c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Never having been troubled by a conscience before, I was far from sure what to expect of one, and so when for a minute or two each day at dawn a voice began to whisper to me to be a better man, I decided the shock of recent events had finally woken mine. My conscience had a name— Baraqel. I didn’t like him much.
— Mark  Lawrence, Prince of Fools
You're not content in your position as a factory owner and a rich heiress, you don't believe in your right to it, and now you can't sleep, which, of course, is certainly better than if you were content, slept soundly, and thought everything was fine. Your insomnia is respectable; in any event, it's a good sign. In fact, for our parents such a conversation as we're having now would have been unthinkable; they didn't talk at night, they slept soundly, but we, our generation, sleep badly, are anguished, talk a lot, and keep trying to decide if we're right or not.- A Medical Case
— Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories
Conscience. Imagine being pursued by your own conscience….A mountain of conscience. Throwing a lengthening shadow. Growing. Darkening.
— Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead
Shakespeare: …the best way to peace is to have a still and quiet conscience. Or none at all, thought Gamache.
— Louise Penny, Bury Your Dead
Trouble is the place where you find yourself when your judgment malfunction
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
All politicians are said to be thieves but all thieves are not politicians which implies that some thieves do have a conscience.
— Amit Abraham
Conscience is the parliament in our mind. It depends on who holds the majority
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death
— Henry David Thoreau
But it is obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is precisely life that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis. To say that life is absurd, the conscience must be alive.
— Albert Camus
Don't you be worried or annoyed, Sancho, about any comments you hear, or there will never be an end to them. Keep a safe conscience and let people say what they like: trying to still gossips' tongues is like putting up doors in open fields. If the governor leaves office rich they say he's a thief, and if he leaves it poor they say he's a milksop and a fool.
— Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
How conscience tells us that we ought to be fair, nobody knows. This we can say: we don't know it just from being told, we don't know it from the five senses, and we don't know it by inference from prior knowledge. We just know it. The knowledge is "underived.
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
. But itis obvious that absurdism hereby admits that human life is the only necessary good since it is preciselylife that makes this encounter possible and since, without life, the absurdist wager would have no basis.To say that life is absurd, the conscience must be alive.
— Albert Camus, The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt
Jeffrey Murdock is a colossal turd.""Can I stitch that on a sampler and put it on Etsy?""Sure.
— Cecilia London, Conscience
Or perhaps the syndrome we are witnessing is preemptive capitulation: If we reduce our conscience to rubble before the bad men get here, they will have nothing to destroy.
— J. Budziszewski, What We Can't Not Know: A Guide
Oh, Punky. You should afford to have a bit more humility. But the first goal is for you to stop cursing so much." "Fuck that," Caroline said. "You're failing miserably." "I haven't even started yet.
— Cecilia London, Conscience
Always listen to your conscience. If your conscience conflicts with your faith, question everything. You discover your true faith when you start flowing with your conscience. After lessons, visions, and theories validate themselves to you, you begin to build faith in that hypothesis/feeling/idea that originated from your own heart and mind -- not that of others. Before you submit to any one religion, create your own first and then find out which one out there resonates closest with the one already in your heart.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Without demolishing religious schools (madrassahs) and minarets and without abandoning the beliefs and ideas of the medieval age, restriction in thoughts and pains in conscience will not end. Without understanding that unbelief is a kind of religion, and that conservative religious belief a kind of disbelief, and without showing tolerance to opposite ideas, one cannot succeed. Those who look for the truth will accomplish the mission.Mevlana Jalal ad-Din RUMI
— Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi
When we criticize people, their consciences console them. When we love them, their consciences indict them.
— C. Terry Warner
We estimate wrongdoing in proportion to the purity of our conscience
— Honoré de Balzac
Never forget Yourself in the wind of success!!
— Tanuj
The only thing worth listening to is your conscience.
— Saru Singhal
Share Your Conscience to Other is ultimate sophistication.
— Tanuj
The stomach is the seat of all feeling. The heart is the seat of the conscience. The mind is the seat of the ego. Your body is the seat of the soul. When a man goes out in the night and looks up at the universe, he is observing a mirror of himself. The universe within us, is a reflection of the universe we see out our eyes.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
I am a Christian, but my time in Iraq has convinced me that God doesn't want to hear from me anymore. I've done things that He can never forgive. I've done them consciously. I've made decisions I must live with for years to come. I am not a victim. In each instance, I heard my conscience call for restraint, I told it to shut the fuck up and let me handle my business. All the sins I've committed, I've done with one objective: to keep my men alive.
— David Bellavia, House to House: An Epic Memoir of War
His conscience, like a sunburnt scorpion, was stinging itself to death.
— Edward St. Aubyn
- a bad conscience is indeed able to make life interesting.
— Søren Kierkegaard, The Seducer's Diary
What a tricky and uncomfortable thing is conscience, that nearly always begins to trouble us at the moment of, or after, the event, not before, when it might be of some use.
— H. Rider Haggard, Child of Storm
Yes, they mean well, but the only good that an absence of malice guarantees is a clear conscience.
