β
For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Some things in life are out of your control. You can make it a party or a tragedy.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1))
β
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
βT.S. Eliot, from βLittle Gidding,β Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take, towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
Tahu kau mengapa aku sayangi kau lebih dari siapa pun? Karena kau menulis. Suaramu takkan padam ditelan angin, akan abadi, sampai jauh, jauh di kemudian hari. (Mama, 84)
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
It's hard to resist a bad boy who's a good man.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet, #4))
β
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Kehidupan ini seimbang, Tuan. Barangsiapa hanya memandang pada keceriaannya saja, dia orang gila. Barangsiapa memandang pada penderitaannya saja, dia sakit.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
To leave, after all, was not the same as being left.
β
β
Anita Shreve (The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3))
β
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Hidup sungguh sangat sederhana. Yang hebat-hebat hanya tafsirannya.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
When you find somebody you love, all the way through, and she loves youβeven with your weaknesses, your flaws, everything starts to click into place. And if you can talk to her, and she listens, if she makes you laugh, and makes you think, makes you want, makes you see who you really are, and who you are is better, just better with her, youβd be crazy not to want to spend the rest of your life with her. (Carter Maguire)
β
β
Nora Roberts (Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet, #4))
β
Broken hearts healed. Maybe the cracks were always there, like thin scars, but they healed. People lived and worked, laughed and ate, walked and talked with those cracks
For many, even the scars healed and they loved again.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2))
β
She likes to read, she reads all the time, and she prefers to be reading several things at once, she says it gives endless perspective and dimension.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
Orang boleh pandai setinggi langit, tapi selama ia tak menulis, ia akan hilang di dalam masyarakat dan dari sejarah.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
Iβve never been the one. Not for anybody.β
He closed the distance between them.
βYouβll get used to it.β He tipped her face up to his, kissed her.
βWhy? Why am I the one?β
βBecause my life opened up, and it flooded with color when you walked back into it.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1))
β
In my end is my beginning.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Orang bilang ada kekuatan-kekuatan dahsyat yang tak terduga yang bisa timbul pada samudera, pada gunung berapi dan pada pribadi yang tahu benar akan tujuan hidupnya .
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
A woman with romance in her life lived as grandly as a queen, because her heart was treasured.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2))
β
A city becomes a world when one loves one of its inhabitants.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
Always be reading something, he said. Even when we're not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
If youβre looking for the full deal, the till-death deal, then look at me. No oneβs ever going to love you, stick by you, understand how you work the way I do.
(Malcolm Kavanaugh)
β
β
Nora Roberts (Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet, #4))
β
I'd rather waltz than just walk through the forest
The trees keep the tempo and they sway in time
Quartet of crickets chime in for the chorus
If I were to pluck on your heartstrings, would you strum on mine?
β
β
Owl City
β
People and relationships never stop being a work in progress
β
β
Nora Roberts (Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1))
β
The lifelong friends, he said. We sometimes wait a lifetime for them.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
Nothing is permanently perfect. But there are perfect moments and the will to choose what will bring about more perfect moments.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Perfect (Simply Quartet, #4))
β
Love is not simply the sum of sweet greetings and wrenching partings and kisses and embraces, but is made up more of the memory of what has happened and the imagining of what is to come.
β
β
Anita Shreve (Fortune's Rocks (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #1))
β
In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art--the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases--beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden.
β
β
Anne Rice (The Vampire Lestat (The Vampire Chronicles, #2))
β
Who invented the human heart, I wonder? Tell me, and then show me the place where he was hanged.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
Not that she objected to solitude. Quite the contrary. She had books, thank Heaven, quantities of books. All sorts of books.
β
β
Jean Rhys (Quartet)
β
Kehidupan lebih nyata daripada pendapat siapa pun tentang kenyataan.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.
β
β
Jane Yolen (Girl in a Cage (Stuart Quartet, #2))
β
Setiap tulisan merupakan dunia tersendiri, yang terapung-apung antara dunia kenyataan dan dunia impian.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
Love can really screw you up before you learn to live with it.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Bride Quartet Boxed Set (Bride Quartet, #1-4))
β
Perhaps this is the strongest pleasure known to me. It is the rapture I get when in writing I seem to be discovering what belongs to what; making a scene come right; making a character come together. From this I reach what I might call a philosophy; at any rate it is a constant idea of mine; that behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that weβI mean all human beingsβare connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.
β
β
Virginia Woolf (Moments of Being: A Collection of Autobiographical Writing)
β
Footfalls echo in the memory
down the passage we did not take
towards the door we never opened
into the rose garden. My words echo
thus, in your mind
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Pernah kudengar orang kampung bilang : sebesar-besar ampun adalah yang diminta seorang anak dari ibunya, sebesar-besar dosa adalah dosa anak kepada ibunya.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
I am quite alone. I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
We have to hope, Daniel was saying, that the people who love us and who know us a little bit will in the end have seen us truly. In the end, not much else matters.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Pada akhirnya persoalan hidup adalah persoalan menunda mati, biarpun orang-orang yang bijaksana lebih suka mati sekali daripada berkali-kali.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
The houses are all gone under the sea.
