Withering Quotes

1. "...my boredom might be described as a malady affecting external objects and consisting of a withering process; an almost instantaneous loss of vitality--just as though one saw a flower change in a few seconds from a bud to decay and dust."
Author: Alberto Moravia

2. "Question: Why are we Masters of our Fate, the captains of our souls? Because we have the power to control our thoughts, our attitudes. That is why many people live in the withering negative world. That is why many people live in the Positive Faith world."
Author: Alfred A. Montapert

3. "He went farther into the shadows to exchange his pants for the leather breeches. Too bad. When he emerged again, he looked pretty good even though it wasn't his style. And he was lucky there were no tights, after all. He tilted his head."You like it.""Shut up." I blushed. I hated vampire extrasensory perception. It wasn't fair that he could hear my heartbeat or smell my skin or what ever."Girls are so weird."Kieran snorted. "No kidding.""Please, you two were fighting ten minutes ago, and now you're the best of friends?" I said witheringly. "Guys are weird."
Author: Alyxandra Harvey

4. "PLATITUDE, n. The fundamental element and special glory of popular literature. A thought that snores in words that smoke. The wisdom of a million fools in the diction of a dullard. A fossil sentiment in artificial rock. A moral without the fable. All that is mortal of a departed truth. A demi-tasse of milk-and-mortality. The Pope's-nose of a featherless peacock. A jelly-fish withering on the shore of the sea of thought. The cackle surviving the egg. A desiccated epigram."
Author: Ambrose Bierce

5. "Yeah, well there's your first problem. You don't get it. You can't even see what you did. You're going to sit here today and you're going to convince yourself that you were right and I was unreasonable and you won't even think about what you just tried to make me into. But hey....It's not my problem, now. You think what you want. I'm gone."He sighed and reached for my suitcase. "Will you at least let me help you down the stairs?""Fuck off." I'd rather break my neck than let him give me a second of assistance."Topher, come on!" Now he sounded annoyed and seriously, fuck him, he didn't get to be pissy over this. I turned around and gave him a withering look."Be sure you clear the lube out of the bedside table before you bang your wife in that room. It's a dead giveaway."
Author: Amelia C. Gormley

6. "Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
Author: Anais Nin

7. "A good word will spread in the grapevine, bringing forth clusters of grapes and the benevolent of wine; a bad word will spread withering the vines, and choke the potential grapes."
Author: Anthony Liccione

8. "American capitalism is derided for its superficial banality, yet it has unleashed profound, convulsive social change. Condemned as mindless materialism, it has burst loose a flood tide of spiritual yearning. The civil rights movement and the sexual revolution, environmentalism and feminism, the fitness and health-care boom and the opening of the gay closet, the withering of censorship and the rise of a "creative class" of "knowledge workers" – all are the progeny of widespread prosperity."
Author: Brink Lindsey

9. "Please do not break your heart over the withering of a dream you once held, that never became yours! After all, the shattered dream could have very well been a nightmare and not a dream at all, you wouldn't really know because you didn't have it yet! Let the sparks fade, let the flame dim and die, you'll never know it wasn't poison."
Author: C. JoyBell C.

10. "And tell them what?" Jace said witheringly. "That invisible people are bothering you? Trust me, little girl, the police aren't going to arrest someone they can't see"
Author: Cassandra Clare

11. "The next moment I was chained to my chair again,--the fires were lit, the bells rang out, the litanies were sung;--my feet were scorched to a cinder,--my muscles cracked, my blood and marrow hissed, my flesh consumed like shrinking leather,--the bones of my legs hung two black withering and moveless sticks in the ascending blaze;--it ascended, caught my hair,--I was crowned with fire,--my head was a ball of molten metal, my eyes flashed and melted in their sockets;--I opened my mouth, it drank fire,--I closed it, the fire was within,...and we burned, and burned! I was a cinder body and soul in my dream."
Author: Charles Robert Maturin

12. "I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth,but i experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers and less withering dread of oppression. The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed, and the flame of resentment extinguished"
Author: Charlotte Brontë

13. "Friendship however is a plant which cannot be forced -- true friendship is no gourd spring up in a night and withering in a day."
Author: Charlotte Brontë

14. "Good night, my lord." The words were pronounced in her most withering tone.By contrast, he remained quite alarmingly unwithered long after she left."
Author: Christina Brooke

15. "National leaders who find themselves wilting under the withering criticisms by members of the media, would do well not to take such criticism personally but to regard the media as their allies in keeping the government clean and honest, its services."
Author: Corazon Aquino

16. "No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease."
Author: Dogen Zenji

17. "I feel myself withering away. The leafs of a soul fall and fall...naked branches left behind. I look up at the sky, yield and let my tears come down."
Author: Eiry Nieves

18. "If there is one abiding theme in the gym, it's the withering work in the ring. Those not fit do not survive."
Author: Emanuel Steward

19. "But then, life is a constant withering of possibilities. Some are stolen with the lives of people you love. Others are let go, with regret and reluctance and deep, deep sorrow. But there is compensation for lives unlived in the intoxicating joy of knowing that the life you have - right here, right now - if the one you have chosen. There is power in that, and hope."
Author: Emily Maguire

20. "So, let's make a deal: If you do not voice all the withering comments about the weight or uselessness of this jacket that are no doubt swirling in that big brain of yours, then I will not mention the super-laser episode again. Agreed?"This jacket is really cutting into my shoulders, thought Artemis. And it's so heavy that I could not outrun a slug.But he said, "Agreed."
Author: Eoin Colfer

