c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Joe knew that for some, really for most, the derivations of belladonna that blurred their vision and caused their hearts to race would, as well, hasten their forgetting of detail. They would not recall, not readily, any sense of pain or shame or doubt or threat of danger. []There were always children to be used. Members were obliged to offer their children, although not necessarily every child in a family was used. Some were found to be not suited for the rigor. Some were left alone so that if the involved children in a family were to attempt to tell, siblings could not corroborate their experience.
— Judith Spencer, Satans High Priest
I am haunted by the clear knowledge that, in the end, evil always triumphs.
— Glen Cook
The power of evil was nothing more than a tangible thing, something that given the strength of will, could be broken as easily as glass.
— Nathan Robinson, Starers
You think some are bad or evil or whatnot, but somewhere along the way they were someone's baby, suckling the teat like anybody. Then something puts a volt in 'em and they ain't the same no more.
— Alan Heathcock
No one just starts giggling and wearing black and signs up to become a villainous monster. How the hell do you think it happens? It happens to people. Just people. They make questionable choices, for what might be very good reasons. They make choice after choice, and none of them is slaughtering roomfuls of saints, or murdering hundreds of baby seals, or rubber-room irrational. But it adds up. And then one day they look around and realized that they're so far over the line that they can't remember where it was.
— Jim Butcher, Cold Days
There is no greater evil than killing. I don't care whether they call it war or justice. Life is precious.
— Brian Jacques, Mossflower
You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots.
— George R.R. Martin
The West's post-Holocaust pledge that genocide would never again be tolerated proved to be hollow, and for all the fine sentiments inspired by the memory of Auschwitz, the problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good.
— Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families
Everything at some point has been declared the root of all evil.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
I sat back and looked at it. It was ugly, dark, uncontrolled. Like a monster's face. Or maybe what I saw there was my own face. I couldn't quite tell. Was the face the image of something evil or the image of myself?"Both," Bea muttered, as if I'd spoken my question out loud. "Of course, it's both. But it shouldn't be. Goodness, no.
— Jennifer Brown, Hate List
The good man is free, even if he is a slave. The evil man is a slave, even if he is a king.
— Augustine of Hippo
Potter is mocked by a faculty member for the idea that there is evil in the world from which even children need to learn to defend themselves by the actual practice of doing so rather than familiarity with theory.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Once she exclaimed, "But I always thought that sorceresses were evil!""What do you mean 'evil'?"Lynet has never considered the question. "You know," she said, after a moment, "unfriendly to people.""People!" repeated Morgana derisively. "As if humans were all that mattered. Just once I'd like to see people judged by how friendly they are to sorceresses.
— Gerald Morris, The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf
There is evil in all of us, and it is the mark of a man how he defies the evil within.
— David Gemmell, Waylander
Once the soul has left the body it had to walk across a bridge as narrow as a knife edge, with paradise on the right and, on the left, a series of circles that lead down into the darkness inside the earth. Before crossing the bridge, each person had to place all his virtues in his right hand and all his sins in his left, and the imbalance between the two meant that the person always fell towards the side to which his actions on Earth had inclined him.
— Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym
It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth.
— David Cecil, Library Looking-Glass: A Personal Anthology
When a tree falls it resounds with a thundering crash
—  and yet a whole forest grows in silence.
white is not always light and black is not always dark.
— Habeeb Akande
I did it thirty-five minutes ago.
— Alan Moore, Watchmen
The battle of good and evil reduced to a fat woman standing in front of a chocolate shop, saying, Will I? Won’t I? in pitiful indecision.
— Joanne Harris, Chocolat
If we don't harness their potential for good, their societies will continue to reap their capacity for evil.
— Roméo Dallaire, They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers
He is incredibly handsome. You never realized before how beautiful evil could be.
— Teresa Lo, Realities: a Collection of Short Stories
Looking down from my throne full of thorns, I glanced at the people on Earth. Oh, man. I despised them. It wasn’t like they were becoming better humans or anything, Devil forbid. In fact, they all roasted in their sin, mayonnaised in their stupidity, tomato-sauced in their envy and anger toward each other....
— Cameron Jace, Mary Mary Quite Contrary
In the Garden story, good and evil are found on the same tree, not in separate orchards. Good and evil give meaning and definition to each other. If God, like us, is susceptible to immense pain, He is, like us, the greater in His capacity for happiness. The presence of such pain serves the larger purpose of God's master plan, which is to maximize the capacity for joy, or in other words, "to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." He can no more foster those ends in the absence of suffering and evil than one could find the traction to run or the breath to sing in the vacuum of space. God does not instigate pain or suffering, but He can weave it into His purposes. "God's power rests not on totalizing omnipotence, but on His ability to alchemize suffering, tragedy, and loss into wisdom, understanding, and joy.
