FastSaying

If all hearts were open and all desires known -- as they would be if people showed their souls -- how many gapings, sighings, clenched fists, knotted brows, broad grins, and red eyes should we see in the market-place!


Thomas Hardy

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CASSANDRA CLARE What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears as easily as we open and shut our eye...
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG That's how many people here see their life. More of the world may start coming to see us in Rocinha ...
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INGRID NEWKIRK Nothingever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laught...
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ELLEN BASS How would it be possible if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labor be found...
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ROBERT ZUBRIN How beautiful would it be if we could just see souls instead of bodies? To see love and compassion i...
KAREN QUAN Wisdom lightens the foreheads, the eyes, and the souls – savagery, fangs and fists.
MARIANA FULGER Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the bla...
JAMES JOYCE Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once; And He that might the vantage best have took Found ...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE I would read all day if I could.
QUVENZHANE WALLIS How many relationships would be better if they were born out of something genuine rather than merely...
EVAN SUTTER Eyes and ears are poor witnesses to people if they have uncultured souls.
HERACLITUS The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God as if he stood ther...
MEISTER ECKHART All the fans who came out, we're going to need their support all year long. It was great to see it, ...
ERIC FIEGI People trust their eyes above all else - but most people see what they wish to see, or what they bel...
ZOë MARRIOTT In a health relationship, it should always be about them. Two people are involved. And both of them ...
LISA S. LEWIS Beauty is all about us, but how many are blind! They look at the wonder of this earth and seem to se...
PAU (PABLO) CASALS If we were talking constant dollar, which is all we should be talking about, they came in at the hig...
ERIC COLDWELL If the truth were known, many sermons are prepared and preached with more regard for the sermon than...
GEORGE F. PENTECOST I think of Lindsay in the bathroom of Rosalita’s, and wonder how many people are clutching secrets...
LAUREN OLIVER The No. 1 thing circulating in my head regarding Katrina's impact on the community, is how they will...
BEVERLY WILLIAMS How could you have a soccer team if all were goalkeepers? How would it be an orchestra if all were F...
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STEPHEN FRY Every day they get more wrinkles. When we first got them they didn't have very many so I wondered if...
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G. C. (GEORG CHRISTOPH) LICHTENBERG If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
G. C. LICHTENBERG This would likely allow them to go down market, and potentially not hurt the major Juniper brand dep...
MARK SEERY We have a wonderful physical plant in place. The key is to focus on the consumer and what they want ...
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SRI SATHYA SAI BABA If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by every...
STEPHEN HAWKING I want to gather next to to me all those friendly souls believing like me in the intrinsic good of m...
MICHAEL DE CHâTILLON God quickened in the Sea and in the Rivers, So many fishes of so many features, That in the wa...
GUILLAUME DE SALLUSTE DU BARTAS If our early lessons of acceptance were as successful as our early lessons of anger, how much happie...
PETER MCWILLIAMS Someone has to speak for the animals. We try to fix as many as we can and educate as many people as ...
DANA FRYE I think our heads were just out of the game and our hearts weren't in it as it should have been. If ...
HOLLY HARRIS If ever again, someone says to go to the market, where hearts are sold in exchange for melancholy so...
KHADIJA RUPA In the eyes of man, we were known as human beings. In the eyes of the Gods, we were their sons. Hist...
ENRIQUE VEGA If a test showed you had telomere shortening, it would be a red flag suggesting you should take a lo...
ELIZABETH BLACKBURN God sends little children to speak and act for him. In their simplicity and naivety they say and do ...
PHIL STEER If everyone in the world sat quietly at the same time, closed their eyes and concentrated as hard as...
GEORGE CARLIN If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they w...
SUSAN B. ANTHONY If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they w...
SUSAN ANTHONY How wonderful it would be if people did all they could for one other without seeking anything in ret...
KENTETSU TAKAMORI If the quality of the people got better as they aged, how good that would be, don’t you think so? ...
MEHMET MURAT ILDAN If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving ...
PAUL BOWLES To see how happy they were, ... that?s the feeling that happens to most people once in a lifetime if...
CLEM LABINE Evil witnesses are eyes and ears of men, if they have souls that do not understand their language.
HERACLITUS If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with r...
RUSH LIMBAUGH If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with re...
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MICHAEL MEADE If people were more concerned with how they looked on the inside, then on the outside, the world wou...
DAVID WALSH To really be free, a Person must open their hearts, minds and souls to the world around them. Only t...
MARIE KATRA They should calculate what their rate would be if adjusted in today's market and compare that with t...
