Poise Quotes

1. "For the rest of history, for most of us, our bright promise will always fall short of being actualised; it will never earn us bountiful sums of money or beget exemplary objects or organisations....Most of us stand poised at the edge of brilliance, haunted by the knowledge of our proximity, yet still demonstrably on the wrong side of the line, our dealings with reality undermined by a range of minor yet critical psychological flaws (a little too much optimism, an unprocessed rebelliousness, a fatal impatience or sentimentality). We are like an exquisite high-speed aircraft which for lack of a tiny part is left stranded beside the runway, rendered slower than a tractor or a bicycle."
Author: Alain De Botton

2. "Lovers of air travel find it exhilarating to hang poised between the illusion of immortality and the fact of death."
Author: Alexander Chase

3. "John [the father] kept saying, "You have a penis. That means you're a boy." One day, Shannon noticed that her son had been in the bathroom an awfully long time and pushed the door open. "He had a pair of my best, sharpest sewing scissors poised, ready to cut. Penis in the scissors. I said, 'What are you doing?' He said, 'This doesn't belong here. So I'm going to cut it off.' I said, 'You can't do that.' He said, 'Why not?' I said, 'Because if you ever want to have girl parts, they need that to make them.' I pulled that one right out of my ass. He handed me the scissors and said, 'Okay."
Author: Andrew Solomon

4. "But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?" You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind -- a scene, a locale, a character, whatever -- and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind."
Author: Anne Lamott

5. "For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone."
Author: Audrey Hepburn

6. "If you knew how to cook, maybe I would eat," Jace muttered.Isabelle froze, her spoon poised dangerously. "What did you say?"Jace edged toward the fridge. "I said I'm going to look for a snack to eat."That's what I thought you said." Isabelle turned her attention to the soup."
Author: Cassandra Clare

7. "...a new day was starting, the things of the garden were not concerned with our troubles. A blackbird ran across the rose-garden to the lawns in swift, short rushes, stopping now and again to stab at the earth with his yellow beak. A thrush, too, went about his business, and two stout, little wagtails, following one another, and a little cluster of twittering sparrows. A gull poised himself high in the air, silent and alone, and then spread his wings wide and swooped beyond the lawns to the woods and the Happy Valley. These things continued, our worries and anxieties had no power to alter them."
Author: Daphne Du Maurier

8. "The number two, he thought, was an ominous number. Two is a reflection or duplication of one, the most perfect of the natural numbers. Two is all echo and counterpoise; two is the beginning of multiplicity, the way the universal oneness differentiates itself and breaks apart into strings and quarks and photons, all the separate and component pieces of life. Two is a symbol of becoming as opposed to pure being..."
Author: David Zindell

9. "Obama seemed poised to realign American politics after his stunning 2008 victory. But the economy remains worse than even the administration's worst-case scenarios, and the long legislative battles over health care reform, financial services reform and the national debt and deficit have taken their toll. Obama no longer looks invincible."
Author: Dee Dee Myers

10. "Her ears, lightly fringed with white that looked silver, lifted and moved, back, forward, listening and sensing. Her face turned, slightly, after each new sensation, alert. Her tail moved, in another dimension, as if its tip was catching messages her other organs could not. She sat poised, air-light, looking, hearing, feeling, smelling, breathing, with all of her, fur, whiskers, ears -- everything, in delicate vibration."
Author: Doris Lessing

11. "Straddling him intimately, he slides his hands up my thighs, pushing the silk aside and caressing my pale, exposed skin. Even against his uniform, I can feel his hardness. His body feels taut and poised for action."
Author: Felicity Brandon

12. "Not as we are but as we must appear, contractual ghosts of pity; not as we desire life, but as they would have us live, set apart in timeless colloquy. So it is required; so we bear witness, despite ourselves, to what is beyond us,each distant sphere of harmony forever poised, unanswerable. It is without consequence when we vaunt and suffer, or if it is not, all echoes are the same in such eternity. Then tell me, love,how that should comfort us-or anyone dragged half-unnerved out of this worldly place crying to the end "I have not finished."From 'Funeral Music"
Author: Geoffrey Hill

