaves against an endless sky, I was overcome by a sensation that is difficult to describe: all at once, I seemed to rise above all the coordinates of my momentary existence in the world into a kind of state outside time in which all the beautiful things I had ever seen and experienced existed in a total “co-present”; I felt a sense of reconciliation, indeed of an almost gentle consent to the inevitable course of things as revealed to me now, and this combined with a carefree determination to face what had to be faced. A profound amazement at the sovereignty of Being became a dizzying sensation of tumbling endlessly into the abyss of its mystery; an unbounded joy at being alive, at having been given the chance to live through all I have lived through, and at the fact that everything has a deep and obvious meaning— this joy formed a strange alliance in me with a vague horror at the inapprehensibility and unattainability of everything I was so close to in that moment, standing at the very “edge of the finite”; I was flooded with a sense of ultimate happiness and harmony with the world and with myself, with that moment, with all the moments I could call up, and with everything invisible that lies behind it and has meaning. I would even say that I was somehow “struck by love,” though I don’t know precisely for whom or what.
Václav Havel (Vaclav Havel: Or Living in Truth)
There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives—where the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and gray fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forgot all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands. Then it is as if the Invisible Power that had been the object of lip-worship and lip-resignation became visible, according to the imagery of the Hebrew poet, making the flames his chariot, and riding on the wings of the wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under the rolling fiery visitations. Often the good cause seems to lie prostrate under the thunder of relenting force, the martyrs live reviled, they die, and no angel is seen holding forth the crown and the palm branch. Then it is that the submission of the soul to the Highest is tested, and even in the eyes of frivolity life looks out from the scene of human struggle with the awful face of duty, and a religion shows itself which is something else than a private consolation.
George Eliot (Daniel Deronda)
Roses, roses! An interminable chain of these royal blossoms, red and white, wreathed by the radiant fingers of small rainbow-winged creatures as airy as moonlight mist, as delicate as thistledown! They cluster round me with smiling faces and eager eyes; they place the end of their rose-garland in my hand, and whisper, "FOLLOW!" Gladly I obey, and hasten onward. Guiding myself by the fragrant chain I hold, I pass through a labyrinth of trees, whose luxuriant branches quiver with the flight and song of birds. Then comes a sound of waters; the riotous rushing of a torrent unchecked, that leaps sheer down from rocks a thousand feet high, thundering forth the praise of its own beauty as it tosses in the air triumphant crowns of silver spray. How the living diamonds within it shift, and change, and sparkle! Fain would I linger to watch this magnificence; but the coil of roses still unwinds before me, and the fairy voices still cry, "FOLLOW!" I press on. The trees grow thicker; the songs of the birds cease; the light around me grows pale and subdued. In the far distance I see a golden crescent that seems suspended by some invisible thread in the air. Is it the young moon? No; for as I gaze it breaks apart into a thousand points of vivid light like wandering stars. These meet; they blaze into letters of fire. I strain my dazzled eyes to spell out their meaning. They form one word—HELIOBAS. I read it. I utter it aloud. The rose-chain breaks at my feet, and disappears. The fairy voices die away on my ear. There is utter silence, utter darkness,—save where that one NAME writes itself in burning gold on the blackness of the heavens.
