Best 63 quotes in «orphan quotes» category

A foolish son has no advantage over a wise orphan.

After every battle, he ritually dips his hood into the blood of his enemies. I’ve seen the hood, kept under glass in the armory. The fabric is stiff and stained a brown so deep it’s almost black, except for a few smears of green. Sometimes I go down and stare at it, trying to see my parents in the tide lines of dried blood. I want to feel something, something besides a vague queasiness. I want to feel more, but every time I look at it, I feel less.

A Jewish Native American half-breed orphan playing bagpipes wasn't the sort of impression I ever wanted to make

...and when the Assembly arrived at Dusk I hasten'd into the Streets and made my self a child of Hazard. There was a Band of little Vagabonds who met by moon-light in the Moorfields, and for a time I wandred with them; most of them had been left as Orphans in the Plague and, out of the sight of Constable or Watch, would call out to Passers-by Lord Bless you give us a Penny or Bestow a half penny on us: I still hear their Voices in my Head when I walk abroad in a Croud, and some times I am seiz'd with Trembling to think I may be still one of them.

And after that until the end, there was no relief from being a girl with chores that she wasn’t being paid for, a girl with no new sandals and a friend who wasn’t a friend but a mistress, and a family that wasn’t but people who owned her and ordered her about, and nothing at all but her pretty breasts and her round bottom and her misbehaving hair to help her feel any different.

For my sake,” he said firmly, addressing the air in front of him as though it were a tribunal, “I dinna want ye to bear another child. I wouldna risk your loss, Sassenach,” he said, his voice suddenly husky. “Not for a dozen bairns. I’ve daughters and sons, nieces and nephews, grandchildren—weans enough.” He looked at me directly then, and spoke softly. “But I’ve no life but you, Claire.” He swallowed audibly, and went on, eyes fixed on mine. “I did think, though . . . if ye do want another child . . . perhaps I could still give ye one.

Bee had never been so hungry in her life. Oh, she’d been hungry plenty of times. Stomach-growling, eat-a-big-meal hungry. But this was different.

Charity begins on the street when you are homeless.

Destiny is not always preordained. Life is about making choices. Our lives are the sum of all the choices we make, the bridges we cross, and the ones we burn. Our souls cast long shadows over many people, even after we are gone. Fate, luck, and providence are the consequence of our freedom of choice, not the determinants. When justice is served by following our principles, making good decisions brings us inner peace.

Even with the way you usually carry on over children, I wouldn't have expected this. Actually bringing him to your home- what will Lord Hunter say?" "I don't know. I'm sure Hunter won't approve, but there's something about this boy that makes me want to keep him safe." "Lara, you feel that way about every child you encounter." "Yes, but this one is special." Lara felt awkward and tongue-tied as she fumbled for a rational explanation. "When I first saw him, he had a mouse in his pocket. He had brought it from prison." "A mouse," Rachel repeated, shivering suddenly. "Dead or alive?" "Alive and kicking," Lara said ruefully. "Johnny was taking care of it. Isn't that remarkable? Locked away in that prison, facing horrors you and I could never imagine... and he found a little creature to love and care for." Rachel shook her head and smiled as she stared at Lara. "So that's the attraction. The two of you share a habit of collecting strays. You're kindred spirits.

For a terrible time of life a teen-ager deceives himself; he believes he can trick the world. He believes he is invulnerable. An adolescent who is an orphan at this phase is in danger of never growing up.

For no man has adherents on the day of woe. I gave to the beggar, I raised the orphan, I gave success to the poor as to the wealthy..