— Zia Haider Rahman, In the Light of What We Know
A costume party… great… a chance for the bimbos to whore themselves out with no penalty of conscience. I found myself excruciatingly curious as to what she was going as, a sailor? No. A pilot. That would be something
— Bruce Crown, Forlorn Passions
Nothing is worth the loss of one's conscience, or the ability to do what is right.
— Morgan, Kathleen
He had a clear conscience. Never used it.
— Stanisław Jerzy Lec, More Unkempt Thoughts
Don't you think it's good to serve your country?' I asked. 'No, I don't,' Mr Peterson said. 'I think it's good to serve your principles. And in the army you don't get to pick and choose your fights according to your conscience. You kill on command. Don't ever surrender your right to make your own moral decisions, kid.
— Gavin Extence, The Universe Versus Alex Woods
How did he close off that part of his brain that tells someone they've harmed another soul?...Most frighteningly of all, are some of us born with no conscience at all?
— Dan Skinner, The Price of Dick
[L]uxury always comes at someone else’s expense. One of the many advantages of civilization is that one doesn’t generally have to see that, if one doesn’t wish. You’re free to enjoy its benefits without troubling your conscience. (Ancillary Justice)
— Caitlín R. Kiernan
It may be necessary to make compromises in everyday politics, but we cannot compromise with our conscience.
— Ludwig Erhard
If this inner and critical voice has kept you safe for many years as your inner voice of authority, you may end up not being able to hear the real voice of God.
— Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
~ Tolerance increases hope between people and their voice of conscience.
— Vasilios Karpos
You’ll have to be my conscience.” He knew his flaws, and he knew the parts of him that were irrevocably broken. “Mine isn’t going to grow back.
— Nalini Singh, Heart of Obsidian
Conscience- protects the privileges of intimacy, makes ,friends keep their promises, prevents the angered spouse from striking back.
— Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door
Mother: What more can we be?Chris: You can be better! Once and for all you can know there's a universe of people outside and you're responsible to it, and unless you know that you threw away your son because that's how he died.
— Arthur Miller, All My Sons
Arrogance makes you stronger from outside, but even more weaker from inside.
— Ujas Soni
Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.
— Abraham Joshua Heschel, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays
Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no ambition corrupt thee, to do anything which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollily; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas.
— Benjamin Franklin
Selfish act is very tempting but it leaves a permanent dent on your character.
— Saru Singhal, Rousing Cadence
At certain moments, the foot slips ; at others, the ground gives way. How many times had that conscience, furious for the right, grasped and overwhelmed him! How many times had truth, inexorable, planted her knee upon his breast! How many times, thrown to the ground by the light, had he cried to it for mercy!
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
God, if he believed in Him, and his conscience, if he had one, were the only judges to whom he was answerable.
— Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
conscience is the window of our spirit, evil is the curtain
— Doug Horton
I would sooner have the approval of my own conscience and know that I had done my duty than to have the praise of all the world and not have the approval of my own conscience. A man's own conscience, when he is living as he should live, is the finest monitor and the best judge in all the world. Men can accuse you of wrong-doing, and it has no effect at all if you know they lie and you have done that which is right
— Heber J. Grant, Gospel Standards
Without shame, without conscience.
— Chris Galford, At Faith's End
A bad conscience is easier to cope with than a bad reputation.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science
I have no conscience at all -- least of all an artistic conscience. All I have is nerves.
— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories
Major, I do not know why God does the things He does, but I believe you have the same duty to God as you have always had: to follow the right path, to live your life with a clear conscience.
— Jeff Shaara, Gods and Generals
Discernment is the son of good judgment and the father of self-control. When mixed with an already clear conscience, the ability to read the true motives of a critic keeps one's conscience both clear and at ease.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
In case you’re not bright enough to figure it out, there’s a real upside to having a sinner like me answer your phone. I lie, and your conscience stays clear.
— Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Ain't She Sweet
C.S. Lewis said that conscience is nothing more than the voice of God within our souls
—  the bridge that links the creature to the creator
No," said Father. "Just do the best you can and don't let it worry you. In that way you'll have a clear conscience and a tranquil heart.
— Carol Ryrie Brink, Caddie Woodlawn's Family
It is often said that second thoughts are best. So they are in matters of judgment but not in matters of conscience.
— John Henry Newman
Whenever the conviction of God’s Spirit comes there is the softening of the whole nature to obey
—  but if the obedience is not instant there will come a metallic hardening and a corrupting of the guidance of God.
A marching army first crushes the flowers before the enemy; but even before this, it crushes its own conscience! Conscience and killing cannot be together!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
All this gave way to my first encounter with guilt, which is still something entirely inscrutable to me, as if aliens were sending transmissions from another planet, telling me there is a right and a wrong in the universe.
— Donald Miller
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resigns his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.
— Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience and Other Essays
Will wrestled with his conscience, grappled it to the ground and sat on it until he couldn't hear a squeak out of it.
