Quotes about quiver (98 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

Children , Color , Game , Coffee

“I have always disbelieved that Sicilian saying about revenge being a dish best served cold. I feel that--don't you?--when I see blinking, quivering octogenarian Nazi war criminals being led away in chains. Why not then? It's too late now. I want to see them taken back in time and punished then… Blame, certainly, is a dish only edible when served fresh and warm. Old blames, grudges and scores congeal and curdle and cause the most terrible indigestion.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

War , Feeling , Revenge , Time

“You know, a landscape painter's day is delightful. You get up early, at three o'clock in the morning, before sunrise; you go and sit under a tree; you watch and wait. At first there is nothing much to be seen. Nature looks like a whitish canvas with a few broad outlines faintly sketched in; all is misty, everything quivers in the cool dawn breeze. The sky lights up. The sun has not yet burst through the gauze veil that hides the meadow, the little valley, the hill on the horizon... Ah, a first ray of sunshine!”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Corot's description of the beginning of a day in Switzerland, Château de Gruyères, 1857; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963
1850s

Nature , Tree , Light , Waiting

“Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street… Everything has a secret soul, which is silent more often than it speaks.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Secret , Soul , Star , Flowers

“The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

World

“All right, boy, skewer me. I've dropped my defenses,
I'm an easy victim. Why, by now
Your arrows practically know their own way to the target
And feel less at home in their quiver than in me.”

Ovid (-43–17 BC) Roman poet

Source: The Erotic Poems

Way , Feeling , Home , Boy

“And I said to myself: From now on help anyone and everyone so far as it lies within your power. Cease to be apathetic, indifferent! Exalt yourself by devoting yourself to others, enrich yourself by making everyone's destiny your own, by enduring and understanding every facet of human suffering through your pity. And my heart, astonished at its own workings, quivered with gratitude to the sick girl whom I had hurt unwittingly and who, through her suffering, had taught me the creative magic of pity.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Girl , Understanding , Suffering , Help

“Tormented by spiritual thirst,
I dragged myself through a somber desert.
And a six-winged seraph
Appeared to meet me at the crossing of the ways.
He touched my eyes
With fingers as light as a dream:
And my prophetic eyes opened
Like those of a frightened eagle.
He touched my ears
And they were filled with noise and ringing:
And I heard the shuddering of the heavens,
And the flight of the angels in the heights,
And the movement of the beasts of the sea under the waters,
And the sound of the vine growing in the valley.
He bent down to my mouth
And tore out my tongue,
Sinful, decitful, and given to idle talk;
with the right hand steeped in blood
He inserted the tongue of a wise serpent,
Into my benumbed mouth.
He clove my breast with a sword,
And plucked out my quivering heart,
And thrust a coal of live fire
Into my gaping breast.
Like a corpse I lay in the desert.
And the voice of God called out to me:
'Arise, O prophet, see and hear,
Be filled with my will,
Go forth over land and sea,
And set the hearts of men on fire with your Word.”

Aleksandr Pushkin The Prophet

English translation found in New Society, Volume 8, (1966). New Society Limited. p. 413.
Also quoted by Kahn, Andrew (2006). The Cambridge Companion to Pushkin. Cambridge University Press, p. 84.
The Prophet (1826)

Men , God , Dreams , Angels

“When a child is born its sense-organs are brought in contact with the outer world. The waves of sound, heat, and light beat upon its feeble body, its sensitive nerve-fibres quiver, the muscles contract and relax in obedience: a gasp, a breath, and in this act a marvelous little engine, of inconceivable delicacy and complexity of construction, unlike any on earth, is hitched to the wheel-work of the Universe.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Man's Greatest Achievement (1908; 1930)

World , Sense , Light , Universe

“I was running from my own thoughts as much as anything. I simply wanted to untangle myself from the web I had touched. A single, sticky, quivering strand of it was all I needed to warn me away. I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me.”

Patricia A. McKillip book Winter Rose

Source: Winter Rose (1996), Chapter 5, pp. 42-43.

People , Color , Bird , Thinking

“I thought I should make something – I felt it would be so easy – it would take form under my hands like magic.
Then people would see!
A strong naked arm – a tanned powerful neck a young woman rests her head on the arching chest.
She closes her eyes and listens with open and quivering lips to the words he whispers into her long flowing hair.
I should paint that image just as I saw it – but in the blue haze.
Those two at that moment, no longer merely themselves, but simply a link in the chain binding generation to generation.
People should understand the significance, the power of it. They should remove their hats like they do in church.
There should be no more pictures of interiors, of people reading and women knitting.
There would be pictures of real people who breathed, suffered, felt, loved.
I felt impelled – it would be easy. The flesh would have volume – the colours would be alive.
There was an interval. The music stopped. I was a little sad. I remembered how many times I had had similar thoughts – and that once I had finished the painting – they had simply shaken their heads and smiled.
Once again I found myself out on the Boulevard des Italiens.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

written in Saint Cloud, 1889
Quotes from his text: 'Saint Cloud Manifesto', Munch (1889): as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 120 -121
1880 - 1895

Love , Women , People , Sadness

“I sit here in the upper circle surrounded by copper and gold, and smile with joy under my fly net as all the light, glory and quivering brightness passes slowly and freely before my eyes. Nothing happier than this. I shout and laugh at my immense wealth, all free and without responsibility. Who could steal this from me? No one. Oh that I could roll some up— as at present.”

Arthur Streeton (1867–1943) Australian artist

Reported in Mollie Hetherington, Famous Australians (1983), p. 252.

