1
" Breeze strolled over to the table and chose a seat with his characteristic decorum. The portly man raised his dueling cane, pointing it at Ham. 'I see that my period of intellectual respite has come to an end.'
Ham smiled. 'I thought up a couple beastly questions while I was gone, and I've been saving them just for you, Breeze.'
'I'm dying of anticipation,' Breeze said. He turned his cane toward Lestibournes. 'Spook, drink.'
Spook rushed over and fetched Breeze a cup of wine.
'He's such a fine lad,' Breeze noted, accepting the drink. 'I barely even have to nudge him Allomantically. If only the rest of you ruffians were so accommodating.'
Spook frowned. 'Niceing the not on the playing without.'
'I have no idea what you just said, child,' Breeze said. 'So I'm simply going to pretend it was coherent, then move on.'
Kelsier rolled his eyes. 'Losing the stress on the nip,' he said. 'Notting without the needing of care.'
'Riding the rile of the rids to the right,' Spook said with a nod.
'What are you two babbling about?' Breeze said testily.
'Wasing the was of brightness,' Spook said. 'Nip the having of wishing of this.'
'Ever wasing the doing of this,' Kelsier agreed.
'Ever wasing the wish of having the have,' Ham added with a smile. 'Brighting the wish of wasing the not.'
Breeze turned to Dockson with exasperation. 'I believe our companions have finally lost their minds, dear friend.'
Dockson shrugged. Then, with a perfectly straight face, he said, 'Wasing not of wasing is. "
― Brandon Sanderson , The Final Empire (Mistborn, #1)
3
" The Awakening Land" p615What was the world coming to and what hearty pleasures folks today missed out of life! One bag of meal her pap said, used to make a whole family rejoice. Now folks came ungrateful from the store, grumbling they had to carry such a heavy market basket. Was that the way this great new country of hers was going to go? The easier they made life, the weaker and sicker the race had to get? Once a majority of the men got weak and soft, what weak, harmful ways would they vote the country into then? Well, her pap's generation could get down on their knees and thank the Almighty they lived and died when they did. How would they ever have come and settled this wild country if they said to each other, " Ain't you afeard?" How would her pappy have fetched them the long way out here on foot if he'd kept asking all the time, " Are you all right! How do ye feel? Do ye reckon ye kin make it?" No, those old time folks she knew were scared of nothing, or if they were, they didn't say so. They knew they ran bad risks moving into Indian country, but they had to die some time. They might as well live as they pleased and let others bury them when the time came. Now Libby's generation, it seemed, lived mostly to study and fret about ailing and dying. "
4
" The Elsinore's bow tilted skyward while her stern fell into a foaming valley. Not a man had gained his feet. Bridge and men swept back toward me and fetched up against the mizzen-shrouds. And then that prodigious, incredible old man appeared out of the water, on his two legs, upright, dragging with him, a man in each hand, the helpless forms of Nancy and the Faun. My heart leapt at beholding this mighty figure of a man-killer and slave-driver, it is true, but who sprang first into the teeth of danger so that his slaves might follow, and who emerged with a half-drowned slave in either hand.
I knew augustness and pride as I gazed--pride that my eyes were blue, like his; that my skin was blond, like his; that my place was aft with him, and with the Samurai, in the high place of government and command. I nearly wept with the chill of pride that was akin to awe and that tingled and bristled along my spinal column and in my brain. As for the rest--the weaklings and the rejected, and the dark-pigmented things, the half-castes, the mongrel-bloods, and the dregs of long-conquered races--how could they count? My heels were iron as I gazed on them in their peril and weakness. Lord! Lord! For ten thousand generations and centuries we had stamped upon their faces and enslaved them to the toil of our will. "
― Jack London , The Mutiny of the Elsinore
6
" Hallo, Pooh,” said Rabbit.
“Hallo, Rabbit,” said Pooh dreamily.
“Did you make that song up?”
“Well, I sort of made it up,” said Pooh. “It isn’t Brain,” he went on humbly, “because You Know Why, Rabbit; but it comes to me sometimes.”
