“
Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.
”
”
Anaïs Nin
“
Dorian looked at the carpet, at all the threads woven together. 'What do I do now?' They were gone: the woman he'd loved--and the man he hated. He met her stare. No calculation, no coldness, no pity in those turquoise eyes. Just unflinching honesty, as there had been from the very start with her. 'What do I do?'
She had to swallow before she said. 'You light up the darkness.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4))
“
There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with one another and with the place and all the living things.
”
”
Wendell Berry (Jayber Crow)
“
Men's deaths are epic, women's deaths are tragic: is that it? He has misunderstood the very nature of conflict. Epic is countless tragedies, woven together. Heroes don't become heroes without carnage, and carnage has both causes and consequences. And those don't begin and end on a battlefield.
”
”
Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships)
“
He was losing her incrementally...As a web is no more than holes woven together, they were bonded by what was no longer there.
”
”
Anthony Marra (A Constellation of Vital Phenomena)
“
Truth and facts are woven together. However, sometimes facts can blind you from seeing what is actually going on in someone’s life.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Grief and love are sisters, woven together from the beginning. Their kinship reminds us that there is no love that does not contain loss and no loss that is not a reminder of the love we carry for what we once held close.
”
”
Francis Weller (The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief)
“
I feel the urge, familiar now, to wrench myself from my body and speak directly into her mind. It is the same urge, I realize, that makes me want to kiss her every time I see her, because even a sliver of distance between us is infuriating. Our fingers, loosely woven a moment ago, now clutch together, her palm tacky with moisture, mine rough in places where I have grabbed too many handles on too many moving trains. Now she looks pale and small, but her eyes make me think of wide-open skies that I have never actually seen, only dreamed of.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
“
The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight.
”
”
Virginia Woolf
“
Like an unprotected photograph
some friendships fade.
People grow apart, lose touch,
want different things.
Dreams, woven together,
unravel.
”
”
Kimberly Marcus (Exposed)
“
We are nothing more than distractions for each other, and distractions get you killed. But my hands close over his, our fingers lacing, until our bones are woven together. The fire is dying, flames reduced to embers. But Cal is still here. He will never leave me.
”
”
Victoria Aveyard (Glass Sword (Red Queen, #2))
“
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.
”
”
Chief Seattle
“
We are all woven together in the great web of humanity, and whatever we can do to benefit and uplift others will reflect in blessing upon ourselves.
”
”
Ellen Gould White (The Story of Patriarchs and Prophets - As Illustrated in the Lives of Holy Men of Old)
“
We're each single threads woven together in a tapestry God has created. Only he sees the full picture, but not even a sparrow falls without his knowing.
”
”
Francine Rivers (A Voice in the Wind (Mark of the Lion, #1))
“
Depending on who you ask, sometimes ghost stories are all that is left of history. History is full of ghosts, because it’s full of myth. All of it woven together depending on who survived to do the telling.
”
”
Roshani Chokshi (The Silvered Serpents (The Gilded Wolves, #2))
“
Your job then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity. The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship—just so long as those prayers are sincere.
I think you have every right to cherry-pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted. It's nothing to be embarrassed about. It's the history of mankind's search for holiness. If humanity never evolved in its exploration of the divine, a lot of us would still be worshipping golden Egyptian statues of cats. And this evolution of religious thinking does involve a fair bit of cherry-picking. You take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you keep moving toward the light.
The Hopi Indians thought that the world's religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm. More contemporarily, the Dalai Lama has repeated the same idea, assuring his Western students repeatedly that they needn't become Tibetan Buddhists in order to be his pupils. He welcomes them to take whatever ideas they like out of Tibetan Buddhism and integrate these ideas into their own religious practices. Even in the most unlikely and conservative of places, you can find sometimes this glimmering idea that God might be bigger than our limited religious doctrines have taught us. In 1954, Pope Pius XI, of all people, sent some Vatican delegates on a trip to Libya with these written instructions: "Do NOT think that you are going among Infidels. Muslims attain salvation, too. The ways of Providence are infinite."
But doesn't that make sense? That the infinite would be, indeed ... infinite? That even the most holy amongst us would only be able to see scattered pieces of the eternal picture at any given time? And that maybe if we could collect those pieces and compare them, a story about God would begin to emerge that resembles and includes everyone? And isn't our individual longing for transcendence all just part of this larger human search for divinity? Don't we each have the right to not stop seeking until we get as close to the source of wonder as possible? Even if it means coming to India and kissing trees in the moonlight for a while?
That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight. Choosing my religion.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
You and I are victims of the same disease. We're fighting the same war, just different battles in different theaters, and it's way too late for me to hate you for anything, because we're the same damn thing. My soul, your conscience, whatever's left of me woven into whatever's left of you, all tangled up and conjoined. We're in this together, corpse.
”
”
Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies (Warm Bodies, #1))
“
Like the cat who finds her way back home over a thousand miles, like the dog who waits for his master to arrive on the train that never comes, like the one who keeps a vigil at her master’s grave until she too can cross the bridge, some people and their pets are woven together by threads of life and they cannot, and will not, for long be separated.
”
”
Kate McGahan
“
It is hundreds of tiny threads of memories, which sew people together through the years. Despite, their mental separation they stay woven into that tapestry out of habit, emotion, obsession or fear.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
There's no chance of their having a conscious glimpse of the truth as long as they refuse to disturb the things they take for granted and remain incapable of explaining them. For if your starting-point is unknown, and your end-point and intermediate stages are woven together out of unknown material, there may be coherence, but knowledge is completely out of the question.
”
”
Plato (The Republic)
“
He sat watching the people go by, wondering how a thing of this sort could have come about, I must have let myself get mixed up in something horrible, he thought ... Probably she's the one who did it; I have no control of myself or anything that's happened. So now I'm waking up. I'm awake, he thought ... I've been destroyed and now that I'm awake all I can do is realize it ... The shock of getting up there and telling that account made me see. Mixture of lies and bits of truth. Woven together. Unable to see where each starts.
”
”
Philip K. Dick
“
I took her hand in mine, not the way I used to hold hers as a child, but with our fingers woven together. And we strode through the archway of emperors and into the open -- hand in hand, my mother and I.
”
”
Justina Chen (North of Beautiful)
“
Over and over the images rolled behind Helen’s eyes like giant waves. When they stopped, Helen could see everything clearly—like a beach wiped clean after a storm.