— Terryl L. Givens, The God Who Weeps: How Mormonism Makes Sense of Life
I almost told her everything right then. I wanted to tell her about the Wolves, and how I was supposed to hate them, but when you spend your days with evil, some of it is bound to soak into your clothes, like cigar smoke in a closed room.
— Neal Shusterman, Red Rider's Hood
The mystery of Evil and its origin & purposes".~R. Alan Woods [2012]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is The Destination: A Photo Journal
I fear that the evil which man brings into this world will never be squelched, leaving behind a terrible, uninhabitable wasteland of a world for our...” She stuttered minutely before continuing, “...children and their children.
— Benjamin M. Strozykowski, Psychic Skin Volume 2
It is your karma to fight evil. It doesn't matter if the people that evil is being committed against don't fight back. It doesn't matter if the entire world chooses to look the other way. Always remember this. You don't live with the consequences of other people's karma. You live with the consequences of your own
— Amish Tripathi, The Secret of the Nagas
Being good is something that one must choose over and over again, every day, throughout the day, for the rest of one's life," Asher said. "A day is made of a thousand decisions, most small, some huge. With each decision you have the chance to work toward light, or sink toward darkness.
— Cate Tiernan, Immortal Beloved
They were still all beautiful and there was still enchantment and wonder, but she had crossed a line and now the fairy tale was green with corruption and evil.
— Stephen King, Carrie
Nowadays, no one believes in evil. It is considered, at most, a mere negation of good. Evil, people say, is done by those who know no better - who are undeveloped - who are to be pitied rather than blamed. But, M. Poirot, evil is real! It is a fact! I believe in Evil as I believe in Good. It exists! It is powerful! It walks the earth!' He stopped. His breath was coming fast. He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief and looked suddenly apologetic. 'I'm sorry. I got carried away.
— Agatha Christie, Evil Under the Sun
I feel I could kill. I feel that I might like it. And I know that this should scare me. But it doesn't. It excites me. I am in Plato's cave, watching the shadows and fraught with the desire to hunt what casts them.
— Nenia Campbell, Fearscape
The only thing necessary for evil to conquer is for us and those like us to do nothing.
— Julie Kagawa, The Iron Queen
People are rarely diabolic or bent enthusiastically on evil. As a rule, they are only weak; they cannot resist temptation and thus give way to their evil drives.
— Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism: from de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse
Since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last forever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must be constantly won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined and good state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.
— Pope Benedict XVI, Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi
The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.
— Mark Twain
Evil then consists not in being created but in the rebellious idolatry by which humans worship and honour elements of the natural world rather than the God who made them. The result is that the cosmos is out of joint. Instead of humans being God's wise vice-regents over creation, they ignore the creator and try to worship something less demanding, something that will give them a short-term fix of power or pleasure.
— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
Lorsen shook his head in amazement. 'You truly are disgusting.''I would be the last to disagree, but you fail to see that you are worse. No man capable of greater evil than the one who thinks himself in the right. No purpose more evil than the higher purpose. I freely admit I am a villain. That's why you hired me. But I am no hypocrite.
— Joe Abercrombie, Red Country
The worse the evil, the readier must the Christian be to suffer it; he must let the evil person fall into Jesus' hands.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
The Bible may be an arresting andpoetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should giveyour children to form their morals.
— Richard Dawkins
All we Karamazovs are such insects. And angel as you are, that insect lives in you, too, and will stir up a tempest in your blood. Tempests, because sensual lust is a tempest - worse than a tempest! Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets before us nothing but riddles. Here the boundaries meet and all contradictions exist side by side. I am not an educated nor cultured man, Alyosha, but I've thought a lot about this. It's terrible what mysteries there are! Too many riddles weigh men down on earth. We must solve as we can, and try to keep a dry skin in the water. Beauty! I can't bear the thought that a man of lofty mind and heart begins with the ideal of the Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom. What's still more awful is that a man with the ideal of Sodom in his soul does not renounce the ideal of the Madonna, and his heart may be on fire with that ideal, genuinely on fire, just as in his days of youth and innocence. Yes, man is broad, too broad. I'd have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Dialogic is not to be identified with love. But love without dialogic, without real outgoing to the other, reaching to the other, the love remaining with itself - this is called Lucifer.
— Martin Buber, I and Thou
Evil might not prevail in the end, but it certainly doesn't fail to devastate in its time.
— Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway
For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.
— Yann Martel, Life of Pi
To be evil at all, Satan needs good things he can abuse, things like intelligence, power and will. Those good things come from God.