GARY AKRIGHT If we delight in God, He shall give us our hearts desires.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA If you are strangling someone and staring them in their eyes as you're depriving them of their life ...
LONNA STEVENS He seemed kind of ticked-off. His fists were doubled, clenched down by his side.
CURTIS JONES If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and ...
EMILY BRONTë If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as...
C.S. LEWIS If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as...
C. S. LEWIS When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside...
MICHAEL BRIDGE When our eyes see our hands doing the work of our hearts, the circle of Creation is completed inside...
MICHAEL BRIDGE If wisdom were on sale in the open market, the stupid would not even ask the price.
SOURCE UNKNOWN If wisdom were on sale in the open market, the stupid would not even ask the price.
Would love to see all the doctor professions with their degrees, all the different illnesses and the...
APURVA GAGLANI Everything worth is known to a true heart and everyone understands its worth only if they don’t mi...
ANUJ SOMANY It's all right if people think we are idiots.
It's all right if we lie face down on the earth.<...
ROBERT BLY What became of all those lost balloons: they were the loves that slipped out of our fists; the blank...
JODI PICOULT In broad general terms, yes, we'd be interested in mine safety improvements at the federal level. We...
MARK YORK We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many ...
KARL POPPER I should meet and go over all of the bases. How many grass services would be used, how much trash wo...
DENNIS RITTENHOUSE If I were the rain. . . that binds together the Earth and the sky, whom in all eternity will never m...
TITE KUBO We are looking for caring families to open their hearts and homes. All these youths need is a safe h...
DAVE BETZ [But even with two Englishmen in the band, McCarthy and Hardy, they remain loyal to Glasgow.] We def...
ALEX KAPRANOS I think if people were to look at badminton and tennis, they'd see they're actually very sim...
RAJIV OUSEPH You should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it we...
QUENTIN CRISP Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk up...
ELIAS CANETTI Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk up...
ELIAS CANETTI Every decision is liberating, even if it leads to disaster. Otherwise, why do so many people walk up...
ELIAS CANETTI She thought about how it was so simple with animals. They gave their hearts without question or fear...
ELIZABETH GEORGE When we treat people merely as they are, they will remain as they are. When we treat them as if they...
THOMAS S. MONSON … many people must be ruled to thrive. In their selfishness and greed, they see free people as the...
TERRY GOODKIND Ashamed of the many frailties they feel within, all men endeavor to hide themselves, their ugly nake...
BERNARD MANDEVILLE Two people can share a life of dreams, if they know their hearts desire, if they love,care,and alway...
FRANCO C. ZARLI JR. You would realize how good you had it, if God allowed you to see how many people were trying to take...
TROY GATHERS Something happens when two people look at each other, and they have a cellular connection. It's ...
COSTA RONIN She did not talk to people as if they were strange hard shells she had to crack open to get inside. ...
MARITA BONNER Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of those ancient points of light were the last echoes of s...
RANSOM RIGGS

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THOMAS HARDY The main object of religion is not to get a man into heaven, but to get heaven into him.
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THOMAS HARDY Ethelberta breathed a sort of exclamation, not right out, but stealthily, like a parson's damn.
THOMAS HARDY Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveli...
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THOMAS HARDY Aspect are within us, and who seems most kingly is king.
THOMAS HARDY Of course poets have morals and manners of their own, and custom is no argument with them.
THOMAS HARDY Like the British Constitution, she owes her success in practice to her inconsistencies in principle.
THOMAS HARDY Don't you go believing in sayings, Picotee: they are all made by men, for their own advantages. Wome...
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THOMAS HARDY That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
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THOMAS HARDY A lover without discretion is no lover at all.
THOMAS HARDY ...our impulses are too strong for our judgement sometimes
THOMAS HARDY Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
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THOMAS HARDY There are accents in the eye which are not on the tongue, and more tales come from pale lips than ca...
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THOMAS HARDY Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many ...
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THOMAS HARDY The bower we shrined to Tennyson, / Gentlemen, / Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon / Sagged sea...
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THOMAS HARDY Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.
THOMAS HARDY Where once we danced, where once we sang, Gentlemen, / The floors are shrunken, cobwebs hang.
THOMAS HARDY Cruelty is the law pervading all nature and society; and we can't get out of it if we would
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THOMAS HARDY I need not go / Through sleet and snow / To where I know / She waits for me: / She will tarry there ...
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THOMAS HARDY Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.
THOMAS HARDY The sky was clear -- remarkably clear -- and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs ...
THOMAS HARDY This was a practical application of the principle that a half-feigned and fictitious faith is better...