Marie Corelli (A Romance of Two Worlds)
In the shores of twilight, Wide and deep as your eyes, I swim. In a way, I feel her Night, a crowned goddess commanding the stars to swim, So peaceful, even death escapes into serenity. Stars so far, they seem as they tell the living world, lights, live into shinning, die into nothingness. Worlds I want to travel, away to shadows of your eyes in the hold of your lips. So far, so far away.... As your kiss, as my lover. Night, With a soft touch, Touches my face, winds to the trees, sunlight on grass, life, breath, so quite, death screams in the abyss, a black pearl with grains of sand. The dance of the night..reminds me of her. Her tender laughter, the gleam in her enormous eyes, her soft whirlpool lips. As a reflection from dark streams, She reveals hot love, Nothing hidden, no shame, just love that hurts. The solace in the night makes me cry... The lights of stars as arrows to me. Night, Hits my eyes, Beauty of the wilderness, Calling me, Homeless in a city, naked on cold steel At home with the sea, with night above, foam of waters breaks below. As my companion, friend I speak to. I say to the night sky. Does she love me? When travels of the heart goes outside of me, outside the seas into clouds of your warmth, To another place in her heart trying to find out... Does your heart want me to visit or stay? Night, Calm is the winds, feeling the air, Night, She is beautiful.. Hitting me with such painful softness, I don't want day to arrive, I want to stay.. In the night, Peaceful, loving...with you... Night...vast space in time, Nothing, empty, to hold, for night, you are me. For I cannot have her. A love vast, beautiful and alone. For in the night, We see each other, In the light, Nothing hidden, Everything revealed, Night..I love you.,,as I love her. For I don't have her but I have you. As my love, invisible and forever waiting like a lost sailor in the night sea....
Albert Alexander Bukoski
Now we move on to the dominant idea of this ancient heroic tradition, namely the mystical conception of victory. The fundamental assumption is that of a true correspondence between the physical and metaphysical, between the visible and the invisible, whereby the deeds of the spirit reveal supra-individual traits and express themselves through action and real events. On this basis, a spiritual realization is presumed to be the hidden soul of certain martial endeavors, which are crowned by the actual victory. Then the material, military victory becomes the correlation to a spiritual event, which has called forth victory in the place where outer and inner connect. The victory appears as a tangible sign for a consecration and mystical rebirth that are fulfilled in the same instant. The Furies and the death which the warrior withstood physically on the battlefield also confront him internally, in his spiritual element, in the form of a dangerous and threatening outburst of the primordial energy of his being. In triumphing over this, victory is his. This connection clarifies why, in the Traditional world, every victory also takes on a sacred meaning. The celebrated commander on the battlefield thus provided the experience of the presence of a mystical, transformative energy. In the same way we can understand the deep meaning a supra-wordly character that breaks forth in the victory’s glory and 'divinity', as well as the fact that the ancient Roman triumphal ceremony had far more of a sacred quality than a military one. It sheds a totally different light on those recurring symbols of the ancient Aryan tradition of Victories, Valkyries, and similar beings who leads the souls of warriors into 'Heaven', as well as on the myth of a victorious hero such as the Doric Hercules, who receives the crown from Nike, the 'victory goddess', enabling him to participate in Olympian immortality. And now it becomes obvious how paralyzing and frivolous that viewpoint is which prefers to see only 'poetics', rhetorics, and fairy tales in all of this.
Julius Evola (Metaphysics of War)
I also received a note from the Unknown, the first in two days. I pounced on it eagerly, for receiving his letters had come to be the most important part of my day. Instead of the long letter I had come to anticipate, it was short. I thank you for the fine ring. It was thoughtfully chosen and I appreciate the generous gesture, for I have to admit I would rather impute generosity than mere caprice behind the giving of a gift that cannot be worn. Or is this a sign that you wish, after all, to alter the circumscriptions governing our correspondence? I thought--to make myself clear--that you preferred your admirer to remain secret. I am not convinced you really wish to relinquish this game and risk the involvement inherent in a contact face-to-face. I dropped the note on my desk, feeling as if I’d reached for a blossom and had been stung by an unseen nettle. My first reaction was to sling back an angry retort that if gifts were to inspire such an ungallant response, then he could just return it. Except it was I who had inveighed, and at great length, against mere gallantry. In a sense he’d done me the honor of telling the truth-- And it was then that I had the shiversome insight that is probably obvious by now to any of my progeny reading this record: that our correspondence had metamorphosed into a kind of courtship. A courtship. As I thought back, I realized that it was our discussion of this very subject that had changed the tenor of the letters from my asking advice of an invisible mentor to a kind of long-distance friendship. The other signs were all there--the gifts, the flowers. Everything but physical proximity. And it wasn’t the unknown gentleman who could not court me in person--it was I who couldn’t be courted in person, and he knew it. So in the end I sent back only two lines: You have given me much to think about. Will you wear the ring, then, if I ask you to? I received no answer that day, or even that night. And so I sat through the beautiful concert of blended children’s voices and tried not to stare at Elenet’s profile next to the Marquis of Shevraeth, while feeling a profound sense of unhappiness, which I attributed to the silence from my Unknown. The next morning brought no note, but a single white rose.