— J. Budziszewski, How to Stay Christian in College
Within biblical theology it remains the case that the one living God created a world that is other than himself, not contained within himself. Creation was from the beginning an act of love, of affirming goodness of the other. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good; but it was not itself divine. At its height, which according to Genesis 1 is the creation of humans, it was designed to REFLECT God, both to reflect God back to God in worship and to reflect God into the rest of creation in stewardship. But this image-bearing capacity of humankind is not in itself the same thing as divinity. Collapsing this distinction means taking a large step toward a pantheism within which there is no way of understanding, let alone addressing, the problem of evil.
— N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
...this refinement and delicacy were what Cale adored; but Cale had been beaten into shape, hammered in dreadful fires of fear and pain. How could she be with him for long? A secret part of Arbell had been searching for some time for a way to leave her lover—although she was unaware of this, it is only fair to record. And so as Cale waited for her to save him while he worked out a way of saving her, she had already chosen the bitter but reasonable path of the good, of the many over the one...
— Paul Hoffman, The Left Hand of God
The world needed a little Evil, so Good had something to compare itself to, but you couldn't let it think it had the right-of-way on the road and an invitation to dinner.
— Dean Koontz, The Dead Town
I'm of the opinion that many Christians are in deep denial about the reality of there being 'real' Evil in this world. Evil that cannot be reasoned with; is reprobate, incorrigible, determined, un-appeasable, violent, murderous, and unrelenting. I find this denial shocking in that the Bible clearly shows that in the end this battle is all about Good vs. Evil. This is a very real and present danger to the leaders and people of Israel. They know the truth and are not in any denial about it!!! It's harsh, yes! However, it is Real and a danger to those in Israel. This is not my first rodeo!!! Combat brings me no joy!!! But, God has His holy warriors who risk their lives so others can have the luxury to live in denial!!! Israeli's have no such luxury!!!
— R. Alan Woods
Lord John: 'The court has suffered most sorely for your absence. We hardly know where to find our amusement now.' Lady Nora: 'I am sorry to hear that, I suppose it takes some wit to produce one's own entertainment. Are you often bored?
— Meredith Duran, At Your Pleasure
Ubi boni, malum prosperat (Where good men are silent, evil prospers)
— F. Sionil José, The God Stealer and Other Stories
Only evil in this world is the one in your brain.
— Raymond Tio
Evil does not fight against evil, rather it struggles against Good. Where as, Good does not struggle against evil, rather it overwhelmingly defeats it".~R. Alan Woods [2012]
— R. Alan Woods, The Journey Is The Destination: A Photo Journal
They're power-hungry, the mundane said of the magical people. They're immoral, people said, and they're scary. Playing with the dark arts could plunge me into evil. I'd be pulled toward depravity. Blasphemy would begin to seem like truth, bad like good, God like Satan. It had happened to people through the centuries, they said. And they were right. All that did happen.
— Christine Wicker, Not In Kansas Anymore
They’ve worked the absolute-power-corrupts-absolutely truth since the beginning of time. They foment destruction and chaos. It puts them in their happy place.
— Nina Bangs, Eternal Pleasure
Indifference to me, is the epitome of all evil.
— Elie Wiesel
Beauty is only skin deep but evil cuts straight through the soul.
— Lauren Hammond, White Walls
In the mirrors of the many judgments, my hands are the color of blood. I sometimes fancy myself an evil which exists to oppose other evils; and on that great Day of which the prophets speak but in which they do not truly believe, on the day the world is utterly cleansed of evil, then I too will go down into darkness, swallowing curses. Until then, I will not wash my hands nor let them hang useless.
— Roger Zelazny, The Guns of Avalon
The world is evil only when you become its slave.
— Henri J.M. Nouwen, Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World
Seems to me people are mean or evil because they're scared, mostly, or in pain, or afraid they're going to lose something.
— Barbara Samuel, The Sleeping Night
It is a ridiculous thing for a man not to fly from his own badness, which is indeed possible, but to fly from other men's badness, which is impossible.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Evil never goes unpunished, Monsieur. But the punishment is sometimes secret.
— Agatha Christie, Peril at End House
Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography, crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people's right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil.
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Virtue is imaginative. Evil, repetitive.
— Dean Koontz, Odd Apocalypse
I detest audiences - not in their individual components, but en masse I detest audiences. I think they're a force of evil. It seems to me rule of mob law.
— Glenn Gould
Oh, oh, no greater evil is there in this world, than the evil that lies in the hearts of those who repay good with evil. Oh no greater shame be upon anyone in this world, than the shame that be upon the heads of those who will not save the life that saved them. No greater evil, no greater shame. No greater trespass against God and angel and man; than a human who can say that they are entitled to repay good with evil.
— C. JoyBell C.
