Tower Of Dawn Quotes

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A gift. A gift from a queen who had seen another woman in hell and thought to reach back a hand. With no thought of it ever being returned. A moment of kindness, a tug on a thread.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Aelin frightens everyone…But not him. I think that’s why she fell in love with him, against her best intentions. Rowan beheld all Aelin was and is, and he was not afraid
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
I will cherish it always. No matter what may befall the world. No matter the oceans, or mountains, or forests in the way.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
He’d almost told the princess that she could keep Hellas’s Horse, but there was something to be said about the prospect of charging down Morath foot soldiers atop a horse named Butterfly.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
What did Aelin promise you?” Hasar smiled to herself. “A better world.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Rowan beheld all Aelin was and is, and he was not afraid.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
you must enter where you fear to tread
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
We don't look back. It helps no one and nothing to look back.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Aelin frightens everyone.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Sartaq chuckled. “I did. But I also told him that the woman I love now plans to head into war. And I intend to follow her.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Here, with her, he was home.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Every step. Every curve into darkness. Every moment of despair and rage and pain. It had led him to precisely where he needed to be. Where he wanted to be.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Gods help him when Hasar and Aedion met.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
The heart he’d offered and had been left to drop on the wooden planks of the river docks. An assassin who had sailed away and a queen who had returned.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Then it is a good thing, Yrene Towers, that I love you as well.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
No lady, beautiful or plain, young or old, deserved to be gawked at.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
It was agony and despair and fear. It was joy and laughter and rest. It was life, all of it...
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
The most powerful pure-blooded Fae male in the world,” Chaol said simply. “A worthy asset for any court. Especially when they had fallen in love with each other.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
A moment of kindness. From a young woman who ended lives to a young woman who saved them.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
I think she was a god... I never learned her name. She only left a note with two lines. "For wherever you need to go - and then some. The world needs more healers." - Yrene, about Aelin
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
You would be surprised by how closely the healing of physical wounds is tied to the healing of emotional ones.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
I once lived in fear of other people. I let other people walk all over me just because I was too afraid of the consequences for refusing. I did not know how to refuse.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Don’t you waste one heartbeat being afraid of a coward who hunts women in the darkness,” Chaol snapped at her.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Using the chair is not a punishment. It is not a prison,' he said softly. 'It never was. And I am as much of a man in that chair, or with that cane, as I am standing on my feet.' He brushed away the tear that slipped down her cheek. 'I wanted to heal you,' she breathed. 'You did,' he said, smiling. 'Yrene, in every way that truly matters . . . You did.' Chaol wiped away the other tears that fell, brushing a kiss to her hot cheek.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
This was not the end. This crack in him, this bottom, was not the end. He had one promise left.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
I knew another women who lost as much as you. And do you know what she did with it-the loss?' He could barely stop the words from pouring out, could barely think over the roaring in this head. 'She hunted down the people responsible for it and obliterated them.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Everything hurts.” Falkan grimaced, rubbing at his leg. “Remind me never to do anything heroic again.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
He didn't understand-how she could be so delicate, so small, when she had overturned his life entirely. Worked miracles with those hands and that soul, this woman who had crossed mountains and seas.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
It was like waking up or being born or falling out of the sky. It was an answer and a song, and she could not think or feel fast enough.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
...he realized that here, amongst the dunes and stars … Here, in the heart of a foreign land … Here, with her, he was home.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Nesryn Sobbed, tugging and tugging. Sartaq smiled at her ــ gently. Sweetly. In a way she had not yet seen. "I Loved you before I ever set eyes on you," he said. "Please," Nesryn wept. Sartaq's hand tightened on hers. "I wish we'd had time." A Hiss behind him, a rising bulk of shining black ــ Then the prince was gone. Ripped from her hands. As if he had never been.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Some swore the cats had been caught pawing through the pages of open books - reading.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
He supposed he'd learned that strength could be hidden beneath the most unlikely faces.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Aelin would have been beside herself with glee.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Get. Up.” Her mouth tightened. “You want to die in this war so badly, then get up.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Aelin would likely laughed to see him now. The man who had stumbled out of her room after she’d declared that her cycle had arrived. Now sitting in this fine room, mostly naked and not giving a shit about it.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Desperation breeds people who are willing to do anything to get what they need.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
The darkness belongs to you. To shape as you will. To give it power or render it harmless.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Nesryn supposed that was why she liked the queen: there were plans so long in the making that for someone who let the world deem her unchecked and brash, Aelin showed a great deal of restraint in keeping it all hidden.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
I hold you to no promises. And I will hold to none of my own.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
We wait for the Queen of the Valg,” the spider purred, rubbing against the carving. “Who in this world calls herself Maeve.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Centre yourself. Fear will get you killed as easily as a weapon.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
I was given this gift by silba. It is not right to charge for what was granted for free
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
She would have an adventure. For herself. This one time. She would see her homeland, and smell it and breathe it in. See it from high above, see it racing as fast as the wind. She owed herself that much.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
This will be the great war of our time,” Kashin said quietly. “When we are dead, when even our grandchildren’s grandchildren are dead, they will still be talking about this war. They will whisper of it around fires, sing of it in the great halls. Who lived and died, who fought and who cowered.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Chaol’s back ached thanks to yesterday’s ride and last night’s … other ride. Multiple rides.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Yet dawn is ever the hope of men.