— Nick Hornby, About a Boy
It was Friday, so the farmers' market was in full autumnal swing, a sea of potted chrysanthemums and bushel after bushel of apples, pears, Fauvist gourds, and pumpkins with erotically fanciful stems. On one table stood galvanized buckets of the year's final roses; on another, skeins of yarn in muted, soulful purples and reds. Walter loved this part of the season- and not just because it was the time of year his restaurant flourished, when people felt the first yearnings to sit by a fire, to eat stew and bread pudding and meatloaf, drink cider and toddies and cocoa. He loved the season's transient intensity, its gaudy colors and tempestuous skies.
— Julia Glass, The Whole World Over
Wisdom comes when you realize the pain, people, or problems life used to produce you now push you.
— Jeffrey Fry
You know that when a police officer refuses to produce formal identification on request, they are probably engaging in some form of corruption.
— Steven Magee
Harvest is a joyful time of gathering the produce of the land
— Sunday Adelaja
Avoid any exercises that may produce injuries.
— Steven Magee
The undulating terrain was cloaked in lush abundance, the vineyards like garlands of deep green and yellow, orchards and farms sprouting here and there, hillocks of dry golden grass crowned by beautiful sun-gilt houses, barns and silos. And overhead was the bluest sky she'd ever seen, as bright and hard polished as marble.There was something about the landscape that caught at her emotions. It was both lush and intimidating, its beauty so abundant. Far from the bustle of the city, she was a complete stranger here, like Dorothy stepping out of her whirling house into the land of Oz. Farm stands overflowing with local produce marked the long driveways into farms with whimsical names- Almost Paradise, One Bad Apple, Toad Hollow. Boxes and bushels were displayed on long, weathered tables. Between the farms, brushy tangles of berries and towering old oak trees lined the roadway.
— Susan Wiggs, The Apple Orchard
How Does What We Eat Affect the Planet? The things you put on your fork have the power to affect not only your health, but also agricultural practices, climate change, and even our economy. One church member told us about Nigerian farmers he met who were given seed by a large agricultural company at a cheaper price than their regular seed, but then the seeds from that crop couldn’t be replanted. (They are designed that way.) The farmers then were forced to buy the seed from the same company at a higher price the next year and eventually couldn’t afford to farm. This pattern of industrial agricultural practices not only has impacted the quality of the food you eat, but also creates hunger in little children in Africa. When you stop buying industrial food, it has an enormous ripple effect. The power of your fork can change the world. When it comes to our health and the health of the planet, we have a lot more to learn and study, but we don’t need all the answers in order to take action. We can each make choices to buy more whole foods, sustainably raised animals, locally grown produce, and more. Just as we’ve learned that certain fats are good for us and others are destructive, we can learn what agricultural and food practices are best for us too.
— Rick Warren, The Daniel Plan: 40 Days to a Healthier Life
The garden flourished that summer because Magnus's mother was determined to feed her family despite the depredations of the distant war. In the fall, there were beans and tomatoes and pickles to can, and jar after jar of applesauce. Mama's hives yielded fresh honey, and then willow skeps were winterized. The bees would not come out until the air warmed and the sun appeared.
— Susan Wiggs, The Beekeeper's Ball
What sort of life have you ledthat you find yourself, an adult male of late middle age,about to weep among the avocados and citrus fruitsin a vast, overlit room next to a bosomy Cuban Grandmawith her sparkly, extravagent eyewear?It's good that your parents are no longer alive.
— August Kleinzahler, The Hotel Oneira
All I care for is the inclusion of my name in the list of the believers of the supremacy of human soul over all other masterpieces He has ever produced.
— Annie Ali
The gospel that has been preached in our churches has not been fair to the African continent. It has left us in a beggarly state, waiting on God for things we could produce by and for ourselves
— Sunday Adelaja
We no longer produce laborers, we would rather pray to God to send laborers to come and build our cities
— Sunday Adelaja
Do a loony-goony dance 'Cross the kitchen floor, Put something silly in the world That ain't been there before.
— Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic
Dance is the hidden language of the soul
— Martha Graham
Life is the dancer and you are the dance.
— Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.
— Oprah Winfrey
I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance. 
— George Balanchine
Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. 
— Dave Barry
What's your name?" he asked above the roar of the music.She leaned close. "My name is Wind," she whispered. "And Rain. And Bone and Dust. My name is a snippet of a half-remembered song."He chuckled a low, delightful sound. She was drunk and silly, and so full of the glory of being young and alive and in the capital of the world that she could hardly contain herself."I have no name," she purred. "I am whoever the keepers of my fate tell me to be."He grasped her by her wrist, running a thumb along the sensitive sknin underneath. "Then let me call you Mine for a dance or two.
— Sarah J. Maas, The Assassin and the Underworld
Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion. 
— Martha Graham
I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to to dance better than myself.
— Mikhail Baryshnikov
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
— Twyla Tharp
To dance is to be out of yourself. Larger, more beautiful, more powerful.. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking
— Agnes De Mille
People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life. 