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THOMAS HARDY The rarest offerings of the purest loves are but a self-indulgence, and no generosity at all.
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THOMAS HARDY Human shapes, interferences, troubles, and joys were all as if they were not, and there seemed to be...
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THOMAS HARDY I may do some good before I am dead--be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; ...
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THOMAS HARDY Did it never strike your mind that what every woman says, some women may feel?
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THOMAS HARDY So each had a private little sun for her soul to bask in; some dream, some affection, some hobby, or...
THOMAS HARDY Let truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and...
THOMAS HARDY You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter...
THOMAS HARDY Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who k...
THOMAS HARDY Love is a possible strength in an actual weakness.
THOMAS HARDY And at home by the fire, whenever you look up there I shall be— and whenever I look up, there will...
THOMAS HARDY --the ethereal, fine-nerved, sensitive girl, quite unfitted by temperament and instinct to fulfil th...
THOMAS HARDY Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almo...
THOMAS HARDY Like all people who have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too irrational and incon...
THOMAS HARDY She seemed to be occupied with of inner chamber of ideas and to have slight need for visible objects...
THOMAS HARDY ...who remained as fixed in the arm-chair as if she had been melted into it when in a liquid state, ...
THOMAS HARDY Her suspense was terrible.
THOMAS HARDY If she had not been imprudence incarnate, she would not have acted as she did when she met Henchard ...
THOMAS HARDY Yet her experience had consisted less in a series of pure disappointments than in a series of substi...
THOMAS HARDY The curious double strands in Farfrae's thread of life - the commercial and the romantic - were very...
THOMAS HARDY With peace of mind came development, and with development beauty. Knowledge—the result of great na...
THOMAS HARDY Fancies find room in the strongest minds. Here, in a churchyard old as civilization, in the worst of...
THOMAS HARDY And all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, an...
THOMAS HARDY Though when at home their countenances varied with the seasons, their market faces all the year roun...
THOMAS HARDY There are men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or cause thrown by chance int...
THOMAS HARDY He was like one who had half fainted, and could neither recover nor complete the swoon.
THOMAS HARDY The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Farfrae who had danced with her, and walked with her, in a deli...
THOMAS HARDY The pain she experienced from the almost absolute obliviousness to her existence that was shown by t...
THOMAS HARDY If ever tears and pleadings have served the weak to fight the strong, let them do so now!
THOMAS HARDY He was to them like the poet of a new school who takes his contemporaries by storm; who is not reall...
THOMAS HARDY The man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed in profile a facial angle so...
THOMAS HARDY Fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony.
THOMAS HARDY It was part of his nature to extenuate nothing and live on as one of his own worst accusers.
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THOMAS HARDY Life is an oasis which is submerged in the swirling waves of sorrows and agonies.
THOMAS HARDY She had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly.
THOMAS HARDY Her companion, also in black, appeared as a well-formed young woman about 18, completely possessed o...
THOMAS HARDY She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time ...
THOMAS HARDY Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or wrongly, that the doubtful honor of a bri...
THOMAS HARDY She had learned the lesson of renunciation and was as familiar with the wreck of each day's wishes a...
THOMAS HARDY Some folks want their luck buttered.
THOMAS HARDY In considering what Tess was not, he overlooked that she was, and forgot that the defective can more...
THOMAS HARDY Men thin away to insignificance and oblivion quite as often by not making the most of good spirits w...
THOMAS HARDY Then if children make so much trouble, why do people have 'em?
THOMAS HARDY You would hardly think, at first, that horrid monsters lie up there waiting to be discovered by any ...
THOMAS HARDY He's charmed by her as if she were some fairy!" continued Arabella. "See how he looks round at her, ...
THOMAS HARDY It is difficult for a woman to define her feelings in a language which is chiefly made by men to exp...
THOMAS HARDY Rural solitude, which provides ample themes for the intellect and sweet occupations innumerable for ...
THOMAS HARDY There's a friendly tie of some sort between music and eating.
THOMAS HARDY If we be doomed to marry, we marry; if we be doomed to remain single we do.
THOMAS HARDY Christmas Eve Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder...
THOMAS HARDY War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
THOMAS HARDY There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct -- not more in ourse...
THOMAS HARDY No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.
THOMAS HARDY So little cause for carolings / Of such ecstatic sound / Was written on terrestrial things / Afar or...
THOMAS HARDY Rays from the sunrise drew forth the buds and stretched them into long stalks, lifted up sap in nois...
THOMAS HARDY So zestfully canst thou sing? / And all this indignity, / With God's consent, on thee! / Blinded ere...