Evil…doesn’t mean doing things that have bad consequences for people. It means private thoughts and actions that are not to “the Christian majority’s” private liking.
— Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion
I have heard that, with some persons, temperance – that is, moderation – is almost impossible; and if abstinence be an evil (which some have doubted), no one will deny that excess is a greater. Some parents have entirely prohibited their children from tasting intoxicating liquors; but a parent’s authority cannot last for ever; children are naturally prone to hanker after forbidden things; and a child, in such a case, would be likely to have a strong curiosity to taste, and try the effect of what has been so lauded and enjoyed by others, so strictly forbidden to himself – which curiosity would generally be gratified on the first convenient opportunity; and the restraint once broken, serious consequences might ensue.
— Anne Brontë
Evil is a double-edged sword, if you use it you'll end up cutting you
— Válgame
That is what a shadow is, and empty space, a hole in the light. Evil is this - a hole in the goodness of God.
— Ann Voskamp
Now you see. We are all fugitives. We have always been fugitives from the void. Whatever comfort, whatever power we gain from outside of ourselves diminishes us -- because comfort and power, unless they are won from the void inside of us, are illusions that make us forget the emptyness that carries us. When we forget that, we believe we deserve comfort and power and so are capable of any evil. We deserve nothing but what we make of ourselves. We deserve nothing else. And when we understand that, then nothing is enough.
— Tirumalai S. Srivatsan
Sometimes there's other reason for helping, other than personal gain or benefit," added Sam softly. "Friendship, companionship, trust and love are not confined to light alone...they are harder won, fewer seen...but no less real.
— Eve Forward, Villains by Necessity
Halloween season. The season of the witch, so many thought. And, in legend, the night when souls could return to earth...And try to linger on.But the dead weren't really returning, the living created evil.
— Heather Graham, The Evil Inside
Priests might divide the world into good and bad. In battle there was strong and weak and nothing else.
— A.J. Hartley, Macbeth
I have often wished in vain,' said she, 'for another's judgment to appeal to when I could scarcely trust the direction of my own eye and head, they having been so long occupied with the contemplation of a single object as to become almost incapable of forming a proper idea respecting it.''That,' replied I, 'is only one of many evils to which a solitary life exposes us.
— Anne Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
There's more to people than some defined label," said Arcie. "There are more than straight good and evil, aye, even more than law or disorders or fence-sittin. There's prejudice, whimsey, affection, superstition, habit, upbringing, alliance, pride, society, morals, animosity, preference, values, religion, circumstance, humor, perversity, honor, vengeance, jealousy, frustration...hundreds o' factors, from the past and in every present moment, as decides what some one person'll do in an individious situation.
— Eve Forward, Villains by Necessity
We absolutely must battle with every bit of determination we can muster to root out the harm that would warp the souls and spirits of children in our world.
— Wess Stafford
Evil possesses an instinct for theater, which is why, in an era of gaudy and gifted media, evil may vastly magnify its damage by the power of horrific images.
— Lance Morrow
Why should we remain innocent of what lurks in the shadows? How can we live in the world if we don't understand how dark and brutal it can be?
— Penny Matthews, A Girl Like Me
That was his tactic. Make them want know something they never wanted to know. Lure them into the trap of knowledge.
— Sahana Epari
Evil is inevitable,' Reuben quoted, 'in the course of a creation which develops with time.
— Rice Anne
He felt that there is a loose balance of good and evil, and that the art of living consists in getting the greatest good out of the greatest evil.
— Machado de Assis, Iaiá Garcia
I nod, because I do understand. I'm just not sure how to go about divorcing myself from the evil I've already accepted.
— Ellen Hopkins, Identical
We all disapprove of prostitution
—  but we do not all approve of purity. The only way to discuss the social evil is to get at once to the social ideal. We can all see the national madness
Doing nothing is even worse than doing the wrong thing.
— Michelle Templet
Nothing is more egregious than greedy politicians.
