“She still remembered sitting for hours as a little girl and pretending to be a hassock. A foot stool. Because if she could just stay very small, and very quiet, her mother would forget she was there, and then she wouldn't scream about people and places and things that had gone wrong.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas
“Then he just blurted it out, with no preparation. 'The truth of it is that whether your mother arranged our marriage, or whether it was all an illusion, I must be horribly obtuse, because I can't talk myself out of being in love with you.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas
“I miss talking to you.'
'I can't imagine why. We haven't talked about anything particularly interesting in years.'
'I thought it was interesting. Perhaps I like talking about boring things with you.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas
“A number of visitors called this morning,' Finchley announced with some pride. He took a tray from a waiting footman and displayed it as if it were a baby. Sure enough there was a little heap of cardboard bits, embossed with the names of nobility, acquaintances, friends and the purely curious.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas
“She found a small picture made entirely of feathers and was trying to decide whether it depicted a monkey climbing up the back of a man—or possibly a person climbing a flight of stairs or perhaps a cow next to a tree, when she saw a chess piece, sitting by itself on a small pedestal.
It was the white queen, carved from ivory. She stood with a regal frown, her body shadowed by the enormous crown that bloomed on her head. The crown was a hollow sphere, exquisitely carved with open work, and when Jemma peered inside she saw inside another sphere, also open, and inside that, yet another.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas
“He walked until his heart was as dreary as the sky, until some sort of truth came to him.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas
“Fletch took his wife’s arm. 'We aren’t going to turn anyone out into the cold and dark, are we, Poppy?'
She looked up at him and said, 'Absolutely, we are. If you pay them double, Fletch, they’ll probably be quite grateful.'
He always knew that women were the crueler sex. But there was something slightly unnerved in her voice that he found interesting. “Unkind wench. I don’t turn people out into the dark. It’s coming on to snow.”
― Eloisa James, quote from An Affair Before Christmas
“That fool of a fairy Lucinda did not intend to lay a curse on me. She meant to bestow a gift. When I cried inconsolably through my first hour of life, my tears were her inspiration. Shaking her head sympathetically at Mother, the fairy touched my nose. "My gift is obedience. Ella will always be obedient. Now stop crying, child."
I stopped.”
― Gail Carson Levine, quote from Ella Enchanted
“Results aside, the ability to have complete faith in another human being is one of the finest qualities a person can possess.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“…I seemed to be lying neither asleep nor awake looking down a long corridor of gray half light where all stable things had become shadowy paradoxical all I had done shadows all I had felt suffered taking visible form antic and perverse mocking without relevance inherent themselves with the denial of the significance they should have affirmed thinking I was I was not who was not was not who.”
― William Faulkner, quote from The Sound and the Fury
“But today’s society is characterized by achievement orientation, and consequently it adores people who are successful and happy and, in particular, it adores the young. It virtually ignores the value of all those who are otherwise, and in so doing blurs the decisive difference between being valuable in the sense of dignity and being valuable in the sense of usefulness. If one is not cognizant of this difference and holds that an individual’s value stems only from his present usefulness, then, believe me, one owes it only to personal inconsistency not to plead for euthanasia along the lines of Hitler’s program, that is to say, ‘mercy’ killing of all those who have lost their social usefulness, be it because of old age, incurable illness, mental deterioration, or whatever handicap they may suffer. Confounding the dignity of man with mere usefulness arises from conceptual confusion that in turn may be traced back to the contemporary nihilism transmitted on many an academic campus and many an analytical couch.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, quote from Man's Search for Meaning
“Remember, the people who know me are the ones who are free to live and love without any agenda."
Is that what it means to be a Christian?" It sounded kind of stupid as Mack said it, but it was how he was trying to sum everything up in his mind.
Who said anything about being a Christian? I'm not a Christian."
The idea struck Mack as odd and unexpected and he couldn't keep himself from grinning. "No, I suppose you aren't."
They arrived at the door of the workshop. Again Jesus stopped. "Those who love me come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslim, Democrats, Republicans, and many who don't vote or are not part of any Sunday morning religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some were bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraquis, Jews and Palistinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved."
Does that mean," asked Mack, "that all roads will lead to you?"
Not at all," smiled Jesus as he reached for the door handle to the shop. "Most roads don't lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you.”
― William Paul Young, quote from The Shack
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