Smile , Light , Joy , Flying

“He put his hands on the young woman's shoulders, and looked at her, in readiness for his eager embrace.
They held each other close, staggering. They said the same word at the same time, "At last!" That was all they said, but they said it over and over again in a low voice, chanting it together. Their eyes uttered the same sweet cry. Their breasts communicated it to each other. It seemed to be tying them together and making them merge into one. At last! Their long separation was over. Their love was victor. At last they were together. And I saw her quiver from head to foot. I saw her whole body welcome him while her eyes opened and then closed on him again. They made a great effort to speak to each other. The few shreds of conversation held them back a moment.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XV

Love , Communication , Effort , Time

“Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a forest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence cried out.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XVII
Context: Who shall compose the Bible of human desire, the terrible and simple Bible of that which drives us from life to life, the Bible of our doings, our goings, our original fall? Who will dare to tell everything, who will have the genius to see everything?
I believe in a lofty form of poetry, in the work in which beauty will be mingled with beliefs. The more incapable of it I feel myself, the more I believe it to be possible. The sad splendour with which certain memories of mine overwhelm me, shows me that it is possible. Sometimes I myself have been sublime, I myself have been a masterpiece. Sometimes my visions have been mingled with a thrill of evidence so strong and so creative that the whole room has quivered with it like a forest, and there have been moments, in truth, when the silence cried out.
But I have stolen all this, and I have profited by it, thanks to the shamelessness of the truth revealed. At the point in space in which, by accident, I found myself, I had only to open my eyes and to stretch out my mendicant hands to accomplish more than a dream, to accomplish almost a work.

Truth , Strong , Silence

“To dwellers in a wood almost every species of tree has its voice as well as its feature. At the passing of the breeze the fir-trees sob and moan no less distinctly than they rock; the holly whistles as it battles with itself; the ash hisses amid its quiverings; the beech rustles while its flat boughs rise and fall.”

Thomas Hardy Under the Greenwood Tree

Source: Under the Greenwood Tree (1872), ch. 1

Tree

“Yes!" Narissus unslung his bow and grabbed an arrow from his dusty quiver. "The first one who get that bronze, I will like youas much as I like me. I might even kiss you, right after I kiss my reflection!"

"Oh my gods!" the nymphs squealed.”

Rick Riordan The Mark of Athena

Source: The Mark of Athena

God , Kiss

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 195
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

Mountain

“If you don't like it you can kiss my quiver”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Variant: Its our loot. If you don't like it, you can kiss my quiver
Source: The Last Olympian

Kiss

“Don't talk to my sister that way." Nico said. His voice quivered, but I was impressed that he had the guts to say anything at all. — Percy”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Way , Sister

“Boy, you better check that tone. (Wulf)
Yeah, yeah, ya scare me. I’m even wetting my pants while in your terrifying, gut-wrenching presence. See me shiver and quiver? Ooo, ahhh, ooo. (Chris)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Boy

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

Donna Tartt book The Secret History

Variant: It's a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.
Source: The Secret History

Beauty

“Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?'

What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Life , Death , Fear , Knowledge

“It'sloot!" he yelled, standing on his tiptoes so he could get in Clarisse's face. "If you don't like it, you can kiss my quiver!”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Kiss

“Dustfinger still clearly remembered the feeling of being in love for the first time. How vulnerable his heart had suddenly been! Such a trembling, quivering thing, happy and miserably unhappy at once.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Love , Feeling , Time , Heart

“After all, when a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Water

“Tarzan of the Apes had decided to mark his evolution from the lower orders in every possible manner, and nothing seemed to him a more distinguishing badge of manhood than ornaments and clothing.
To this end, therefore, he collected the various arm and leg ornaments he had taken from the black warriors who had succumbed to his swift and silent noose, and donned them all after the way he had seen them worn.
About his neck hung the golden chain from which depended the diamond encrusted locket of his mother, the Lady Alice. At his back was a quiver of arrows slung from a leathern shoulder belt, another piece of loot from some vanquished black.
About his waist was a belt of tiny strips of rawhide fashioned by himself as a support for the home-made scabbard in which hung his father's hunting knife. The long bow which had been Kulonga's hung over his left shoulder.
The young Lord Greystoke was indeed a strange and war-like figure, his mass of black hair falling to his shoulders behind and cut with his hunting knife to a rude bang upon his forehead, that it might not fall before his eyes.
His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 13 : His Own Kind

God , War , Way , Home

“The difference between the first- and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition — it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind — yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

To Henry Rutgers Marshall (7 February 1899)
1920s, The Letters of William James (1920)

Art

“If liberals were prevented from ever again calling Republicans dumb, they would be robbed of half their arguments. To be sure, they would still have "racist," "fascist," "homophobe," "ugly," and a few other highly nuanced arguments in the quiver. But the loss of "dumb" would nearly cripple them.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Source: 2002, Slander : Liberal Lies About the American Right (2002), p. 121.

Loss

“Good humour is the only shield to keep off the darts of the satirical railer: if you have a quiver well stored, and are sure of hitting him between the joints of the harness, do not spare him; but you had better not bend your bow than miss your aim.”

James Burgh (1714–1775) British politician

The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)

“Cupid and my Campaspe play'd
At cards for kisses—Cupid paid:
He stakes his quiver, bow, and arrows,
His mother's doves, and team of sparrows;
Loses them too; then down he throws
The coral of his lips, the rose
Growing one's cheek (but none knows how);
With these, the crystal of his brow,
And then the dimple of his chin:
All these did my Campaspe win.
At last he set her both his eyes—
She won, and Cupid blind did rise.
O Love! has she done this for thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?”

John Lyly (1554–1606) English politician

Poem: Cupid and Campaspe.

Love , Kiss

“The spider hung motionless, like a dull brown gem in an intricate necklace. The web was complete, now, the last strands laid delicately in place; it stretched from one side of the ceiling corner to the other, quivering gently in the rising air as though strummed by invisible hands.
For a moment Isgrimnur lost the thread of talk, important talk though it was. His eyes had drifted from the worried faces huddled near the fireplace in the great hall, roving up to the darkened corner, and to the tiny builder at rest.
There’s sense, he told himself. You build something and then you stay there. That’s the way it’s meant to be. Not this running here, running there, never see your blood-family or your home roofs for a year at a time.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 37, “Jiriki’s Hunt” (p. 619).