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2))
Chaol took a shuddering breath. “What did Aelin promise you?” Hasar smiled to herself. “A better world.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
I know I am not an easy person to care for, or an easy friend to have, but you have never once made me feel that way
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
He wished he’d been able to walk. So she could see him crawl toward her.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
He had made one promise. He had not broken it yet. To save them. His friend, his kingdom. He still had that. Even here at the bottom of this dark hell, he still had that.
Sarah J. Maas
I have no interest in easy friends—easy people. I think I trust them less than the difficult ones, and find them far less compelling, too.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Wind-seeker, her mother had once called her. Unable to keep still, always wandering where the wind calls you. Where shall it beckon you to journey one day, my rose? How far the wind had now called her.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Paris, viewed from the towers of Notre Dame in the cool dawn of a summer morning, is a delectable and a magnificent sight; and the Paris of that period must have been eminently so.
Victor Hugo (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame)
I reached out my hand, England's rivers turned and flowed the other way... I reached out my hand, my enemies's blood stopt in their veins... I reached out my hand; thought and memory flew out of my enemies' heads like a flock of starlings; My enemies crumpled like empty sacks. I came to them out of mists and rain; I came to them in dreams at midnight; I came to them in a flock of ravens that filled a northern sky at dawn; When they thought themselves safe I came to them in a cry that broke the silence of a winter wood... The rain made a door for me and I went through it; The stones made a throne for me and I sat upon it; Three kingdoms were given to me to be mine forever; England was given to me to be mine forever. The nameless slave wore a silver crown; The nameless slave was a king in a strange country... The weapons that my enemies raised against me are venerated in Hell as holy relics; Plans that my enemies made against me are preserved as holy texts; Blood that I shed upon ancient battlefields is scraped from the stained earth by Hell's sacristans and placed in a vessel of silver and ivory. I gave magic to England, a valuable inheritance But Englishmen have despised my gift Magic shall be written upon the sky by the rain but they shall not be able to read it; Magic shall be written on the faces of the stony hills but their minds shall not be able to contain it; In winter the barren trees shall be a black writing but they shall not understand it... Two magicians shall appear in England... The first shall fear me; the second shall long to behold me; The first shall be governed by thieves and murderers; the second shall conspire at his own destruction; The first shall bury his heart in a dark wood beneath the snow, yet still feel its ache; The second shall see his dearest posession in his enemy's hand... The first shall pass his life alone, he shall be his own gaoler; The second shall tread lonely roads, the storm above his head, seeking a dark tower upon a high hillside... I sit upon a black throne in the shadows but they shall not see me. The rain shall make a door for me and I shall pass through it; The stones shall make a throne for me and I shall sit upon it... The nameless slave shall wear a silver crown The nameless slave shall be a king in a strange country...
Susanna Clarke (Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell)
He was Lord of Nothing. Lord of Oath-Breakers. Lord of Liars.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
I loved you before I ever set eyes on you.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Bitch. The princess was a bitch,
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Aragorn looked at the pale stars, and at the moon, now sloping behind the western hills that enclosed the valley. 'This is a night as long as years', he said. 'How long will the day tarry?' 'Dawn is not far off', said Gamling, who had now climbed up beside him. 'But dawn will not help us, I fear' 'Yet dawn is ever the hope of men', said Aragorn.
