Jenna Bayley-Burke · 248 pages
Rating: (2.5K votes)
“Love. It is an incredible sensation. An amazing gift. All consuming and yet as light as a whisper. Once you've been in love you don't ever want to find yourself out of it.”
― Jenna Bayley-Burke, quote from Compromising Positions
“Raise your expectations. If he thinks you’re worth it he’ll rise to the occasion.”
― Jenna Bayley-Burke, quote from Compromising Positions
“Never give someone more than you’re willing to lose,”
― Jenna Bayley-Burke, quote from Compromising Positions
“That brief moment of being loved is worth any pain you have to endure at losing it.”
― Jenna Bayley-Burke, quote from Compromising Positions
“The man had a body that made her want to learn how to carve marble.”
― Jenna Bayley-Burke, quote from Compromising Positions
“When a man seats before his eyes the bronze face of his helmet and steps off from the line of departure, he divides himself, as he divides his ‘ticket,’ in two parts. One part he leaves behind. That part which takes delight in his children, which lifts his voice in the chorus, which clasps his wife to him in the sweet darkness of their bed. “That half of him, the best part, a man sets aside and leaves behind. He banishes from his heart all feelings of tenderness and mercy, all compassion and kindness, all thought or concept of the enemy as a man, a human being like himself. He marches into battle bearing only the second portion of himself, the baser measure, that half which knows slaughter and butchery and turns the blind eye to quarter. He could not fight at all if he did not do this.” The men listened, silent and solemn. Leonidas at that time was fifty-five years old. He had fought in more than two score battles, since he was twenty; wounds as ancient as thirty years stood forth, lurid upon his shoulders and calves, on his neck and across his steel-colored beard. “Then this man returns, alive, out of the slaughter. He hears his name called and comes forward to take his ticket. He reclaims that part of himself which he had earlier set aside. “This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath. “What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy’s spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell? “When a man joins the two pieces of his ticket and sees them weld in union together, he feels that part of him, the part that knows love and mercy and compassion, come flooding back over him. This is what unstrings his knees. “What else can a man feel at that moment than the most grave and profound thanksgiving to the gods who, for reasons unknowable, have spared his life this day? Tomorrow their whim may alter. Next week, next year. But this day the sun still shines upon him, he feels its warmth upon his shoulders, he beholds about him the faces of his comrades whom he loves and he rejoices in their deliverance and his own.” Leonidas paused now, in the center of the space left open for him by the troops. “I have ordered pursuit of the foe ceased. I have commanded an end to the slaughter of these whom today we called our enemies. Let them return to their homes. Let them embrace their wives and children. Let them, like us, weep tears of salvation and burn thank-offerings to the gods. “Let no one of us forget or misapprehend the reason we fought other Greeks here today. Not to conquer or enslave them, our brothers, but to make them allies against a greater enemy. By persuasion, we hoped. By coercion, in the event. But no matter, they are our allies now and we will treat them as such from this moment. “The Persian!”
― Steven Pressfield, quote from Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
“پیش از آنکه زمان آغاز شود خداوند همهچیزی را آکنده بود و مکان وجود نداشت. پدر برای آفریدن عالم میبایست به درون خود بازگردد تا خلائی پدید آورد و این غیبت خداوند مکان را به وجود آورد و در این مکان در هفت روز ستارگان، روشنایی، آب، گیاهان و جانوران و آدمی سر برکردند، اما چندانکه زمین به سبب بیرون رفت ذات الهی پدیدار شد، زمینه پدید آمد سلطه دشمن خداوند یعنی گناه مساعد بود!”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from The War of the End of the World
“Meg’s eyes were too bright. “I wish human beings couldn’t have feelings. I am having feelings. They hurt.”
― Madeleine L'Engle, quote from A Wind in the Door
“And yes, I came over here fully intending to seduce you." He lifted his head and whispered in my ear, "It's what I'm good at. Just like you're good at evading demons and kicking ass."
"Kicking ass?" I questioned as he dropped his head back to the arm of the couch. His hand was exploring again, and I didn't want to move.
"Yeah," he said, and I jumped as he found a ticklish spot. "I like a woman who takes care of herself."
"Not much of a white knight on a horse, huh?"
He raised one eyebrow. "Oh, I could," he said. "But I'm a lazy son of a bitch.”
― Kim Harrison, quote from Every Which Way But Dead
“Either you’re standing under your haloes, eyes up to heaven, or you’re munching apples in their faces and flashing your bush. I’m not even sure they know which one they prefer. The best you can do is choose when you change your costume”
― Sarah Dunant, quote from The Birth of Venus
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