Family , Way , Home , Sense

“I dash out to the banks of the river [river the 'Loup', at Cagnes, France] and find myself amongst the rushes and the reeds. I grind some pigment over all this and the wind makes their slender stalks bend and appliqués them with precision and delicacy on to my canvas, which I thus offer to quivering nature: I obtain a vegetal mark. Then it starts to rain; a fine spring rain: I expose my canvas to the rain.... and I have the mark of the rain!”

Yves Klein (1928–1962) French artist

a mark of an atmospheric event.
In 1960; p. 61
1960 -1964, "Yves Klein, 1928 – 1962, Selected Writings"

Spring , Nature

“And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Men , Money , God , War

“The moonlight rolls down like a river,
The silence streams out like a sea;
And far where the eastern winds quiver,
My farewell goes floating to thee.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

And Thou Too (1888)

Silence , Sea

“You can lock the door upon them, but they burst open their shaky lattices and call out over the house-tops so that men cannot but hear. You hounded wild Rousseau into the meanest garret of the Rue St. Jacques and jeered at his angry shrieks. But the thin, piping tones swelled a hundred years later into the sullen roar of the French Revolution, and civilization to this day is quivering to the reverberations of his voice.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Men , Housing

“Do you recall that night in June
Upon the Danube River;
We listened to the ländler-tune,
We watched the moonbeams quiver.”

Charles Hamilton Aide (1826–1906) French writer

The Danube River, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Night

“That Somerset Maugham anthology Cakes and Ale. How destructive he is, venomous, pulling everything down in biting, corrosive cynicism. Yet somewhere deep down under all the conceit, sarcasm and snobbery is real quivering pain, helpless bewilderment at the inexplicable fact that human nature is chequered. And what perplexes him is less the common, mean element in decent people than the goodness and kindness of wicked, vicious ones.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.

Pain , People , Nature

“I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

Feeling , Sense , Time , Heart

“But I am poor, and my name ends with a soft vowel, and they hate me and my father, and my father's father, and they would have my blood and put me down, but they are old now, dying in the sun and in the hot dust of the road, and I am young and full of hope and love for my country and my times, and when I say Greaser to you it is not my heart that speaks, but the quivering of an old wound, and I am ashamed of the terrible thing I have done.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Six

Love , Hate , Hope , Time

“A dumb halo of sorrow lurks in Shirin's cold gaze,
Reclining on the marble columns of the veranda,
A pregnant cat is sleeping on her lap
And slowly snores.

The Shirin's image north of the garden
Is hanging on an apple tree;
Khosrow, in love with another mistress, mockingly mutters;
How can the eye in this image
Show the trace of lover breathing eye of Shirin?…??
For a moment Khosrow beats at the bow and says:
Shirin's eye is a good target, I have ordained
That this new bow should be tried on it.

Khosrow, the king of the world,
The master of archers,
Pulled out an arrow from his quiver.
This Parthian arrow, this nimble flying hawk,
Is familiar with the bow and the thumb.

A spark rose from Mount Bistoun,
Was it the lightening from Farhad's ax?
An angry flame is blazing in the image's eye,
The loud uproar,
The loud clamor of Farhad's heart,
Is robing sleep from the cat's eye.”

Farrokh Tamimi (1934–2003) Iranian poet and translator

Poet, Farhad

Love , World , Cats , Lovers

“Faith has in it the recognition of the certainty and the justice of a judgment that is coming down crashing on every human head; and then from the midst of these fears and sorrows and the tempest of that great darkness there rises up in the night of terrors the shining of one perhaps pale, quivering, distant, but divinely given hope, "My Saviour! My Saviour! He is righteous; He has died; He lives! I will stay no longer; I will cast myself upon Him!"”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 229.

Fear , Faith , Justice , Hope

“Ye will not pray; ye will not shun temptation; ye will not renounce known sin; ye will not fight against evil habits! Are ye stronger than God? Can ye contend with the Eternal One? Have ye the nerve which shall not tremble, and the flesh which shall not quiver, and the soul which shall not quail, when the sheet of fire is round the globe, and thousand times ten thousand angels line the sky, and call to judgment?”

Henry Melvill (1798–1871) British academic

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 340.

God , Angels , Soul , Evil

“It is only in the case of musical instruments that I find any commendable diligence in the [Irish] people. They seem to me to be incomparably more skilled in these than any other people that I have seen. The movement is not, as in the British instrument to which we are accustomed, slow and easy, but rather quick and lively, while at the same time the melody is sweet and pleasant. It is remarkable how, in spite of the great speed of the fingers, the musical proportion is maintained. The melody is kept perfect and full with unimpaired art through everything – through quivering measures and the involved use of several instruments – with a rapidity that charms, a rhythmic pattern that is varied and a concord achieved through elements discordant.”
In musicis solum instrumentis commendabilem invenio gentis istius diligentiam. In quibus, prae omni natione quam vidimus, incomparabiliter instructa est. Non enim in his, sicut in Britannicis quibus assueti sumus instrumentis, tarda et morosa est modulatio, verum velox et praeceps, suavis tamen et jocunda sonoritas. Mirum quod, in tanta tam praecipiti digitorum rapacitate, musica servatur proportio; et arte per omnia indemni inter crispatos modulos, organaque multipliciter intricata, tam suavi velocitate, tam dispari paritate, tam discordi concordia, consona redditur et completur melodia.

Gerald of Wales (1146) Medieval clergyman and historian

Topographia Hibernica (The Topography of Ireland) Part 3, chapter 11 (94); translation from Gerald of Wales (trans. John J. O'Meara) The History and Topography of Ireland ([1951] 1982) p. 103.

People , Art , Music , Time

“Pillars are fallen at thy feet,
Fanes quiver in the air,
A prostrate city is thy seat,
And thou alone art there.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

Marius amid the Ruins of Carthage

Art

“shadows of night and reflections of light
shiver and quiver and churn,
for the searching of soul that never can hurt
is the fire that never can burn.”