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2))
Prince Rowan Whitethorn, of Doranelle. Former commander to Queen Maeve, and a member of her royal household.” Yrene could have sworn the blood drained wholly from Arghun’s face. “Aelin Galathynius is to wed Rowan Whitethorn?” From the way the prince said the name … he’d indeed heard of this Rowan. Chaol had mentioned Rowan more than once in passing—Rowan, who had managed to heal much of the damage in his spine. A Fae Prince. And Aelin’s beloved. Chaol shrugged. “They are carranam, and he swore the blood oath to her.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Wait or me where the trees clear and the water's sweet. I'll come to ye, ay, as sure as dawn makes shadows run west.
Stephen King (The Waste Lands (The Dark Tower, #3))
The two angels were both tall, but Aodhan was perhaps an inch taller, and now his eyes locked with Illium's for a long, quiet moment before he lowered his head slightly. Illium raised his hand, the movement slow, hesitant....and then his fingers brushed Aodhan's cheek just below the cut that had almost sealed. The first ray of dawn kissed the tear that rolled down Illium's face, caressed the painful wonder on Aodhan's as he lifted his hand to clasp the wrist of his friend's hand. That instant of contact, the power of it, stole her breath. Then Illium smiled, said something that made Aodhan's lips curve-Elena thought it might've been "Welcome back, Sparkle"-and they were separating to sweep off the Tower in a symphony of wild silver blue and heartbreaking light. "Raphael," she whispered, having felt him come up behind her. "Did you see?" "Yes." His hand on her nape, his thumb brushing over her pulse. "Of course it would be Illium who reached him," he murmured.
Nalini Singh (Archangel's Legion (Guild Hunter, #6))
It was hope that stood beside him, hidden and protected these years in this city, and in the years before it, spirited across the earth by the gods themselves, concealed from the forces poised to destroy her.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
A man used to being obeyed, yes, but a man also inclined to care for others. Look after them. Driven to do it by a compulsion he couldn’t leash, couldn’t train out of him. Couldn’t have broken out of him.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
It was a … rough period for me. Everything I knew was trampled. Everything. And she … I think I placed the blame for a great deal of it upon her. Began to see her as a monster.” “Is she?” “It depends on who’s telling the story, I suppose.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
He fell in love with Manhattan's skyline, like a first-time brothel guest falling for a seasoned professional. He mused over her reflections in the black East River at dusk, dawn, or darkest night, and each haloed light-in a tower or strung along the jeweled and sprawling spider legs of the Brooklyn Bridge's spans-hinted at some meaning, which could be understood only when made audible by music and encoded in lyrics.
Arthur Phillips (The Song Is You)
So dashing,” one of the girls murmured behind him. Wait until you see my dismount, he almost said.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Dawn came and matters were worse for it. Because now, emerging from the darkness, I could see, what before I had only felt, the great curtains of rain crashing down on me from towering heights and the waves that threw a path over me and trod me underfoot one after another.
Yann Martel (Life of Pi)
- Good luck to anyone who tries to go after Rowan Whitethorn. - Because Aelin will burn them to ash? - Because Rowan Whitethorn will always be the person who walks away from that encounter. Not the assailant.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Sartaq said to her, clear and steady, “I heard the spies’ stories of you. The fearless Balruhni woman in Adarlan’s empire. Neith’s Arrow. And I knew …” Nesryn sobbed, tugging and tugging. Sartaq smiled at her—gently. Sweetly. In a way she had not yet seen. “I loved you before I ever set eyes on you,” he said. “Please,” Nesryn wept. Sartaq’s hand tightened on hers. “I wish we’d had time.” A hiss behind him, a rising bulk of shining black— Then the prince was gone. Ripped from her hands. As if he had never been.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Love cannot exist without trust.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Keeping her head, Yrene decided, was a very good birthday gift indeed.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
My blood was in a ferment within me, my heart was full of longing, sweetly and foolishly; I was all expectancy and wonder; I was tremulous and waiting; my fancy fluttered and circled about the same images like martins round a bell-tower at dawn; I dreamed and was sad and sometimes cried. But through the tears and the melancholy, inspired by the music of verse or the beauty of the evening, there always rose upwards, like the grasses of early spring, shoots of happy feeling, of young and surging life.