She and Lucas were woven from the same cloth, cut apart, and then stitched back together from one cycle to another. The circumstances changed, but they were always intertwined, no matter what.
”
”
Josephine Angelini (Goddess (Starcrossed, #3))
“
But remember, pain must be woven together with threads of love and patience. Don't ever let pain poison you. A beautiful carpet is not woven in one day.
”
”
Muriel Maufroy (Rumi's Daughter)
“
We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversely and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment.
”
”
Michel de Montaigne
“
The Hopi Indians thought that the world’s religions each contained one spiritual thread, and that these threads are always seeking each other, wanting to join. When all the threads are finally woven together they will form a rope that will pull us out of this dark cycle of history and into the next realm.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love)
“
But all these truths, woven together, might give us a picture of what is true. That is why it’s important to know all the different stories. We can never see all the sky at once.
”
”
Alison Croggon (The Riddle)
“
Beauty is a wonderful tapestry embroidered by the many single threads woven together by the unspeakable tender hand of God.
”
”
Joseph Jacson K.
“
In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled “Bordando el Manto Terrestre,” were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in the tapestry, and the tapestry was the world. Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she’d wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had take her away from nothing, there’d been no escape. What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49)
“
It looked like she held a basketful of woven gold.
Arin leap down the stairs. He strode up to his cousin and seized her arm.
“Arin!”
“What did you do?”
Sarsine jerked away. “What she wanted. Pull yourself together.”
But Arin only saw Kestrel as she had been last night before the ball. How her hair had been a spill of low light over his palms. He had threaded desire into those braids, had wanted her to sense it even as he dreaded that she would. He had met her eyes in the mirror, and didn’t know, couldn’t tell her feelings. He only knew the fire of his own.
“It’s just hair,” Sarsine said. “It will grow back.”
“Yes,” said Arin, “but no everything does.
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
“
Our lives are like single threads meticulously woven together—the result an exquisite tapestry of past, present, and future. Bound by unflappable trust, our hearts, our desires, her life woven into mine.
”
”
Jillian Dodd (That Baby (That Boy, #3))
“
Life unravels as it's lived. It can't be woven back together.
”
”
Allan Wolf (Zane's Trace)
“
This is how my love for her goes on: in moments remembered and moments imagined. It’s how I keep her alive. Hers is the voice in my head, my conscience. I see the world, at least in part, through her eyes. Her story—which is the story of a time and land and the indomitable will of a people—is my story; two lives woven together, and like any good story, ours will begin and end and begin again. Love is what remains.
”
”
Kristin Hannah (The Four Winds)
“
Kiss me hard, let your wetness linger along my lips. I want to drown against you, our bodies woven together and raging in ecstatic synchrony. I don’t want to lie in an easy, hollow embrace. I want to feel the hunger emanating from you. I want the desire to swallow me. I want it to hurt. I want you to show me that this matters. That we matter. That you would risk it all for me. Love me with everything you have or don’t love me at all.
”
”
Jacqueline Simon Gunn
“
Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."-- Chief Seattle, Duwamish
”
”
Chief Seattle
“
Time was spinning numerous threads for its tapestry, some to be woven together, some to entangle or fray, others merely to perish and pass away.
”
”
Cecilia Dart-Thornton (Weatherwitch (The Crowthistle Chronicles, #3))
“
Our actions are part of who we are. It's not that we are inert things who do stuff. Rather, the stuff we do and who we are are inextricably woven together.
”
”
Brad Warner (Don't Be a Jerk: And Other Practical Advice from Dogen, Japan's Greatest Zen Master)
“
But that is the way of the world: sadness and delight, anger and forbearance, hatred and love—all woven together in every inch of the tapestry.
”
”
Dean Koontz (The Mercy of Snakes (Nameless: Season One, #5))
“
This isn’t just a kiss. It’s all the words we haven’t said written with our mouths, with our bodies. It’s unbridled anger and hope and fear and lust—all woven together and electrified.
”
”
Lexi Ryan (These Twisted Bonds (These Hollow Vows, #2))
“
Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads.
Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place.
Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows?
...No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right.
How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads....
Why did they kill little Bobby Franks?
Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood.
. . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain
”
”
Clarence Darrow (Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom)
“
Each of our lives’ is a separate and precious journey. No matter how happy, sad, painful, tragic or confusing it may by, it is unique and beautiful. No matter if we hurt others or if we ourselves were hurt, it happened and it is part of our story.
If we think we can have complete control over this journey, our journey will wake us up… usually with a very unpleasant surprise.
More than genetics, money or education, it is our journey who defines who we are. It defines what kind of person you are. Not the experiences you encountered nor the happy or traumatic events you may have endured. But rather how we dealt with those events and how we continue to deal with those events; when we evaluate ourselves and how we treat others.
Your journey is part of your story. But it is not the complete story of who and how you are. You are a soul, a spirit, who has traveled through this life and along the way; you learned and gathered bits and pieces from here and there. And you, yourself, have woven together a soul, a spirit. And that is who you are today. You define… you.
Oh, and just in case you thought your journey, your story was over… surprise, its not. So keep weaving. You are not finished yet. It is never to late to define who you are.
”
”
José N. Harris
“
Our right brain perceives the big picture and recognizes that everything around us, about us, among us and within us is made up of energy particles that are woven together into a universal tapestry. Since everything is connected, there is an intimate relationship between the atomic space around and within me, and the atomic space around and within you - regardless of where we are. On an energetic level, if I think about you, send good vibrations your way, hold you in the light, or pray for you, then I am consciously sending my energy to you with a healing intention. If I meditate over you or lay my hands upon your wound, then I am purposely directing the energy of my being to help you heal.
”
”
Jill Bolte Taylor (My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey)
“
Our lives were a complex tapestry, and our woven strands were only meant to intersect at a small number of points in the time-conceived whole. An embroidered starburst, a missed warp, a complicated notion on the loom of time. We were always together, but meant to live our majorities apart, two golden threads wandering through a haunted textile life.
”
”
Courtney M. Privett (Mayfly Requiem (The Malora Octet, #1))
“
Her story—which is the story of a time and land and the indomitable will of a people—is my story; two lives woven together, and like any good story, ours will begin and end and begin again.