David Gerrold book When HARLIE Was One

Section 2 (p. 5; typed by HARLIE in answer to the question [how do you feel, harlie?)]
When HARLIE Was One (1972)

Soul , Search , Light , Hurt

“Halfway up the slope, guarded by a group of tall, slim, cypress-trees, nestled a small strawberry-pink villa, like some exotic fruit lying in the greenery. The cypress-trees undulated gently in the breeze, as if they were busily painting the sky a still brighter blue for our arrival.
The villa was small and square, standing in its tiny garden with an air of pink-faced determination. Its shutters had been faded by the sun to a delicate creamy-green, cracked and bubbled in places. The garden, surrounded by tall fuschia hedges, had the flower beds worked in complicated geometrical patterns, marked with smooth white stones. The white cobbled paths, scarcely as wide as a rake's head, wound laboriously round beds hardly larger than a big straw hat, beds in the shape of stars, half-moons, triangles, and circles all overgrown with a shaggy tangle of flowers run wild. Roses dropped petals that seemed as big and smooth as saucers, flame-red, moon-white, glossy, and unwrinkled; marigolds like broods of shaggy suns stood watching their parent's progress through the sky. In the low growth the pansies pushed their velvety, innocent faces through the leaves, and the violets drooped sorrowfully under their heart-shaped leaves. The bougainvillaea that sprawled luxuriously over the tiny iron balcony was hung, as though for a carnival, with its lantern-shaped magenta flowers. In the darkness of the fuschia-hedge a thousand ballerina-like blooms quivered expectantly. The warm air was thick with the scent of a hundred dying flowers, and full of the gentle, soothing whisper and murmur of insects.”

Gerald Durrell book My Family and Other Animals

My Family and Other Animals (1956)

Star , Flowers , Lying , Parent

“Petals are a plant’s eardrum. Distant sounds make them quiver like the needle of a seismograph.”

Malcolm de Chazal (1902–1981) Mauritian artist

Sens-plastique

Distant

“Let that ancient dragon, Cadalus, take note. Let this disturber of the Church, this destroyer of apostolic discipline, this enemy of man’s salvation understand. Let him beware, I say, this root of all sin, this herald of the devil, this apostle of Antichrist. And what else shall I call him? He is the arrow drawn from the quiver of Satan, the rod of the Assyrian, the son Belial, "the son of perdition, who rises in his pride against every god, so called, ever object of men’s worship" (2 Thess. 2:3-4), the whirlpool of lust, the shipwreck of chastity, the disgrace of Christianity, the ignominy of bishops, the progeny of vipers, the stench or the world, the filth of the ages, the shame of the universe. Still more epithets for Cadalus can be added, a list of darksome names: slippery snake, a twisting serpent, the dung of humanity, the latrine of crime, the dregs of vice, the abomination of heaven the expulsion from paradise, the fodder of hell, the stubble of eternal fire.”

Peter Damian (1007–1072) reformist monk

Letter 120:13. Damian to young King Henry IV, A. D. 1065 or 1066, wherein Damian exhorts Henry to use his sword against the disturber of the Church’s peace, Cadalus, the bishop of Parma, the antipope Honorius II (d. 1072):
The Fathers of the Church, Medieval Continuation, 1998, Letters 91-120, Owen J. Blum, Irven Michael Resnick, trs., Catholic University of America Press, ISBN 0813208165 ISBN 9780813208169, vol. 5, pp. 393-394. http://books.google.com/books?id=Vlspdtjmhd4C&pg=PA393&dq=%22Let+that+ancient+dragon,+Cadalus,+take+note%22&hl=en&ei=QVpiTIjeIIG88gaFq-SVCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Let%20that%20ancient%20dragon%2C%20Cadalus%2C%20take%20note%22&f=false

Men , God , Age , World

“"Is it agreeable?" somebody asked.
"Neither agreeable nor disagreeable," I answered. "it just is." Istigkeit - wasn't that the word Meister Eckhart liked to use? "Is-ness." The Being of Platonic philosophy - except that Plato seems to have made the enormous, the grotesque mistake of separating Being from becoming and identifying it with the mathematical abstraction of the Idea. He could never, poor fellow, have seen a bunch of flowers shining with their own inner light and all but quivering under the pressure of the significance with which they were charged; could never have perceived that what rose and iris and carnation so intensely signified was nothing more, and nothing less, than what they were - a transience that was yet eternal life, a perpetual perishing that was at the same time pure Being, a bundle of minute, unique particulars in which, by some unspeakable and yet self-evident paradox, was to be seen the divine source of all existence.”

Aldous Huxley book The Doors of Perception

page 4-5
The Doors of Perception (1954)

Life , Flowers , Mathematics , Idea

“The murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell, meets death without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ, or the eternal "procession" of the Holy Ghost. The king who has waged cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with widows and fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who has succeeded in offering to the Moloch of ambition the best and bravest of his subjects, dies like a saint.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The Great Infidels (1881)

Death , War , Children , Disease

“Not a single muscle quivered
On his radiantly evil face.
Oh, I know: his delight
Is the tense and passionate knowledge
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

The Guest (1914)

Knowledge , Passion , Evil

“The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said; for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak that it would scarcely run down hill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to its salvation, and a part of the “manifest destiny” of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government. So, too, when Russia wanted to take possession of a part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks were “an inferior race.” So, too, when England wants to set the heel of her power more firmly in the quivering heart of old Ireland, the Celts are an “inferior race.” So, too, the Negro, when he is to be robbed of any right which is justly his, is an “inferior man.” It is said that we are ignorant; I admit it. But if we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote. If he knows as much when he is sober as an Irishman knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote, on good American principles.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)

Men , People , Support , Strong

“I have never been frightened of anything. Because I fought British tommies to save the honor of an Indian lady, Gandhiji called me abhay sadhak, a fearless seeker of truth. When the sweepers of Warora challenged me to clean gutters, I did so. But that same person who fought goondas and British bandits quivered in fright when he saw the living corpse of TuIshiram, no fingers, no clothes, with maggots all over. That is why I took up leprosy work. Not to help anyone, but to overcome that fear in my life. That it worked out good for others was a by-product. But the fact is I did it to overcome fear.”