— Sonia Rumzi
It was so awful! And he kept on looking at me and I knew I must get out of bed or he'd come and touch me. I did, too, but when I got out I wasn't me-I was a little white bunny. And he started out of the room and I had to go with him for fear he'd touch me. It felt so horrid, going out with him and looking back at mother there asleep."We went into the main part of the house, and one of the big front doors was open, and we went out through it. And then he gave a big jump, and so did I, and it took us clear up into the sky. We couldn't fly, but we kept jumping and jumping."Sometimes we stayed in the sky a little while, jumping from cloud to cloud, and the moon would get closer and closer and bigger and bigger, and its face would change and get horrible and grin at us until it seemed like its mouth was a mile wide and open, to swallow us up. And then we'd come down again and jump from one cliff to another, and the sea would be roaring down under us, and the waves all grey and cold and moving around and boiling like they were mad or afraid."We went all over the island and sometimes we jumped over the sea to the mainland and back again; and sometimes I tried to get away and run back to Mother - I thought she'd know me even if I was a bunny - but always, whichever way I turned, the hare was there in front of me, and his teeth were shining."We kept it up all night, and I was so tired and cold and miserable, and so scared. I didn't know whether he would ever let me go home or whether he would take me to Aunt Sarai. Then finally I did get away and the hare chased me!"She broke off, her voice rising again to a wail."It was so awful! I ran all over the island, into all sorts of queer little places that I never knew were there before - it seems so different after dark - and finally, when two or three times I'd been so tired that I thought I just couldn't go any farther, before he caught me, I saw the house in front of me and the front door still open and I started to run in, and then I thought - what if they'd planned it that way, and Aunt Sarai had come down from her portrait and was inside there in the dark, waiting for me?
— Evangeline Walton, Witch House
Five actors playing allotted parts on a set stage; and now he, for whom no part had been written, had walked onto the stage unexpectedly, because one of the players had turned rebel, as she had once before. He threw everything out of focus, and them into a fever. The heat and intensity of these flying questions was enough to make a man with even partially trained clairvoyant faculties feel as if he sat in a room filled with flashing fireflies.He took warning and withdrew himself to a cold inner isolation, as he knew how to do, even while laughing and talking with surface ease. It would not do to let his mind become clouded with emotion; or open any door of his imagination. But the impressions that came across that safer inner distance did not make his companions seem less dramatic, more normal: they were still out of focus. Something about the picture was distorted, even to a clear vision. The sense of evil was as strong as ever although the lurking Presence seemed to have retreated into a far background.He saw presently what the distortion was.Their modern figures were somehow incongruous in the old house, not at home. Like actors who had somehow got onto the wrong stage, onto sets with which their voices and costumes clashed. Interlopers. Or else-actors of an old school dressed up in an unbecoming masquerade.Witch House was an old house. Not old as other houses are old, that remain beds of the continuous stream of life, of marriages and births and deaths, of children crying and children laughing, where the past is only part of the pattern, root of the present and the future. Joseph de Quincy, dead nearly a quarter of a thousand years, was still its master: he had been strong, so strong that no later personality could dim or efface him here where he had set his seal."He left his evil here when he could no longer stay himself," Carew thought. "As a man with diphtheria leaves germs on the things he has handled, the bed he has lain in. Thoughts are tangible things; on their own plane they breed like germs and, unlike germs, they do not die. He may have forgotten; he may even walk the earth in other flesh, but what he has left here lives."As probably it had been meant to do. For the man whose malignance, swollen with the contributions of the centuries, still ensouled these walls would not have cared to build a house or found a family except as a means to an end. Witch House was set like a mold, steeped in ritual atmosphere as a temple.Dangerous business, for who could say that such a temple would not find a god? There are low, non-human beings that coalesce with and feed on such leftover forces: lair in them.
— Evangeline Walton, Witch House
The woman's face was grimly drawn, an ugly expression on an indescribably beautiful face. “This is the Shadowdun. You know who I am, but I wish to know you more. What is your name?” Her voice was rich; it sounded sweet and smooth in Athena's ears, like soft honey. She hated every last word.
— Kendra Sunderson
The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
— Ayn Ranc
I’ve always seen you, angel. From the moment you found me, I’ve seen nothing but you.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
Oh, Eva." He rubbed his cheek against my damp face. "I must've wished for you so hard and so often you had no choice but to come true.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
It was like the Justice League of Super Heroes but instead it was the Justice League of Hot Guys.
— Kristen Ashley, Rock Chick Rescue
Are you sleeping with anyone?” The question was asked so casually it took a second to process what he’d said. I inhaled sharply. “Why is that any business of yours?” He looked at me and I saw what I’d seen the first time we’d met—tremendous power and steely control. Both of which had me taking an involuntary step back. Again. At least I didn’t fall this time; I was making progress. “Because I want to fuck you, Eva. I need to know what’s standing in my way, if anything.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
I want there to be happily-ever-afters for the fucked-up crowd. Show me the way, Eva honey. Make me believe.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
He was the kind of guy that made a woman want to rip his shirt open and watch the buttons scatter along with her inhibitions.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
You forget who submits, Eva,” he said gruffly. “I’ve given up control for you. I’ve bent and adjusted for you. I’ll do anything to keep you and make you happy. But I can’t be tamed or topped. Don’t mistake indulgence for weakness.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
It's probably best for me to work off some energy before I get you naked. I'm sure you'd like to be able to walk tomorrow.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
I can't go long without you either, Eva. You're an addiction...my obsession...
