token QUOTES

26 " Haymitch isn't thinking of arenas, but something else. " Johanna's back in the hospital." I assumed Johanna was fine, had passed her exam, but simply wasn't assigned to a sharp shooters' unit. She's wicked with a throwing axe but about average with a gun. " Is she hurt? What happened?" " It was while she was on the Block. They try to ferret out a soldier's potential weakness. So they flooded the street, " says Haymitch.This doesn't help. Johanna can swim. At least, I seem to remember her swimming around some in the Quarter Quell. Not like Finnick, of course, but none of us are like Finnick. " So?" " That's how they tortured her in the Capitol. Soaked her then used electric shocks," says Haymitch. " In the Block, she had some kind of flashback. Panicked, didn't know where she was. She's back under sedation." Finnick and I just stand there as if we've lost the ability to respond.I think of the way Johanna never showers. How she forced herself into the rain like it was acid that day. I had attributed her misery to morphling withdrawal. " You two should go see her. You're as close to friends as she's got," says Haymitch.That makes the whole thing worse. I don't really know what's between Johanna and Finnick, but I hardly know her. No family. No friends.Not so much as a token from District 7 to set beside her regulation clothes in her anonymous drawer.Nothing. "

28 " She wanted to return to her dream. Perhaps it was still somewhere there behind her closed eyelids. Perhaps a little of its happiness still clung like gold dust to her lashes. Don't dreams in fairy tales sometimes leave a token behind? "

― Cornelia Funke , Inkheart (Inkworld, #1)

30 " In the light of His example we can see, in the faith of His power we too can prove, that suffering is to God’s child the token of the Father’s love, and the channel of His richest blessing. [. . .]

Suffering is the way of the rent veil, the new and living way Jesus walked in and opened for us. "

― Andrew Murray , Holy in Christ Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy

32 " The next time that you find yourself surrounded by darkness, I hope that you will consider that you need not necessarily look to the night skies in search of a guiding star to offer hope. You don’t essentially have to depend on a shooting star as a prospect or token that you’re now able to make a wish that may actually stand a chance of coming to pass. "

34 " Envy said, “Girl, I remember well,
ye, who I flung from Hell,
and not a day has passed, I haven’t missed
the loss of your soul that I mourned,
I’ve been bereft and forlorn,
for the sweet taste of your flesh I’ve yet to kiss.

But no worries—bygones,
that’s the past—long gone,
I don’t hold a grudge, no, in no way.
And though your family they did swindle
my joy of flaying ye on a spindle,
I begrudge ye not a little, so let’s play.

So, merely toss your token in my well,
and all your dreams I will unveil,
for ye alone, them I’ll grant.
Come closer, little Penny,
your hands I know are not empty,
ye have something I dreadfully want. "

― , Penny Willan and the Well: A Fairy Tale of Ode

36 " Those who live in retirement, whose lives have fallen amid the seclusion of schools or of other walled-in and guarded dwellings, are liable to be suddenly and for a long while dropped out of the memory of their friends, the denizens of a freer world. Unaccountably, perhaps, and close upon some space of unusually frequent intercourse—some congeries of rather exciting little circumstances, whose natural sequel would rather seem to be the quickening than the suspension of communication—there falls a stilly pause, a wordless silence, a long blank of oblivion. Unbroken always is this blank; alike entire and unexplained. The letter, the message once frequent, are cut off; the visit, formerly periodical, ceases to occur; the book, paper, or other token that indicated remembrance, comes no more.Always there are excellent reasons for these lapses, if the hermit but knew them. Though he is stagnant in his cell, his connections without are whirling in the very vortex of life. That void interval which passes for him so slowly that the very clocks seem at a stand, and the wingless hours plod by in the likeness of tired tramps prone to rest at milestones—that same interval, perhaps, teems with events, and pants with hurry for his friends.The hermit—if he be a sensible hermit—will swallow his own thoughts, and lock up his own emotions during these weeks of inward winter. He will know that Destiny designed him to imitate, on occasion, the dormouse, and he will be conformable: make a tidy ball of himself, creep into a hole of life's wall, and submit decently to the drift which blows in and soon blocks him up, preserving him in ice for the season.Let him say, " It is quite right: it ought to be so, since so it is." And, perhaps, one day his snow-sepulchre will open, spring's softness will return, the sun and south-wind will reach him; the budding of hedges, and carolling of birds and singing of liberated streams will call him to kindly resurrection. Perhaps this may be the case, perhaps not: the frost may get into his heart and never thaw more; when spring comes, a crow or a pie may pick out of the wall only his dormouse-bones. Well, even in that case, all will be right: it is to be supposed he knew from the first he was mortal, and must one day go the way of all flesh, As well soon as syne. "

38 " But it’s a pretense, it’s artificial,” Adelia protested. “Love, honor, respect. When are they ever extended to everyday women? I doubt if that boy actually practices what he’s singing. It’s… it’s a pleasant hypocrisy.”“Oh, I have a high regard for hypocrisy,” the little nun said. “It pays lip service to an ideal which must, therefore, exist. It recognizes that there is a Good. In its own way, it is a token of civilization. You don’t find hypocrisy among the beasts of the field.”“What good does the Good do if it is not adhered to?”“That is what I have been wondering,” Mother Edyve said calmly. “And I have come to the conclusion that perhaps the early Christians wondered it, too, and perhaps that Eleanor, in her fashion, has made a start by setting a brick in a foundation on which, with God’s help, our daughters’ daughters can begin to build a new and better Jerusalem.”“Not in time for Emma,” Adelia said.“No.”Perhaps, Adelia thought drearily, it was only a very old woman who could look hopefully on a single brick laid in a wasteland. "

40 " I take you as my queen, to protect and honor, to be my light in darkness, my courage in fear, my healing in sickness, my riches in need, my peace in war, my life in death. In token I present to you my sword by which I so swear from this hour henceforth, until death take me or the world end. I name you now Calista Vandal.”
(Hero's wedding vow to his bride.) "

― Ashlyn Macnamara , Destined for a King (The Bastard Brotherhood, #1)