— Martha Graham, Blood Memory
CORALINE'S STORYTHERE WAS A GIRL HER NAME WAS APPLE. SHE USED TO DANCE A LOT. SHE DANCED AND DANCED UNTIL HER FEET TURND INTO SOSSAJES. THE END.
— Neil Gaiman, Coraline
I love zombies. If any monster could Riverdance, it would be zombies.
— Craig Ferguson
Anyone who's just driven 90 yards against huge men trying to kill them has earned the right to do Jazz hands. 
— Craig Ferguson
They dined on mince, and slices of quinceWhich they ate with a runcible spoon;And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,They danced by the light of the moon.
— Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussycat
It doesn’t matter if I’m off the beat. It doesn’t matter if I’m snapping to the rhythm. It doesn’t matter if I look like a complete goon when I dance. It is my dance. It is my moment. It is mine. And dance I will. Try and stop me. You’ll probably get kicked in the face.
— Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing
To understand what I am saying, you have to believe that dance is something other than technique. We forget where the movements come from. They are born from life. When you create a new work, the point of departure must be contemporary life -- not existing forms of dance.
— Pina Bausch
I don't want to hide. I want to slow dance with you again. I want to dance with you forever.
— Sarah Black, Border Roads
Dance for yourself. If someone understands, good. If not, no matter. Go right on doing what interests you, and do it until it stops interesting you.
— Louis Horst
Life is short and there will always be dirty dishes, so let's dance.
— James Howe, Totally Joe
Kids: they dance before they learn there is anything that isn't music
— William Stafford
When it's finals week and you've been studying for five hours straight, you need three things to get you through the nigh.The biggest Slurpee you can find,half cherry half Coke.Pajama pants, the kind that have been washed so many times they are tissue-paper thin. And finally,dace breaks.Lots of dance breaks.
— Jenny Han, We'll Always Have Summer
If you look at a dancer in silence, his or her body will be the music. If you turn the music on, that body will become an extension of what you're hearing.
— Judith Jamison, Dancing Spirit: An Autobiography
Life is sweet when you pay attention. When it doesn't seem sweet, put a sticker on your nose and do a funky dance.
— Whitney Scott
It is a truth universally acknowledge that there will always be a gentleman to dance with, except at just the moment when you require one most.
— Anna Godbersen, Envy
There is a need to find and sing our own song, to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there, that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage.
— Barbara Lazear Ascher
You don't enter a dance studio and say "I can't do that." If you do, then why are you in the studio in the first place?
— Judith Jamison, Dancing Spirit: An Autobiography
He was shockingly easy to follow. The pressure of his hand, the step of his foot, the angle of his frame... it was like reading his mind. When he leaned right, they turned in perfect unison. He swept her across the gallery in a quick three, a dizzying pace. Gilded frames and glass cases and the window blurred in her vision, and Azalea spun out, her skirts pulling and poofing around her, before he caught her and brought her back into dance position. She could almost hear music playing, swelling inside of her.Mother had once told her about this perfect twining into one. She called it interweave, and said it was hard to do, for it took the perfect matching of the partners’ strengths to overshadow each other’s weaknesses, meshing into one glorious dance. Azalea felt the giddiness of being locked in not a pairing, but a dance. So starkly different than dancing with Keeper. Never that horrid feeling that she owed him something; no holding her breath, wishing for the dance to end. Now, spinning from Mr. Bradford’s hand, her eyes closed, spinning back and feeling him catch her, she felt the thrill of the dance, of being matched, flow through her.”Heavens, you’re good!” said Azalea, breathless.”You’re stupendous,” said Mr. Bradford, just as breathless. “It’s like dancing with a top!
— Heather Dixon, Entwined
The problem is not making up the steps but deciding which ones to keep.
— Mikhail Baryshnikov
Don't you agree? Swordplay is a dance of sorts, an understanding of the logical, most sophisticated next step. Except that in a fight, one must take the unexpected step. In dance it is all about taking the right, expected step.
— Lisa Tawn Bergren, Waterfall
I feel his arm Lightly Over me.He takes one of my outstretched hands.Draws it beneath my stomach."One more time..."This is not sex,Not friendship. SomethingStrangeSpecialIn the stillness of his breath,The waterlike way he moves.He is making a dance.We are making a dance.
— Stasia Ward Kehoe, Audition
Lermontov: Why do you want to dance?Vicky: Why do you want to live?Lermontov: Well, I don't know exactly why, but... I must.Vicky: That's my answer too.
— The Red Shoes
Hello, Bradley,' said Mom. She'd regained her composure after my outburst, and now raised her camera. 'Stand close.''No, Mom,' I said. 'No pictures.''But you're friend's here now,' she said, waving us together. 'Smile!''I don't need a picture with-' the flash snapped '-another guy. That's great, Mom, thank you. Send that one to Dad and tell him we're going steady.