The dancers are all gone under the hill.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Love is blind,β Harriet quipped.
βBut not illiterate,β Elizabeth retorted.
β
β
Julia Quinn (A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #2))
β
Kita semua harus menerima kenyataan, tapi menerima kenyataan saja adalah pekerjaan manusia yang tak mampu lagi berkembang. Karena manusia juga bisa membikin kenyataan-kenyataan baru. Kalau tak ada orang mau membikin kenyataan-kenyataan baru, maka βkemajuanβ sebagai kata dan makna sepatutnya dihapuskan dari kamus umat manusia.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
Tak ada satu hal pun tanpa bayang-bayang, kecuali terang itu sendiri.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
And since Iβm marrying into the Quartet, I have certain privileges and duties. If youβre sleeping with Laurelββ
βIβm not sleeping with Laurel. Weβre dating.β
βRight, and the two of you are just going to hold hands, admire the moon, and sing camp songs.β
βFor a while. Minus the singing.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Savor the Moment (Bride Quartet, #3))
β
Do not let me hear
Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,
Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,
Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.
The only wisdom we can hope to acquire
Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Selama penderitaan datang dari manusia, dia bukan bencana alam, dia pun pasti bisa dilawan oleh manusia.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
Only through time time is conquered
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
squats are a form of torture designed by people who donβt need to do squats in the first place
β
β
Nora Roberts (Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2))
β
You can only chase a butterfly for so long.
β
β
Jane Yolen (Prince Across the Water (Stuart Quartet, #3))
β
Kau Pribumi terpelajar! Kalau mereka itu, Pribumi itu, tidak terpelajar, kau harus bikin mereka jadi terpelajar. Kau harus, harus, harus, harus bicara pada mereka , dengan bahasa yang mereka tahu
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
time past and time future
what might have been and what has been
point to one end, which is always present.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Odd, isn't it? He really was the right man for her in a sort of way; but then as you know, it is a law of love that the so-called 'right' person always comes to soon or too late.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Balthazar (The Alexandria Quartet, #2))
β
Or music heard so deeply
That it is not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
...She'd gone past interest, swung into attraction, burst through lust, tripped over affection, and was now skidding out of control into love.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet, #4))
β
The historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
I am glad you have a Cat, but I do not believe it is So remarkable a cat as My Cat.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
He gave her a quick, casual kiss on the cheek first. Then came the hug, and it was the hug that always made Laurelβs heart mush. Serious grip, cheek to the hair, eyes closed, just a little sway. Delβs hugs mattered, she thought, and made him impossible to resist.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Savor the Moment (Bride Quartet, #3))
β
She had always been an unashamed reader of novels.
β
β
Barbara Pym (Quartet in Autumn)
β
Love does not last forever, then?"
"He asked me the same thing this morning," she said. "No, it does not - not love that has been betrayed. One realizes that one has loved a mirage, someone who never really existed. Not that love dies immediately or soon, even then. But it does die and cannot be revived.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Perfect (Simply Quartet, #4))
β
Sometimes, she thought, courage was simply a matter of putting one foot in front of another and not stopping.
β
β
Anita Shreve (The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3))
β
-If you were a girl,Jack said to Dell, I'd marry you.
-No. You'd just have sex with me then never call me.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2))
β
Love's scary, and sometimes it's transient. But it's worth the risks and the nerves. It's even worth the pain.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1))
β
Gamblers and lovers really play to lose.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (The Alexandria Quartet (The Alexandria Quartet, #1-4))
β
Semua yang terjadi d bawah kolong langit adalah urusan setiap orang yang berpikir
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
Is it possible, he said, to be in love not with someone but with their eyes. I mean, with how eyes that aren't yours let you see where you are, who you are.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
These are the moments which are not calculable, and cannot be assessed in words; they live on in the solution of memory, like wonderful creatures, unique of their own kind, dredged up from the floors of some unexplored ocean.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
Kami memang orang miskin. Di mata orang kota kemiskinan itu kesalahan. Lupa mereka lauk yg dimakannya itu kerja kami.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
Language is like poppies. It just takes something to churn the earth round them up, and when it does up come the sleeping words, bright red, fresh, blowing about.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
Barangsiapa muncul di atas masyarakatnya, dia akan selalu menerima tuntutan dari masyarakatnya-masyarakat yang menaikkannya, atau yang membiarkannya naik.... Pohon tinggi dapat banyak angin? Kalau Tuan segan menerima banyak angin, jangan jadi pohon tinggi
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
Is there never any escaping the junkshop of the self?
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
No. Havenβt you been listening?β
Marcus would always remember that moment. It was to be the first time he would ever be faced with that most vexing of female quirks: the question that had nothing but wrong answers.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
The polite thing would be to go back inside, give you privacy when you read it. But, Iβm just not that mature.'
'Itβs nothing. Fine.' Feeling foolish, Laurel opened the envelope.