13. "And so their spirits soaredas they took positions own the passageways of battleall night long, and the watchfires blazed among them.Hundreds strong, as stars in the night sky glitteringround the moon's brilliance blaze in all their glorywhen the air falls to a sudden, windless calm...all the lookout peaks stand out and the jutting cliffsand the steep ravines and down from the high heavens burststhe boundless bright air and all the stars shine clearand the shepherd's heart exults - so many fires burnedbetween the ships and the Xanthus' whirling rapidsset by the men of Troy, bright against their walls.A thousand fires were burning there on the plainand beside each fire sat fifty fighting menpoised in the leaping blaze, and champing oatsand glistening barley, stationed by their chariots,stallions waited for Dawn to mount her glowing throne."
Author: Homer

14. "When we are faced with circumstances, He gives us the Power to endure! When we are faced with loss, He grants us the Poise to hold on. When we come across failure, He installs back in us the Potential to rise up again. When we meet death, He gave us the Pleasure to be carried up into the Lovely coasts of eternity!"
Author: Israelmore Ayivor

15. "Beauty is at its most poignant when the cold hand of Death holds poised to wither it imminently."
Author: Jacqueline Carey

16. "The phrase and the day and the scene harmonized in a chord. Words. Was it their colours? He allowed them to glow and fade, hue after hue: sunrise gold, the russet and green of apple orchards, azure of waves, the greyfringed fleece of clouds. No it was not their colours: it was the poise and balance of the period itself. Did he then love the rhythmic rise and fall of words better than their associations of legend and colour? Or was it that, being as weak of sight as he was shy of mind, he drew less pleasure from the reflection of the glowing sensible world through the prism of a language manycoloured and richly storied than from the contemplation of an inner world of individual emotions mirrored perfectly in a lucid supple periodic prose?"
Author: James Joyce

17. "Ranger is an unusual name," she managed. "Is it a nickname?"It's a street name," Ranger said. "I was a Ranger in the army."I heard about them Rangers on TV," Grandma said. "I heard they get dogs pregnant."My father's mouth dropped open and a piece of ham fell out.My mother froze, her fork poised in midair.That's sort of a joke," I told Grandma. "Rangers don't get dogs pregnant in real life."I looked at Ranger for corroboration and got another smile."
Author: Janet Evanovich

18. "He was undone. His cock throbbed against his trousers and his whole body was poised, ready to explode. "Some day the time will come when I will take my time with you," he promised. "I'm certain at some point this madness that steals my control will cease." Mariah's lips parted in surprise at his statement. John was known for his restraint with lovers—how could it be that she stole that from him? She might have asked, but at that moment John stripped his shirt over his head and shucked his boots and trousers off. She could scarcely breathe, let alone speak, as she stared at him. They were naked together. She never would have dreamed that would ever happen. But here they were. He stepped forward and dragged her against him. His mouth came to hers again, rough and demanding, but utterly and sinfully pleasurable. She lost herself when he tasted her, sucking her tongue like he had laved her tingling nipple."
Author: Jess Michaels

19. "Heade's calm is unsteady, storm-stirred; we respond in our era to its hint of the nervous and the fearful. His weather is interior weather, in a sense, and he perhaps was, if far from the first to portray a modern mood, an ambivalent mood tinged with dread and yet imbued with a certain lightness.The mood could even be said to be religious: not an aggressive preachment of God's grandeur but a kind of Zen poise and acceptance, represented by the small sedentary or plodding foreground figures that appear uncannily at peace as the clouds blacken and the lightning flashes."
Author: John Updike

20. "I think you're extremely rude! And you're doing it on purpose!""Of course. One should never be rude except on purpose."…"Why?"…"Because one should never appear to anything without intent. It's the secret of poise."
Author: Kate Ross

21. "I have no limits, no filter, no class, no poise. No decorum. Just fun."
Author: Kathy Griffin

22. "He knew what his father thought: that immigration, so often presented as a heroic act, could just as easily be the opposite; that it was cowardice that led many to America; fear marked the journey, not bravery; a cockroachy desire to scuttle to where you never saw poverty, not really, never had to suffer a tug to your conscience; where you never heard the demands of servants, beggars, bankrupt relatives, and where your generosity would never be openly claimed; where by merely looking after your wife-child-dog-yard you could feel virtuous. Experience the relief of being an unknown transplant to the locals and hide the perspective granted by journey. Ohio was the first place he loved, for there at last he had been able to acquire poise --"
Author: Kiran Desai

23. "Painted and smiling, I balance on my trapeze. Luka is poised ten metres away, his muscles shining under the lights. The wooden circles in his earlobes twitch as his jaw clenches, unclenches, clenches."
Author: Kirsty Logan