”
”
Kristin Hannah (The Four Winds)
“
How blue is the sea, how blue is the sky, how blue and tiny and redeemable everything is, even you, even your eyes, even your imagination. The Soul at Last The Lord’s terrifying kindness has come to me. It was only a small silvery thing—say a piece of silver cloth, or a thousand spider webs woven together, or a small handful of aspen leaves, with their silver backs shimmering. And
”
”
Mary Oliver (Why I Wake Early)
“
Edward wasn't supposed to leave Jordan, though. They were meant to age together. That loss continues to be spiked with pain; it will never be soothed. And he can see, objectively, that Shay's life without him would have been woven with different moments, friends or lack of friends, different fights with Besa, different books and different struggles.
”
”
Ann Napolitano (Dear Edward)
“
Through him speaks a shrewd and magnanimous people, a people who have woven together into one wisdom a profound, old, terrible, and unimaginably various experience of life. But he himself is young: impatient, inexperienced. He stands higher than we stand, seeing wider, but he is himself only the height of a man.
”
”
Ursula K. Le Guin
“
My friend, I am not what I seem. Seeming is but a garment I wear-a care-woven garment that protects me from thy questionings and thee from my negligence.
The “I” in me, my friend, dwells in the house of silence, and therein it shall remain for ever more, unperceived, unapproachable.
I would not have thee believe in what I say nor trust in what I do-for my words are naught but thy own thoughts in sound and my deeds thy own hopes in action.
When thou sayest, “The wind bloweth eastward,” I say, “Aye it doth blow eastward”; for I would not have thee know that my mind doth not dwell upon the wind but upon the sea.
Thou canst not understand my seafaring thoughts, nor would I have thee understand. I would be at sea alone.
When it is day with thee, my friend, it is night with me; yet even then I speak of the noontide that dances upon the hills and of the purple shadow that steals its way across the valley; for thou canst not hear the songs of my darkness nor see my wings beating against the stars-and I fain would not have thee hear or see. I would be with night alone.
When thou ascendest to thy Heaven I descend to my Hell-even then thou callest to me across the unbridgeable gulf, “My companion, my comrade,” and I call back to thee, “My comrade, my companion”-for I would not have thee see my Hell. The flame would burn thy eyesight and the smoke would crowd thy nostrils. And I love my Hell too well to have thee visit it. I would be in Hell alone.
Thou lovest Truth and Beauty and Righteousness; and I for thy sake say it is well and seemly to love these things. But in my heart I laughed at thy love. Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone.
My friend, thou art good and cautious and wise; nay, thou art perfect-and I, too, speak with thee wisely and cautiously. And yet I am mad. But I mask my madness. I would be mad alone.
My friend, thou art not my friend, but how shall I make thee understand? My path is not thy path, yet together we walk, hand in hand.
”
”
Kahlil Gibran (The Madman)
“
28So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together to fit into God’s perfect plan of bringing good into our lives, for we are his lovers who have been called to fulfill his designed purpose.
”
”
Brian Simmons (Romans: Grace and Glory-OE: Passion Translation)
“
Their love had lasted a lifetime; their stories had become woven together so tightly that they’d forgotten where one ended and another began. All around us were scattered the tiny clues of their love, enmeshed in even the most mundane objects
”
”
Martin Pistorius (Ghost Boy: My Miraculous Escape from a Life Locked Inside My Own Body)
“
At what point did he and I establish something? I missed it. That’s what worries me. It was organic. The knots and bonds were knitted without me noticing. Now I don’t know how to untie all the knots because I missed how they were woven together.
”
”
Amo Jones (In Peace Lies Havoc (Midnight Mayhem, #1))
“
All paths lie together in the hand of god like a web endlessly woven, and yours and mine are no greater or less than the beetle's or the squirrel's or the sparrow's. All are held together.
”
”
Daniel Quinn
“
And if someone were to ask, Noah, what’s the most important aspect of story? I would most likely answer, character, but I’m not sure that’s true, because my favorite books contain my favorite places. I do not say, I love Harry Potter, or I love Frodo Baggins; I say, I love Hogwarts, and I love Middle-earth. Thoreau’s Walden is less about the book, more about the pond. The woods. And so setting, I think, is the secret weapon of storytelling. I always want to meet new people until I’ve met them. I think if I spend enough time with a person so we get woven together like an old basket, eventually we’ll think in similar patterns until our various histories are apples and oranges spilling over the edge of the basket, and I think this kind of shared history is dangerous. I think it’s okay to recognize a thing’s faults and still like that thing. Because apples and oranges spilling from a basket can be beautiful too. I think I’m whatever personality hates personality tests. I think nostalgia is just a soul’s way of missing a thing, and like long-distance love, nostalgia grows deeper with time until the reality of what a thing actually was gets blurred to the point you miss the idea of the thing more than the thing itself. I like the idea of hot cocoa more than drinking
”
”
David Arnold (The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik)
“
As I look at my life from the back side of the tapestry, I can see from the canvas of time that each single threads of my life was necessary.
It's these threads woven together that soar to repair an older and tattered pieces of mine into a beautiful design.
”
”
Joseph Jacson K.
“
The Alchemical world view, in stark contrast to the scientific world view, where rational deterministic man is completely separated from both Nature and the Self, in fact the Self does not even exist. In the alchemical world view, all three are inextricably woven together and in "synchronistic" or "archetypal" events & occurrences in one's life, all distinctions between them blur and almost disappear.
”
”
Craig Nelson
“
Namaste
means that my soul
acknowledges yours -
not just your light,
your wisdom,
your goodness,
but also your darkness,
your suffering,
your imperfections.
It is a recognition
and acceptance of
the inexplicable
divine absurdity,
the miraculous woven
into the ordinary,
light and darkness
intimately entwined
in magical, messy
humanity.
It means that I honor
all that you are
with all that I am.
So, namaste,
my fellow travelers.
I'm so glad we're on
this trek through
the universe together.
”
”
L.R. Knost
“
It looked like she held a basketful of woven gold.
Arin leap down the stairs. He strode up to his cousin and seized her arm.
“Arin!”
“What did you do?”
Sarsine jerked away. “What she wanted. Pull yourself together.”
But Arin only saw Kestrel as she had been last night before the ball. How her hair had been a spill of low light over his palms. He had threaded desire into those braids, had wanted her to sense it even as he dreaded that she would. He had met her eyes in the mirror, and didn’t know, couldn’t tell her feelings. He only knew the fire of his own.
