Best 451 quotes in «description quotes» category

The late-afternoon light was thick and orange and she passed four different couples taking photos of themselves on the same cobblestoned block, all their loves endlessly recorded and reviewed, ever and ever, a little archive of two.

The lines of her face, turned up to the sky, would have broken your heart.

The man is angry, the man Is destructive, the man wants more. The woman is more, the woman is all.

The minute grains of sand slipped silently down the curved hourglass, no matter how many times the people of Earth willed them not to. Time, fate and the actions of others were out of their control.

The moon was up now and the trees were dark against it, and he passed the frame houses with their narrow yards, light coming from the shuttered windows; the unpaved alleys, with their double rows of houses; Conch town, where all was starched, well-shuttered, virtue, failure, grit and boiled grunts, under-nourishment, prejudice, righteousness, inter-breeding and the comforts of religion; the open-doored, lighted Cuban boilto houses, shacks whose only romance was their names

The music as always had a dark sweet luster, but it was more than ever like an endless beginning-a theme ever building to a climax which would never come.

The nature of atheism merits clarification on two further points which involve less common ideas about theism. The first involves the idea of 'God' which is metaphorical — for example, a theist who believes in 'God' as a principle of conscience or morality. This 'God' exists in a person’s mind and it is not something which atheists will dispute. Atheists agree that gods exist as ideas in people’s minds; the disagreement lies over whether any gods actually exist independently of human beliefs. Those are the gods which atheists disbelieve in or deny. The second type of theism involves gods that exist as physical objects: stones, trees, rivers, or even the universe itself. Believers treat these objects are their gods, but do atheists reject their existence? Of course not — but how do they then remain atheists? The point of disagreement here is whether the label 'god' communicates any information beyond the more common label of 'stone,' 'tree,' or 'universe.' If not, then as far as atheists are concerned, those objects don’t merit the extra label 'god' and they remain atheists.

...the nest is agiggle with excitement.

Then it cleared: farther down the hallway, a door had opened on a flourish of sunlight. Into the light stepped a youth, white and gold, a celestial apparition—the Earl of Southampton. His face was beardless still, the eyes pale blue and with the lashless look of redheads. His auburn tresses, artfully curled, fell almost to his elbows. He was six feet tall and lovely as a waterfall, as pretty as a flowering tree. White silk, white velvet, cloth of gold. A gold filigree earring in one ear. Emilia knew him from her days of attendance on the Queen: an uncanny, androgynous youth with the despotic pout of the beautiful, who can never be sufficiently loved.

The night was very stark, alternate streams of town cars and chequered taxicabs, blaring horns busily staking claims—here is the road and here is the sidewalk. But the road looked so much livelier, what if I tried the road?

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled over like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a cafe, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours.

The only thing that comes close to defining me correctly is my love.

The problem with cliches is not that they contain false ideas, but rather that they are superficial articulations of very good ones. The sun is often on fire at sunset and the moon discreet, but if we keep saying this every time we encounter a sun or a moon, we will end up believing that this is the last rather than the first word to be said on the subject. Cliches are detrimental insofar as they inspire us to believe that they adequately describe a situation while merely grazing its surface.

The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentleman, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered lanes; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner.

There was a time when I quite liked what I saw in the looking-glass, but not anymore. Now I’m startled, and more than startled, by the visage that so abruptly appears there, never at all the one that I expect. I have been elbowed aside by a parody of myself, a sadly dishevelled figure in a Halloween mask made of sagging, pinkish- grey rubber that bears no more than a passing resemblance to the image of what I look like that I stubbornly retain in my head.

There are times today when Rachel looks at Zach and sees an effusion, she sees him in colours of yellow and blue, sun and sky. She sees the yellow crew-neck jumper and blue jeans the boy of eight years old appeared in the day he came to Chelsea from the Coram Family via the two or three previous fosterers who returned him there, defeated, pronouncing him uncommunicative and maladroit in the extreme, animal, said one; unruly. So why this boy? For Katya the fractious? Of all the orphan boys in the world, why him? Of all potential mothers, why Katya? What did she see? Everyone has a part and a destiny. Rachel remembers the yellow jumper the boy rarely removed, even after the family shopping spree for a new wardrobe at Harrods followed by lunch in a restaurant with napkins large as small tablecloths, and heavy cutlery and wine for Katya and Lev and a pervasive daunting hush. Zach had never been to a restaurant before and chose spaghetti, because he knew what it was. He ate it with knife and fork. On the day he arrived in Chelsea, he stopped in the vestibule to slip his feet from lace-ups without undoing the bows, removing his shoes with institutional efficiency, left hand still held in Katya's right. Rachel sees that boy still, blue and yellow. Sky and sun.

There is no moon. The stars have risen and fallen and given way to a new spread, to the smeared heart of our Milky Way.

There was an extravagant winter storm outside. The tinfoil sky flashed beyond the window, rattling in the frame, and once or twice a white fork like a vein. Through the opposite window, which looked out onto the other side of the house, the light was pale, picking out where the wall was still broken from the last big storm, with the scorched telegraph pole and the burnt tree.

