chained QUOTES

1 " There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love. "

― Cassandra Clare , Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices, #1)

2 " Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root. "

― Emma Goldman , Marriage and Love

3 " The purer your heart, the lighter your spirit will be. The lighter your spirit, the closer to light it will float. The closer to light it is permitted to go, the higher it will float. The higher it floats, the closer to God you will be. Heaven has seven layers. The vibrations of your good deeds, which will be reflected by the weight of your conscience and the purity of your heart, will determine the layer in which your soul will reside. Your goal is to make your heart as light as a feather. The heavier the heart, the more chained to this hell it will remain. "

4 " Featherweight by Suzy Kassem

One evening,
I sat by the ocean and questioned the moon about my destiny.
I revealed to it that I was beginning to feel smaller compared to others,
Because the more secrets of the universe I would unlock,
The smaller in size I became.

I didn't understand why I wasn't feeling larger instead of smaller.
I thought that seeking Truth was what was required of us all –
To show us the way, not to make us feel lost,
Up against the odds,
In a devilish game partitioned by
An invisible wall.

Then the next morning,
A bird appeared at my window, just as the sun began
Spreading its yolk over the horizon.
It remained perched for a long time,
Gazing at me intently, to make sure I knew I wasn’t dreaming.
Then its words gently echoed throughout my mind,
Telling me:

'The world you are in –
Is the true hell.
The journey to Truth itself
Is what quickens the heart to become lighter.
The lighter the heart, the purer it is.
The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.
And the heavier the heart,
The more chained to this hell
It will remain.'

And just like that, it flew off towards the sun,
Leaving behind a tiny feather.
So I picked it up,
And fastened it to a toothpick,
To dip into ink
And write my name. "

― , Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

5 " Regardless of your chosen faith, at the end of your life's journey, your heart will be measured in two ways. One, the weight of your conscience must far outweigh the weight of a feather. Two, any impurities in your heart must weigh no more than one feather. The purer your heart, the lighter your spirit will be. The lighter your spirit, the closer to light it will float. The closer to light it is permitted to go, the higher it will float. The higher it floats, the closer to God you will be. Heaven has seven layers. The vibrations of your good deeds, which will be reflected by the weight of your conscience and the purity of your heart, will determine the layer in which your soul will reside. Your goal is to make your heart as light as a feather. The heavier the heart, the more chained to this hell it will remain. "

6 " Over the souls of men spread the condor wings of colossal monsters and all manner of evil things prey upon the heart and soul and body of Man. Yet it may be in some far day the shadows shall fade and the Prince of Darkness be chained forever in his hell. And till then mankind can but stand up stoutly to the monsters in his own heart and without, and with the aid of God he may yet triumph. "

― Robert E. Howard , The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane

7 " The world you are in –
Is the true hell.
The journey to Truth itself
Is what quickens the heart to become lighter.
The lighter the heart, the purer it is.
The purer the heart, the closer to light it becomes.
And the heavier the heart,
The more chained to this hell
It will remain. "

― , Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

8 " Your realm is an insane place. In Volaria, no-one goes hungry, slaves are no use when they starve. Those freeborn too lazy or lacking in intelligence to turn sufficient profit to feed themselves are made slaves so they can generate wealth for those deserving of freedom, and be fed in return. Here, your people are chained by their freedom, free to starve and beg from the rich. It's disgusting. "

― Anthony Ryan , Tower Lord (Raven's Shadow, #2)

9 " When you go against the flow of nature and betray the spiritual laws existing within, there is, and always will be, a negative reaction. Those who try escaping life before fate shakes their hand, will forever be stuck on earth, chained to the place they so badly wanted to leave. What a complicated misery. I guarantee you it will be torture to be invisible and ignored by those you love when you can see them - but you are already dead for them to hear you utter another word. Talk about agony, more so, than remaining on this plane and continuing your spiritual cycle as it was written to be lived. "

― , Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

10 " We are graced with a godlike ability to transcend time and space in our minds but are chained to death. "