Baba Amte (1914–2008) Indian freedom fighter, social worker

On fear
Baba Amte's Words of Wisdom

Life , Truth , Fear , Help

“There was Johnson (Lyndon) who had compromised too many contradictions and now the contradictions were in his face: when he smiled the corners of his mouth squeezed gloom; when he was pious, his eyes twinkled irony; when he spoke in a righteous tone, he looked corrupt; when he jested, the ham in his jowls looked to quiver. He was not convincing. He was a Southern politician, a Texas Democrat, a liberal Eisenhower; he would do no harm, he would do no good, he would react to the machine, good fellow, nice friend -- the Russians would understand him better than his own. … Johnson gave you all of himself, he was a political animal, he breathed like an animal, sweated like one, you knew his mind was entirely absorbed with the compendium of political fact and maneuver.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Superman Comes to the Supermarket (1960)

Smile , Understanding , Animals

“There was a time, and not so long ago, when one could score a success also here with a bit of irony, which compensated for all other deficiencies and helped one get through the world rather respectably, gave one the appearance of being cultured, of having a perspective on life, an understanding of the world, and to the initiated marked one as a member of an extensive intellectual freemasonry. Occasionally we still meet a representative of that vanished age who has preserved that subtle, sententious, equivocally divulging smile, that air of an intellectual courtier with which he has made his fortune in his youth and upon which he had built his whole future in the hope that he had overcome the world. Ah, but it was an illusion! His watchful eye looks in vain for a kindred soul, and if his days of glory were not still a fresh memory for a few, his facial expression would be a riddle to the contemporary age, in which he lives as a stranger and foreigner. Our age demands more; it demands, if not lofty pathos then at least loud pathos, if not speculation then at least conclusions, if not truth then at least persuasion, if not integrity then at least protestations of integrity, if not feeling then at least verbosity of feelings. Therefore it also coins a totally different kind of privileged faces. It will not allow the mouth to be defiantly compressed or the upper lip to quiver mischievously; it demands that the mouth be open, for how, indeed, could one imagine a true and genuine patriot who is not delivering speeches; how could one visualize a profound thinker’s dogmatic face without a mouth able to swallow the whole world; how could one picture a virtuoso on the cornucopia of the living world without a gaping mouth? It does not permit one to stand still and to concentrate; to walk slowly is already suspicious; and how could one even put up with anything like that in the stirring period in which we live, in this momentous age, which all agree is pregnant with the extraordinary? It hates isolation; indeed, how could it tolerate a person’s having the daft idea of going through life alone-this age that hand in hand and arm in arm (just like itinerant journeymen and soldiers) lives for the idea of community.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates (1841), p. 246-247

Life , Hate , Truth , Youth

“The limbs will quiver and move after the soul is gone.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Northcote, 487
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), Johnsoniana

Soul

“We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion — a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

This I Believe (1951)

Age , Faith , Courage , Despair

“When calculations become complex and Infinity is obscured, then will be remembered anew the simplest principle: from heart to heart — such is the law of fraternity, community, fellowship.
Toiler, when the energy is transmuted into an ocean of light,
does thy consciousness quiver or expand?
Toiler, is thy heart fearful or exultant
when before thee looms Infinity?”

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) Russian painter, writer, archaeologist, theosophist, enlightener, philosopher

§ 275
New Era Community (1926)

Fear , Law , Communication , Light

“I had not failed to interpret the significance of that dark frown, that bitten lip and those flashing eyes, nor the way the willowy figure had quivered, indicating, unless she had caught a chill, that she was as sore as a sunburned neck.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Much Obliged, Jeeves

Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971)

Way

“There was a time when even brave men might look fearfully upon the destiny of the Republic; when our country was involved in a tangled network of contradictions; when vast and irreconcilable social forces fiercely disputed for ascendency and control; when a heavy curse rested upon our very soil, defying alike the wisdom and the virtue of the people to remove it; when our professions were loudly mocked by our practice, and our name was a reproach and a byword to a mocking; when our good ship of state, freighted with the best hopes of the oppressed of all nations, was furiously hurled against the hard and flinty rocks of derision, and every cord, bolt, beam and bend in her body quivered beneath the shock, there was some apology for doubt and despair. But that day has happily passed away. The storm has been weathered, and the portents are nearly all in our favor.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

Wisdom , Men , People , Hope

“And, (relief pitcher Dennis Eckersley) walked (pinch-hitter Mike Davis) … and look who's comin' up!
(36 seconds of crowd cheering)
All year long, they looked to him to light the fire, and all year long, he answered the demands, until he was physically unable to start tonight—with two bad legs: the bad left hamstring, and the swollen right knee. And, with two out, you talk about a roll of the dice … this is it. If he hits the ball on the ground, I would imagine he would be running 50 percent to first base. So, the Dodgers trying to catch lightning right now!
Fouled away.
He was, you know, complaining about the fact that, with the left knee bothering him, he can't push off. Well, now, he can't push off and he can't land. … 4-3 A's, two out, ninth inning, not a bad opening act!
Mike Davis, by the way, has stolen 7 out of 10, if you're wondering about Lasorda throwing the dice again. 0-and-1.
Fouled away again. … 0-and-2 to Gibson, the infield is back, with two out and Davis at first. Now Gibson, during the year, not necessarily in this spot, but he was a threat to bunt. No way tonight, no wheels.
No balls, two strikes, two out.
Little nubber … foul—and, it had to be an effort to run that far. Gibson was so banged up, he was not introduced; he did not come out onto the field before the game. … It's one thing to favor one leg, but you can't favor two. 0-and-2 to Gibson.
Ball one. And, a throw down to first, Davis just did get back. Good play by Ron Hassey using Gibson as a screen; he took a shot at the runner, and Mike Davis didn't see it for that split-second and that made it close.
There goes Davis, and it's fouled away! So, Mike Davis, who had stolen 7 out of 10, and carrying the tying run, was on the move.
Gibson, shaking his left leg, making it quiver, like a horse trying to get rid of a troublesome fly. 2-and-2! … Tony LaRussa is one out away from win number one. … two balls and two strikes, with two out.
There he goes! Wa-a-ay outside, he's stolen it! … So, Mike Davis, the tying run, is at second base with two out. Now, the Dodgers don't need the muscle of Gibson, as much as a base hit, and on deck is the lead-off man, Steve Sax. 3-and-2. Sax waiting on deck, but the game right now is at the plate.
High fly ball into right field, she i-i-i-is gone!!
(67 seconds of cheering and organ music)
In a year that has been so improbable … the impossible has happened!
And, now, the only question was, could he make it around the base paths unassisted?!
You know, I said it once before, a few days ago, that Kirk Gibson was not the Most Valuable Player; that the Most Valuable Player for the Dodgers was Tinkerbell. But, tonight, I think Tinkerbell backed off for Kirk Gibson. And, look at Eckersley—shocked to his toes!
They are going wild at Dodger Stadium—no one wants to leave!”