For years, well into my adult life, I had recurring nightmares about that desk. I'd be walking past it, barefoot on a cold, hard floor. I'd hear a sound like wind rushing through a tunnel and feel a magnetic force sucking me inside. I'd be pulled, helpless, underneath the scarred roll-top and into the cubbyholes where the papers were stashed. I'd find myself in a room with a dirt floor, strapped to a table, and people would be standing around branding ugly names on my body with hot irons

I miss her,' Fyrian sobbed, 'My mother. I miss her so much. This witch should pay for what she's done.' Glerk stood tall as a mountain. He was serene as a bog. He looked at Fyrian with all the love in the world 'No, Fyrian. That answer is too easy, my friend. Look deeper.

History is orphan. It can speak, but cannot hear. It can give, but cannot take. Its wounds and tragedies can be read and known, but cannot be avoided or cured.

I finally let someone else in and now the weight of what happened to me isn’t so heavy to carry around.

If God is calling you to adopt, He will accomplish it. If God is leading you to care for the fatherless across the globe in some way other than adoption, He will accomplish it.

If you are too much interested in the story of others, then your own story will be orphaned!

I propose a conspiracy of orphans. We exchange winks. We reject hierarchies. All hierarchies. We take the shit of the world for granted and we exchange stories about how we nevertheless get by. We are impertinent. More than half the stars in the universe are orphan-stars belonging to no constellation. And they give off more light than all the constellation stars.

I thought back to Meg’s advice about Hemingway sentences—simple declarative statements that showed the truth and distilled the meaning. My first attempt at that had been cynical and messed up. I gave it a go again. Find one lost sheep. The angels rejoice.

Is there any greater mystery than the separateness of each person?

It’s a neighborhood where every dad has at least one job and where parents often end conversations with the words: no guts, no glory.

There would be fewer absent fathers, if straight men were turned on only by women with whom they would not mind having children.

Never go on a date unarmed.” Words of wisdom from my father. Well, my foster father. I was an orphan, of course. The best kings always are.

Orphans? Would you really? Adopt children?" "There are advantages. If they turn out badly, we can blame their natural parents. We can also choose our own assortment of ages and genders. We can even get them ready-grown, if we wish.

Someone experiencing the stages of grief is rarely aware of how his behavior might appear to others. Grief often produces a “zoom lens effect,” in which the focus is entirely on oneself, to the exclusion of external considerations.

It’s the tale of one ominous Dextra Hyde, who spent her childhood in the cold confines of the Happy Forest Orphanage just outside of Sceaux.

Maybe it was being orphaned and alone all my life, but I always steeled for the worst outcome I could envision. That way I could shrug and be almost happy with anything that fell short of the worst. It was a peculiar life skill and one I had gotten damn good at.

My hand shakes and some of the coffee I was bringing toward my mouth slips out of the cup and onto the table. Starving? This handsome CEO with his Jaguar and penthouse suite was starving?

Okay… This looks bad. You cowboy around with the Avengers some. Guys got, what, armor. Magic. Super-powers. Super-strength. Shrink-dust. Grow-rays. Magic. Healing factors. I’m an orphan raised by carnies fighting with a stick and a string from the Paleolithic era. So when I say this looks “bad”? I promise you it feels worse.

Some people ate less food less often when they each had a home than they now do as hobos.

The sign says that the Scald Mt. Rod & Gun Club has adopted the highway, but the Minotaur knows an orphan when he sees it.

This horrible half-grief has made me feel complicit in darkness. I worry that my sadness will be interpreted as an endorsement of his choices—of his very existence—and in this matter I don’t want to be misunderstood, so I cannot admit that I grieve him, that I care at all for the loss of this monstrous man who raised me. And in the absence of healthy action I remain frozen, a sentient stone in the wake of my father’s death. I hated him. I hated him with a violent intensity I’ve never since experienced. But the fire of true hatred, I realize, cannot exist without the oxygen of affection. I would not hurt so much, or hate so much, if I did not care. And it is this, my unrequited affection for my father, that has always been my greatest weakness. So I lie here, marinating in a sorrow I can never speak of, while regret consumes my heart. I am an orphan.