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
Whatever this shit is between us it’s always been there and it’s always gonna be there. I’m shit-fuckin’-tired tryin’ to ignore it. I’ll try to do right by you Eva, you’d be the first, but I’ll fuckin’ try my damndest. And baby, true freedom is the open road, the wind on your face and a good woman on the back of your bike holdin’ you tight like you’re her reason for breathin’ because she sure as fuck is yours.
— Madeline Sheehan, Undeniable
Everybody's crooked. The trick is to find out how they're bent.
— Jennifer Crusie, Faking It
I believe in fate and I believe you were supposed to walk into my life, so Mason could walk into yours.
— Ella Frank, Exquisite
That's a movie quote, right? You know, if you do that with books, people think you're intelligent."Sophie lowered her chin. "If this is your pathetic attempt to seduce me again, you're falling miserably." "I don't seduce woman." Phin shoved back his chair and stood up. "They fall into my open arms.""Clumsy of them.
— Jennifer Crusie, Welcome to Temptation
He paused leaning over to lay his lips on hers, “It’s time to feel again. Let me save you from yourself. You were drowning when I found you, but I’m not letting you go, not without a fight.” He kissed her sweetly and moved back standing up and over her. Lena looked up at his out stretched hand.“Take my hand Lena.” He offered and she knew he meant it in a way that went far beyond offering to help her stand.
— Ella Frank, Exquisite
Be yourself. Unless you can be a unicorn, In that case, you should always be a unicorn.
— Elle Lothlorien, Alice in Wonderland
Dempseys are never in trouble. We just have stretches of life that are more interesting than others.
— Jennifer Crusie, Faking It
We're enveloped in pitch black. "Wait here," I whisper."Are you getting your ax?""Handcuffs.""Kinky. But, okay, I'll try it.
— Stephanie Perkins, Isla and the Happily Ever After
I want you. Am I supposed to walk away because you're a man? Maybe. They'll say yes for sure. But I'm sick of all the questions running around in my head." Tate stopped and licked his lips. "I want the man who sat down across from me and changed the way I look at the world. And if that's wrong, then I'm confused because when I'm near you, it feels so damn right.
— Ella Frank, Try
You are my heart now. Whatever happens to you happens to me.
— Faith Sullivan, Hold Me Tight
By the time I'm through sweeping you off your feet, you will be bursting at the seams, begging me to fuck you, never wanting another man inside you again.
— T.K. Leigh, A Beautiful Mess
Very few people mate for life with the people they fall for at twelve. Doesn't mean is isn't real, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, doesn't mean it doesn't matter, but basically, we're talking a practice swing in the big game of love.
— Jennifer Crusie, Faking It
Sometimes the clouds weren’t weightless. Sometimes their bellies got dark and full. It was life. It happened. It didn’t mean it wasn’t scary, or that I wasn’t still afraid, but now I knew that as long as I was standing under it with Braden beside me when those clouds broke, I’d be alright.
— Samantha Young, On Dublin Street
I loved the way he kissed me, as if he had to, as if he'd go crazy if he didn't and had nearly waited too long.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
B.O.B. and I have a longtime understanding - when we're done with each other, we know exactly which one of us has been used, and it isn't me. Good night Gideon.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
Romance isn't in my repertoire, Eva. But a thousand ways to make you come are. Let me show you.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
I love you, Gideon.”“God.” He looked at me with something that resembled disgust. Whether it was directed at me or himself, I didn’t know. “How can you say that?”“Because it’s the truth.”“You just see this”—he gestured at himself with a wave of his hand. “You’re not seeing the fucked-up, broken mess inside.”I inhaled sharply. “You can say that to me? When you know I’m fucked up and broken, too?
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
You definitely have the voice for phone sex, but I've got to go. I have a date with my vibrator.""Oh, Eva." Cross spoke my name in a decadent purr. "You're determined to drive me to my knees, aren't you? What will it take to talk you into a threesome with B.O.B.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
Sex that's planned like a business transaction is a turnoff for me..... Listen to yourself. Why even call it a fuck? Why not be clear and call it a seminal emission in a pre-approved orifice?" (Eva to Gideon)
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
Don't. Tell me when, then. And before you say never, take a good look at me and tell me if you see a man who's easily deterred.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
I had never seen hair that purely black. It was glossy and slightly long, the ends drifting over his collar. That sexy length was the crowning touch of bad boy hotness over the successful businessman, like whipped cream topping on a hot fudge brownie sundae. As my mother would say, only rogues and raiders had hair like that." (Eva about Gideon)
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
Don't you dare touch yourself today. I want your orgasm and I plan on getting it later.