“It’s just hair,” Sarsine said. “It will grow back.”
“Yes,” said Arin, “but not everything does.
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
“
Men’s deaths are epic, women’s deaths are tragic: is that it? He has misunderstood the very nature of conflict. Epic is countless tragedies, woven together. Heroes don’t become heroes without carnage, and carnage has both causes and consequences. And those don’t begin and end on a battlefield.
”
”
Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships)
“
When we were little, Eric and Fitz and I invented a language. I've forgotten most of it, with the exception of a few words: valyango, which meant pirate; palapala, which meant rain; and ruskifer, which had no translation to English but described the dimpled bottom of a woven basket, all the reeds coming together to form one joint spot, and that we sometimes used to explain our friendship.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)
“
My poetry lives in the spaces of time, in between time, in time out. It is not a constant vibe; I catch it like the incoming tide, going out again. It will not let me say what I want to say for words cannot be woven together to express me that way. My words have learned to be patient for nothing. Now is my time out.
”
”
Tonny K. Brown
“
In a world sick with envy that leads to coveting that leads to greed that too often results in violence, it wouldn’t seem that something as small as excellent muffins could lift a man’s spirits, even during talk of murder. But that is the way of the world: sadness and delight, anger and forbearance, hatred and love—all woven together in every inch of the tapestry.
”
”
Dean Koontz (The Mercy of Snakes (Nameless: Season One, #5))
“
Lighthearted boys and girls
were harvesting the grapes in woven baskets,
while on a resonant harp a boy among them
played a tune of longing, singing low
with delicate voice a summer dirge. The others,
breaking out in song for the joy of it,
kept time together as they skipped along.
”
”
Homer (The Iliad)
“
What is genuinely awe-inspiring is the realization that, at the molecular level, we are all composed of the same fundamental materials. We share a profound connection, an inherent oneness that transcends the boundaries of individuality. From the grandest galaxies to the tiniest atoms, we are all manifestations of the same energy source
woven together in the intricate fabric of existence.
”
”
T.L. Workman (From Student to Teacher: A Journey of Transformation and Manifestation)
“
VALENTINE'S DAY POEM:
What earth is to sky.. on the horizon..
What moon is to night.. no matter start studded ocean!
What Love is to life.. above all give and take..
that you are to me.. a rhythm that soulful music would make!
*
Let's surrender to each other..
for a dream to be woven together!!
You're my weakness and my strength..
wanna live with you till the end!! .. and beyond.. ;)!!!
*
Even a dent in the universe..
can't express my Love for you!
My life is yours forever..
O girl, O girl..
O girl.. you be mine!!
Not just for this time..
Everyday beyond.. Valentine,
O O my heart, be my.. Valentine!
”
”
Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (Guru with Guitar)
“
Thus he became the archetype of the Renaissance Man, an inspiration to all who believe that the “infinite works of nature,” as he put it, are woven together in a unity filled with marvelous patterns.2 His ability to combine art and science, made iconic by his drawing of a perfectly proportioned man spread-eagle inside a circle and square, known as Vitruvian Man, made him history’s most creative genius.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Leonardo da Vinci)
“
And I think, OK. So a dog isn't the most important thing. But a dog like Honey loves one person completely, unwaveringly, with perfect faith. That has to be more important than most things.
And Gabriel, I say. He has Gabriel too.
Gil says nothing but I know the answer. The answer is that Gabriel can't save Matthew any more than Gil can, or Honey. Or Jake. But we are all woven together, like a piece of cloth, and we all support each other, for better or worse. Gabriel is just a baby but eventually he will see the world and his father as they are: imperfect, dangerous, peppered with betrayals and also with love.
”
”
Meg Rosoff (Picture Me Gone)
“
chapter, however, the modern perspective is that brains enable minds, and that YOU is your vastly parallel and distributed brain without a central command center. There is no ghost in the machine, no secret stuff that is YOU. That YOU that you are so proud of is a story woven together by your interpreter module to account for as much of your behavior as it can incorporate, and it denies or rationalizes the rest.
”
”
Michael S. Gazzaniga (Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain)
“
Who hasn’t grown up knowing the bitchy cheerleader, a dumb jock, the computer nerd, an overbearing mother, a distant father, a misunderstood old person, or an alienated artist, writer, musician, or dancer? If everybody knows these people, are they really clichés or merely categories? Maybe the various cities, towns, neighborhoods, and blocks are really replicating microcosms? The same strands woven together to create one large tapestry of life?
”
”
Karen Wojcik Berner (Until My Soul Gets It Right (The Bibliophiles #2))
“
A drawing is a translation. That is to say each mark on the paper is consciously realted, not only to the real or imagined "model", but also to every mark and space already set out on the paper. Thus a drawn or painted image is woven together by the energy (or the lassitude, wen the drawing is weak) of countless judgements [sic]. Every time a figuration is evoked in a drawing, everything about it has been mediated by consciousness, either intuitively or systematically.
”
”
John Berger
“
He kisses me again, folding me in his arms--the place I want to stay for a thousand years. When I first discovered Dream Town, I wasn't sure where I belonged, where my true home was. But now I know. Sometimes home is a town, a house with four walls. Other times, it's two hollow eyes in a skull, a skeleton without a heartbeat. It's here---not in Dream Town or Halloween Town---but in Jack's arms.
Folded against this hollow, skeleton chest is where I belong.
I let the tears stream down my face, I let them bind us together, salt and water and fabric and bone. Woven parts of ourselves that become one.
”
”
Shea Ernshaw (Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas)
“
Political experts had difficulty anticipating the USSR’s collapse, Tetlock found, because a prediction that not only forecast the regime’s demise but also understood the reasons for it required different strands of argument to be woven together. There was nothing inherently contradictory about these ideas, but they tended to emanate from people on different sides of the political spectrum,11 and scholars firmly entrenched in one ideological camp were unlikely to have embraced them both.
”
”
Nate Silver (The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't)
“
The lives of all the men we meet and know are woven into our own destiny, together with the lives of many we shall never know on earth. But certain ones, very few, are our close friends. Because we have more in common with them, we are able to love them with a special selfless perfection, since we have more to share. They are inseparable from our own destiny, and, therefore, our love for them is especially holy: it is a manifestation of God in our lives.