“Ah!” said Rabbit, who never let things come to him, but always went and fetched them. "
― A.A. Milne , The House at Pooh Corner (Winnie-the-Pooh, #2)
7
" It felt like being shot with an arrow, and Will jerked back. His wineglass crashed to the floor and shattered. He lurched to his feet, leaning both hands on the table. He was vaguely aware of stares, and the landlords anxious voice in his ear, but the pain was too great to think through, almost too great to breathe through. The tightness in his chest, the one he had thought of as one end of a cord tying him to Jem, had pulled so taut that it was strangling his heart. He stumbled away from his table, pushing through a knot of customers near the bar, and passed to the front door of the inn. All he could think of was air, getting air into his lungs to breathe. He pushed the doors open and half-tumbled out into the night. For a moment the pain in his chest eased, and he fell back against the wall of the inn. Rain was sheeting down, soaking his hair and clothes. He gasped, his heart stuttering with a misture of terror and desperation. Was this just the distance from Jem affecting him? He had never felt anything like this, even when Jem was at his worst, even when he'd been injured and Will had ached with sympathetic pain.
The cord snapped.
For a moment everything went white, the courtyard bleeching through as if with acid. Will jackknifed to his knees, vomiting up his supper into the mud. When the spasms had passed , he staggard to his feet and blindly away from the inn, as if trying to outpace his own pain. He fetched up against the wall of the stables, beside the horse trough. He dropped to his knees to plunge his hands into the icy water-and saw his own reflection. There was his face, as white as death, and his shirt, and a spreading stain of red across the front. With wet hands he siezed at his lapels and jerked the shirt open. In the dim light that spilled from the inn, he could see that his parabati rune, just over his heart, was bleeding. His hands were covered in blood, blood mixed with rain, the same ran that was washing the blood away from his chest, showing the rune as it began to fade from black to silver, changing all that had been sense in Will's life into nonsense.
Jem was dead. "
― Cassandra Clare , Clockwork Princess (The Infernal Devices, #3)
10
" There Peter was, looking straight into the very eyes of God, walking the Sea of Galilee and then all of the sudden up to his neck in water. Some would argue he lacked the true believing, I say he had enough faith to go it a ways, and when he couldn't go farther Christ fetched him up.
What am I saying? I'm saying that the walk to God ain't easy for the best of us. Now some would say, Preacher, if Peter had misdoubts there in the very glory of the Lord, what of us left here that ain't seen the dead raised nor the leper folk healed. All we seen is hard trial and sorrows. I'd not deny it.
Burdens are plenty in this world and they can pull us down in the lamentation. But the good Lord knows we need to see at least the hem of the robe of glory, and we do. Ponder a pretty sunset or the dogwoods all ablossom. Every time you see such it's the hem of the robe of glory. Brothers and sister, how do you expect to see what you don't seek?
Some claim heaven has streets of gold and all such things, but I hold a different notion. When we’re there, we’ll say to the angels, why, a lot of heaven’s glory was in the place we come from. And you know what them angels will say? They’ll say yes, pilgrim, and how often did you notice? What did you seek? "
― Ron Rash
11
" You’re not touching us,’” Eve said, and raised her voice. “Shane! Shane, get your ass up here now!’”
There was a touch of panic in her voice, although she was putting on a good front. Her hands were shaking where they gripped the hockey stick.
The man glided around the end of the bed, prowling like a cat. Six feet tall, at least, and as broad as two of Eve, maybe bigger. His bare arms were ripped with muscle. His blue eyes looked shallow and hungry.
Claire heard the thump of footsteps outside, and then a bang as Shane fetched up against the locked door. He rattled the knob and pounded hard. “Eve! Eve, open up!’”
“She’s busy!’” the biker yelled, and laughed. “Oh yeah, gonna be real busy.’”
“No!’” Shane screamed it, and the door shook with the strength of the blows he put into it. “Stay away from them! "
― Rachel Caine , The Dead Girls' Dance (The Morganville Vampires, #2)