You might think this is over, but youβd be wrong. Iβve taken your shoes hostage. Contact me within forty-eight hours, or the Pradas get it.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Savor the Moment (Bride Quartet, #3))
β
In the cave's innermost entryway, a band of four stood tall and thick, shouldered and heavily weaponed.
Members of the Brotherhood.
He knew this quartet by name: Ahgony, Throe, Murhder, Tohrture.
β
β
J.R. Ward (Lover Mine (Black Dagger Brotherhood, #8))
β
After two hours it stopped raining and in the same moment the spell broke, which Peroquet and the Admiral and Captain Jumeau knew by a curious twist of their senses, as if they had tasted a string quartet, or been, for a moment, deafened by the sight of colour blue.
β
β
Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)
β
Every moment is a moment of decision, and every moment turns us inexorably in the direction of the rest of our lives.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Perfect (Simply Quartet, #4))
β
Laurel: I don't need a ring or a license, or a spetacular white dress. It's not marriage so much, or at all really, that matters. It's the promise. It's the knowing someone wants me to be part of his life. Someone loves me, that I'm the one for him. That's not just enough, it's everything.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Savor the Moment (Bride Quartet, #3))
β
Science is the poetry of the intellect and poetry the science of the heart's affections.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (The Alexandria Quartet (The Alexandria Quartet, #1-4))
β
There are three conditions which often look alike
Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:
Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment
From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference, ... .
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Orang bilang, apa yang ada di depan manusia hanya jarak. Dan batasnya adalah ufuk. Begitu jarak ditempuh sang ufuk menjauh.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
One realized all sorts of things. The value of an illusion, for instance, and that the shadow can be more important than the substance. All sorts of things.
β
β
Jean Rhys (Quartet)
β
Passion: "Your profile ought to be pressed upon a coin."
Mark: "Your body ought to be pressed upon mine.
β
β
Lisa Valdez (Passion (Passion Quartet, #1))
β
That's the thing about things. They fall apart, always have, always will, it's in their nature.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
The choice is not in what you do. The choice is in the why.
β
β
Emma Raveling (Billow (Ondine Quartet, #2))
β
Did they know - the young and fearless - what a miraculous thing it was to have all of anyone?
β
β
Nora Roberts (Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1))
β
Some men get the world, some men get ex-hookers and a trip to Arizona. You're in with the former, but my God I don't envy the blood on your conscience.
β
β
James Ellroy (L.A. Confidential (L.A. Quartet, #3))
β
These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.
β
β
John Cheever
β
To be relieved of love, she thought, was to give up a terrible burden.
β
β
Anita Shreve (The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3))
β
Quick now, here, now, always-
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
-The little things,Emma. The gestures,the moments. And the big. I let him see my heart. I gave it to him,even when I believed he couldn't or wouldn't take it. I gave it anyway-a gift. Even if he broke it. I was very brave. Love is very brave.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2))
β
Yet often the mountain gives itself most completely when I have no destination, when I reach nowhere in particular, but have gone out merely to be with the mountain as one visits a friend with no intention but to be with him.
β
β
Nan Shepherd (The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland (The Grampian Quartet Book 4))
β
I don't think you tell someone you love them because you expect something. I think you tell them because you have something to give.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2))
β
The sorrow of losing what we love is nothing to the torment of having it present but denied us.
β
β
Martin Boyd (A Difficult Young Man (Langton Quartet, #2))
β
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, every poem an epitaph.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Is it...dead?" asked Tom, his voice all quivery with fright.
"A town just ran over him," said Hester. "I shouldn't think he's very well...
β
β
Philip Reeve (Mortal Engines (Mortal Engines Quartet, #1))
β
I'm tired of the news. I'm tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren't, and deals so simplistically with what's truly appalling. I'm tired of the vitriol. I'm tired of anger. I'm tired of the meanness. I'm tired of selfishness. I'm tired of how we're doing nothing to stop it. I'm tired of how we're encourageing it. I'm tired of the violence that's on it's way, that's coming, that hasn't happened yet. I'm tired of liars. I'm tired of sanctified liars. I'm tired of how those liars have let this happen. I'm tired of having to wonder whether they did it out of stupidity or did it on purpose. I'm tired of lying governments. I'm tired of people not caring whether they're being lied to anymore. I'm tired of being made to feel this fearful.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
Men shake hands after they beat each other up; we eat chocolate.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1))
β
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Barang siapa tidak tahu bersetia pada azas, dia terbuka terhadap segala kejahatan: dijahati atau menjahati. (Mama, 4)
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
What the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
No one can make you a victim but yourself.
β
β
Amelia Atwater-Rhodes (The Den of Shadows Quartet)
β
Love is like trench warfare - you cannot see the enemy, but you know he is there and that it is wiser to keep your head down.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Balthazar (The Alexandria Quartet, #2))
β
Ψ₯ΩΩ ΩΨ£Ω
Ψ± ΩΨΈΩΨΉ Ψ£Ω ΩΩΩΩ
Ψ§ΩΨ₯ΩΨ³Ψ§Ω ΩΩΨ³Ω ΩΩΩ Ω
Ψ§ ΩΩΨΉΨ§ΩΩΩ Ω
Ω Ψ΄ΩΨ§Ψ‘ ΩΨΉΨ°Ψ§Ψ¨.