”
”
Thomas Merton (No Man Is an Island)
“
I think I like stories because they're simple and contained. You establish a status quo, create conflict, then resolve it. In life, nothing is ever really resolved. Your story never stops. How can it, when all our stories are woven together, part of some greater tapestry of tales that make up our lives and the lives of those around us?
”
”
Hazel Hayes (Out of Love)
“
Let Us Gather In A Flourishing Way
Let us gather in a flourishing way
opening with sun light grains songs
we carry every day
I pasture the young body
happy to give and give pearls pearls
of corn flowing tree of life at the four corners
let us gather in a flourishing way
happy life full of strength to
giving birth to fragrant rivers
Fresh sweet green turquoise strong
rainbows flesh of our children
let us gather in a flourishing way
in the light and in the flesh of our heart to toil
quiet in fields of blossoms
together to stretch the arms
With the quiet rain in the morning
Early on our forehead star
Heat sky and wisdom to meet us
Where we toil always
in the garden of our Struggle and joy
let us offer our hearts to greet our eagle rising
freedom
woven branches celebrate arms branches
nopales stones feathers bursting piercing
figs and avocados
Butterfly ripe fields and clear seas
of our face
to breathe all the way in blessing
to give seeds to grow maiztlán
in the hands of our love.
”
”
Juan Felipe Herrera (Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems)
“
Men's deaths are epic, women's deaths are tragic: is that it? He has misunderstood the very nature of conflict. Epic is countless tragedies, woven together. Heroes don't become heroes without carnage, and carnage has both causes and consequences. And those don't begin and end on a battlefield.
If he truly wants to understand the nature of the epic story I am letting him compose, he needs to accept that the casualties of war aren't just the ones who die. And that a death off the battlefield can be more noble (more heroic, if he prefers it that way) than one in the midst of fighting. But it hurts, he said when Creusa died. He would rather her story had been snuffed out like a spark failing to catch damp kindling. It does hurt, I whispered. It should hurt. She isn't a footnote, she's a person. And she - all the Trojan women - should be memorialized as much as any other person. Their Greek counterparts too. War is not a sport, to be decided in a quick bout on a strip of contested land. It is a web which stretches out to the furthest parts of the world, drawing everyone into itself.
”
”
Natalie Haynes (A Thousand Ships)
“
I know that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without distrubing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame.
I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain. But I do know that in back of it is a power that made it, that power alone can tell, and if there is no power, then it is an infinite chance which man cannot solve.
”
”
Marianne Wiggins (Evidence of Things Unseen)
“
Together, the chapters make the case that historically high imprisonment rates and the intensive policing and surveillance that have accompanied them are transforming poor Black neighborhoods into communities of suspects and fugitives. A climate of fear and suspicion pervades everyday life, and many residents live with the daily concern that the authorities will seize them and take them away. A new social fabric is emerging under the threat of confinement: one woven in suspicion, distrust, and the paranoiac practices of secrecy, evasion, and unpredictability.
”
”
Alice Goffman (On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City (Fieldwork Encounters and Discoveries))
“
I woke up dead. At the mall. And while I was there I fell in love, found out who killed me, haunted the living, made friends, and saved my dad's life. Not a bad afterlife.
I was a daughter, a friend, a lover, a singer, a Mathlete, a New Yorker, a girl. All of my stories were woven together.
I have a new story now. I'm the girl, the angel, who helps you move on. I'm the girl, the angel, who lives here at the mall. I'm the girl, the angel, who loves Nick. He's the boy, the angel, who helps you move on too. Who loves me. Here at the mall.
We both hope you stay safe and well. But if something should happen to you, we'll be here for you. We want to know your story.
But first, stop and listen. Can you hear that? It's the sound of life and afterlife. And it sounds exactly like music.
”
”
Judy Sheehan (I Woke Up Dead at the Mall)
“
It is a single perfect memory. A goodbye that gives me peace and courage. Her courage. If I ever have a sliver of it, I will be lucky. Be brave. It was the last thing she said to me in this world, and I wish I'd told her that her courage would always guide me. In my dreams, I say I love you. I tell her every day how she shaped me, how she taught me to stand up and find my woman's voice, even in this man's world. This is how my love for her goes on: in moments remembered and moments imagined. It's how I keep her alive. Hers is the voice in my conscience. I see the world, at least in part, through her eyes. Her story- which is the story of a time and land and the indomitable will of a people- is my story; two lives woven together, and like any good story, ours will begin and end and being again. Love is what remains.
”
”
Kristin Hannah (The Four Winds)
“
We are all tapestries, woven of the world. We are lifelines interlacing, yarn of many sources swirled. In our pattern there is purpose. In our softness , strength abides. Warmth and beauty still unfolding, growing, as the shuttle glides...
”
”
Katey Howes (Woven of the World)
“
Break it down.
What are you really afraid of? Is it the water or is it not being able to breathe? Is it sitting in the dentist chair or not being in control of a situation? Analyze it and get to the place where you can see what’s really haunting you and holding you back. I find that fears are not as big and powerful as we make them out to be. They’re just made up of many thoughts that have woven together. Unravel them, pick them apart, tackle them one by one. It’s like breaking down a wall, brick by brick.
”
”
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
“
There is a theory of space and time embedded in the way we use words. There is a theory of matter and a theory of causality, too. Our language has a model of sex in it (actually, two models), and conceptions of intimacy and power and fairness. Divinity, degradation, and danger are also ingrained in our mother tongue, together with a conception of well-being and a philosophy of free will. These conceptions vary in their details from language to language, but their overall logic is the same. They add up to a distinctively human model of reality, which differs in major ways from the objective understanding of reality eked out by our best science and logic. Though these ideas are woven into language, their roots are deeper than language itself. They lay out the ground rules for how we understand our surroundings, how we assign credit and blame to our fellows, and how we negotiate our relationships with them. A close look at our speech-our conversations, our jokes, our curses, our legal disputes, the names we give our babies-can therefore give us insight into who we are.
”
”
Steven Pinker (The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature)
“
Many today insist that music is amoral, that there is nothing innately good or bad about music itself. They say it is neutral, and only its use determines whether it is good or evil. To a degree this is true, but in a very real way music ceases to be neutral the moment those little black-and-white notes begin to be woven together to produce a certain combinations of sounds that result in the message or world-view that the composer of the music wants to get across. The music itself becomes a statement, even when words are not attached to its message.