Ivan Turgenev (First Love)
Jake stood on the corner of Second and Forty-sixth, looking at a board fence about five feet high. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. From the darkness beyond the fence cam a strong harmonic humming. The sound of many voices, all singing together. Singing one vast open note. 'Here is yes,' the voices said. 'Here is you may. Here is the good turn, the fortunate meeting, the fever that broke just before dawn and left your blood calm. Here is the wish that came true and the understanding eye. Here is the kindness you were given and thus learned to pass on. Here is the sanity and clarity you thought were lost. Here, everything is all right.
Stephen King (Wolves of the Calla (The Dark Tower, #5))
Their bodies were lithe and young, the peak of youth and virility. Hips rolled, backs arched, hands twined in the air above them as they began to weave around one another in circles and lines. "I told you," was all Yrene muttered to him. "I think Dorian would enjoy this," he muttered back.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Thank you for tonight,” Chaol said, stifling what tried to leap off his tongue: I can’t take my eyes off you.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
He was allowed to break, so that this forging might begin.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
You saw me. Not the chair or the injury. You saw me. It was the first time I’d felt … seen. Felt awake, in a long time.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
Sartaq whispered in Nesryn’s ear, “I was praying to the Eternal Sky and all thirty-six gods that you’d say yes.” She smiled, even if he couldn’t see it. “So was I,” Nesryn breathed, and they leaped into the skies.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy. "He was on his way home from work — happy, successful, healthy — and then, gone," I read in the account of a psychiatric nurse whose husband was killed in a highway accident. In 1966 I happened to interview many people who had been living in Honolulu on the morning of December 7, 1941; without exception, these people began their accounts of Pearl Harbor by telling me what an "ordinary Sunday morning" it had been. "It was just an ordinary beautiful September day," people still say when asked to describe the morning in New York when American Airlines 11 and United Airlines 175 got flown into the World Trade towers. Even the report of the 9/11 Commission opened on this insistently premonitory and yet still dumbstruck narrative note: "Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.
Joan Didion (The Year of Magical Thinking)
She added, more quietly but no less fiercely, “I once lived in fear of other people. I let other people walk all over me just because I was too afraid of the consequences for refusing. I did not know how to refuse.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
I suppose some would call ten years as a trained assassin to be experience.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
We wait for the Queen of the Valg... Who in this world calls herself Maeve.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
There is no one else to do this.” The unspoken words said the rest: They sent their best.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
EDMUND *Then with alcoholic talkativeness You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and signing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping looking, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. the peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like a veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason! *He grins wryly. It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a a little in love with death! TYRONE *Stares at him -- impressed. Yes, there's the makings of a poet in you all right. *Then protesting uneasily. But that's morbid craziness about not being wanted and loving death. EDMUND *Sardonically The *makings of a poet. No, I'm afraid I'm like the guy who is always panhandling for a smoke. He hasn't even got the makings. He's got only the habit. I couldn't touch what I tried to tell you just now. I just stammered. That's the best I'll ever do, I mean, if I live. Well, it will be faithful realism, at least. Stammering is the native eloquence of us fog people.
Eugene O'Neill (Long Day’s Journey into Night)
Her evil cannot reach us here. Let us burn the ancient tree-mace trees and close off the ancient ways. Tear down the tower, the crown of our barrow, and let us hide ourselves from evil. Let no one leave the mound, and if evil grows, we shall flee farther. No! Let evil hear the pounding of our feet! Let evil hear our drumming and our chanting songs of war. Let evil fear us! Let evil flee! In any world, may dark things know our names and fear. May their vile skins creep and shiver at every mention of the faeren. Let the night flee before the dawn and darkness crowd into the shadows. We march to war!" - Nudd, the Chestnut King
N.D. Wilson (The Chestnut King (100 Cupboards, #3))
The quality it had now, in fresh untempered sunlight, was neither faerie nor austere; the changing shadows of dusk and midnight had vanished with the darkness and the rain, and walls and roof and towers were bathed in the radiance that comes only in the first hours of the day, soft, new-washed, the delicate aftermath of dawn. The people who slept within must surely bear some imprint of this radiance in themselves, must turn instinctively to the light seeping through the shutters, while the ghostly dreams and sorrows of the night slipped away, finding sanctuary in the unwakened forest trees the sun had not yet touched.