― Russell Shorto , Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason

11 " SPRING POEM

It is spring, my decision, the earth
ferments like rising bread
or refuse, we are burning
last year's weeds, the smoke
flares from the road, the clumped stalks
glow like sluggish phoenixes / it wasn't
only my fault / birdsongs burst from
the feathered pods of their bodies, dandelions
whirl their blades upwards, from beneath
this decaying board a snake
sidewinds, chained hide
smelling of reptile sex / the hens
roll in the dust, squinting with bliss, frogbodies
bloat like bladders, contract, string
the pond with living jelly
eyes, can I be this
ruthless? I plunge
my hands and arms into the dirt,
swim among stones and cutworms,
come up rank as a fox,

restless. Nights, while seedlings
dig near my head

I dream of reconciliations
with those I have hurt
unbearably, we move still
touching over the greening fields, the future
wounds folded like seeds
in our tender fingers, days
I go for vicious walks past the charred
roadbed over the bashed stubble
admiring the view, avoiding
those I have not hurt

yet, apocalypse coiled in my tongue,
it is spring, I am searching
for the word:
finished
finished

so I can begin over
again, some year
I will take this word too far. "

― Margaret Atwood , You are Happy

12 " My heart in the East But the rest of me far in the West— How can I savor this life, even taste what I eat? How, in the bonds of the Moor, Zion chained to the Cross, Can I do what I’ve vowed to and must? Gladly I’d leave All the best of grand Spain For one glimpse of the ruined Shrine’s dust. "

13 " The person who hurt you--who raped you or killed your family--is also here. If you are still angry at that person, if you haven't been able to forgive, you are chained to him. Everyone could feel the emotional truth of that: When someone offends you and you haven't let go, every time you see him, you grow breathless or your heart skips a beat. If the trauma was really severe, you dream of revenge. Above you, is the Mountain of Peace and Prosperity where we all want to go. But when you try to climb that hill, the person you haven't forgiven weighs you down. It's a personal choice whether or not to let go. No one can tell you how long to mourn a death or rage over a rape. But you can't move forward until you break that chain. "

― , Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War

14 " The last thing the hockey ball symbolized was Time itself, the unstoppability of it, the way we're chained to our bodies, which are chained to Time. "

― Jeffrey Eugenides , Middlesex

15 " It will never belong in a Hallmark card, but I drove a car into a house and killed a man for you. You chained me up for days and I still wanted to come back and talk over our darkly sordid, slightly kinky, and a lot warped relationship. Face it, you're stuck with me. "

― Kylie Scott , Skin (Flesh, #2)

16 " There were thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the book-shelves and others propped against each other as if they had had too much to drink and did not really trust themselves. These gave out a smell of must and solid brownness which was most secure. "

― T.H. White , The Once and Future King (The Once and Future King, #1-4)

17 " Maybe there wasn't, after all, a clear motivation for any of the things that people did. Maybe they just did them for no reason at all or because of stupidity or selfishness or cowardice or anger or for reasons that made no rational sense - because the clouds happened to be a particularly gloomy shade of gray that day, because the barking of an old dog chained to a sycamore tree just happened to sound exactly like the crunch of soldiers' boots on gravel or the hum of bees like an engine in the head driving you mad. "

18 " Death isn't empty like you say it is. Emptiness is life without freedom, Darrow. Emptiness is living chained by fear, fear of loss, of death. I say we break those chains. Break the chains of fear and you break the chains that bind us to the Golds, to the Society. Could you imagine it? Mars could be ours. It could belong to the colonists who slaved here, died here." Her face is easier to see as the night fades through the clear roof. It is alive, on fire. " If you led the others to freedom. The things you could do, Darrow. The things you could make happen." She pauses and I see her eyes are glistening. " It chills me. You have been given so, so much, but you set your sights so low." " You repeat the same damn points," I say bitterly. " You think a dream is worth dying for. I say it isn't. You say it's better to die on your feet. I say it's better to live on our knees." " You're not even listening!" she snaps. " We are machine men with machine minds, machine lives …" " And machine hearts?" I ask. " That's what I am?" " Darrow …" " What do you live for?" I ask her suddenly. " Is it for me? Is it for family and love? Or is it just for some d "

19 " Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized " hero of our time" - and of all time. "

20 " A trance healer in Bali, an eagle woman, asked me, 'What is freedom, madam?' She had a chained eagle, her ally in healing, and it broke my heart, those huge, folded wings. So I asked her why the eagle couldn't fly free, why it was chained. And then her eagle eyes dug into mine, and she asked, 'What is freedom, madam? "

― Alma Luz Villanueva , Song of the Golden Scorpion