THOMAS HARDY Perhaps you are making a cat's paw of me with Phillotson all this time. Upon my word it almost seems...
THOMAS HARDY They spoke very little of their mutual feeling; pretty phrases and warm expressions being probably u...
THOMAS HARDY It appears that ordinary men take wives because possession is not possible without marriage, and tha...
THOMAS HARDY But there were certain early days in Casterbridge- days of firmamental exhaustion which followed ang...
THOMAS HARDY I have sometimes thought--that under the affectation of independent views you are as enslaved to the...
THOMAS HARDY It takes two or three generations to do what I tried to do in one; and my impulses--affections--vice...
THOMAS HARDY I have no fear of men, as such, nor of their books. I have mixed with them--one or two of them parti...
THOMAS HARDY The people who had turned their heads turned them again as the service proceeded; and at last observ...
THOMAS HARDY Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as...
THOMAS HARDY What is it, Angel?" she said, starting up. "Have they come for me?"

"Yes, dearest," he sa...
THOMAS HARDY Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now a...
THOMAS HARDY That it would always be summer and autumn, and you always courting me, and always thinking as much o...
THOMAS HARDY ...she moved about in a mental cloud of many-coloured idealities, which eclipsed all sinister contin...
THOMAS HARDY Tis because we be on a blighted star, and not a sound one, isn't it Tess?
THOMAS HARDY She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but hersel...
THOMAS HARDY Never in her life – she could swear it from the bottom of her soul – had she ever intended to do...
THOMAS HARDY Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
THOMAS HARDY Do you know that I have undergone three quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth ...
THOMAS HARDY In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, th...
THOMAS HARDY How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality...
THOMAS HARDY Her affection for him was now the breath and life of Tess's being; it enveloped her as a photosphere...
THOMAS HARDY Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about [history] than I know already. [...] Becau...
THOMAS HARDY I agree to the conditions, Angel; because you know best what my punishment ought to be; only - only ...
THOMAS HARDY My eyes were dazed by you for a little, and that was all.
THOMAS HARDY This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?
THOMAS HARDY The beauty or ugliness of a character lay not only in its achievements, but in its aims and impulses...
THOMAS HARDY Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks…
THOMAS HARDY Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard again...
THOMAS HARDY Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
"Yes."
"All like ours?"
"I don't know, but ...
THOMAS HARDY Beauty lay not in the thing, but in what the thing symbolized.
THOMAS HARDY A novel is an impression, not an argument; and there the matter must rest.
THOMAS HARDY You overrate my capacity of love. I don't posess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. A...
THOMAS HARDY ...it is foreign to a man's nature to go on loving a person when he is told that he must and shall b...
THOMAS HARDY The purpose of a chronicler of moods and deeds does not require him to express his personal views up...
THOMAS HARDY My weakness has always been to prefer the large intention of an unskilful artist to the trivial inte...
THOMAS HARDY you dear, sweet, tantalizing phantom--hardly flesh at all; so that when I put my arms round you I al...
THOMAS HARDY Had other aims than my delight.
THOMAS HARDY Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.
THOMAS HARDY Indeed, he seemed to approach the grave as a hyperbolic curve approaches a straight line -- less dir...
THOMAS HARDY Many besides Angel have learnt that the magnitude of lives is not as to their external displacements...
THOMAS HARDY On a Fine Morning”
in Poems of the Past and the Present (1901)

WHENCE comes Solac...
THOMAS HARDY The sky was clear - remarkably clear - and the twinkling of all the stars seemed to be but throbs of...
THOMAS HARDY Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down you'd treat if met where any bar is, or ...
THOMAS HARDY She had not heard him enter, and hardly realized his presence there. She was yawning, and he saw the...
THOMAS HARDY The beggarly question of parentage--what is it, after all? What does it matter, when you come to thi...
THOMAS HARDY My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
THOMAS HARDY He had just reached the time of life at which 'young' is ceasing to be the prefix of 'man' in speaki...
THOMAS HARDY But no one came. Because no one ever does.
THOMAS HARDY My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own.
THOMAS HARDY The offhand decision of some commonplace mind high in office at a critical moment influences the cou...
THOMAS HARDY And yet to every bad there is a worse.
THOMAS HARDY That man's silence is wonderful to listen to.
THOMAS HARDY Love, though added emotion, is substracted capacity
THOMAS HARDY Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women love when they abandon their self-relia...
THOMAS HARDY The atmosphere beneath is languorous, and is so tinged with azure that what artists call the middle ...
THOMAS HARDY