Daphne du Maurier (The Scapegoat)
He’d never seen such a glorious sight. In every land, every battle, he had never seen anything as glorious as Aelin before the throat of the siege tower, holding the line. Dawn breaking around them, Rowan loosed a battle cry and tore into Morath.
Sarah J. Maas (Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass, #7))
And, Legolas, when the torches are kindled and men walk on the sandy floors under the echoing domes, ah! Then, Legolas, gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities, such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come, And plink! A silver drop falls, and the round wrinkles in the glass make all the towers bend and waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea. Then evening comes:” they fade and twinkle out; the torches pass on into another chamber and another dream. There is chamber after chamber, Legolas; hall opening out of hall, dome after dome, stair beyond stair; and still the winding paths lead on into the mountains’ heart. Caves! The Caverns of Helm’s Deep! Happy was the chance that drove me there! It makes me weep to leave them.
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
Like Hasar, she isn’t an easy person to be with, to understand. Aelin frightens everyone.” He snorted. “But not him. I think that’s why she fell in love with him, against her best intentions. Rowan beheld all Aelin was and is, and he was not afraid.
Sarah J. Maas (Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass, #6))
There was nobody. Her words faded. So a rocket fades. Its sparks, having grazed their way into the night, surrender to it, dark descends, pours over the outlines of houses and towers; bleak hillsides soften and fall in. But though they are gone, the night is full of them; robbed of colour, blank of windows, they exist more ponderously, give out what the frank daylight fails to transmit—the trouble and suspense of things conglomerated there in the darkness; huddled together in the darkness; reft of the relief which dawn brings when, washing the walls white and grey, spotting each windowpane, lifting the mist from the fields, showing the red brown cows peacefully grazing, all is once more decked out to the eye; exists again. I am alone; I am alone!
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)
I think if Eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its nature, despair. I think that on a certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will not set, an angel entered Hades — stood, shone, smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and hour unlooked for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur the height and compass of his promise: spoke thus — then towering, became a star, and vanished into his own Heaven. His legacy was suspense — a worse boon than despair.
Charlotte Brontë (Villette)
It was but yesterday we met in a dream. You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky. But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn. The noontide is upon us and our half-waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part. If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song. And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky.
Kahlil Gibran
Wednesday, November 8th, 1893 Here I sit in the still winter night on the drifting ice-floe, and see only stars above me. Far off I see the threads of life twisting themselves into the intricate web which stretches unbroken from life’s sweet morning dawn to the eternal death-stillness of ice. Thought follows thought—you pick the whole to pieces, and it seems so small—but high above all towers one form … Why did you take this voyage? … Could I do otherwise? Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory which I reared, in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections has fallen like a house of cards at the first breath of wind. Build up the most ingenious theories and you may be sure of one thing—that fact will defy them all. Was I so very sure? Yes, at times; but that was self-deception, intoxication. A secret doubt lurked behind all the reasoning. It seemed as though the longer I defended my theory, the nearer I came to doubting it. But no, there is not getting over the evidence of that Siberian drift-wood. But if, after all, we are on the wrong track, what then? Only disappointed human hopes, nothing more. And even if we perish, what will it matter in the endless cycles of eternity?