24. "Doctora Zainab looks at her watch. I should leave. But Mai carries her book and sits next to me. She wants me to read it for her. I start to read 'This is the House that Jack Built' and I forget Doctora Zainab's presence there is only Mai's attention and Tamer looking at us. For as long as the book lasts, we are poised, no future, no past.-Minaret"
Author: Leila Aboulela

25. "No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise."
Author: Lewis Carroll

26. "The Temperature is RisingThe heartbeat quickens my breath is controlled,my senses are illuminated like a mother to her young. This feeling I have I've know it before, when the gates are opened I'll remember the beginning. Awaiting, dreaming imagining the endless possibilities of moments together as I give into my desires. My body reacts it has a mind of its own leaving little clues yet I continue on. Poised and professional I cross my origin the passion that awaits it stirs like a simmer. The sweet aroma a treat being made just for him I know he will like, the hunger in his eyes his mouth soft and strong it only took me a moment as he continued to look on. I didn't even recognize my sound as I was in a sphere all alone I hoped and imagined it would be but my mind was left in awe like sweet chocolate after a meal."
Author: M.I. Ghostwriter

27. "Did she look at us that first week and see past the glossed hair and the shiny legs, our glittered brow bones and girl bravado? See past all that to everything beneath, all our miseries, the way we all hated ourselves but much more everyone else? Could she see past all of that to something else, something quivering and real, something poised to be transformed, turned out, made? See that she could make us, stick her hands in our glitter-gritted insides and build us into magnificent teen gladiators?"
Author: Megan Abbott

28. "Elisabeth was the same as ever, and I was the same as ever around her; no longer a confident college senior, I was diminished in her golden presence. In the stale air of the train car, I felt as limp and wrinkled as the sad linen dress I was wearing. While she looked as pressed and poised as a mannequin, not a wrinkle or smudge on her smart silk suit, despite the red dust blowing in through the inadequate windows."
Author: Melanie Benjamin

29. "Perhaps [transgression] is like a flash of lightning in the night which, from the beginning of time, gives a dense and black intensity to the night it denies, which lights up the night from the inside, from top to bottom, yet owes to the dark the stark clarity of its manifestation, its harrowing and poised singularity."
Author: Michel Foucault

30. "…Then another porpoise broke the water and rolled toward us. A third and fourth porpoise neared. The visitation was something so rare and perfect that we knew by instinct not to speak—and then as quickly as they had come, the porpoises moved away from us…Each of us would remember that all during our lives. It was the purest moment of freedom and headlong exhilaration that I had ever felt. A wordless covenant was set, and I would go back in my imagination, and return to where happiness seemed so easy to touch."
Author: Pat Conroy

31. "He sat on as the sun's rays came slowly down through the trees, lower and lower, and when the lowest reached a branch not far above him it caught a dewdrop poised upon a leaf. The drop instantly blazed crimson, and a slight movement of his head made it show all the colours of the spectrum with extraordinary purity, from a red almost too deep to be seen through all the others to the ultimate violet and back again."
Author: Patrick O'Brian

32. "The key to winning is poise under stress."
Author: Paul Brown

33. "I would ask my teacher a question," Yehonala said."Ask," Lady Miao replied. She was brushing fine quick strokes upon a large sheet of paper spread upon a square table which the eunuch had brought to her side."When may I paint a picture of my own?" Yehonala asked. Her teacher held her hand poised for an instant and cast a sidelong look from her narrowed eyes. "When I can no longer command you."
Author: Pearl S. Buck

34. "Only snobs kiss once, I was told, or those unfortunates who suffer from congenital froideur. I then saw what I assumed to be the correct procedure - the triple kiss, left-right-left, so I tried it on a Parisian friend. Wrong again. She told me that triple-kissing was a low Provençal habit, and that two kisses were enough among civilized people. The next time I saw my neighbor's wife, I kissed her twice. "Non," she said, "trois fois."I now pay close attention to the movement of the female head. If it stops swiveling after two kisses, I am almost sure I've filled my quota, but I stay poised for a third lunge just in case the head should keep moving."
Author: Peter Mayle

35. "One of the supreme paradoxes of baseball, and all sports, is that the harder you try to throw a pitch or hit a ball or accomplish something, the smaller your chances are for success. You get the best results not when you apply superhuman effort but when you let the game flow organically and allow yourself to be fully present. You'll often hear scouts say of a great prospect, "The game comes slow to him." It mean the prospect is skilled and poised enough to let the game unfold in its own time, paying no attention to the angst or urgency or doubt, funnelling all awareness to the athletic task at hand."
Author: R.A. Dickey