β
β
ΩΩΨ±ΩΨ³ Ψ―Ψ§Ψ±ΩΩ (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
...We understood nothing at all. Not what it meant to wish for a miracle... nor its price.
β
β
Magica Quartet (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Vol. 1 (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, #1))
β
So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
I do not know much about gods;but I think that the river is a strong brown god-sullen, untamed and intractable . . .
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Sometimes now was enough.
Sometimes it was everything.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Perfect (Simply Quartet, #4))
β
I wonβt be satisfied with anything less than everything,
β
β
Julia Quinn (A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #2))
β
We say that flowers return every spring, but that is a lie. It is true that the world is renewed. It is also true that that renewal comes at a price, for even if the flower grows from an ancient vine, the flowers of spring are themselves new to the world, untried and untested.
The flower that wilted last year is gone. Petals once fallen are fallen forever. Flowers do not return in the spring, rather they are replaced. It is in this difference between returned and replaced that the price of renewal is paid.
And as it is for spring flowers, so it is for us.
β
β
Daniel Abraham (The Price of Spring (Long Price Quartet, #4))
β
anyone who has no feelings for animals has a dead heart.
β
β
Raegan Butcher (Rusty String Quartet)
β
And she was terribly aware that she was alive. Not just living and breathing, but ...alive.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Love (Simply Quartet #2))
β
Art like life is an open secret.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (The Alexandria Quartet (The Alexandria Quartet, #1-4))
β
I wish," he said, "I had known at eighteen what I know now - that there are some things on which one does not compromise.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Perfect (Simply Quartet, #4))
β
The world is like a cucumberβtoday it's in your hand, tomorrow up your arse.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (The Alexandria Quartet (The Alexandria Quartet, #1-4))
β
Lists are a form of power.
β
β
A.S. Byatt (The Virgin in the Garden (The Frederica Quartet, #1))
β
Kehidupan lebih nyata daripada pendapat siapapun tentang kenyataan.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
But, of course, memory and responsibility are strangers. They're foreign to each other. Memory always goes its own way quite regardless.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
Every unmarried man is looking for a wife. They just don't always know it.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
Even friends need private spaces, if only within the depths of their own souls, where no one else is allowed to intrude.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Magic (Simply Quartet #3))
β
Some people donβt respond to civility.
β
β
James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia (L.A. Quartet, #1))
β
All time is unreedemable.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Watch over Honoria, will you? See that she doesnβt marry an idiot.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
Sahabat dalam kesulitan adalah sahabat dalam segala-galanya. Jangan sepelekan persahabatan. Kehebatannya lebih besar daripada panasnya permusuhan.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
I want you to find what you seek, live the way you choose," he whispered. "Even if it means I can never touch you again. I will never abandon you because I love you.
β
β
Emma Raveling (Crest (Ondine Quartet, #3))
β
You see, nothing matters except pleasure - which is the opposite of happiness, its tragic part, I expect.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (The Alexandria Quartet (The Alexandria Quartet, #1-4))
β
He loved her.
He wanted her.
He needed her.
And he needed her now.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
A diary is the last place to go if you wish to seek the truth about a person. Nobody dares to make the final confession to themselves on paper: or at least, not about love.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Balthazar (The Alexandria Quartet, #2))
β
At the still point, there the dance is.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Jangan kau mudah terpesona oleh nama-nama. Kan kau sendiri pernah bercerita padaku: nenek moyang kita menggunakan nama yang hebat-hebat, dan dengannya ingin mengesani dunia dengan kehebatannyaβkehebatan dalam kekosongan. Eropa tidak berhebat-hebat dengan nama, dia berhebat-hebat dengan ilmu pengetahuannya. Tapi si penipu tetap penipu, si pembohong tetap pembohong dengan ilmu dan pengetahuannya.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
Like all young men I set out to be a genius, but mercifully laughter intervened.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Clea (The Alexandria Quartet, #4))
β
But how do you ever know that you know a person?
β
β
Anita Shreve (The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3))
β
I was told once that the most important part of a fight is making sure your opponent looks worse than you do when youβre through.
β
β
Julia Quinn (A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #2))
β
Heβd spent his life being a perfect gentleman. Heβd never been a flirt. Heβd never been a rogue. He hated being the center of attention, but by God, he wanted to be the center of her attention. He wanted to do the wrong thing, the bad thing. He wanted to pull her into his arms and carry her to her bed. He wanted to peel every last inch of her clothing from her body, and then he wanted to worship her. He wanted to show her all the things he wasnβt sure he knew how to say.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?β
<...>
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
β
β
T.S. Eliot
β
There is nothing worse, is there," she said, "than a past that has never been fully dealt with. One can convince oneself, that it is all safely in the past and forgotten about, but the very fact that we can tell ourselves that it is forgotten proves that it is not.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Magic (Simply Quartet #3))
β
Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Clea (The Alexandria Quartet, #4))
β
Dari atas ke bawah yang ada adalah larangan, penindasan, perintah, semprotan, hinaan. Dari bawah ke atas yang ada adalah penjilatan, kepatuhan, dan perhambaan.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
The pauses are a precise language, more a language than actual language is, Elisabeth thinks.