Fridtjof Nansen (Farthest North: The Incredible Three-Year Voyage to the Frozen Latitudes of the North (Modern Library Exploration))
He was rowed down from the north in a leather skiff manned by a crew of trolls. His fur cape was caked with candle wax, his brow stained blue by wine - though the latter was seldom noticed due to the fox mask he wore at-all times. A quill in his teeth, a solitary teardrop a-squirm in his palm, he was the young poet prince of Montreal, handsome, immaculate, searching for sturdier doors to nail his poignant verses on. In Manhattan, grit drifted into his ink bottle. In Vienna, his spice box exploded. On the Greek island of Hydra, Orpheus came to him at dawn astride a transparent donkey and restrung his cheap guitar. From that moment on, he shamelessly and willingly exposed himself to the contagion of music. To the secretly religious curiosity of the traveler was added the openly foolhardy dignity of the troubadour. By the time he returned to America, songs were working in him like bees in an attic. Connoisseurs developed cravings for his nocturnal honey, despite the fact that hearts were occasionally stung. Now, thirty years later, as society staggers towards the millennium - nailing and screeching at the while, like an orangutan with a steak knife in its side - Leonard Cohen, his vision, his gift, his perseverance, are finally getting their due. It may be because he speaks to this wounded zeitgeist with particular eloquence and accuracy, it may be merely cultural time-lag, another example of the slow-to-catch-on many opening their ears belatedly to what the few have been hearing all along. In any case, the sparkle curtain has shredded, the boogie-woogie gate has rocked loose from its hinges, and here sits L. Cohen at an altar in the garden, solemnly enjoying new-found popularity and expanded respect. From the beginning, his musical peers have recognized Cohen´s ability to establish succinct analogies among life´s realities, his talent for creating intimate relationships between the interior world of longing and language and the exterior world of trains and violins. Even those performers who have neither "covered" his compositions nor been overtly influenced by them have professed to admire their artfulness: the darkly delicious melodies - aural bouquets of gardenia and thistle - that bring to mind an electrified, de-Germanized Kurt Weill; the playfully (and therefore dangerously) mournful lyrics that can peel the apple of love and the peach of lust with a knife that cuts all the way to the mystery, a layer Cole Porter just could`t expose. It is their desire to honor L. Cohen, songwriter, that has prompted a delegation of our brightest artists to climb, one by one, joss sticks smoldering, the steep and salty staircase in the Tower of Song.
Tom Robbins
Eiffel Tower" To Robert Delaunay Eiffel Tower Guitar of the sky Your wireless telegraphy Attracts words As a rosebush the bees During the night The Seine no longer flows Telescope or bugle EIFFEL TOWER And it's a hive of words Or an inkwell of honey At the bottom of dawn A spider with barbed-wire legs Was making its web of clouds My little boy To climb the Eiffel Tower You climb on a song Do re mi fa sol la ti do We are up on top A bird sings in the telegraph antennae It's the wind Of Europe The electric wind Over there The hats fly away They have wings but they don't sing Jacqueline Daughter of France What do you see up there The Seine is asleep Under the shadow of its bridges I see the Earth turning And I blow my bugle Toward all the seas On the path Of your perfume All the bees and the words go their way On the four horizons Who has not heard this song I AM THE QUEEN OF THE DAWN OF THE POLES I AM THE COMPASS THE ROSE OF THE WINDS THAT FADES EVERY FALL AND ALL FULL OF SNOW I DIE FROM THE DEATH OF THAT ROSE IN MY HEAD A BIRD SINGS ALL YEAR LONG That's the way the Tower spoke to me one day Eiffel Tower Aviary of the world Sing Sing Chimes of Paris The giant hanging in the midst of the void Is the poster of France The day of Victory You will tell it to the stars
Vicente Huidobro (The Cubist Poets in Paris: An Anthology (French Modernist Library))
Oh, say can you see by the dawn’s early light What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming? Whose broad stripes and bright stars thru the perilous fight, O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, In full glory reflected now shines in the stream: ‘Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion, A home and a country should leave us no more! Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution. No refuge could save the hireling and slave From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave: And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave! Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.” And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
Francis Scott Key (The Star-Spangled Banner)
A chill penetrating wail of outrage screamed up from the depts of the Abyss. So loud and horrifying was it that all the citizens of Palanthas woke shruddering from even the deepest sleep and lay in their beds, paralyzed by fear, waiting for the end of the world. The guards on the the city walls could move neither hand nor foot. Shutting their eyes, they cowered in shadows, awaiting death. Babies wimpered in fear, dogs cringed and slunk beneath beds, cat's eyes gleamed. The shriek sounded again, and a pale hand reached out from the Tower gates. A ghastly face, twisted in fury, floated in the dank air. Raistlin did not move. The hand drew near, the face promised him tortures of the Abyss, where he would be dragged for his great folly in daring the curse of the Tower. The skeletal hand touched Raistlin's heart. Then, trembling, it halted. 'Know this,' said Raistlin calmly, looking up at the Tower, pitching his voice so that it could be heard by those within. 'I am the master of the past and the present! My coming was foretold. For me, the gates will open.' The skeletal hand shrank back and, with a slow sweeping motion of invitation, parted the darkness. The gates swung open upon silent hinges. Raistlin passed through them without a glance at the hand or the pale visage that was lowered in reverence. As he entered, all the black and shapeless, dark and shadowy things dwelling within the Tower bowed in homage. Then Raistlin stopped and looked around him. 'I am home,' he said.