36. "Let us be poised, and wise, and our own, today. Let us treat men and women well; treat them as if they were real; perhaps they are."
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson

37. "Olson sat up. He put his hands against his belly and stared calmly at the poised soldiers on the deck of the squat vehicle. the soldiers stared back. 'You bastards!' McVries sobbed. 'You bloody bastards!' Olson began to get up. Another volley of bullets drove him flat again. Now there was a sound from behind Garraty. He didn't have to turn his head to know it was Stebbins. Stebbins was laughing softly. Olson sat up again. The guns were still trained on him, but the soldiers did not shoot. Their silhouettes on the halftrack seemed almost to indicate curiosity. Slowly, reflectively, Olson gained his feet, hands crossed on his belly. He seemed to sniff the air for direction, turned slowly in the direction of the Walk, and began to stagger along."
Author: Richard Bachman

38. "More broadly, we are going to have to examine the safety net programs to make sure they are poised to catch the families before they fall even more, especially in the areas of unemployment benefits, child care assistance, and foster care."
Author: Richard Neal

39. "Leo scratched his head. "Well I dunno about Enchiladas—""Enceladus," Piper corrected."Whatever. But Old Potty Face mentioned another name. Porpoise Fear, or something?""Porphyrion?" Piper asked. "He was the giant king, I think."
Author: Rick Riordan

40. "It's because we need to determine who in this country is poised, positioned to commit terrorist acts."
Author: Robert Mueller

41. "She was prisoner to an old, forgotten god, kept from her home, probably never to see it again, and yet... the way she sat, poised, calm, clear like a full moon night, she seemed much happier than me, the witch who contained them all, the jailer with the magic key."
Author: Sarah Diemer

42. "Small Moth...She's slicing ripe white peachesinto the Tony the Tiger bowland dropping slivers for the dogpoised vibrating by her foot to stop their fallwhen she spots it, camouflaged,a glimmer and then full on-happiness, plashing blunt soft wingsinside her as if it wantsto escape again."
Author: Sarah Lindsay

43. "In the end, this is a difficult story to sum up. The making of the atomic bomb is one of history's most amazing examples of teamwork and genius and poise under pressure. But it's also the story of how humans created a weapon capable of wiping our species off the planet. It's a story with no end in sight.And, like it or not, you're in it."
Author: Steve Sheinkin

44. "When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it'll never end. But however hard you try you can't run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever for one moment, accepts it. Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. (In the library, the Doctor walks back to the TARDIS. He stops, looking at the doors. Then he raises his hand, and stands there poised like that for a long moment. Finally he snaps his fingers. The doors open. He smiles slowly and walks in, joining Donna. Then he snaps his fingers again, and the doors close. River's voice continues over this.) Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair, and the Doctor comes to call... everybody lives."
Author: Steven Moffat

45. "And I was remembering that time in our lives together, the time of those ritual walks. I was remembering the way it feels at just that moment when you begin to turn, when you're poised exactly between the things in life you want to do and those you need to do, and it seems for a few blessed seconds that they are all going to be the same."
Author: Sue Miller

46. "Ever poised on that cusp between past and future, we tie memories to souvenirs like string to trees along life's path, marking the trail in case we lose ourselves around a bend of tomorrow's road."
Author: Susan Lendroth

47. "Then, in my most careful handwriting, come all the details it would be a crime to forget. Lady licking Prim's cheek. My father's laugh. Peeta's father with the cookies. The colour of Finnick's eyes. What Cinna could do with a length of silk. Boggs reprogramming the Holo. Rue poised on her toes, arms slightly extended, like a bird about to take flight. On and on. We seal the pages with salt water and promises to live well to make their death count."
Author: Suzanne Collins

48. "For one last second, I saw them again the way I had that evening: a golden apparition on the front steps, shining and poised like young warriors stepped out of some lost myth, heads lifted, too bright to be real."
Author: Tana French

49. "...it is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.[Letter to William Short, 13 April 1820]"
Author: Thomas Jefferson

50. "The man running toward me is not a man, he is a boy. A shaggy-haired boy with a crease between his eyebrows. Will. Dull-eyed and mindless, but still Will. He stops running and mirrors me, his feet planted and his gun up. In an instant, I see his finger poised over the trigger and hear the bullet slide into the chamber, and I fire. My eyes squeezed shut. Can't breathe.The bullet hit him in the head. I know because that's where I aimed it."
Author: Veronica Roth

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