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
β
I shall have one, too," he told her. "So that you don't feel alone."
She tried not to smile. "That is most generous of you."
"I am quite certain it is my gentlemanly duty."
"To eat cake?"
"It is one of the more appealing of my gentlemanly duties," he allowed.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
Finding what's true means letting go of the lies that control.
β
β
Emma Raveling (Billow (Ondine Quartet, #2))
β
Love can really screw you up before you figure out how to live with it. And once you do? You wonder how the hell you ever lived without it
β
β
Nora Roberts (Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2))
β
Kartini pernah mengatakan : mengarang adalah bekerja untuk keabadian.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (Child of All Nations (Buru Quartet, #2))
β
Artβthe meaning of the pattern of our common actions in reality. The cloth-of-gold that hides behind the sackcloth of reality, forced out by the pain of human memory.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
There is no happily-ever-after to run to. We have to work for happiness.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Magic (Simply Quartet #3))
β
I loved him," Muire said. "We were in love." As if that were enough.
β
β
Anita Shreve (The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3))
β
To be a jazz freedom fighter is to attempt to galvanize and energize world-weary people into forms of organization with accountable leadership that promote critical exchange and broad reflection. The interplay of individuality and unity is not one of uniformity and unanimity imposed from above but rather of conflict among diverse groupings that reach a dynamic consensus subject to questioning and criticism. As with a soloist in a jazz quartet, quintet or band, individuality is promoted in order to sustain and increase the creative tension with the group--a tension that yields higher levels of performance to achieve the aim of the collective project. This kind of critical and democratic sensibility flies in the face of any policing of borders and boundaries of "blackness", "maleness", "femaleness", or "whiteness".
β
β
Cornel West (Race Matters)
β
I know it is something of a cliche to say that love makes all things possible, but I believe it does. It is not a magic wand that can be waved over life to make it all sweet and lovely and trouble free, but it can give the energy to fight the odds and win.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Magic (Simply Quartet #3))
β
Tell me anything.
Tell me everything.
Revoke our time apart.
Love me fierce in danger.
β
β
James Ellroy (White Jazz (L.A. Quartet, #4))
β
Madoka: I want to erase the tears of all those who trusted in hope. I want them to be left with a smile on their faces.
β
β
Magica Quartet (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Vol. 3 (Puella Magi Madoka Magica, #3))
β
Was it confusing because it was artistic, or artistic because it was confusing?
β
β
Joyce Carol Oates (Expensive People (Wonderland Quartet, #2))
β
Somethings in life are out of your control. you can make it a party or a tragedy. Or, you could refuse to take the next step. You could refuse to take what you wanted most because you're afraid some day you might lose it.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1))
β
Very few people realise that sex is a psychic and not a physical act. The clumsy coupling of human beings is simply a biological paraphrase of this truth - a primitive method of introducing minds to each other, engaging them. But most people are stuck in the physical aspect, unaware of the poetic rapport which it so clumsily tries to teach.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Balthazar (The Alexandria Quartet, #2))
β
A little more than that, even.
β
β
Christelle Dabos (The Storm of Echoes (The Mirror Visitor Quartet #4))
β
Love, I have discovered, does not judge. It just is.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Magic (Simply Quartet #3))
β
My Sleeping Beauty ~ I kissed you, but you did not wake. I find this strange for I know I am your prince.
β
β
Lisa Valdez (Patience (Passion Quartet, #2))
β
Kalau ahli hukum tak merasa tersinggung karena pelanggaran hukum sebaiknya dia jadi tukang sapu jalanan.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
There.β She tossed her hair back while he stared at her. βThe sky did not fall, the world did not end, neither of us was struck by lightning or beamed straight to hell. Iβm not your damn
sister, Delaney. That ought to make it clear.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Savor the Moment (Bride Quartet, #3))
β
You are always looking at people like this.β And then she made a face, one he couldnβt possibly begin to describe.
βIf I ever look like that,β he said dryly, βprecisely like that, to be more precise, I give you leave to shoot me.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
...it is not possible to create the opposite of what one has always known, simply because the opposite is believed to be desired. Human beings need what they already know, even horrors.
β
β
A.S. Byatt (The Virgin in the Garden (The Frederica Quartet, #1))
β
Look at all the Eastern writers who've written great Western literature. Kazuo Ishiguro. You'd never guess that The Remains of the Day or Never Let Me Go were written by a Japanese guy. But I can't think of anyone who's ever done the reverse-- any Westerner who's written great Eastern literature. Well, maybe if we count Lawrence Durrell - does the Alexandria Quartet qualify as Eastern literature?"
"There is a very simple test," said Vikram. "Is it about bored, tired people having sex?"
"Yes," said the convert, surprised.
"Then it's western.