Margaret Weis (Dragons of Spring Dawning (Dragonlance: Chronicles, #3))
The Last Hero The wind blew out from Bergen from the dawning to the day, There was a wreck of trees and fall of towers a score of miles away, And drifted like a livid leaf I go before its tide, Spewed out of house and stable, beggared of flag and bride. The heavens are bowed about my head, shouting like seraph wars, With rains that might put out the sun and clean the sky of stars, Rains like the fall of ruined seas from secret worlds above, The roaring of the rains of God none but the lonely love. Feast in my hall, O foemen, and eat and drink and drain, You never loved the sun in heaven as I have loved the rain. The chance of battle changes -- so may all battle be; I stole my lady bride from them, they stole her back from me. I rent her from her red-roofed hall, I rode and saw arise, More lovely than the living flowers the hatred in her eyes. She never loved me, never bent, never was less divine; The sunset never loved me, the wind was never mine. Was it all nothing that she stood imperial in duresse? Silence itself made softer with the sweeping of her dress. O you who drain the cup of life, O you who wear the crown, You never loved a woman's smile as I have loved her frown. The wind blew out from Bergen to the dawning of the day, They ride and run with fifty spears to break and bar my way, I shall not die alone, alone, but kin to all the powers, As merry as the ancient sun and fighting like the flowers. How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave, Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave. Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie, When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky. The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, -- You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes. Know you what earth shall lose to-night, what rich uncounted loans, What heavy gold of tales untold you bury with my bones? My loves in deep dim meadows, my ships that rode at ease, Ruffling the purple plumage of strange and secret seas. To see this fair earth as it is to me alone was given, The blow that breaks my brow to-night shall break the dome of heaven. The skies I saw, the trees I saw after no eyes shall see, To-night I die the death of God; the stars shall die with me; One sound shall sunder all the spears and break the trumpet's breath: You never laughed in all your life as I shall laugh in death.
G.K. Chesterton
Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about. They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three. There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another table who look the recruits over. The recruits stand sideways along the bar with their thumbs in their belts and watch the room. They talk among themselves of the expedition in loud voices and the old Mennonite shakes a rueful head and sips his drink and mutters. They'll stop you at the river, he says. The second corporal looks past his comrades. Are you talking to me? At the river. Be told. They'll jail you to a man. Who will? The United States Army. General Worth. They hell they will. Pray that they will. He looks at his comrades. He leans toward the Mennonite. What does that mean, old man? Do ye cross that river with yon filibuster armed ye'll not cross it back. Don't aim to cross it back. We goin to Sonora. What's it to you, old man? The Mennonite watches the enshadowed dark before them as it is reflected to him in the mirror over the bar. He turns to them. His eyes are wet, he speaks slowly. The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making into a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs. But they berated the old man and swore at him until he moved off down the bar muttering, and how else could it be? How these things end. In confusion and curses and blood. They drank on and the wind blew in the streets and the stars that had been overhead lay low in the west and these young men fell afoul of others and words were said that could not be put right again and in the dawn the kid and the second corporal knelt over the boy from Missouri who had been named Earl and they spoke his name but he never spoke back. He lay on his side in the dust of the courtyard. The men were gone, the whores were gone. An old man swept the clay floor within the cantina. The boy lay with his skull broken in a pool of blood, none knew by whom. A third one came to be with them in the courtyard. It was the Mennonite. A warm wind was blowing and the east held a gray light. The fowls roosting among the grapevines had begun to stir and call. There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto, said the Mennonite. He had been holding his hat in his hands and now he set it upon his head again and turned and went out the gate.
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)