— Dan Wells, I Don't Want to Kill You
He grasped her by the wrist , running a thumb along the sensitive skin underneath. "Then let me call you Mine for a dance or two"She grinned but someone was suddenly between them, a tall, powerfully built person. Sam. He ripped the stranger's hand off of her wrist. "She's spoken for," he growled, all too close to the young man's maked face. The stranger's friend was behind him in an instant, his bronze eyes fixed on Sam.Celaena grabbed Sam's elbow. "Enough," she warned him.The masked stranger looked Sam up and down, then held up his hands. "My mistake," he said, but winked at Celaena before disappeared into the crowd, his armed friend close behind.Celaena whirled to face Sam. "What in hell was that for?""You're drunk," he told her, so close her chest brushed his, "And he knew it, too.""So?" Even as she said it, someone dancing wildly crashed into her and set her reeling. Sam caught her around the waist, his hands firm on her as he kept her from falling to the ground."You'll thank me in the morning." "Just because we're working together doesn't mean I'm suddenly incapable of handling myself." His hands were still on her waist."Let me take you home.
— Sarah J. Maas, The Assassin and the Underworld
Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you just can't fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance.
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
When life gets you down, improvise as if crawling was part of the choreography.
— Iveta Cherneva
All the ills of mankind, all the tragic misfortunes that fill the history books, all the political blunders, all the failures of the great leaders have arisen merely from a lack of skill at dancing.
— Molière
Oceans are vast and almost bottomless. You dance in the rain Elizabeth. You drown in the sea.
— Jennifer Rush, Reborn
You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being. 
— Martha Graham, Blood Memory
If you're skating on thin ice, you might as well dance!
— Laurie Strongin, Saving Henry: A Mother's Journey
The first time I started choreographing was in the dark, in my living room, with the lights completely out, to some popular music on the radio. I put the radio on full blast and I started moving. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't want to see it... I had to start in the dark.
— Judith Jamison, Dancing Spirit: An Autobiography
The Indian danced on alone. The crowd clapped up the beat. The Indian danced with a chair. The crowd went crazy. The band faded. The crowd cheered. The Indian held up his hands for silence as if to make a speech. Looking at the band and then the crowd, the Indian said, "Well, what're you waiting for? Let's DANCE.
— Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
A kind of joyous hysteria moved into the room, everything flying before the wind, vehicles outside getting dented to hell, the crowd sweaty and the smells of aftershave, manure, clothes dried on the line, your money’s worth of perfume, smoke, booze; the music subdued by the shout and babble through the bass hammer could be felt through the soles of the feet, shooting up the channels of legs to the body fork, center of everything. It is the kind of Saturday night that torches your life for a few hours, makes it seem like something is happening.
— Annie Proulx, Close Range
CHEERS, CARTER. At least you have the sense to hand me the microphone for important things.Honestly, he drones on and on about his plans for the Apocalypse, but he makes no plans at all for the school dance. My brother's priorities are severely skewed.Sadie Kane
— Rick Riordan
In her fantastic mood she stretched her soft, clasped hands upward toward the moon. 'Sweet moon,' she said in a kind of mock prayer, 'make your white light come down in music into my dancing-room here, and I will dance most deliciously for you to see". She flung her head backward and let her hands fall; her eyes were half closed, and her mouth was a kissing mouth. 'Ah! sweet moon,' she whispered, 'do this for me, and I will be your slave; I will be what you will.'Quite suddenly the air was filled with the sound of a grand invisible orchestra. Viola did not stop to wonder. To the music of a slow saraband she swayed and postured. In the music there was the regular beat of small drums and a perpetual drone. The air seemed to be filled with the perfume of some bitter spice. Viola could fancy almost that she saw a smoldering campfire and heard far off the roar of some desolate wild beast. She let her long hair fall, raising the heavy strands of it in either hand as she moved slowly to the laden music. Slowly her body swayed with drowsy grace, slowly her satin shoes slid over the silver sand.The music ceased with a clash of cymbals. Viola rubbed her eyes. She fastened her hair up carefully again. Suddenly she looked up, almost imperiously."Music! more music!" she cried.Once more the music came. This time it was a dance of caprice, pelting along over the violin-strings, leaping, laughing, wanton. Again an illusion seemed to cross her eyes. An old king was watching her, a king with the sordid history of the exhaustion of pleasure written on his flaccid face. A hook-nosed courtier by his side settled the ruffles at his wrists and mumbled, 'Ravissant! Quel malheur que la vieillesse!' It was a strange illusion. Faster and faster she sped to the music, stepping, spinning, pirouetting; the dance was light as thistle-down, fierce as fire, smooth as a rapid stream. The moment that the music ceased Viola became horribly afraid. She turned and fled away from the moonlit space, through the trees, down the dark alleys of the maze, not heeding in the least which turn she took, and yet she found herself soon at the outside iron gate. ("The Moon Slave")
— Barry Pain, Ghostly By Gaslight
Every child in South Florida can dance. And every child there is amazing.
— Abby Lee Miller
Each day before the end of eveshe sought her lover, nor would him leave,until the stars were dimmed, and daycame glimmering eastward silver-grey.Then trembling-veiled she would appear,and dance before him, half in fear;there flitting just before his feetshe gently chid with laughter sweet:'Come! dance now, Beren, dance with me!For fain thy dancing I would see!