β
β
G. Willow Wilson (Alif the Unseen)
β
He gave her his best smile. His
best I-almost-died-so-how-can-you-deny-me smile. Or at least
thatβs how he hoped it appeared. The truth was, he wasnβt a very
accomplished flirt, and it might very well have come across as an Iam-
mildly-deranged-so-itβs-in-all-of-our-best-interests-if-youpretend-
to-agree-with-me smile.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
Life, she realized, so often became a determined, relentless avoidance of pain-of one's own, of other people's. But sometimes pain had to be acknowledged and even touched so that one could move into it and through it and past it. Or else be destroyed by it.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Love (Simply Quartet #2))
β
Sometimes she wished for someone she could tell about her problems, just to be able to say, βIβm in love with a man and I canβt have him.β But that would only lead to questions she couldnβt answer, so she kept the secret and the pain inside, hoping someday she would no longer feel as if half of her were missing.
β
β
Abigail Reynolds (The Man Who Loved Pride & Prejudice (The Woods Hole Quartet #1))
β
Nilai yang diwariskan oleh kemanusiaan hanya untuk mereka yang mengerti dan membutuhkan. Humaniora memang indah bila diucapkan para mahaguruβindah pula didengar oleh mahasiswa berbakat dan toh menyebalkan bagi mahasiswa-mahasiswa bebal. Berbahagialah kalian, mahasiswa bebal, karena kalian dibenarkan berbuat segala-galanya.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
He said he loved me,β she whispered.
Daniel swallowed, and he had the strangest sensation, almost a premonition of what it must like to be a parent.
Someday, God willing, heβd have a daughter, and that daughter would look like the woman standing in front of him, and if ever she looked at him with that bewildered expression, whispering, βHe said he loved me . . .β
Nothing short of murder would be an acceptable response.
β
β
Julia Quinn (A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #2))
β
Do you want to fix it?"
"I just said I was in love with her. Why wouldn't I want to fix it?"
"You want to know how?"
"Goddamn it, Del." He drank again. "Yes, since you're so fucking smart. How do I fix it?"
"Crawl."
Jack blew out a breath. "I can do that".
β
β
Nora Roberts (Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2))
β
If you do not apologize to Lady Honoria,β Marcus said, his voice so mild as to be terrifying, βI will kill you.β
There was a collective gasp, and Daisy faked a swoon, sliding elegantly into Iris, who promptly stepped aside and let her hit the floor.
βOh, come now,β Mr. Grimston said. βSurely it wonβt come to pistols at dawn.β
βIβm not talking about a duel,β Marcus said. βI mean I will kill you right here.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
How do you feel?β she asked, trying to fluff his pillow. βOther than terrible, I mean.β
He moved his head slightly to the side. It seemed to be a sickly interpretation of a shrug.
βOf course youβre feeling terrible,β she clarified, βbut is there any change? More terrible? Less terrible?β
He made no response.
βThe same amount of terrible?
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
We live" writes Pursewarden somewhere, "lives based upon selected fictions. Our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time - not by our personalities as we like to think. Thus every interpretation of reality is based upon a unique position. Two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Balthazar (The Alexandria Quartet, #2))
β
Ah, hi. Itβs Carter. I wonder if you might want to go out to dinner, or maybe the movies. Maybe you like plays better than movies. I shouldβve looked up what might be available before I called. I didnβt think of it. Or we could just have coffee again if you want to do that. Orβ¦ Iβm not articulate on these things. I canβt use a tape recorder either. And why would you care? If youβre at all interested in any of the above, please feel free to call me. Thanks. Um. Good-bye.β
βDamn you, Carter Maguire, for your insanely cute quotient. You should be annoying. Why arenβt I annoyed? Oh God, Iβm going to call you back. I know Iβm going to call you back. Iβm in such trouble.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1))
β
Great works of art in all cultures succeed in capturing within the constraints of their form both the pathos of anguish and a vision of its resolution. Take, for example, the languorous sentences of Proust or the haiku of Basho, the late quartets and sonatas of Beethoven, the tragicomic brushwork of Sengai or the daunting canvases of Rothko, the luminous self-portraits of Rembrandt and Hakuin. Such works achieve their resolution not through consoling or romantic images whereby anguish is transcended. They accept anguish without being overwhelmed by it. They reveal anguish as that which gives beauty its dignity and depth.
β
β
Stephen Batchelor (Buddhism without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening)
β
Are you always so forthright over coffee dates?β
βI donβt know. Youβre the only one I ever had a crush on.β Oh, boy. βAnd that was stupid.β Flustered again, he raked his fingers through his hair. βNow Iβve scared you. That sounds scary and obsessive. Like I have an alter somewhere with your pictures over it, where I light candles and chant your name. Jesus! Thatβs even scarier. Run now. I wonβt hold it against you.β
She burst out laughing. Had to set her coffee back down before she slouched it over the rim.
