Surface Quotes - Page 11

High school’s actually kind of boring. It’s a little bit like living in the Center. Everyone thinks they know everything about everyone else, but really there’s a lot more under the surface. (Lend)

Kiersten White

School, Thinking, Littles

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I love this quote when Valerian the King of the Nymphs says to his mate Shaye; "I am Valerian, leader of the nymphs. You may call me Oh God, that is what the other surface dwellers have preferred to call me".

Gena Showalter

Kings, Nymphs, Leader

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When you live on your own for a long time, however, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social, to understand what is and isn't normal behavior. There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface. Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.

Donald Miller

Long, People, Water

Donald Miller (2007). “Miller 3-in-1: Blue Like Jazz, Through Painted Deserts, Searching for God”, p.87, Thomas Nelson Inc

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I kept waiting for him to lay bare something more than this pointed unobjectionableness, but all that rose to the surface was more surface

Philip Roth

Rose, Waiting, Lays

Philip Roth (1997). “American Pastoral”, p.31, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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On the surface, we're polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we're the same: people think they know what they're getting, and they're always wrong.

Jodi Picoult

Thinking, Opposites, People

Jodi Picoult (2009). “My Sister's Keeper - Movie Tie-In: A Novel”, p.93, Simon and Schuster

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I'm not going to wear a red dress," she said. "It would look stunning, My Lady," she called. She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. "If there's anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I'll hit him in the face.

Kristin Cashore

Water, Wish, Dresses

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Oh, my darling, wish you were here! And my dark soul is happy again, because it does not know how to be anything else for very long, and because the pain is a deep dark sea in which I would drown if I did not sail my little craft steadily over the surface, steadily towards a sun which will never rise.

Anne Rice

Pain, Dark, Sea

Anne Rice (1992). “The Tale of the Body Thief”, A.A. Knopf Canada

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The point is... to live one's life in the full complexity of what one is, which is something much darker, more contradictory, more of a maelstrom of impulses and passions, of cruelty, ecstacy, and madness, than is apparent to the civilized being who glides on the surface and fits smoothly into the world.

Thomas Nagel

Passion, World, Maelstrom

Thomas Nagel (2010). “Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament: Essays 2002-2008”, p.34, Oxford University Press

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The surface of the pond was green with fallen leaves. "How could you have been happy there? I know what you thought, but Valentine was a terrible father. He killed your pets, lied to you, and I know he hit you- don't even try to pretend he didn't." A flicker of a smile ghosted across Jace's face. "Only on alternate Thursdays.

Cassandra Clare

Father, Valentine, Pet

Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.457, Simon and Schuster

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Of our thinking it is but the upper surface that we shape into articulate thought; underneath the region of argument and conscious discourse lies the region of meditation.

Thomas Carlyle

Lying, Thinking, Meditation

John Stuart Mill, Thomas Carlyle (2010). “Autobiography of J.S. Mill & on Liberty; Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh & Sir Walter Scott”, p.336, Cosimo, Inc.

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Never trust a shiny surface. They hide a multitude of flaws.

Melissa de la Cruz

Flaws, Never Trust, Multitudes

Melissa de la Cruz (2010). “Masquerade: Number 2 in series”, p.190, Hachette UK

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God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, 'This is my Country.'

Benjamin Franklin

Love, Country, Knowledge

Benjamin Franklin's letter to David Hartley (December 4, 1789) as quoted in "The Writings of Benjamin Franklin," Volume 10 (p. 72) edited by Albert H. Smyth, 1907.

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Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands.

Pablo Picasso

War, Cutting, Hands

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So many humans. So many colours. They keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-coloured clouds, beating, like black hearts. And then. There is death. Making his way through all of it. On the surface: unflappable, unwavering. Below: unnerved, untied, and undone.

Markus Zusak

Memories, Heart, Clouds

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Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what's going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

Annie Dillard

Tunnels, Views, Darkness

"Pilgrim at Tinker Creek". Book by Annie Dillard, books.google.ru. January 1, 2011.

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Adversity will surface in some form in every life. How we prepare for it, how we meet it, makes the difference. We can be broken by adversity, or we can become stronger. The final result is up to the individual'.

Marvin J. Ashton

Adversity, Differences, Broken

Marvin J. Ashton (1982). “Ye Are My Friends”, Shadow Mountain

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I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

Jonathan Swift

Race, Gulliver, Earth

Gulliver's Travels "A Voyage to Brobdingnag" ch. 6 (1726)

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All our land was enriched with my treasures buried in it, thickly inhabited just below the surface with my marbles and my teeth and my colored stones, all perhaps turned to jewels by now, held together under the ground in a powerful taut web which never loosened, but held fast to guard us.

Shirley Jackson

Powerful, Jewels, Land

Shirley Jackson (2010). “Novels and Stories: The Lottery, The Haunting of Hill House, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Other Stories and Sketches”

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In their choice of lovers both the male and the female reveal their essential nature. The type of human being we prefer reveals the contours of our heart. Love is an impulse which springs from the most profound depths of our beings, and upon reaching the visible surface of life carries with it an alluvium of shells and seaweed from the inner abyss. A skilled naturalist, by filing these materials, can reconstruct the oceanic depths from which they have been uprooted.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Spring, Heart, Love Is

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Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart.

Haruki Murakami

Rain, Heart, Rivers

FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Nov 04, 2015

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Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.

Sherwood Smith

Memories, Reality, Sight

Sherwood Smith (1997). “Crown Duel”, p.182, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough. Time gets strange there from too much sky, too many miles from crack to crease in the flat surface of the land.

Katherine Dunn

Men, Texas, Years

Katherine Dunn (2011). “Geek Love: A Novel”, p.199, Vintage

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When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tup and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank into sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.

Sylvia Plath

Lying, Flower, Sleep

Sylvia Plath (2008). “The Bell Jar”, p.110, Faber & Faber

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Imagine how they would have mocked you if you proclaimed, 'Not only is the world a sphere, but there is an invisible, mystical force that holds everything to its surface'!

Dan Brown

World, Spheres, Imagine

Dan Brown (2017). “Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon Series”, p.1348, Random House

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There's nothing wrong with enjoying looking at the surface of the ocean itself, except that when you finally see what goes on underwater,you realize that you've been missing the whole point of the ocean. Staying on the surface all the time is like going to the circus and staring at the outside of the tent.

Dave Barry

Beach, Ocean, Sea

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