There was . . . a mirror that crawled across the wall in a wooden frame. When I go into Miri's room all I can see, all I can think of is that enormous mirror, like a lake on the wall.

There was a shadowy light, not exactly twilight, but an uncertain vivid yet hazy illumination, wherein people walked like spirits, bathed in light and not revealed.

... there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again.

There was this hot, yellowy stillness the air always got in the minutes before the last bell, as if it were stiffening itself to be shattered.

The road of the pass was hard and smooth and not yet dusty in the early morning.

The room had the rather sinister tedium which some bedrooms have, a sort of weary banality which is a reminder of death. A dressing table can be a terrible thing.

The room, the wall, trembled with precision, as if the inanimate world were about to utter a word.

There was a short railway official travelling up to the terminus, three fairly short market-gardeners picked up two stations afterwards, one very short widow lady going up from a small Essex town, and a very short Roman Catholic priest going up from a small Essex village. When it came to the last case, Valentin gave it up and almost laughed. The little priest was so much the essence of those Eastern flats; he had a face as round and dull as a Norfolk dumpling; he had eyes as empty as the North Sea; he had several brown-paper parcels, which he was quite incapable of collecting. The Eucharistic Congress had doubtless sucked out of their local stagnation many such creatures, blind and helpless, like moles disinterred. Valentin was a skeptic in the severe style of France, and could have no love for priests. But he could have pity for them, and this one might have provoked pity in anybody. He had a large, shabby umbrella, which constantly fell on the floor. He did not seem to know which was the right end of his return ticket. He explained with a moon-calf simplicity to everybody in the carriage that he had to be careful, because he had something made of real silver "with blue stones" in one of his brown-paper parcels. His quaint blending of Essex flatness with saintly simplicity continuously amused the Frenchman till the priest arrived (somehow) at Tottenham with all his parcels, and came back for his umbrella.

The sky was always full of birdsong and evening smells, piano music from a window, the stone buildings glowing against the blue, like cream poured over something tart and hot.

These hands are steady enough, but they are large. Had he been a proper pianist - he's dabbled inexpertly - his ten-note span might be of use.

The sky is grey, with a thin TV-static drizzle that hangs in the air like it's been freeze-framed.

The sky is the sea glittering with minnows caught in the nets of the rain, a flute at dusk is a lover's tongue in the ear, an eye is a talon, a cinder, a star.

The sky was as blue and delicate as a porcelain teacup, and the hills rolled gently in all directions, intersected occasionally with the silver ribbon of a river.

The sky was like ebony and the only illumination was the harsh white light of the central streetlamp, which cast shadows so hard it seemed you might cut yourself on them.

The sky was low at night, full of the presence of a strange and watchful God.

The sky was low and broody, but from here, near the treeline, you could see the forest rolling down into the valley, the lake tucked away like a pocket mirror.

The sun was deaf'nin' so high up, yay, it roared an' time streamed from it.

. . . the superiority of some infinite reserve and the mystery of some infinite sadness.

The unseen essential can be described in many ways and comes in many forms, but is always preceded by virtue.

They cleared swiftly, dramatically, like a stage set or a movie; we went from black to stunning blue, the day emerging at once wet and crisp, the trees dripping jewels, the flowers drunk on drinking, their heads lolling with dizzy delight, rivulets etched into our earth, showing us which way the rain ran, downhill, of course, heading, all water, straight for our yet-to-be-pond.

The waterwheel was twice a man’s height, wider than a man’s two stretched arms. The timbers, braced and bolted with rusty iron were heavy, hand-hewn, swollen with a century of wet. Moss bearded the paddles, which dripped as they rose. The sounds were good. Wooden stutter like children running down a hall at the end of school. Grudging axle thud like the heartbeat of a strong old man.

The world always says the same thing. And in that patient truth which proceeds from star to star is established a freedom that releases us from ourselves and from others, as in that other patient truth which proceeds from death to death.

The worst is itself the description of the pain in it. It hurts wherever it is.

The very shapes of the trees were like frozen screams.

The water was so cold on her skin that it felt dry.

The 'Wild West' is a good description of law enforcement in the desert southwest USA.

They called him a comical genius and carried his stories carefully home, and they wondered at how the stories spilled out on the way, for they never sounded the same repeated in their own kitchens.

... they imagine that the life they are obliged to lead is not that for which they are really fitted, and they bring to their regular occupations either a fantastic indifference or a sustained and lofty application, scornful, bitter, and conscientious.

They lay there, two starfish on a galactic beach, the lights twinkling and the pink and blue clouds hovering like distant nebulae.

The young man who stood there was the handsomest mad Rand had ever seen, almost too handsome for masculinity.

Things that in other circumstances would have excited him left him unmoved now, for they were simply part of his life, until the moment he was back in his room using all his strength and care to smother the flame of life that burned within him.

This morning, I see the lead in my glass tumbler. A slim, bright glint, a silverfish. I feel it collecting in my blood, papercutting the lining of my veins.