βIβll stay if you swear you donβt have the alter.β
βI donβt.β He swiped his finger in an X over his heart.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Vision in White (Bride Quartet, #1))
β
And donβt worry.β Bob, Carterβs best man and colleague, held up a notebook computer. βIβve got it handled on this end. And I memorized the vows just in case he needs me to throw him a line.β
βYouβre a treasure, Bob.β
She waited until she was out of earshot to laugh.
β
β
Nora Roberts (Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet, #4))
β
I am not sure what lonliness is," she said. "If it is not literally being solitary, is it the fear of solitude, of being alone with oneself? I feel no such fear. I like being alone."
"What do you fear then?" he asked her.
She glanced briefly at him and smiled, a fragile expression that spoke for itself even before she found words.
"Never finding myself again....
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Love (Simply Quartet #2))
β
And then, well . . . He might have slept for a bit. He rather hoped he was sleeping, because he was quite certain heβd seen a six-foot rabbit hopping through his bedchamber, and if that wasnβt a dream, they were all in very big trouble.
Although really, it wasnβt the rabbit that was so dangerous as much as the giant carrot he was swinging about like a mace.
That carrot would feed an entire village.
β
β
Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
Sejak jaman nabi sampai kini, tak ada manusia yang bisa terbebas dari kekuasaan sesamanya, kecuali mereka yang tersisihkan karena gila. Bahkan pertama-tama mereka yang membuang diri, seorang diri di tengah-tengah hutan atau samudera masih membawa padanya sisa-sisa kekuasaan sesamanya. Dan selama ada yang diperintah dan memerintah, dikuasai dan menguasai, orang berpolitik.
β
β
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (House of Glass (Buru Quartet, #4))
β
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it agian? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
What happened to your face?" Harriet asked.
"It was a misunderstanding," Daniel said smoothly, wondering how long it might take for his bruises to heal. He did not think he was particularly vain, but the questions were growing tiresome.
"A misunderstanding?" Elizabeth echoed. "With an anvil?"
"Oh, stop," Harriet admonished her. "I think he looks very dashing."
"As if he dashed into an anvil."
"Pay no attention," Harriet said to him. "She lacks imagination.
β
β
Julia Quinn (A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #2))
β
She took kisses like so many coats of paint [β¦] how long and how vainly I searched for excuses which might make her amorality if not palatable at lest understandable. I realize now the time I wasted in this way; instead of enjoying her and turning aside from these preoccupations with the thought, βShe is untrustworthy as she is beautiful. She takes love as plants do water, lightly, thoughtlessly.
β
β
Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
β
For I have known them all already, known them all -
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all -
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
β
β
T.S. Eliot (T.S. Eliot Reads: The Wasteland, Four Quartets and Other Poems)
β
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, alwaysβ
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
β
β
T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
β
Odd, she thought, how intensely you knew a person, or thought you did, when you were in love - soaked, drenched in love - only to discover later that perhaps you didn't know that person quite as well as you had imagined. Or weren't quite as well known as you had hoped to be. In the beginning, a lover drank in every word and gesture and then tried to hold on to that intensity for as long as possible. But inevitable, if two people were together long enough, that intensity had to wane.
β
β
Anita Shreve (The Pilot's Wife (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #3))
β
Now I must live with the consequences of the choice I made. And I will not call it the wrong choice. That would be foolish and pointless. That choice led me to everything that has happened since, including this very moment, and the choices I make today or tomorrow or next week will lead me to the next and next present moments in my life. It is all a journey, Miss Jewell. I have come to understand that that is what life is all about-a journey and the courage and energy always to take the next step and the next without judgement about what was right and what was wrong.
β
β
Mary Balogh (Simply Love (Simply Quartet #2))
β
All across the country, people felt it was the wrong thing. All across the country, people felt it was the right thing. All across the country, people felt they'd really lost. All across the country, people felt they'd really won. All across the country, people felt they'd done the right thing and other people had done the wrong thing. All across the country, people looked up Google: what is EU? All across the country, people looked up Google: move to Scotland. All across the country, people looked up Google: Irish Passport Applications. All across the country, people called each other cunts. All across the country, people felt unsafe. All across the country, people were laughing their heads off. All across the country, people felt legitimised. All across the country, people felt bereaved and shocked. All across the country, people felt righteous. All across the country, people felt sick. All across the country, people felt history at their shoulder. All across the country, people felt history meant nothing. All across the country, people felt like they counted for nothing. All across the country, people had pinned their hopes on it. All across the country, people waved flags in the rain. All across the country, people drew swastika graffiti. All across the country, people threatened other people. All across the country, people told people to leave. All across the country, the media was insane. All across the country, politicians lied. All across the country, politicians fell apart. All across the country, politicians vanished...
β
β
Ali Smith (Autumn (Seasonal Quartet, #1))
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The loved object is simply one that has shared an experience at the same moment of time, narcissistically; and the desire to be near the beloved object is at first not due to the idea of possessing it, but simply to let the two experiences compare themselves, like reflections in different mirrors. All this may precede the first look, kiss, or touch; precede ambition, pride, or envy; precede the first declarations which mark the turning pointβfor from here love degenerates into habit, possession, and back to loneliness.