When you financially supported the orphanage and loved the orphans, you enriched yourself. -Red White Love: The Love of Liverpool FC

This is the great world, and I am only Kim. Who is Kim?' He considered his own identity, a thing he had never done before, till his head swam. He was one insignificant person in all this roaring whirl of India, going southward to he knew not what fate.

Turn it beautiful. His words came faintly at first, but they came again and again, always softly, always with the insistence of an elder commanding wisdom. Turn it all to beauty. She walked to the rail. When she turned and sat upon it, she heard a sailor in the crowd murmur that she might play them a tune. She hoped he was right. She needed the voices to be wrong. Fin raised the instrument to the cleft of her neck and closed her eyes. She emptied her mind and let herself be carried back to her earliest memory, the first pain she ever knew: the knowledge that her parents didn’t want her. The despair of rejection coursed through her. It fathered a knot of questions that bound her, enveloped her. Waves of uncertainty and frailty shook her to the bones. Her body quivered with anger and hopelessness. She reeled on the edge of a precipice. She wanted to scream or to throw her fists but she held it inside; she struggled to control it. She fought to subjugate her pain, but it grew. It welled up; it filled her mind. When she could hold it no more, exhausted by defiance and wearied by years of pretending not to care, Bartimaeus’s words surrounded her. Got to turn it beautiful. She dropped her defenses. She let weakness fill her. She accepted it. And the abyss yawned. She tottered over the edge and fell. The forces at war within her raced down her arms and set something extraordinary in motion; they became melody and harmony: rapturous, golden. Her fingers coaxed the long-silent fiddle to life. They danced across the strings without hesitation, molding beauty out of the miraculous combination of wood, vibration, and emotion. The music was so bright she felt she could see it. The poisonous voices were outsung. Notes raged out of her in a torrent. She had such music within her that her bones ached with it, the air around her trembled with it, her veins bled it. The men around fell still and silent. Some slipped to the deck and sat enraptured like children before a travelling bard.

Well, finally, once you become an orphan, you're an orphan till the day you die. I keep having the same dream. I'm seven years old and an orphan again. All alone, with no adults around to take care of me. It's evening, and the light is fading, and night is pressing in. It's always the same. In the dream I always go back to being seven years old. Software like that you can't exchange once it's contaminated.

Werner likes to crouch in his dormer and imagine radio waves like mile-long harp strings,bending and vibrating over Zollverein,flying through forests,through cities,through walls.At midnight he and Jutta prowl the ionosphere,searching for that lavish,penetrating voice.When they find it,Werner feels as if he has been launched into a different existence,a secret place where great discoveries are possible,where an orphan from a coal town can solve some vital mystery hidden in the physical world.

When other girls were dreaming about love, she dreamt of love too, but in an entirely different context - the ones they took for granted.

When you don't have something anymore, you learn to live without it." That's what my dad told me that first night after he found me sleeping inside a closet underneath a pile of my mom's clothes. All the different smells of her were still there and the memories were alive even if she wasn't. I looked up into his face and wondered why would I ever want to learn to live without her? That felt like she really would be gone forever, and I wanted to limp on the broken piece of me so I could feel her there all the time.

While many of us give to the hungry orphan, we have forgotten to love her.

Woe to the heart that has not loved in youth!

I decided that it might be interesting to have terrible things happen to orphans over and over again.

Cross-generational sex is the phenomenon in which young girls are given material goods in exchange for sex. All girls are vulnerable to it, particularly orphans.

Houses of evil similarity appeared like rows of disciplined, humiliated orphans.

Yes, my sister is weird and says crap like en route. I smirk - it's a common facial tic of mine - and turn to her.

Every politician should have been born an orphan and remain a bachelor.

I feel akin to the Platypus. An orphan in a family. A swimmer, a recluse. Part bird, part fish, part lizard.

I'm an orphan!" Constance cried gleefully. "I'm an orphan!" ~ The Prisoner's Dilemma

If I lose show business - I'll really be an orphan!