Vin Scully (1927) American sports broadcaster

Kirk Gibson's World Series-game-winning home run, October 15, 1988, transcribed from mlb.com archives <nowiki>[</nowiki>excising comments by color commentator Joe Garagiola]

Music , Way , Imagination , Game

“O, Woman! in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!”

Walter Scott Marmion

Canto VI, st. 30.
Marmion (1808)

Pain , Angels , Light

“As for hair in the nose, it is picturesque, and with a little practise it can be made to quiver, like the antennae of one of the more intelligent and sensitive insects. Anything which gives interest to the gloomy, immobile pan of the average Canadian should be cherished and not extirpated with circular scissors.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)

Intelligence

“Did you see them in the river?
They were there to wave to you.
Could you tell that the empty quiver,
Brown skinned Indian on the banks
That were crowded and narrow,
Held a broken arrow?”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Broken Arrow, from Buffalo Springfield Again (1967)
Song lyrics, With Buffalo Springfield

“We reach vague-gesturing hands, we lift our heads,
Hear sounds far off,—and dream, with quivering breath,
Our curious separate ways through life and death.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Life , Death , Dreams , Way

“Oh I wish that I could paint again. Paint is an instrument without which I cannot survive for any length of time. Whenever I even think of gray, green and white, I am overcome with quivers of lust. Then I wish that this war would end and that I might paint again.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Quote from Beckmann's letter to his first wife Minna, from the front, first World war, 1915; as quoted in Max Beckmann, Stephan Lackner, Bonfini Press Corporation, Naefels, Switzerland, 1983, p. 14
Quote of Max Beckmann, one from a series of letters he wrote to his wife Minna Beckmann-Tube, being medic soldier at the front of World War 1.
1900s - 1920s

War , Thinking , Time , Painting

“But still the great public opinion of the free States was unmoved. It cried angrily, 'You're only making matters worse. It's very hard, but what can we do? It's none of our business. It's none of our business'. But when 1850 came, and theory was found to be fact, when the man who was angrily crying, 'It's none of my business, what have I to do with slavery?' suddenly felt the quivering, panting fugitive clinging to his knees — a wretched, forlorn, outcast, hunted man, guilty of no crime but color, and begging the succor that no honest man would refuse to a cur cowering on his threshold — then, as he stood aghast and heard Slavery thundering at his door, 'I am the law. Give me my prey! Give me my prey!”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

he felt God knocking at his heart, 'Whoso doeth it unto the least of these my little ones, doeth it unto me'.
1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

God , Law , Color , Business

“the color of the sky as far as I can see is coal gray
lift my head from the pillow and then fall again
with a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather
a quiver in my lips as if I might cry”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, In My Tribe (1987), Like The Weather

Color , Thinking , Cry , Weather

“A thousand trills and quivering sounds
In airy circles o'er us fly,
Till, wafted by a gentle breeze,
They faint and languish by degrees,
And at a distance die.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

Ode on St. Cecilia's Day (1699), st. 6.

Flying

“"Hey, gang!" I squeaked in my terrifically accurate Mickey voice. "Everybody ready to shoot the ultimate Disney flick? The film that rips the lid off the goody two-shoes hypocrisy that lies sweltering beneath the surface of G-rated true-life adventures? Okay, you guys, let's get that hand-held Arriflex right down there between Minnie's legs! I wanna see closeups of quivering labia!"”

Harlan Ellison (1934–2018) American writer

The Three Most Important Things in Life http://www.harlanellison.com/iwrite/mostimp.htm (1978)

Life , Shoe , Guy

“Hitherto he has found in Western music, in Bach above all, everything he needs. Now he encounters something that is not in Bach, though there are intimations of it: a joyous yielding of the reasoning, comprehending mind to the dance of the fingers. He hunts through record shops, and in one of them finds an LP of a sitar player named Ustad Vilayat Khan, with his brother — a younger brother, to judge from the picture — on a veena, and an unnamed tabla player. He does not have a gramophone of this own, but he is able to listen to the first ten minutes in the shop. It is all there: the hovering exploration of tone-sequences, the quivering emotion, the ecstatic rushes. He cannot believe his good fortune. A new continent and all for a mere nine shillings! He takes the record back to his room, packs it away between sleeves of cardboard till the day he will able to listen to it again.”