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Lawrence Durrell (Justine (The Alexandria Quartet, #1))
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Weβre going to get a couple pretty, fluffy inches in the morning for a gorgeous December evening wedding. Go get ready for rehearsal.β
βIβm afraid of rehearsal. My voice is going to squeak. I think Iβm getting a zit right in the middle of my chin. Iβm going to trip coming down the aisle. Itβs okay if Carter trips. People expect it. But ββ
β¦
βCarter isnβt nervous. βMac narrowed her eyes in a scowl. βI could hate him for that.β
βMackensie.β Parker turned from the computer. βI was in the kitchen this morning when Mrs. G made him sit down and eat some breakfast. He put maple syrup in his coffee.β
βHe did?β She threw up her arms in a cheer. βHe is nervous. I feel better.
β
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Nora Roberts (Happy Ever After (Bride Quartet, #4))
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Later, when she sees the photographs for the first time, she will be surprised at how calm her face looks - how steady her gaze, how erect her posture. In the picture her eyes will be slightly closed, and there will be a shadow on her neck. The shawl will be draped around her shoulders, and her hands will rest in her lap. In this deceptive photograph, she will look a young woman who is not at all disturbed or embarrassed, but instead appears to be rather serious. And she wonders if, in its ability to deceive, photography is not unlike the sea, which may offer a benign surface to the observe even as it conceals depths and current below.
β
β
Anita Shreve (Fortune's Rocks (Fortune's Rocks Quartet, #1))
β
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden.
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past. (I)
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know. (I)
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present. (I)
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is...
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time. (II)
All is always now.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered. (II)
Words move, music moves
Only in time; but that which is only living
Can only die. Words, after speech, reach
Into the silence. (V)
Or say that the end precedes the beginning,
And the end and the beginning were always there
Before the beginning and after the end.
And all is always now. Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Will not stay still. (V)
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being. (V)
β
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T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
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What was to be the value of the long looked forward to,
Long hoped for calm, the autumnal serenity
And the wisdom of age? Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm.
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T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets)
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Well,β she finally said, βheβs coming back shortly, so you are absolved of your responsibilities.β
βNo.β The word came from him like an oath, emerging from the very core of his being.
She looked at him in impatient confusion. βWhat do you mean?β
He stepped forward. He wasnβt sure what he was doing. He knew only that he couldnβt stop. βI mean no. I donβt want to be absolved.β
Her lips parted. He took another step. His heart was pounding, and something within him had gone hot, and greedy, and if there was anything in the world besides her, besides himβhe did not know it.
βI want you,β he said, the words blunt, and almost harsh, but absolutely, indelibly true.
βI want you,β he said again, and he reached out and took her hand. βI want you.β
βMarcus, Iββ
βI want to kiss you,β he said, and he touched one finger to her lips. βI want to hold you.β
And then, because he couldnβt have kept it inside for one second longer, he said, βI burn for you.β
He took her face in his hands and he kissed her. He kissed her with everything that had been building within him, every last aching, hungry burst of desire. Since the moment he had realized he loved her, this passion had been growing within him. It had probably been there all along, just waiting for him to realize it.
He loved her.
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Julia Quinn (Just Like Heaven (Smythe-Smith Quartet, #1))
β
Nodding, Parker ate. βHeβs an exceptional kisser.β
βHe really is. He . . . How do you know?β When Parker just smiled, Emmaβs jaw dropped. βYou? You and Jack? When? How?β
βI think itβs disgusting,β Mac muttered. βYet another best pal moving on my imaginary ex.β
βTwo kisses, my first year at Yale, after we ran into each other at a party and he walked me back to the dorm. It was nice. Very nice. But as exceptional a kisser as he is, it was too much like kissing my brother. And as exceptional a kisser as I am, I believe he felt it was too much like kissing his sister. And thatβs how we left it. I gather that wasnβt an issue for you and Jack.
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Nora Roberts (Bed of Roses (Bride Quartet, #2))
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Laurelβs in right field, leading off. Her fieldingβs crap, but sheβs got a good bat.β
βMy fielding is not crap.β She hit Del with the glove. βKeep it up and youβre not going to have any problem winning that beat, Brown.β
When she stalked off, Mal took an easy, testing swing. βWhat bet?β
Laurel strode straight up to Mac. βI want to switch with you. I want to play on Jackβs team.β
βBaseball slut. Okay by me, but youβd better tell Jack.β
She walked over to where Jack sat on the ground writing his lineup. βI switched with Mac. Iβm on your team.β
βTrading the redhead for the blonde. Okay, let me figureβ¦ Youβre right field, leading off.β
Son of a bitch. Did he and Del have telepathy? Laurel narrowed her eyes. βWhy right field?β
He flicked her a glance, and she saw him reconsider his response. βYouβve got a strong arm.β
She pointed at him. βGood answer.β
βHow come youβ¦ Hey. Hey, is that Mal? Del hooked Mal?β Jack barred his teeth. βSo thatβs the way he wants to play the game?β
βLetβs kick his ass.
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Nora Roberts (Savor the Moment (Bride Quartet, #3))