“Work is a blessing. God has so arranged the world that work is necessary, and He gives us hands and strength to do it. The enjoyment of leisure would be nothing if we had only leisure. It is the joy of work well done that enables us to enjoy rest, just as it is the experiences of hunger and thirst that make food and drink such pleasures.”
“We have ample evidence that the Lord is able to guide. The promises cover every imaginable situation. All we need to do is to take the hand he stretches out.”
“What we say and what we do ultimately comes back to us so let us own our responsibility, place it in our hands, and carry it with dignity and strength.”
“She took it, running her fingers over the flesh. It was as rough as the wood grain of the table in the dining hall, the skin along his thumb as hard and dry as leather cracking with age. No wonder he could work all day and not complain.”
“I conjure the boy I knew. Achilles, grinning as the figs blur in his hands. His green eyes laughing into mine. Catch, he says. Achilles, outlined against the sky, hanging from a branch over the river.”
“When she sat down, she did the only sensible thing with her beautiful hands there was to be done: she placed them on her lap and left them there. In brief, she was probably the first appreciable thing of beauty I had seen that struck me as wholly legitimate.”
“The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is more important than the eye. . . . The hand is the cutting edge of the mind. —J. Bronowski”
“No natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods.”
“Here soar not with wings
But with your moving hands and feet
And sweating brows -
Standing by your Beloved’s side
Reaching out to comfort this world
With your cup of solace
Drawn from your vast reservoir of truth.”
“The cold chill of fear ran up Miyax’s spine – the wolves would soon depart! Then what would she do? […]
Her hands trembled and she pressed them together to make them stop, for Kapugen had taught her that fear can so cripple a person that he cannot think or act. Already she was too scared to crawl.”
“That night Treehorn was watching TV. As he reached over to change channels, he noticed that his hand was bright green. He looked in the mirror that was hanging over the television set. His face was green. His ears were green. His hair was green. He was green all over.
“There. She has shopped.That went well. Now she just has to go back the same way. The bag is rather big to carry. It is also rather heavy. A big, heavy bag -now everyone call really see that she has been shopping. What an incredibly heavy bag! And so big! Why did she have to buy such a heavy bag? Silly Grandma.”
“I do not know if these hands will become Malcolm’s—raised and fisted or Martin’s—open and asking or James’s—curled around a pen. I do not know if these hands will be Rosa’s or Ruby’s gently gloved and fiercely folded calmly in a lap, on a desk, around a book, ready to change the world . . .”
“Gwendolen put out her hand at the same moment. She did not say anything. Neither did Mrs. Sharp. Both their hands stood still in the air. There was a feeling of fierce invisible struggle.”
“Two of the riders dismounted, handing their reins to the third -a boy of about fourteen- who remained on his horse. They had a look of each other, the riders, like brothers. The first to dismount, his lance still in his hand, was probably the eldest. He was bearded, but no older than about twenty. He went straight up to Malc and began to pull the back-pack from this shoulders.”
“Once more he stepped into the street and to his lips again laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane. Before he blew three notes (so sweet and soft, and yet so cunning), there was a rustling that seemed like a bustling of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling. Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering, little hands clapping and little tongues chattering, and, like fowls on a farm when barley is scattering, out came the children running.”
“He walked toward her instantly and put out his hand to lay it on her. There was nothing there but intense cold. All grew white about him. He groped on further. The white thickened about him and he felt himself stumbling and falling. But as he fell, he rolled over the threshold. It was thus that Diamond got to the back of the north wind.”
“Let dogs delight to bark and bite.
For God hath made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight:
For ‘tis their nature to.
But children you should never let
Such angry passions rise;
Your little hands were never made
To tear each others eyes.”
“The boy felt warm and proud inside when he saw his father’s great hand take hold of the handle of the hot lid without using a pot rag the way his mother always did.”
“Assure yourselves, O King and Queen, that you daughter shall not die of this disaster. it is true, I have no power to undo entirely what my elder has done. The Princess shall indeed pierce her hand with a spindle; but, instead of dying, she shall only fall into a profound sleep, which shall last one hundred years, at the expiration of which a King’s son shall come and awake her.”
“Such frank talk about money embarrassed Kit. Her grandfather had seldom mentioned such a thing. She herself had rarely so much as held a coin in her hand, and for sixteen years she had never questioned the costly and beautiful things that surrounded her. In the last few months, to be sure, she had a terrifying glimpse of what it might mean to live without money, but it seemed shameful to speak of it.”
“Stig did not seem much bigger than himself, but he looked very strong and his hands looked cleverer than his face. But how old was he? Ten? Twenty? A Hundred? A Thousand?”
“Since his accident he had unconsciously taken to wearing his hat at a rakish angle. This, and the way he always kept his right hand thrust into his breeches pocket, gave him a slightly arrogant air. The arrogance had always been there, but formerly it had come out as pride in his work—not in the way he wore his hat and walked.”
“We have developed loafing on this Island to such an expert extent that even our hands are completely relaxed. Our only work now, besides cooking, is in trying to make life more pleasant for ourselves and for each other.”
“Murray lowered his hand and place it on the silver pommel of his sword. ‘I am charging you with piracy on the high seas. You will be tried in London. When you are found guilty you will be hanged at Execution Dock, and I doubt if even your government will raise any objection.‘”
“Even the hands of his watch and the hands of all the thirteen clocks were frozen. They had all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten minutes to five in the castle.”
″ Pauline felt awful standing by herself being stared at by all the people on the stage, and all those she could not see in the stalls. She would have liked to have wriggled, and stood on one leg, but the Academy training had taught her not to stand just how she felt, so she stood as she did before a class, with her toes turned out, her heels together, and her hands clasped behind her back”
Foreign Lands
Up into the cherry tree
Who should climb but little me?
I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad on foreign lands.
I saw the next-door garden lie,
Adorned with flowers, before my eye,
And many pleasant places more
That I had never seen before.
“The object of all schools is not to ram Latin and Greek into boys, but to make them good English boys, good future citizens; and by far the most important part of that work must be done, or not done, out of school hours. To leave it, therefore, in the hands of inferior men, is just giving up the highest and hardest part of the work of education. Were I a private school-master, I should say, Let who will hear the boys their lessons, but let me live with them when they are at play and rest.”