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two
[... Dance] involves every possible feeling (as potential), because it is of the body, which is lived (inescapably) as a body of feeling. Some of these feelings we can name, and some we cannot, since we associate feelings with language only when we name them. The body lives sentience on a preverbal level. Dance exists first on this primordial level, not on an intellectual plane (even though it requires skill and intelligence). Its inmost substance cannot be reasoned, only experienced.
— Sondra Horton Fraleigh, Dance And Lived Body
A major assumption that underlies this selection is that it is only within work that is progressive, experimental or avant-garde that staid, old-fashioned images and ideas about gender can be challenged and alternatives imagined. I have never seen a ballet performance that has not disappointed me.
— Ramsay Burt, The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle and Sexuality
Really? We are being herded on a bus to drive across town to an all-boy academy where we disembark and join our lonely counterparts on a dance floor. Sounds like a scorecard situation to me.
— Adriana Trigiani, Viola in Reel Life
The months passed away. Slowly a great fear came over Viola, a fear that would hardly ever leave her. For every month at the full moon, whether she would or no, she found herself driven to the maze, through its mysterious walks into that strange dancing-room. And when she was there the music began once more, and once more she danced most deliciously for the moon to see. The second time that this happened she had merely thought that it was a recurrence of her own whim, and that the music was but a trick that the imagination had chosen to repeat. The third time frightened her, and she knew that the force that sways the tides had strange power over her. The fear grew as the year fell, for each month the music went on for a longer time - each month some of the pleasure had gone from the dance. On bitter nights in winter the moon called her and she came, when the breath was vapor, and the trees that circled her dancing-room were black, bare skeletons, and the frost was cruel. She dared not tell anyone, and yet it was with difficulty that she kept her secret. Somehow chance seemed to favor her, and she always found a way to return from her midnight dance to her own room without being observed. Each month the summons seemed to be more imperious and urgent. Once when she was alone on her knees before the lighted altar in the private chapel of the palace she suddenly felt that the words of the familiar Latin prayer had gone from her memory. She rose to her feet, she sobbed bitterly, but the call had come and she could not resist it. She passed out of the chapel and down the palace gardens. How madly she danced that night! ("The Moon Slave")
— Barry Pain, Ghostly By Gaslight
A couple of hours after Sunset Michael Robartes returned and told me that I would have to learn the steps of an exceedingly antique dance, because before my initiation could be perfected I had to join three times in a magical dance, for rhythm was the wheel of Eternity, on which alone the transient and accidental could be broken, and the spirit set free.
— W.B. Yeats, Rosa Alchemica
He's at ease, his body sculpted to the music, his shoulder searching the other shoulder, his right toe knowing the left knee, the height, the depth, the form, the control, the twist of his wrist, the bend of his elbow, the tilt of his neck, notes digging into arteries, and he is in the air now, forcing the legs up beyond muscular memory, one last press of the thighs, an elongation of form, a loosening of human contour, he goes higher and is skyheld.
— Colum McCann, Dancer
The dance that I wasn't going to attend in about a jillion years just turned into a make-out session with random boys we have never met.
— Adriana Trigiani, Viola in Reel Life
I miss a good cup of tea, dancing, boys- definitely not rain.""We dance," Diana protested.Maeve had just laughed. "You dance differently when you know you won't live forever.
— Leigh Bardugo, Wonder Woman: Warbringer
Then Bacchus and Silenus and the Maenads began a dance, far wilder than the dance of the trees; not merely a dance of fun and beauty (though it was that too) but a magic dance of plenty, and where their hands touched, and where their feet fell, the feast came into existence- sides of roasted meat that filled the grove with delicious smells, and wheaten cakes and oaten cakes, honey and many-colored sugars and cream as thick as porridge and as smooth as still water, peaches, nectarines, pomegranates, pears, grapes, straw-berries, raspberries- pyramids and cataracts of fruit. Then, in great wooden cups and bowls and mazers, wreathed with ivy, came the wines; dark, thick ones like syrups of mulberry juice, and clear red ones like red jellies liquefied, and yellow wines and green wines and yellow-green and greenish-yellow.But for the tree people different fare was provided. When Lucy saw Clodsley Shovel and his moles scuffling up the turf in various places (when Bacchus had pointed out to them) and realized that the trees were going to eat earth it gave her rather a shudder. But when she saw the earths that were actually brought to them she felt quite different. They began with a rich brown loam that looked almost exactly like chocolate; so like chocolate, in fact, that Edmund tried a piece of it, but he did not find it all nice. When the rich loam had taken the edge off their hunger, the trees turned to an earth of the kind you see in Somerset, which is almost pink. They said it was lighter and sweeter. At the cheese stage they had a chalky soil, and then went on to delicate confections of the finest gravels powdered with choice silver sand. They drank very little wine, and it made the Hollies very talkative: for the most part they quenched their thirst with deep draughts of mingled dew and rain, flavored with forest flowers and the airy taste of the thinnest clouds.