Sherwood Smith (Court Duel (Crown & Court, #2))
That rough-looking diamond is put upon the wheel of the lapidary. He cuts it on all sides. It loses much--much that seemed costly to itself. The king is crowned; the diadem is put upon the monarch's head with trumpet's joyful sound. A glittering ray flashes from that coronet, and it beams from that very diamond which was just now so sorely vexed by the lapidary. You may venture to compare yourself to such a diamond, for you are one of God's people; and this is the time of the cutting process. Let faith and patience have their perfect work, for in the day when the crown shall be set upon the head of the King, Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, one ray of glory shall stream from you. "They shall be mine," saith the Lord, "in the day when I make up my jewels." "Better is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (MORNING AND EVENING: DAILY READINGS)
Up to this point, my life had been a phantom-chase after the arrow in the blue, the perfect cause, the blueprint of a streamlined Utopia. Now, with unintentional irony, I adopted as my home a country where arrows are only used on dart-boards, suspicious of all causes, contemptuous of systems, bored by ideologies, skeptical about Utopias, rejecting all blue-prints, enamored of its leisurely muddle, incurious about the future, devoted to its past. A country neither of Yogis nor of Commissars, but of potterers-in-the-garden and stickers-in-the-mud, where strikers played soccer with police and Socialists wore peers' crowns.
Arthur Koestler (The Invisible Writing)
ALWAYS wear your invisible crown. You are BLESSED and HIGHLY FAVORED.
Germany Kent
Segment of Throat Center. Includes jaws, lower face and mouth. Positive aspects: All forms of energetic expression originate from the lower segments and are allowed to pass freely and fully. Lots of creative ideas and good communication skills, with their expressions unblocked. Can express how you feel, what you want and how you want things to be.  Flexibility of voice, singing, shouting, laughing, moaning, facing, giggling. Negative: It can be restricted, even pushed back as much as water in a hose. We can swallow our power and pride, we can stifle our expression, we can "choke" our own words. By muffling self-expression in accordance with the wishes of our parents we may have learnt this. Physical Negative Aspects. Problems regarding exhaustion, digestion and weight. Tension of neck and head in the shoulders and the back. Very common colds, sore throats and infections. Center segment of visualization. 3rd Eye, 6th Chakra. Concentration, the mind and will's strong powers.  Imagination, intuition, and perceptions that determine how you and the world around you see yourself. Your eyes are deep self-reflection. The subconscious mind gets imprinted with visions and symbols.  Positive aspects: Clarity, vitality, sparkle, insight and the intimacy opportunity.  Strong connection with one's self and inner guide. Spiritual open-mindedness.  You are approaching a sacred sense.  Negotiating. Achievement compulsive.  Controlling behavior, denying reality, repetitive thinking and internal dialogues.  Forgetting. One hides the partially closed eyes behind them. A tired, lifeless low-energy quality or partial commitment to a passionless cause; lack of direction. A distracted focus that represents a failed purpose. Physical negative aspects: problems with eyes and vision, headaches. Crown Center or (brow segment). Once you unlock, you feel the soul's seat and the world door; cosmic harmony. A vision, or purpose, and inner knowledge, shine forth.  To fully realize its potential, this center needs energy from the breath and other centers. A continuous passage from the head to the toe. Aspects which are positive.  Beyond this corporeal world into unbridled states of ecstasy.  Link of something that is visible and invisible. Extremely clear. A deep sense of wholeness. Negative scores. Undeveloped sense of wholeness and a fundamental confidence. So much logic and analysis. Constantly active and distrustful of one's intuitive powers. Physical negative aspects: Unbalanced hemispheres in the brain. Thyroid, parathyroid, genital, and muscle ailments.