J.M. Coetzee (1940) South African writer

Youth (2002)

Music , Dance

“There is another earthquake in Kyoto. We appreciate it lyrically. A slide of dust slips along a roof gully. A large tree of golden petals shakes and the petals drift to the floor. Birds fly up. Bottles of clear liquid in a shop quiver on a shelf. The water in a puddle shimmers reflections up a wall. A collection of grey roof tiles shift and -- ever faster -- begin to slide down a roof slope.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Section 56
8 1/2 Women

Bird , Tree , Water , Flying

“The Arab was by nature continent; and the use of universal marriage had nearly abolished irregular courses in his tribes. The public women of the rare settlements we encountered in our months of wandering would have been nothing to our numbers, even had their raddled meat been palatable to a man of healthy parts. In horror of such sordid commerce our youths began indifferently to slake one another's few needs in their own clean bodies — a cold convenience that, by comparison, seemed sexless and even pure. Later, some began to justify this sterile process, and swore that friends quivering together in the yielding sand with intimate hot limbs in supreme embrace, found there hidden in the darkness a sensual co-efficient of the mental passion which was welding our souls and spirits in one flaming effort. Several, thirsting to punish appetites they could not wholly prevent, took a savage pride in degrading the body, and offered themself fiercely in any habit which promised physical pain or filth.”

T. E. Lawrence book Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Source: Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922), Ch. 1

Women , Pain , Marriage , Youth

“Then through the pallid rift that seemed at first
Hardly enough for a trickle from the suns,
Outpoured the revelation and the flame.
The brief perpetual sign recurred above.
A glamour from unreached transcendences
Iridescent with the glory of the Unseen,
A message from the unknown immortal Light
Ablaze upon creation's quivering edge,
Dawn built her aura of magnificent hues
And buried its seed of grandeur in the hours.”

Sri Aurobindo book Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol

Savitri (1918-1950), Book One : The Book Of Beginnings

Light , Sun

“I heard a heavy step approaching behind the great door, and saw through the chinks the gleam of a coming light. Then there was the sound of rattling chains and the clanking of massive bolts drawn back. A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back.
Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of colour about him anywhere. He held in his hand an antique silver lamp, in which the flame burned without a chimney or globe of any kind, throwing long quivering shadows as it flickered in the draught of the open door. The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation.
"Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!"”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Jonathan Harker's journal
Dracula (1897)

Light , Housing

“So my answer to why I wrote this book [about Pakistani textbooks] is: I have written for posterity. (Sometimes I feel that I have written all my books for the generations whom I will not see). In a hundred years' time; when the future historian sets out to contemplate the Pakistan off an age gone by and look for the causes that brought it low, he might find in this book of mine one small candle whose quivering flame will light his path.”

Khursheed Kamal Aziz (1927–2009) historian

Khursheed Kamal Aziz The Murder of History, critique of history textbooks used in Pakistan, 1993

Books , Age , Feeling , Light

“So from a brazen vase the trembling stream
Reflects the lunar or the solar beam:
Swift and elusive of the dazzled eyes,
From wall to wall the dancing glory flies:
Thence to the ceiling shoot the glancing rays,
And o'er the roof the quivering splendor plays.”

Christopher Pitt (1699–1748) English poet

Book VIII, line 33
The Æneid of Virgil (1740)

Dance

“Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay,
Lull'd by the coil of his crystalline streams
Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers
Quivering within the wave's intenser day,
All overgrown with azure moss and flowers
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book Ode to the West Wind

St. III
Ode to the West Wind (1819)

Dreams , Flowers , Sense , Sleep

“The blood will follow where the knife is driven,
The flesh will quiver where the pincers tear.”

Edward Young (1683–1765) English poet

The Revenge, Act V, sc. ii.

Tear

“Outside in the garden, the greenhouse collapses. Masonry crashes from the roof and splashes into the moat. The grave-marker for the pig Hortense moves up out of the ground. The Maillol statue stands firm as the shrubs around it quiver. A water-main bursts in the yard sending a shower into the air. Trees fall as though whipped down to the ground. The water on the lake shimmers and ripples like a film run backwards.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Penultimate paragraph of the published script.
8 1/2 Women

Tree , Water

“With an effort Ewing turned his gaze away from the far end of the bar. Slowly he spread out his hands on the table and examined them. Then he looked up at Wayne. His left eyelid had begun to quiver slightly like a leaf in a gentle breeze as he put the question, but the expression of his face remained unchanged. "Who's the new customer?"”

Robin Maugham (1916–1981) British novelist, playwright and travel writer

Ewing asked indolently.
Explicit
The Wrong People (1971)

Question , Effort

“I lay too many Eggs in the hot Sands of this Wilderness, the World! with Ostrich Carelessness & Ostrich Oblivion. The greater part, I trust, are trod underfoot, & smashed; but yet no small number crawl forth into Life, some to furnish Feathers for the Caps of others, & still more to plume the Shafts in the Quivers of my Enemies, of them that lie in wait against my Soul.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Notebooks, September/early October 1802
Notebooks

Life , Lie , World , Soul

“Never before had I known the sudden quiver of understanding that travels from word to brain to heart, the way a new language can move, coil, swim into life under the eyes, the almost savage leap of comprehension, the instantaneous, joyful release of meaning, the way the words shed their printed bodies in a flash of heat and light.”

Elizabeth Kostova book The Historian

Source: The Historian (2005), Ch. 25

Life , Way , Travel , Understanding

“Shah Alamgir, that high and mighty king,
Pride and renown of Gurgan Timur’s line,
In whom Islam attained a loftier fame
And wider honour graced the Prophet’s Law,
He the last arrow to our quiver left
In the affray of Faith with Unbelief;
When that the impious seed of heresy,
By Akbar nourished, sprang and sprouted fresh
In Dara’s soul, the candle of the heart
Was dimmed in every breast, no more secure
Against corruption our Community
Continued; then God chose from India
That humble-minded warrior, Alamgir,
Religion to revive, faith to renew.
The lightning of his sword set all ablaze
The harvest of impiety; faith’s torch
Once more its radiance o’er our counsels shed.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

The Secrets of Selflessness, Emperor Alamgir and the Tiger

God , Faith , Religion , Law

“In an extreme instance, in which there is a Propervirt of less than 0.9%, the TEXT OF THE PRESENT PROSPECTUS may likewise undergo an ABRUPT change. If, while you are reading these sentences, the words begin to jump about, and the letters quiver and blur, please interrupt your reading for ten or twenty seconds to wipe your glasses, adjust your clothing, or the like, and then start reading AGAIN from the beginning, and NOT JUST from the place where your reading was interrupted, since such a TRANSFORMATION indicates that a correction of DEFICIENCIES is now taking place.”