— C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian
Rain could show up at your door and teach you how to dance.
— Cynthia Rylant
Sometimes you just want to stop and dance and celebrate mortality. Stop, dance feed your spirit.
— Brent M. Jones
You may fall down when you dance on the edge but edge is the source of all miracles and mystery.
— Amit Ray, Enlightenment Step by Step
Our lives may not have fit together, but ohhh did our souls know how to dance...
— K. Towne Jr.
Death is the dance of Life.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
Even if you can’t dance, you can shake your body. Even if you can’t sing, you can make some noise.
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Dance performances in the party a beautiful thing for celebration make the dance performances more interesting with LED Dance floor and involve your guest in the party. We have different packages to suit your budget.
— Smack Amusements
Move your body.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
One day, Lorna, I will dance this waltz with you again.
— Caroline Leech, Wait for Me
There they are. Dancing in a circle. Shadows swinging over the snow. Calling upon the ancestors. Each wearing the sacred shirt. Side stepping to the left in time to the echoing heartbeat of the drums and the echoing yearning of the songs. There they are. Dancing in a circle. Shadows swinging over the firelit snow. Calling upon the ancestors. Expecting something wonderful to happen. Everyone singing. We will live again. We will live again.
— Glenn Haybittle, The Memory Tree
The hardest step in learning flamenco dance is the first one the student takes into the studio.
— Edw. C, Youn
Hayworth's marriage made her a princess, but her feet made her a queen.
— Edw. C. Young
He seemed to be having trouble remembering the steps, for he was pumping my arm and counting under his breath (one, two, three), and his breath smelled like the open maws of the pub cellars that grapes on Whitchurch pavements on delivery day. Beer.
— Lorna Sage, Bad Blood
Ballroom dancing was inherently social, but steps replaced words and beats ironed out pauses. The shy, the awkward, and the weird found a home where good rhythm or a barn of a memory vanquished their shyness, awkwardness, and weirdness. Some got good while others stayed middling. Everyone, though, had fun.
— Erin Bomboy, The Winner: A Ballroom Dance Novel
I was a swan, but ripped apart and taped haphazardly back together again.
— Erin Bomboy
The Rosebank dancing school gives the high-quality training and enjoyable atmosphere for dance lessons in Glasgow.
— Rosebank dancing
Are you going to dance with me tonight?" I ask."Hell, yeah.""Colin never wanted to dance with me.""I'm not Colin, querida, and never will be.""Good. I've got you, Alex. I realize it's all I need and I'm ready to share it with the world."Inside the club, Alex immediately heads for the dance floor with me. I ignore the gawking stares from Fairfield students from my side of town as I pull Alex close to me and we move as one to the beat.We move together as if we've been a couple forever, every movement in sync with each other. For the first time I'm not afraid of what people think of me and Alex together. Next year, in college, it won't matter who came from what side of town.
— Simone Elkeles, Perfect Chemistry
Let's Run in the circle, opposite to each other. Until we are thrown into the sky by the storm swirling in between us. I'll hold your hands and I'll hug you, let me be your wings. Let's fall on that clouds and let's dance on the rainbow. Let's bore a hole in that sky until we fall back to the sea with the rain. And Let's swim back to the shore, to play the game of circle again.
— Akshay Vasu
Every dance you make belongs to you. It is part of your collection. When you think of it like that, you'll want to make your next routine the best you've ever made!
— Torron-Lee Dewar, 50 Ways to Become a Better Choreographer
Robbing ourselves of the great pleasures in life only makes us perform worse. We need to be happy, and do things we like doing if we want to excel in whatever it is we're focusing on.
— Torron-Lee Dewar, 50 Ways to Become a Better Choreographer
I kept wanting to go back on the stage and do it again since I had so much fun and felt so accomplished. It seemed that I had regained a lot of the confidence that I knew I had years before when I performed onstage all the time.
— Sarah Todd Hammer, Determination
I push my thigh against his. “Well, thank God.”“Thank God what?” he asks. His hand slowly rubs up and down the place where my shoulder meets my arm. It makes me good shiver.“That I don’t have a neck brace. It’s hard to rock a neck brace, especially if we’re still going to that dance.”He leans in and kisses my nose. “If anyone could do it, you could.”I tilt my head so our lips meet.“Hormonal ones, I am right here. Me. The old lady otherwise known as your grandmother,” Betty says.“Sorry. He’s just irresistible,” I say, settling back against him.“Well, try to resist the irresistible,” Betty says knowingly as the truck bumps over a pothole.
— Carrie Jones, Captivate
He was cut from the scene like a case of the runs from a can-can routine.
— Jack Bunbury, He/She Smells a Hoo-Hoo
Dance with me."Blinking, first at his offered palm and then at his features, I asked, "Why?"Not immediately replying, he reached for me, pulled me to my feet, and slid an arm around my waist. I allowed him to hold my body against his, fit our hands together, and sway to the lovely music. Begrudgingly, I admitted to myself he had great rhythm. Someone had taught him to dance.Jehtro dipped his mouth to my ear, his beard tickling my neck as he finally whispered an answer to my question, "Because you want me to hold you, but you don't know how to ask.
