#spin

It was easy, terribly easy, to become with time a middle-aged spinster with a sharp tongue. She would have to guard against this. ↗

— Alexander McCall Smith

#middle-age #sharp-tongue #spinster #age

Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragic romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God's sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason. ↗

— Louisa May Alcott

#women #beauty

I kept asking myself if I felt different, if I was different. The answer was always yes. I was no longer nothing… How odd, I thought; it had taken my mother’s death, Father Quinel’s murder, and the desire of others to kill me to claim a life of my own. ↗

— Avi

#death

Girl going past clinging to a young man's arm. Putting up her face like a duck to the moon. Drinking joy. Green in her eyes. Spinal curvature. No chin, mouth like a frog. Young man like a pug. Gazing down at his sweetie with the face of a saint reading the works of God. Hold on, maiden, you've got him. He's your boy. Look out, Puggy, that isn't a maiden you see before you, it's a work of imagination. Nail him, girlie. Nail him to the contract. Fly laddie, fly off with your darling vision before she turns into a frow, who spends all her life thinking of what the neighbours think. ↗

— Joyce Cary

#gulley-jimson #imagination #maidens #pugs #spinal-curvature

She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Theorem, anti-theorem, corollary, anti-corollary. Underline it twice. It’s all there in the numbers. Listen to your mother. Listen to me, Joshua. Look me in the eyes. I have something to tell you. ↗

— Colum McCann

#armies #children #lessons #let-the-great-world-spin #loss

She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. ↗

— Colum McCann

#colum-mccann #let-the-great-world-spin #life #men

Beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. ↗

— Aesop

#grasping #lose #shadow #substance #you

I find that it's nice to work with somebody and spin off on someone else's feelings. You get a little jaded by yourself. ↗

— Herb Alpert

#feelings #find #get #i #jaded

Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy. ↗

— W. H. Auden

#heavy #mist #remote #sob #spin

What's different now is that while political leaders used to give talking points to talk radio, now talk-radio hosts are giving talking points to political leaders. It's all part of the suffocating spin cycle we're in. In media, politics and publishing, the conventional wisdom is to play to this base. ↗

— John Avlon

#conventional #conventional wisdom #cycle #different #give