”
”
Ron Owens (Return to Worship: A God-Centered Approach)
“
In St. Patrick Town, we find the stubborn, sprightly residents all awake--the leprechaun I spoke to days before still in search of his lost pot of gold in the glen, rain clouds heavy in the distance, and rainbows gleaming above the treetops.
In Valentine's Town, Queen Ruby is bustling through the streets, making sure the chocolatiers are busy crafting their confections of black velvet truffles and cherry macaroons, trying to make up for lost time, while her cupids still flock through town, wild and restless.
The rabbits have resumed painting their pastel eggs in Easter Town. The townsfolk in Fourth of July Town are testing new rainbow sparklers and fireworks that explode in the formation of a queen's crown, in honor of the Pumpkin Queen who saved them all from a life of dreamless sleep. In Thanksgiving Town, everyone is preparing for the feast in the coming season, and the elves in Christmas Town have resumed assembling presents and baking powdered-sugar gingerbread cookies.
And in Halloween Town, we have just enough time to finish preparations for the holiday: cobwebs woven together, pumpkins carved, and black tar-wax candles lit.
”
”
Shea Ernshaw (Long Live the Pumpkin Queen: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas)
“
a simple, inspiring mission for Wikipedia: “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.” It was a huge, audacious, and worthy goal. But it badly understated what Wikipedia did. It was about more than people being “given” free access to knowledge; it was also about empowering them, in a way not seen before in history, to be part of the process of creating and distributing knowledge. Wales came to realize that. “Wikipedia allows people not merely to access other people’s knowledge but to share their own,” he said. “When you help build something, you own it, you’re vested in it. That’s far more rewarding than having it handed down to you.”111 Wikipedia took the world another step closer to the vision propounded by Vannevar Bush in his 1945 essay, “As We May Think,” which predicted, “Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified.” It also harkened back to Ada Lovelace, who asserted that machines would be able to do almost anything, except think on their own. Wikipedia was not about building a machine that could think on its own. It was instead a dazzling example of human-machine symbiosis, the wisdom of humans and the processing power of computers being woven together like a tapestry.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
“
Remember the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matt. 13:24–30) they must grow together, Jesus said, until the harvest. We cannot remove the tares without destroying the wheat. Evil, like the tares, is part of the Ground of Being, the nature of reality, the meaning of God. My being is always light and darkness, love and hate, God and Satan, life and death, being and nonbeing—all in dynamic tension. I cannot split off part of who I am, confess it, be absolved of it, and seek to try again. I cannot pretend that I am made in God’s image until I own as part of my being the shadow side of my life, which reflects the shadow side of God. That is why evil is always present in the holy; that is why evil is perceived as relentless and inescapable; that is why Jesus and Judas have been symbolically bound together since the dawn of time. The Johannine myth was not wrong in suggesting that Jesus was the preexisting word of God who was enfleshed into human history. That is a very accurate conception of an ultimate truth. But it is not complete. Judas Iscariot was also mythically present in God at the dawn of creation, and he too was enfleshed in the drama played out in Judea in the first century. The mythical themes are woven together time after time. God and Satan, life and death, good and evil, sacrifice and freedom, light and darkness, Jesus and Judas—are all inextricably bound up with one another. I cannot finally step into the new being without bringing my own dark shadow with me.
”
”
John Shelby Spong (A New Christianity for a New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying & How a New Faith is Being Born)
“
I made a discovery. It was cold enough to make my eyes water, and I found out that If I kept them almost closed, the moisture diffused the lights, so that everything - the Moon, the stars, the street lamp - seemed to have halos and points of scattered light around it. The snow-banks seemed to glitter like a sea of spun sugar, and all the stars were woven together by a lace of incandescence, so that I was walking through a Universe so wild, so wonderful that my heart nearly broke with its beauty.
"For years, I carried that time and place in mind. It's still there. But the thing is, the Universe didn't make it. I did. I saw it, but I saw it because I made myself see it. I took the stars, which are distant suns, and the night, which is the Earth's shadow, and the snow, which is water undergoing a state-change, and I took the tears in my eyes, and I made a wonderland. No one else has ever been able to see it. No one else has ever been able to go there. Not even I can ever return to it physically, it lies thirty-eight years in the past, in the eye-level perspective of a child, its stereoscopic accuracy based on the separation between the eyes of a child. In only one place does it actually exist. In my mind Elizabeth - in my life.
"But I will die, and where will it be, then?"
Elizabeth looked up at him. "In mind mind a little? Along with the rest of you?"
Hawks looked at her. He reached out and, bending forward as tenderly as a child receiving a snowflake to hold, gently enclosed her in his arms. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth," he said. "I never realized that. I never realized what you were letting me do."
"I love you.
”
”
Algis Budrys
“
Authentic community will undoubtedly be marked by conflict, risk, and rejection. At the same time it offers the deepest levels of acceptance, intimacy, and support.8 Virtual community declares mine and yours and his and hers as though everyone lives independent lives linked only by a thread or two. But genuine community demands an authentic, collective, inclusive our—multiple lives woven strongly together, not simply hanging by threads.
”
”
David Timms (Living the Lord's Prayer)
“
Finally when he climbed below deck after dark, wondering where his dinner was, perhaps with a storm come up and rough seas and blinding rains, I'd sulk and lure him into the warm and steamy darkness and from the hairs of his warm body I'd breed a myriad smiling, sparkle-eyed one-year-olds, my broods, my flocks. In the churning seas, below the waves, together inside our hammock woven in coarse sailcloth by Unguentine's deft hands, a spherical webbed sack which hung and swivelled between the two walls of our bedroom, we would spin round and round with lapping tongues and the soft suction of lips, whirling, our amorous centrifuge, all night long, zipped inside against the elements. Now, years and years later, those nights, the thought and touch of them is enough to make me throw myself down on the ground and roll in the dust like a hen nibbled by mites, generating clouds, stars and all the rest.
”
”
Stanley Crawford (Log of the S.S. the Mrs. Unguentine)
“
Raistlin's lip curled in a sneer. "How does that thread weave into the grand design?"