Adrian Satyam (Energy Healing: 6 in 1: Medicine for Body, Mind and Spirit. An extraordinary guide to Chakra and Quantum Healing, Kundalini and Third Eye Awakening, Reiki and Meditation and Mindfulness.)
As soon as the edifice of the knowledge of the ancients had been shaken in the minds of the most inquisitive, questions upon questions arose which now demanded technology, including -- crucially -- the invention of the telescope and the microscope, enabling a generation of scholars to see clearly things which had been absolutely invisible to their forefathers. It was a thrilling, and dangerous, time to be alive.
Anna Keay (The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown)
After studying self-awareness for 15-years, it is more than a feeling, and it is more than a thought. It’s that space in time where we ‘think less and we live more’ abundantly in the story of the moment’s gift. Self-awareness is, thus, a three-part connection. We must understand it, feel it, and live it through its living, breathing, daily adapting commitment in our heart that’s a micro reflection of life itself. In Cinderella In Focus, her invisible crown teacher her to be her own kind of brave through a new focus: To love deeply is to live freely. Cindy's Secret...
H.L. Balcomb (Cinderella In Focus: "Finding hope when you're feeling a sense of hopelessness!")
A woman with an invisible crown over her head wouldn’t agree to settle if a man tries treating her inappropriately.
Sahara Sanders (Look Stunning! (Secrets of Femmes Fatales, #6))
When God created the earth, He demonstrated His genius simply through His Word. Whatever He spoke came into being. Not only did it come into being, but it was also good. In five days, God had created a spectacular earth with all the nuances and idiosyncrasies necessary for life to be lived out to its fullest. On the sixth day, God spoke forth His crowning achievement—humanity. About humanity, we read that first, “God said” (Genesis 1:26), then, “God created” (Genesis 1:27), and next, “God blessed” (Genesis 1:28). God said it, God created it, and God blessed it. Obviously, this is how God intended it. Because we are about to tread into some delicate territory, I don’t want you to just take my word for it—take His. Also in Genesis 1 we read, “Then God said, ‘Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule’” (Genesis 1:26). On the sixth day, God created man in His own image. Both “male and female” were made in the image of God and given rulership. The plurality of “Let Us” and “Our image” refers to God’s Trinitarian nature, indicating the fullness of function found in the creation of humanity as a reflection of Him. Mankind was uniquely created to mirror God’s rule in the visible, physical world as it exists in the invisible, spiritual realm.
Tony Evans (Kingdom Single: Living Complete and Fully Free)
What about the nobodies and the nothings, the invisible girls? We learn to hold our heads as if we wear crowns. We learn to wring magic from the ordinary. That was how you survived when you weren’t chosen, when there was no royal blood in your veins. When the world owed you nothing, you demanded something of it anyway.
Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows
An invisible hand seemed to wrap around her throat. She had not let herself consider that possibility, because the weight of a crown and a throne were enough to make her feel like she was in a coffin. The thought of marrying like that, of someone else’s body on hers, someone who was not Chaol … She shoved the thought away.
Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass)
Presidents run for office. Dictators steal it. Kings are born, and that’s why it’s the perfect way to describe Damon Scott. He commands any room he enters. He owns the very ground he walks on. And he wears that invisible crown with both pride and resignation, because it’s a bittersweet birthright.
Skye Warren (The Queen (Masterpiece Duet, #2))
We all have weaknesses. Some we know about ourselves, and they are obvious to others too. Then we have faults that we are blind to ourselves, but are plain to everyone else. Some weaknesses we deliberately conceal from others. But the most rare are the ones that are both invisible to us and to others. Those we are blind to. They may be our greatest weakness of all.
