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litany QUOTES

litany QUOTES

1 " He made a sound like a choked laughed before he reached out and pulled her into her arms. She was aware of Luke watching them from the window, but she shut her eyes resolutely and buried her face against Jace's shoulder. He smelled of salt and blood, and only when his mouth came close to her ear did she understand what he was saying, and it was the simplest litany of all: her name, just her name. "

― Cassandra Clare , City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments, #1)

2 " The devil invites mankind to rebellion and disorder. With his litany of subterfuges, he sows discord and incites us to pour out our hatred upon each other. " Old Scratch" always makes noise and a lot of racket so as to prevent us from resting in God. The devil will not be able to reach us in the stronghold of silence. Let us guard against multiplying sins by satisfying our little egotistical or revolutionary passions. "

3 " Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out " Don't you believe in anything?" Yes" , I said. " I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be. "

4 " History, as it was purveyed to us, was not so much a narrative, not even the detached observation of the rise and fall of fortunes and cultures. It was the litany of loss, attended by the inevitable sympathy for the vanquished side. The past was always the underdog, and we sensed it was only right to be on its side against the bully future. We were left with the impression that our own grip was loosening on some essential pediment as one empire after another was swallowed up, and the centuries collapsed into our own. "

― Patricia Hampl , Virgin Time: In Search of the Contemplative Life

5 " No doubt the foregoing litany of obstacles in the path of success stands out more sharply in retrospect than it did at the time. Hindsight can distort "

6 " Does it matter that people and things
Have words,
Have names?

If not,
Why read any book?
A litany of useless letters
Detached from bone, muscle.

Or are words the only things that make the muscle, bone, memory, movement,
Person
Real? "

― Stasia Ward Kehoe , Audition

7 " The Women in Black are Israeli Jews who meet wall in Jerusalem. They meet every Friday, the Sabbath evening, and pray. They begin by singing Kaddish for all the Israelis killed in the fighting in Israel that week. When they are finished, they pause and read all the names. Then, they turn again to face the wall and sing Kaddish again, this time for all of Palestinians killed in the fighting that week, and they turn when they are finished and once again recite the litany of the names of those killed. "

― , And Morning Came: Scriptures of the Resurrection

8 " True prayer is done in secret, but this does not rule out the fellowship of prayer altogether, however clearly we may be aware of its dangers. In the last resort it is immaterial whether we pray in the open street or in the secrecy of our chambers, whether briefly or lenghtily, in the Litany of the Church, or with the sigh of one who knows not what he should pray for. True prayer does not depend either on the individual or the whole body of the faithful, but solely upon the knowledge that our Heavenly Father knows our needs. "

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer , The Cost of Discipleship

9 " To be human is, primarily, to embrace that we are human with strengths and weaknesses, and that our humanity is preordained to seek the Truth, Good and Beauty as part of our humanity. To be human is to be an agent of peace, justice, and reconciliation in our community or society. To be human is to be heroic and generous in an unobtrusive way, free from any selfish motive, with no media to show the litany of our good deeds. To be human is to have time to listen to the story of a grieving soul, to give hope to the hopeless, to give love to the unloved.(Danny Castillones Sillada, A reason to be Human: Human Pathos and Compassion) "

10 " A litany of headlights blinding her, she stands unsteady on the dotted traffic line, takes timid steps toward rolled up windows behind which any horror could crouch.... "

― Beatriz Fitzgerald Fernandez , Shining from a Different Firmament

11 " There were spaceships again in that century, and the ships were manned by fuzzy impossibilities that walked on two legs and sprouted tufts of hair in unlikely anatomical regions. They were a garrulous kind. They belonged to a race quite capable of admiring its own image in a mirror, and equally capable of cutting its own throat before the altar of some god, such as the deity of Daily Shaving. It was a species which often considered itself to be, basically, a race of divinely inspired toolmakers; any intelligent entity from Arcturus would instantly have perceived them to be, basically, a race of impassioned after-dinner speechmakers.

It was inevitable, it was manifest destiny, they felt (and not for the first time) that such a race go forth to conquer stars. To conquer them several times, if need be, and certainly to make speeches about the conquest. But, too, it was inevitable that the race succumb again to the old maladies on new worlds, even as on Earth before, in the litany of life and in the special liturgy of Man... "

― Walter M. Miller Jr.

12 " ...the phone rang.

When the phone rang so early in the morning, it oftentimes meant somebody was dead. An elderly person had passed in the night. A Friday night traffic fatality. The families of deceased would set about the task of notifying family and friends, and somewhere among the sad litany of phone calls, they dialed our number. "

― Ravi Howard

13 " Everything in my head was secondhand, too: Catholicism; Ireland's sad history, a litany of suffering and martyrdom drummed into me by priests, schoolmasters and parents who knew no better. "

― Frank McCourt , Teacher Man (Frank McCourt, #3)

14 " In the moments when I forgot to remind myself to remain calm, I rewarded myself with a multiversed chorus of self-denigration and blame. Weak. Inadequate. Damaged. A problem and a disappointment. The litany of criticism stuck in my brain, skipping through the same tired phrases, like an old, scratched, forty-five speed record, drumming my failure into the silence of the night, adding to my desperation and frustration. I had been singled out for the universe for a reason, and this illness was my fault. I knew that, even though saying as much out loud sounded like crazy talk. I couldn't explain why, but I felt like I deserved what I was getting. "

15 " Planting trees, I myself thought for a long time, was a feel-good thing, a nice but feeble response to our litany of modern-day environmental problems. In the last few years, though, as I have read many dozens of articles and books and interviewed scientists here and abroad, my thinking on the issue has changed. Planting trees may be the single most important ecotechnology that we have to put the broken pieces of our planet back together. "

― Jim Robbins , The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet

16 " If Google decided at any point to publish my search history, or your search history, or anyone's search history, there's a litany of things they could idea police you about, and if it was published, you would be publicly shamed. Everyone would be publicly shamed. But we trust Google, and we trust the people that run that company. "