— T.K. Leigh, A Beautiful Mess
There is something immensely scary about putting yourself out there for people to love or hate you, fan or pan you, review or screw you.
— L.V. Lewis, Fifty Shades of Jungle Fever
Tate?" "What?" he barked at him. Logan couldn't help the way his dick reacted to it. "I can't even remember what he looks like because all I can picture is you.
— Ella Frank, Try
She tries to wear her pain on the inside. She always has. It’s the trademark of the oldest sibling, I think.
— Laura Miller, Butterfly Weeds
Logan ran a hand through his hair as he tried to calm his racing heart. He wanted her on the most basic level that a man could want a woman, but it was so much more than that. It wasn’t just about sex and the need to be inside her so badly it hurt—it was all the other stuff to. The need to matter. The need to be selfless. 	The need to love.
— Juliana Stone, Offside
..then he pushed the call button again and asked, "Are you sleeping with anyone?""Why is that any business of yours?""Because I want to fuck you, Eva. I need to know what's standing in my way, if anything.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
As he stared back, he altered...as if a shield slid away fro his eyes, revealing a scorching force of will that sucked the air from my lungs. The intense magnetism he exuded grew in strength, becoming a near tangible impression of vibrant and unrelenting power.
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
Cary rocked back on his heels and twirled one index finger around another in a sign meaning, wrapped around your fi
— Sylvia Day, Bared to You
I was crying on the back-porch swing. You came out with a corsage of fresh forget-me-nots and roses, and a handkerchief. You told me any guy worth my time would always come to me with flowers and a handkerchief. One to make me smile, and the other to dry my tears, because a smart guy knows women need to cry as much as they need to laugh.
— Joey W. Hill, Hostile Takeover
I mean this is the kind of love people dream about, poets write sonnets for, and well it's the kind of love that keeps people from losing faith in humanity and encourages people to believe that true love still exists and it's still powerful and still wonderful. (Quote from a reviewer of Loving Lily Lavender)
— DeAnna Kinney
Zane," she moaned. "Please touch me.""I will. I'm going to touch every inch of you until I know what makes you sigh and what makes you giggle and what makes you beg me to never stop. I'm going to make you shudder and scream so that long after tonight you'll remember the feel of my hands and exactly where they were on your body.""I'm going to die if you don't get on with it.
— Robin Bielman, Keeping Mr. Right Now
Mom was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry, Melissa, but can you blame me for worrying? In less than an hour I found out you’re being stalked by a killer, sleeping with a stranger, and hiding with him in an empty apartment. You have to admit that sounds…unsettling.
— Robin DeJarnett, Whirlwind
I’ve never quite mastered the art of holding my liquor,” she replied. He watched her root around in her purse a moment, before pulling out a tube of lip balm.As Jonas watched her apply it, he nearly got distracted from her answer. Leaning forward, Jonas murmured, “Can’t hold your liquor, huh?”She replaced the cap and dropped it back into her purse. “Not so much. I tend to get a bit too happy.”His eyebrows shot up and his cock came to full-alert status. Happy--he liked the sound of that. “And that’s a bad thing?”To his utter shock, Deanna blushed. “In my case it is.”Curiosity got the better of him. “Care to explain?”The waiter returned with the check, forcing Jonas to drop the conversation while he fished out his credit card. Once they were alone again, Jonas waited, hoping Deanna would go into more detail. She didn’t disappoint him. “All my inhibitions disappear. It’s not a comfortable feeling for me.”She was killing him. An immediate picture of a carefree Deanna sprang to mind. He liked it a hell of a lot. “Most people enjoy letting it all hang out every once in a while. Taking life too seriously leads to an early grave.” “Maybe, but if I suddenly develop the urge, I’d rather be coherent.”“You don’t like to give up control,” he surmised.She cocked her head to the side, as if unsure how to respond at first. “It’s not that,” she said. “I guess if I’m in the mood to go romping naked through a forest, for example, then I don’t want alcohol to blur the memorable event for me.” She laughed. “I mean, I’d want to remember a crazy moment like that. Wouldn’t you?”No doubt about it, Jonas liked the way the lady’s mind worked. “You had me at ‘running naked’.” Deanna snorted. “You need serious help.
— Anne Rainey, Pleasure Bound
Trouble was, everyone always made talking out a problem sound like it was so simple and solved everything, but actually doing it, and securing the desired outcome without screwing up, seemed about as easy as rowing upriver with a teaspoon.
— Babette James, Clear As Day
I underestimated your laziness.” “It’s pronounced intelligence, Kirk.
— Abria Mattina, Wake
You know, you’re kind of a badass.” “Please, if I had balls they’d be bigger than yours.
— Abria Mattina, Wake
Why am I surrounded by sluts and morons?