Stanisław Lem book Imaginary Magnitude

Imaginary Magnitude (1984), p. 86

Change , Reading , Clothes

“And their love life got better with time. Familiarity bred excitement. They loved discovering those little things, the touch, that made the other respond with a quiver or a sigh, and, in turn, having the discovery made.”

Hubert Selby Jr. book The Demon

The Demon (1976)

Love , Life , Time

“"It is enough", this malicious man tells us, "to extinguish the line of the defeated prince." Can one read this without quivering in horror and indignation?”

Frederick II of Prussia book Anti-Machiavel

Source: Anti-Machiavel, Ch. 3 : Mixed Principalities

Reading

“"Why do I love him so much, mamma? Why do I feel so sorry for him?" she went on in a quivering voice, and her eyes glistened with tears. "Who is he? What is he like? As light as a little feather, as a little crumb, but I love him; I love him like a real person. Here he can do nothing, he can't talk, and yet I know what he wants with his little eyes."”

Anton Chekhov book In the Ravine

Source: In the Ravine (1900), Ch. 6, pp. 216

Love , Feeling , Tear , Light

“Were one to stop and think of what meat is, and what it was, it is doubtful if one could eat it. It is merely dead and decaying flesh — flesh from the body of an animal. … Only by the fact that they are covered up, and their true nature concealed by cooking, and basting, and pickling, and peppering and salting can we eat them at all. If we were natural carnivorous animals, we should delight in bloodshed and gore of all kind! … We should eat our flesh warm and quivering — just as it comes from the cow!”

Hereward Carrington (1880–1958) Jersey parapsychologist

Source: The Natural Food for Man, p. 160-161

Nature , Thinking , Animals , Cooking

“If I saw something once that I can't explain, that doesn't make them real. And if a trick of the dark gave me a chill, that doesn't make them real. And if a madman says what's at the core of us all is a senseless, flapping quiver of black shade, that's just one more reason not to believe.”

Charlie Huston book Joe Pitt Casebooks

My Dead Body, Character: Joe Pitt (narration)
Joe Pitt Casebooks

“As a sunbeam quivers upon the walls of a house when flung up from water, which is just poured forth in a caldron or a pail may be; and hither and thither on the swift eddy does it dart and dance along.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book III. Jason and Medea, Lines 756–759 (tr. R. C. Seaton)

Water , Dance , Housing

“The moon, full-orbed, forsakes her watery cave,
And lifts her lovely head above the wave;
The snowy splendours of her modest ray
Stream o'er the glistening waves, and quivering play;
Around her, glittering on the heaven's arched brow,
Unnumbered stars, enclosed in azure, glow,
Thick as the dew-drops of the April dawn,
Or May-flowers crowding o'er the daisy lawn;
The canvas whitens in the silvery beam,
And with a mild pale-red the pendants gleam;
The masts' tall shadows tremble o'er the deep;
The peaceful winds a holy silence keep;
The watchman's carol, echoed from the prows,
Alone, at times, awakes the still repose.”

William Julius Mickle (1734–1788) British writer

Book I, lines 417–430 (pp. 23–24)
The Lusiad; Or, The Discovery of India: an Epic Poem (1776)

Love , Peace , Star , Flowers

“The starlight of heaven above us shall quiver
As our souls flow in one down eternity’s river.”

Thomas Osborne Davis (Irish politician) (1814–1845) Irish writer and activist

The Welcome.

Soul

“Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Lady of Shalott

Pt. I, st. 2
The Lady of Shalott (1832)

“Master, Master Poet,
Master of our silent desires,
The heart of the world quivers with the throbbing of your heart,
But it burns not with your song.”

Khalil Gibran book Jesus, The Son of Man

A Man From Lebanon: Nineteen Centuries Afterward
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)
Context: Master, Master Poet,
Master of our silent desires,
The heart of the world quivers with the throbbing of your heart,
But it burns not with your song.
The world sits listening to your voice in tranquil delight,
But it rises not from its seat
To scale the ridges of your hills.
Man would dream your dream but he would not wake to your dawn
Which is his greater dream.
He would see with your vision,
But he would not drag his heavy feet to your throne.
Yet many have been enthroned in your name
And mitred with your power,
And have turned your golden visit
Into crowns for their head and sceptres for their hand.

World , Heart

“That Somerset Maugham anthology Cakes and Ale. How destructive he is, venomous, pulling everything down in biting, corrosive cynicism. Yet somewhere deep down under all the conceit, sarcasm and snobbery is real quivering pain, helpless bewilderment at the inexplicable fact that human nature is chequered.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

And what perplexes him is less the common, mean element in decent people than the goodness and kindness of wicked, vicious ones.
Broken Lights Diaries 1955-57.

Pain , Nature

“There is a streak of cruelty <…> that runs through the human race. You find it everywhere you look, on every page of recorded history. Man is not satisfied with inflicting death alone, he must inflict it with many painful frills. A boy pulls the wings off flies and ties tin cans to a dog's tail. The Assyrians flayed screaming thousands while they were still alive. <…> The Aztecs <…> cut out the hearts of their living sacrifices with a blunt stone knife. The Saxons threw men into the serpent pits or flayed them living and rubbed salt into the quivering flesh as the pelt peeled off.”

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) American writer, journalist

Из малой прозы

Pain , History , Dogs , Heart

“can you sense twirling atoms
within the quivering air
it is the frequency of care
cast upon the human race
by anonymous surveyors of fate”

Marcin Malek (1975) Polish writer

Source: We'll go asleep: Poems and Ballads, "Here comes time of plague", pg. 62

Sense , Fate