“Your amoral ingenuity in the pursuit of your interest is perfectly shocking,” said Zacharias severely. “Yes, isn’t it?” said Prunella, pleased.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“But that was the trouble with children, Sir Stephen reflected. They were confoundedly liable to pattern themselves upon one’s conduct, when one would rather they simply did what they were told.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“Why, all the greatest magic comes down to blood," said Mak Genggang. "And who knows blood better than a woman?”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“Prunella had once thought life in London would be all flirting and balls and dresses, hitting attentive suitors on the shoulder with a fan, and breakfasting late upon bowls of chocolate. She sighed now for her naïveté. Little had she known life in London was in fact all hexes and murder and thaumaturgical politics, and she would always be rising early for some reason or other!”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“Prunella took to the ballrooms of London in the spirit of ruthless calculation of a general entering a battlefield.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“Zacharias’s study bore the marks of his predecessors, whose taste had run decidedly stoicheiotical. They had had a fondness for skulls with burning lights in their eye sockets, crystal balls in which mysterious shapes came and went, and dark velvet window curtains traced with obscure runes.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“Are you going? What shall you wear?"
"I shall go in what I am standing in," said Mak Genggang. "A witch is always appropriate whatever her attire.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“A female may be poor or delicate or a spinster, but it does seem ill-advised of Miss Liddiard to combine all three.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“I should advise you not to stop there, but set fire to his house, too, and sell his children to pirates. That is the only way he will learn”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“He was a typical specimen of the younger son in avid pursuit of mediocrity with which the Theurgist’s teemed:”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“[A] life passed amid the feuds and rivalries of a girls' school had left Prunella not wholly unprepared for battle.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“Her bulk seemed to fill the world, blocking out the horizon and casting a shadow over the magicians huddled on the wall. The enchantment appeared to encompass everything upon her person, for as she grew, so did the fronds of seaweed draped over her, and the pretty amber pendant on her breast expanded till it was itself the height and breadth of a grown man.
"Midsommer!" roared Lord Burrow. "Look to your wife!"
"He can hardly miss her", remarked Prunella.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“Since the decision to become a parent is invariably self-interested, it is my belief that a parent's obligation is to the child, and the child's obligation is to itself.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“Shameless, impudent, meddling females, who presumed to set at naught the Society’s prohibition on women’s magic, and duped the common people with their potions and cantrips!”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“It is a mother's duty to teach her daughters about the uses of blood, particularly a magical daughter.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“The woman leant forward, her eyes flashing, a smile both triumphant and tender curving her mouth.
"You are *my* daughter," she said. "Can there be any doubt that you will be brilliant -- audacious -- and free?"
The vision disappeared. She had been so vital, so overflowing with life and energy, that her going seemed to leave the room dark.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“What are acquaintance for, if not to supply the pleasures of gossip?”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“... it is strange to know you would be cast off by the people who greet you so warmly, if they knew the whole truth about you.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“I might go anywhere and do any magic I pleased if I were Peter, not Prunella.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“The statement brought up the old anger and confusion, followed by the accustomed guilt, that he should be so ungrateful as to resent the man who had rescued him from bondage. And yet he did resent Sir Stephen, even now.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“The caterpillars were a problem, however. Fat, fuzzy and complacent, they sat upon his vegetables in veritable hordes, ignoring him until he addressed one directly.
“Good morning, sir,” he said.
The caterpillar paused the busy movement of its jaws to reply:
“Pleasant weather, this, eh?”
It was an ideal summer’s day. The skies stretched out in endless blue overhead, unmarred by a single wisp of cloud; the fresh scent of greenery and earth rose into the nostrils, imparting a lively pleasure in being alive and outdoors.
“You seem troubled, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so,” said the caterpillar.
Zacharias experienced a brief internal struggle, but decided upon candour.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“One might have thought you had never met my aunt Georgiana,” said Rollo, with the steeliness of despair. “She is the one with the false curls and glowing eyes and smoke rising from her jaws. Do not you recollect her?”
“She did strike me as possessing unusual force of character,” admitted Damerell.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“As Zacharias approached his conveyance, the scope of the undertaking to which he had agreed began to dawn upon him.
The chaise that was to bear him and Prunella to Fobdown Purlieu was indeed waiting. It was doubtful whether it was capable of doing anything else.
Turrill was a good-humoured man on the whole, whose anxieties about driving the Sorcerer Royal had been eased by Mr. Wythe’s being as pleasant-spoken and openhanded a gentleman as he had ever met (“Even if he is black as coal, I am sure that is none of his fault, and it would be a dull world if God had cut us all from the same pattern”). It was no wonder he felt hardly used upon this occasion, however, and Zacharias was not surprised to be addressed in terms of reproach.
“You hadn’t ought to have done it, sir,” said the coachman. “You may turn me into a frog for it, but I must speak my mind, and I say you hadn’t ought to have done it. If I had not given satisfaction, you had only to say the word and I should have hopped to it, not wishing to offend any gentleman of such a liberal disposition as yourself, and not being such a fool as to desire to vex a sorcerer besides. There was no call to go a-magicking the chaise—and where you got the squashes for it out of season, I am sure I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” said Zacharias, bending down to examine what had previously been a wheel, and was now an enormous squash.”
― Zen Cho, quote from Sorcerer to the Crown
“I am not in this world to live up to your expectations and you are not in this world to live up to mine. I am I and you are you. And if we find each other that's beautiful, if not, it can't be helped.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“We agreed that at least to some extent the whole punk movement is based on the Buddha's 1st noble truth of suffering & the dissatisfactory nature of the material world. The punks see through the lies of society & the oppressive dictates of modern consumer culture. Very few punks though seem to take it further & attempt to understand the causes & conditions of the suffering & falsehoods, unfortunately punks rarely come around to seeing that there is actually a solution & a path to personal freedom. My own life's experience w/ both Dharma practice & punk rock inspired me to try to bridge the gap between the two. I've tried to help point out the similarities, while also acknowledging the differences, & to show those of my generation who are interested that they can practice meditation & find there the freedom we have been seeking in our rebellion against the system.”
― Noah Levine, quote from Dharma Punx: A Memoir
“He wasn't like some of the hippies in England, where the qualification to rebel is planted by the guilt raised from being a spoilt child with a good education. He was a real hippy born from being forced to kill for his army until he was twenty one. He had long hair because the army made him shave his head. The army made him shave every day too. Now he had a beard. His face for a long time was not his own. When this guy said he was all about peace he wasn't talking about peace because his mum never got him the horse he wanted for his eighteenth birthday, he was talking about peace because he’d seen war. He talked about love because he knew hate: hate for those above him, hate for those he had served with, hate for enemies not born his but who became so and, lastly, hate for himself for how his mind had been controlled.”
― Craig Stone, quote from Life Knocks
“She paced her room all day, tossed sleeplessly in her bed all night. At dusk, she sat in her window and poured all her longing and desire into her songs, hoping he would somehow hear her and return.
And he did.”
― Kate Forsyth, quote from Bitter Greens
“How often do we clutch the burdens of our guilt and regrets – or another’s violation in our life – when we have the option of releasing them There are many things we need to release in order to experience true freedom.”
― quote from When Your Past Is Hurting Your Present: Getting Beyond Fears That Hold You Back
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