— Abria Mattina, Wake
There's something about a cowboy...
— Kathleen Ball, Callie's Heart
You have a certain charm, believe it or not. That, and you feed me.
— Abria Mattina, Wake
Our evening-long tango of stares had my head spinning.
— Jennifer Comeaux, Life on the Edge
I solved world hunger.” “Yeah, right.” “Oh, ye of little faith.” “You realize that solving world hunger would mean you’d be doing something good for a change?” “Ah, but there’s the kicker: I destroyed my solutions.” He finally looks away from the window and gives me this cocky smirk. “Malevolence 101, Kirk.
— Abria Mattina, Wake
I’m going to kill you, you know.
— Abria Mattina, Wake
Life, Jersey Girl, sometimes pauses. It stops. Sometimes we don’t even realize how everything around us is moving so quickly while we’re standing in the middle of it, allowing it to pass us by. Most of us, if not all, just lose the why. Some of us never figure it out to begin with. We lose sight of the purpose that wakes us up every morning and pushes our day forward. We lose a sense of hope and the feeling of life in general. We view life as more of a test, one that’s trying to beat us down every day.
— E.L. Montes, Perfectly Damaged
I have to tell you hon, I don't mind a little teasing now and then, but I'm no masochist and I'm sure as hell no saint...here lately, being around you is agony.
— Jackson Broussard
All pomp and show.” Anjali’s glare at the house would’ve exploded bricks if she’d had superhuman powers. “A fat cow needs a big barn.
— Nicola Marsh, Busted in Bollywood
You know, typically a nickname is shorter than the given name.”“Is it?” he asked in mock seriousness. “Oh. Well, tell you what, you can call me…”She waited several beats, thinking of more than a few unkind examples. “I can call you what?” she finally asked.“That’s it.” He shot her his bone-melting smile. “You can just call me. Anytime.”She rolled her eyes, refusing to give in to the smile that threatened. “That sounds like a line from one of your movies.”He shot her a triumphant look. “Ah, ha! I knew you were a fan.
— Jennifer Shirk, The Role of a Lifetime
It was your choice to sleep with her Gavin! It didn't just happen!
— Belinda G. Buchanan
Wade sighed. “I’ll never understand why women wear bras to start with. They look uncomfortable as hell.” “They’re not that bad.”“Turn around so I can fasten the damn thing for you.”She refused to let go. Suddenly it seemed important to do this one small task alone. “I can do it, Wade. I need to get used to doing things with this cast.”He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched her struggle. “Is it so hard to ask for help from me, Gracie?”She tried the two small hooks once more, but failed to get them both attached. “No, it’s just that I’m not used to people offering, I guess.”He moved around her and helped fasten the contrary hook. When she turned to tell him thanks, he placed his finger over her lips and murmured, “If you thank me, I’ll spank you. Knowing I haven’t been able to catch your stalker, that he broke into your home and trashed your things and I wasn’t able to stop him makes me feel as fucking useless as tits on a bull. The least I can do is fasten your bra.
— Anne Rainey, So Sensitive
After all, Sergios was not all bad. He was tough, ruthless, arrogant and selfish, but while he might have the morals of an alley cat, he had been remarkably kind to her mother.
— Lynne Graham, A Deal at the Altar
True love propels a person to great feats all without so much as a word.
— Joel T. McGrath
Arrr, shiver me timbers,” he said in an exaggerated pirate twang. He winked his uncovered eye and hooked his thumbs in his pants. “This is the nicest your mom’s been to a poor old bloke like me-self in days.”Sandra poked a finger in his chest, but grinned. “Don’t make me regret it, or you’ll walk the plank.”He grinned back and, with that eye patch, turned knee-meltingly rakish in under ten seconds flat. “Aye, I won’t be asking you to make me Roger jolly, if that’s what has you worrying.
— Jennifer Shirk, The Role of a Lifetime
Rumor has it: when you marry a Walsh you are set for life. Only one thing can screw it up.
— Jessica Gordon, Becoming Mrs. Walsh
And this title, retired Major Ryland, gives you authority over my MasterCard?
— Billi Jean, Running Scared
Housework, if you do it right, will kill you. - Erma Bombeck
— Lynn Kellan
Do not, she urged her inner vixen, look at the way those blue jeans fit his lean legs. Do not notice how he’s filled out in all the right places.
— Scarlett Scott, She Likes Him Bad
Look at you… You’re perfect.""Not… perfect.""Perfect to me…
— Jill Shalvis, Chasing Christmas Eve
We all have horrible track records,” he said. “It’s what leads up to the real thing. It’s what allows you to recognize it when it shows up.
— Jill Shalvis, Chasing Christmas Eve