"As do all threads," Astinus said. "Look at the rug beneath your feet. Were you to turn the rug over, you would see what appears to be a confused tangle of many-colored strands of thread. But look at the rug from the top—the strands are neatly, tightly woven, merged together to form a strong fabric. Oh, it is frayed a bit at the corners, but—overall—it has worn well.
”
”
Margaret Weis (Dragons of Summer Flame (Dragonlance: The Second Generation, #2))
“
For some, measuring porn’s real-world effects boils down to one extreme and ultimately misleading question: “Does it lead to rape?” What is overlooked here is the more subtle question of how porn shapes the culture and the men who use it. No anti-porn feminist I know has suggested that there is one image, or even a few, that could lead a nonrapist to rape; the argument, rather, is that taken together, pornographic images create a world that is at best inhospitable to women, and at worst dangerous to their physical and emotional well-being. In an unfair and inaccurate article that is emblematic of how anti-porn feminist work is misrepresented, Daniel Bernardi claims that Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon believed that “watching pornography leads men to rape women.”³ Neither Dworkin nor MacKinnon, pioneers in developing a radical feminist critique of pornography, saw porn in such simplistic terms. Rather, both argued that porn has a complicated and multilayered effect on male sexuality, and that rape, rather than simply being caused by porn, is a cultural practice that has been woven into the fabric of a male-dominated society. Pornography, they argued, is one important agent of such a society since it so perfectly encodes woman-hating ideology, but to see it as simplistically and unquestionably leading to rape is to ignore how porn operates within the wider context of a society that is brimming with sexist imagery and ideology.
”
”
Gail Dines (Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality)
“
But this is certain, that on the broken rocks of the foreground in the crystalline groups the mosses seem to set themselves consentfully and deliberately to the task of producing the most exquisite harmonies of color in their power. They will not conceal the form of the rock, but will gather over it in little brown bosses, like small cushions of velvet made of mixed threads of dark ruby silk and gold, rounded over more subdued films of white and grey, with lightly crisped and curled edges like hoar frost on fallen leaves, and minute clusters of upright orange stalks with pointed caps, and fibres of deep green, and gold, and faint purple passing into black, all woven together, and following with unimaginable fineness of gentle growth the undulation of the stone they cherish, until it is charged with color so that it can receive no more; and instead of looking rugged, or cold, or stern, as anything that a rock is held to be at heart, it seems to be clothed with a soft, dark leopard skin, embroidered with arabesque of purple and silver.
”
”
John Ruskin (Modern Painters: Volume 4. Of Mountain Beauty)
“
He is the butcher who showed me how the price of flesh is love; skin the rabbit, he says! Off come my clothes. He makes his whistles out of an elder twig and that is what he uses to call the birds out of the air - all the birds come; and the sweetest singers he will keep in cages. He could thrust me into the seed-bed of next year's generation and I would have to wait until he whistled me up from my darkness before I could come back again. His skin is the tint and texture of sour cream, he has stiff, russet nipples ripe as berries. Like a tree that bears bloom and fruit on the same bough together, how pleasing, how lovely. I feel your sharp teeth in the subaqueous depths of your kisses. You sink your teeth into my throat and make me scream. His embraces were his enticements and yet, oh yet! they were the branches of which the trap itself was woven. I shall take two huge handfuls of his rustling hair as he lies half dreaming, half waking, and wind them into ropes, very softly, so he will not wake up, and, softly, with hands as gentle as rain, I shall strangle him with them.
”
”
Angela Carter (The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories)
“
Without the eternal, one lives with the help of habit, sagacity, aping, experience, custom, and usage. Indeed, take all this, put it all together, cook it over the slow or the merely earthly blazing fire of passions, and you will see that you will get all kinds of things out of it, a variously concocted tough slime that is called practical sagacity. But no one ever got possibility out of it, possibility, this marvelous thing that is so infinitely fragile (the most delicate shoot of spring is not so fragile!), so infinitely frail (the finest woven linen is not so frail!), and yet, brought into being and shaped with the help of the eternal, stronger than anything else, if it is the possibility of the good!
”
”
Søren Kierkegaard (Works of Love)
“
Every limb [of my body] sees him, even if he be absent
from me, in every delicate, clear, joyous essence,
In the tune of the melodious lute and flute when they
blend together in trilling strains,
And in luxurious pasturage of gazelles in the coolness
of twilight and in the first rays of dawning,
And in misty rains falling from a cloud on a carpet woven of flowers,
And where the breeze sweeps her train, guiding to me
most fragrant attar at sweet dawn,
And when I kiss the lip of the cup, sipping the clear
wine in pleasure and joy.
I knew no estrangement from my homeland when he was with me: My mind was undisturbed where we were— That place was my home while my beloved was present; where the sloping dune appeared, that was my halting- place.
(Ibn al-Fārid)
”
”
Annemarie Schimmel (Mystical Dimensions of Islam)
“
PSALM 139 O LORD, you have p searched me and known me! 2 You q know when I sit down and when I rise up; you r discern my thoughts from afar. 3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, s you know it altogether. 5 You t hem me in, behind and before, and u lay your hand upon me. 6 v Such knowledge is w too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it. 7 x Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where y shall I flee from your presence? 8 z If I ascend to heaven, you are there! a If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there your hand shall b lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. 11 If I say, c “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,” 12 d even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you. 13 For you e formed my inward parts; you f knitted me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. [1] g Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. 15 h My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in i the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your j book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
”
”
Anonymous (Holy Bible: English Standard Version (ESV))
“
We see the universal harmony in the wondrous sky and on the wondrous earth; how elements essentially opposed to each other are all woven together in an ineffable union to serve one common end, each contributing its particular force to maintain the whole; how the unmingling and mutually repellent do not fly apart from each other by virtue of their peculiarities, any more than they are destroyed, when compounded, by such contrariety; how those elements which are naturally buoyant move downwards, the heat of the sun, for instance, descending in the rays, while the bodies which possess weight are lifted by becoming rarefied in vapour, so that water contrary to its nature ascends, being conveyed through the air to the upper regions; how too that fire of the firmament so penetrates the earth that even its abysses feel the heat; how the moisture of the rain infused into the soil generates, one though it be by nature, myriads of differing germs, and animates in due proportion each subject of its influence; how very swiftly the polar sphere revolves, how the orbits within it move the contrary way, with all the eclipses, and conjunctions, and measured intervals of the planets. We see all this with the piercing eyes of mind, nor can we fail to be taught by means of such a spectacle that a Divine power, working with skill and method, is manifesting itself in this actual world, and, penetrating each portion, combines those portions with the whole and completes the whole by the portions, and encompasses the universe with a single all-controlling force, self-centred and self-contained, never ceasing from its motion, yet never altering the position which it holds.