— Penny Reid, Grin and Beard It
The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle- making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen.
— O. Henry, The Complete Works of O. Henry
When---when I dance," she said quietly. "When I dance, I---I forget all the---the bad things." "I---I only remember the good things. That is the b-best thing about d-dancing.
— Heather Dixon, Entwined
You'll be back within the hour?" she said. "For the opening dance?" "Really, Azalea," said the King, putting on his stiff hat. "Is everything about dancing to you?" "It was, actually, but Azalea decided now wasn't the best time to point that out.
— Heather Dixon, Entwined
There are situations of course that leave you utterly speechless. All you can do is hint at things. Words, too, can't do more than just evoke things. That's where dance comes in again.
— Pina Bausch
shall we dance into the perpetual torture of our union once more?
— A.P. Sweet, The Abattoir of Silence
People dance because dance can change things. One move, can bring people together. One move, can make you believe like there's something more. One move, can set a whole generation free.
— Adam G. Sevani
When you dance, your whole body dances, your skin and bones, your soul, The tips of your fingers and the roots of your hair. When you stop dancing you stop living.
— Chloe Thurlow, Sophie's Secret
The Dance
—  who can deplete it?
That's two full days away. Maybe, if I'm not dead by then, I can still take Sophie.
— Leslea Wahl, The Perfect Blindside
The flower is here, so let's dance here.
— Amjad Nasser
Ribbons! Long ones, short ones, ones for every mood." He does a little dance to the singsong rhythm. "Thin ones, thick ones, and ones to tie your shoes!
— Nadine Brandes, A Time to Die
Dance it off.
— Jennifer Lynn Barnes, All In
To me, the body says what words cannot. I believe that dance was the first art.
— Martha Graham
It [ballet] projects a fragile kind of strength and a certain inflexible precision.
— Ayn Rand
It [ballet] is a perfect medium for the expression of spiritual love.
— Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto
Dancing is very like poetry.
— Martha Graham
A gracefully effortless floating, flowing and flying are the essentials of the ballet’s image of man.
— Ayn Rand, The Romantic Manifesto
The priceless lesson in the New Year is that endings birth beginnings and beginnings birth endings. And in this elegantly choreographed dance of life, neither ever find an end in the other.
— Craig D. Lounsbrough, Flecks of Gold on a Path of Stone: Simple Truths for Profound Living
When we step in the name of love, we cannot rhyme if we don't have the same RHYTHM, and we cannot have the same rhythm if we are not listening to the same BEAT.It takes someone who understands the rhythm and melody of your "heartbeat" to dance to it.
— Olaotan Fawehinmi, If I Were A Girl, I Would Not...
Dance madly as if all of life is meant for dancing and celebrating.
— Osho
It was still, at the root, the same dance: the same two bodies, connecting, gliding together, two aching souls reaching for each other and finding more than could be told. And then, in the fourth song, or maybe it was the fifth, they switched roles, without speaking, their bodies deciding, hands moving from waist to shoulder or shoulder to waist and pouring the dance in the opposite direction, which was, they discovered, not an opposite at all but a continuation of the very same dance, the same essential language of the body, of two bodies wishing to be one, forming a kinetic poem out of longing.
— Carolina De Robertis, The Gods of Tango
A dalliance with poetry before we dance.
— Delano Johnson, Rare Images of Love
Hidden by diaphanous clouds of mist and fog floating gracefully over vales of heather and flowing runnels, she began to dance.
— Lawren Leo, Love's Shadow: Nine Crooked Paths
Dancing is spiritual. Dancing is personal. Some people look at a dancing person and say, What a total show-off. They only notice the body of the dancing person. They look at the way the elbows jut out, the way the hips shake and the neck bends. They criticize all of these things, saying, This dancing person shouldn't be dancing. This dancing person has no rhythm. But the dancer is immune to all of this.
— Will Walton, Anything Could Happen
The real rain dance is when the rain dances.
— Marty Rubin
Where life used to feel overcrowded, it now feels boundless as the sky. Where I used to feel shackled, I am now free to dance.
— Narissa Doumani, A Spacious Life: Memoir of a Meditator
I’ve said before, Harry, no need to hide your light,” said Alice, squeezing his hand. She giggled, “Dance, monkey, dance.
— Hanif Kureishi, The Last Word
Whenever I perform on stage, I feel detached from the material world and aspire to be one with the Supreme Being, the PARMATMA. Dance has balanced me as a person and it serves as a direct connect with the ALMIGHTY! I have become more spiritual and I feel much closer to GOD because of dance. It has changed my life in many ways – made me more focused and brought better discipline and positive energy. I can cherish every moment of my life because of dance.
— Shallu Jindal
The slow dance of synchronicity begins the moment you are born.
— Andrea Goeglein
If you hear a different drummer, don’t march—dance!
— Carolyn V. Hamilton
It’s not good idea to always dance with the day’s tune.
— Milad Ghane