Jeff Wheeler (The Hollow Crown (Kingfountain, #4))
The men were not watering the grass; they were spraying it an emerald green. This was Ireland in an atomizer. The workers were coloring the dead, hurrying to finish before the Crown Prince's gaze would zoom by, perhaps peering through the bullet-proofed, tinted, heavily-armored glass of his German car. So much about the Kingdom concerned outward appearances. Veneer was as important as substance, perhaps more so.
Qanta A. Ahmed (In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor's Journey in the Saudi Kingdom)
Unfortunately, nature is very much a now-you-see-it, now-you-don't affair. A fish flashes, then dissolves in the water before my eyes like so much salt. Deer apparently ascend bodily into heaven, the brightest oriole fades into leaves. These disappearances stun me into stillness and concentration; they say of nature that it conceals with a grand nonchalance, and they say of vision that it is a deliberate gift, ... For a week last September migrating red-winged blackbirds were feeding heavily down by the creek at the back of the house. One day I went out to investigate the racket: I walked up to a tree, an Osage orange, and a hundred birds flew away. They simply materialized out of the tree. I saw a tree, then a whisk of color, then a tree again. I walked closer and another hundred blackbirds took flight. Not a branch, not a twig budged: the birds were apparently weightless as well as invisible. Or, it was as if the leaves of the Osage orange had been freed from a spell in the form of red-winged blackbirds; they flew from the tree, caught my eye in the sky, and vanished. When I looked again at the tree the leaves had reassembled as if nothing had happened. Finally I walked directly to the trunk of the tree and a final hundred, the real diehards, appeared, spread, and vanished. How could so many hide in the tree without my seeing them? The Osage orange, unruffled, looked just as it had looked from the house, when three hundred red-winged blackbirds cried from its crown. I looked downstream where they flew, and they were gone. Searching, I couldn't spot one. I wandered downstream to force them to play their hand, but they'd crossed the creek and scattered. One show to a customer. These appearances catch at my throat; they are the free gifts, the bright coppers at the roots of trees.
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
The Child Christ lives on from generation to generation in the poets, very often the frailest of men but men whose frailty is redeemed by a child's unworldliness, by a child's delight in loveliness, by the spirit of wonder. Christ was a poet, and all through His life the Child remains perfect in Him. It was the poet, the unworldly poet, who was King of the invisible kingdom; the priests and rulers could not understand that. The poets understand it, and they, too, are kings of the invisible kingdom, vassal kings of the Lord of Love, and their crowns are crowns of thorns indeed.
Caryll Houselander (The Reed of God)
Silent, still, dark, and distant. Far more manageable, less troublesome. People are small; they can be ignored.” He raised his head toward the invisible horizon. “The whole world is small at a height like this. Almost makes sense the way it lays out, like watching an ant hive. You never look at one of those and consider the politics, the petty prejudices, and all the vanities that drive them, but it’s the same everywhere. The queen has her favorites, her courtiers. The bigger ants lord over the smaller, the more productive over the weak, and the fortunate over the unlucky. We just can’t hear their squabbles. We’re too far above. Instead, they seem so pure of purpose, so simple, so happy. Maybe that’s how we all look to Maribor and the rest of the godly pantheon.” He peered up at the stars. “Perhaps that’s why they never think to help.
Michael J. Sullivan (The Crown Tower (The Riyria Chronicles, #1))
She looked like an African goddess…a full round face holding an even rounder set of eyes, all of it as dark as that gorgeous unruly hair. She had it in one thick crown of braids that circled her head. When my eyes moved down, the scenery got even better: one of those gazette necks, a compact chest, an invisible waist, and then what can only be described as a Bantu butt. I can’t remember anything about her legs or the turn of her ankles, my journey ended at that butt. Only a fool keeps traveling when the roads brought him to paradise.