”
”
Gregory of Nyssa (On the Soul and the Resurrection)
“
I’m sorry,” she said, wishing she could say something more meaningful.
“I’m not. If he’d been a good uncle, I’d have stayed in Boston. Never would have found my way to San Francisco,” he said.
Camille knew where the rest of his story led and grinned.
“And you never would have rescued my father from a pickpocket,” she added.
He started to laugh, a quiet, almost personal chuckle, like he was thinking about some funny memory. Camille caught the bug of laughter and wanted to join in.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Your father didn’t need a rescuer. He caught the pickpocket himself,” Oscar answered, a hand on his abdomen from all his laughter. “And then he invited him inside for dinner.”
Her smile fell flat. She stared at him, trying to comprehend what he’d just said.
“You?” she asked, dumbfounded. “You were the pickpocket?”
Oscar nodded, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah. I wasn’t very good at it.”
Her father could have had him arrested or shooed him away without thinking twice. But he’d invited Oscar inside. He gave him work, food…a real chance.
“Why didn’t he tell me?” she asked, feeling like she’d been duped once again. All the lies her father had woven to cover up his secrets had become so frayed, Camille wondered if she had truly known him at all.
“To give me a clean slate with everyone. Even you.” Oscar moved toward her in cautious, deliberate steps. “We’re alone. We should talk.”
The pantry was cramped and dismal despite the oil lamp, and Camille had a sudden urge to flee.
“About what?” she asked, her ears burning. She still reeled with the knowledge that the pickpocket story hadn’t been real, just like her mother’s story hadn’t been real. Oscar stopped within a few inches from her and reached a hand around her waist.
“About our night together, Camille,” he answered, his dimples forming. “There’s a lot to say.
”
”
Angie Frazier (Everlasting (Everlasting, #1))
“
Jay's downstairs waiting."
With her father on one side, and the handrail on the other, Violet descended the stairs as if she were floating. Jay stood at the bottom, watching her, frozen in place like a statue.
His black suit looked as if it had been tailored just for him. His jacket fell across his strong shoulders in a perfect line, tapering at his narrow waist. The crisp white linen shirt beneath stood out in contrast against the dark, finely woven wool. He smiled appreciatively as he watched her approach, and Violet felt her breath catch in her throat at the striking image of flawlessness that he presented.
"You...are so beautiful," he whispered fervently as he strode toward her, taking her dad's place at her arm.
She smiled sheepishly up at him. "So are you."
Her mom insisted on taking no fewer than a hundred pictures of the two of them, both alone and together, until Violet felt like her eyes had been permanently damaged by the blinding flash. Finally her father called off her mom, dragging her away into the kitchen so that Violet and Jay could have a moment alone together.
"I meant it," he said. "You look amazing."
She shook her head, not sure what to say, a little embarrassed by the compliment.
"I got you something," he said to her as he reached inside his jacket. "I hope you don't mind, it's not a corsage."
Violet couldn't have cared less about having flowers to pin on her dress, but she was curious about what he had brought for her. She watched as he dragged out the moment longer than he needed to, taking his time to reveal his surprise.
"I got you this instead." He pulled out a black velvet box, the kind that holds fine jewelry. It was long and narrow.
She gasped as she watched him lift the lid.
Inside was a delicate silver chain, and on it was the polished outline of a floating silver heart that drifted over the chain that held it.
Violet reached out to touch it with her fingertip. "It's beautiful," she sighed.
He lifted the necklace from the box and held it out to her. "May I?" he asked.
She nodded, her eyes bright with excitement as he clasped the silver chain around her bare throat. "Thank you," she breathed, interlacing her hand into his and squeezing it meaningfully.
She reluctantly used the crutches to get out to the car, since there were no handrails for her to hold on to. She left like they ruined the overall effect she was going for.
Jay's car was as nice on the inside as it was outside. The interior was rich, smoky gray leather that felt like soft butter as he helped her inside. Aside from a few minor flaws, it could have passed for brand-new. The engine purred to life when he turned the key in the ignition, something that her car had never done. Roar, maybe-purr, never.
She was relieved that her uncle hadn't ordered a police escort for the two of them to the dance. She had half expected to see a procession of marked police cars, lights swirling and sirens blaring, in the wake of Jay's sleek black Acura.
Despite sitting behind the wheel of his shiny new car, Jay could scarcely take his eyes off her. His admiring gaze found her over and over again, while he barely concentrated on the road ahead of him. Fortunately they didn't have far to go.
”
”
Kimberly Derting (The Body Finder (The Body Finder, #1))
“
Can anything possibly be salvaged from it?” Wherever you are right now in the story, I am going to interrupt you with Isaiah 35. The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing. (verses 1–2) There is nothing wrong with a desert that a little rain can’t fix. Dry land is not inherently barren; the dirt itself is not evil. We are after all “formed…of dust from the ground” (Genesis 2:7). And no one’s life is apart from that basic ground from which God can bring his purposes to blossom. There are stretches of time when nothing is growing, but all the while nutrients are in the soil and seeds embedded just beneath the surface. A moment will come when the necessary moisture will bring faith to flower. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, “Be strong, fear not! Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God. He will come and save you.” (verses 3–4) You think that you have all you can take? That you can’t lift another burden? That you can’t manage another challenge? Well, “Be strong…! Behold, your God.” God comes. He comes in “vengeance.” He will take care, decisively and completely, of all that is wrong with the story. He comes with “recompense.” He will provide everything to make you whole and mature. The word recompense has a root meaning of “weaning from the mother’s breast.” A happy time, for it means you are making a transition from being a weak and dependent infant, but it’s a terrifying time too, for it means you are no longer treated indulgently as an innocent. “He will come and save you.” Everything God does is woven into the plot for your salvation—the judgments on your sin, the weaning from your innocence, the gifts of maturity. At the end of the story, for you who choose to be his people, you will have a put-together life, a life vibrant with health, a life whole and solid in love.
”
”
Eugene H. Peterson (As Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed by the Words of God)