Gloria Naylor (Bailey's Café)
Not that he cared. He’d meant it when he swore to Nehemia that he was done with Celaena. And maybe he should have told Chaol that he could have her. Not that she’d ever belonged to him—or that she’d even tried to suggest that he belonged to her. He could let go. He had let go. He’d let go. Let go. Let— Books flew from their shelves, dozens upon dozens bursting into flight, and this time, they slammed into him as he staggered back toward the end of the row. He shielded his face, and when the sound of leather and paper stopped, Dorian braced a hand on the stone wall behind him and gaped. Half of the books in the row had been tossed off their shelves and scattered about, as if thrown by some invisible force.
Sarah J. Maas (Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2))
The music was loud enough that it reached them out here, and at the foot of the steps, Celaena waltzed with herself. She even held the edge of her dark cloak in one hand as if it were the skirts of a ball gown, her other hand poised on the arm of an invisible partner. He didn’t know if he should laugh, yell, or just go back inside and pretend he’d never seen it.
Sarah J. Maas (Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2))
Prince Zarad is running a drill,” the guard said. “If the emperor attacks, the prince wants us close together so it’s easier to spread your power of invisibility over the group.” The man’s eyes were round with awe. Tyrrik coughed. Power of invisibility, huh? I liked it. I nodded sagely. “Practice hard, soldier.” He bowed low, and Tyrrik coughed again, not speaking until the guard had joined the line leaving the forest. “You’re going to call your veil that from now on, aren’t you?” Tyrrik asked. He ducked us into our tent. “Hmm, what?” I asked as he set me on top of a blanket, and I lolled there like a blob. “What are you talking about?” “The power of invisibility.” “Oh that,” I said casually. “Maybe. I hadn’t really thought about it.” Eyes narrowed, he stared at me until I couldn’t hold my grin in.
Raye Wagner (Black Crown (The Darkest Drae, #3))
The lines you repeat are like prayers thrown against a wall. You think they’ll break, but it turns out they break through the wall, it turns out the visible reaches the invisible—and they coincide.
Yannick Haenel (Hold Fast Your Crown)
Other historians have confined themselves to the recording of victories in war and triumphs over enemies, of the exploits of the commanders and the heroism of their men, stained with the blood of the thousands they have slaughtered for the sake of children and country and possessions; it is peaceful wars, fought for the very peace of the soul, and men who in such wars have fought manfully for truth rather than for country, for true religion rather than for their dear ones, that my account of God’s commonwealth will inscribe on imperishable monuments; it is the unshakeable determination of the champions of true religion, their courage and endurance, their triumphs over demons and victories over invisible opponents, and the crowns which all this won for them at the last, that it will make famous for all time.
Eusebius (The History of the Church: From Christ to Constantine)
Mortem is invisible to all but those who can channel it—those who have come close enough to death to harness its power. No one else can see its threat until it is atop them, and that is why we cannot simply pray and hope it goes away.
Hannah F. Whitten (The Foxglove King (The Nightshade Crown #1))
Ravyn kept digging. When his fingernail ripped and the raw tip of his finger struck something sharp, he swore and reared back. His body was invisible, but not his blood. It trickled, crimson red, appearing the moment it left his hand and scattering over the hole he’d dug, the ground thirsty for it. Something was hidden in the earth, waiting. When Ravyn touched it, it was sharper than stone—colder than soil. Steel. Heart in his throat, he dug until he’d unearthed a sword. It lay crooked, caked in dirt. But there was no mistaking its make—forged steel—with an intricately designed hilt, too ornate to be a soldier’s blade. He reached for it, the salt in the air piercing his lungs as he took short, fevered breaths. But before Ravyn could pry the sword free, he caught a glimpse at what was buried beneath it. Resting perfectly, undisturbed for centuries. A pale, knobbed object. Human. Skeletal. A spine.
Rachel Gillig (Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2))