21. "But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man, is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. For, whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist."
Author: Ford Madox Ford

22. "This is myself, baby. All of my selves. I own each and every one of them. I know who I'm pretending to be and who I am." The look he gives me is withering. "Do you?"
Author: Gayle Forman

23. "RAIJIN, TAKE ME NOW. She shot Buruu a withering glance as he rolled over on his back and pawed at the sky. HAVE MERCY ON ME, FATHER. TAKE MY WINGS. CHAIN ME TO STINKING EARTH. BUT THIS TORTURE I CANNOT ENDURE.Oh, shut it."
Author: Jay Kristoff

24. "I admit," Morgan said with another withering look, "it's no donut."
Author: Jim Butcher

25. "Nothing can describe the withering horror of this. You feel lost, sick at heart before such unmasked hatred, not so much because it threatens you as because it shows humans in such an inhuman light. You see a kind of insanity, something so obscene the very obscenity of it (rather than its threat) terrifies you. It was so new I could not take my eyes from the man's face. I felt like saying: "What in God's name are you doing to yourself?"
Author: John Howard Griffin

26. "No eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity."
Author: Joseph Conrad

27. "She won't come back here like that," Lee said weakly. "Lightning never strikes the same place twice, right?"Filo stopped in the doorway, one hand on the frame. "No, Lee," he said, giving her a withering look. "A place is never the same after lightning strikes it. I guess that makes you the lightning."
Author: Kaye Thornbrugh

28. "Needle in a haystack's easy - just bring a magnet."Eliot stared witheringly at Hardison. "You take the poetry out of everything.""Says the man who'd just punch the haystack."
Author: Keith R.A. DeCandido

29. "I like walking into a room and seeing your face light up when you see me," he said earnestly, the sun from the open window making his hair glow. "I like arguing with Quen over the wisdom of employing a demon to be my security."My throat caught. This wasn't going to happen, but something in me was withering. I wanted more—­and I knew I couldn't have it.He touched my hair, and I twitched as he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. "I want to wake up beside you, see your curls on my pillow. I want a chance at falling in love."
Author: Kim Harrison

30. "If Edgar sounded overeager, even rushed, the race was with his own temperament. He placed a premium on savvy. Yet since you could only obtain new information by admitting you didn't know it already, savvy required an apprenticeship as a naive twit. You had to ask crude, obvious questions…you had to sit still while worldly-wise warhorses…fired withering glances as if you were born yesterday.Well, Edgar was born yesterday for the moment, although his tolerance for being treated liked a simpleton was in short supply. He'd needed to rattle off a multitude of stupid questions before he embraced his next incarnation as an insider. The trouble was that savvy coated your brain in plastic like a driver's license: nothing more could get in. Hence the point at which you decided you knew everything was exactly the point at which you became an ignorant dipshit."
Author: Lionel Shriver

31. "Lacking stamina, it became a withering whimsy of a flirtation."
Author: Lisa Genova

32. "I suppose when you say you slept with him, it was more than just a nap?' Lillian shot her a withering glance. ‘Daisy, don't be a pea wit."
Author: Lisa Kleypas

33. "What could she do who would not cast away magic and leave the home that an ageless day had endeared to her while centuries were withering like leaves upon earthly shores, whose heart was yet held by those little tendrils of Earth, which are strong enough, strong enough?"
Author: Lord Dunsany

34. "He'd only been gone two seconds, but the room got brighter when they were together, as if they were two elements that became brilliant in proximity. At Sam's clumsy efforts to carry the vacuum, Grace smiled a new smile that I thought only he ever got, and he shot her a withering look full of the sort of subtext you could only get from a lot of conversations whispered after dark."
Author: Maggie Stiefvater

35. "I gave Paul a withering look but the truth was I was curious as hell. First of all, to find out what Sullivan wanted. And second, to see what a teacher's room looked like. I'd always sort of figured they came out during the day to teach classes and then got stored in shoe boxes under someone's bed until they were needed again. (James)"
Author: Maggie Stiefvater

36. "Heading into the race, the perception among political professionals and the press had been that the rival campaign squadrons were more or less evenly matched. But as the smoke cleared, a consensus quickly emerged that the Democrats had methodically been building an atomic clock while the Republicans were trifling with Tinkertoys. Chicago's mockery of Boston was hushed but withering."
Author: Mark Halperin

37. "Women have become so obsessed with not withering, they've forgotten that there are infinite ways to be beautiful."
Author: Maureen Dowd

38. "This is getting tedious," Dee muttered. "Drive on. Turn right into the yacht club. I have an idea." He looked at Virginia. "Can you stop them?" He jerked his thumb at the cyclists. Virginia Dare gave him a withering look. "I have stopped armies. Or have you forgotten?""I doubt you'll ever let me," he sighed. Then he stuck his fingers in his ears.Rolling her window down, Virginia placed her flute on the edge of the glass, took a deep breath, closed her eyes and blew gently.The sound was appalling."
Author: Michael Scott

39. "She's pretty." (It's amazing how girls can say this and make it the most withering insult.)"
Author: Ned Vizzini

40. "Even as rigorous a determinist as Karl Marx, who at times described the social behaviour of the bourgeoisie in terms which suggested a problem in social physics, could subject it at other times to a withering scorn which only the presupposition of moral responsibility could justify."
Author: Reinhold Niebuhr

41. "People did change, and a change could be a bloom as well as a withering..."
Author: Richard Yates

42. "Angeline's gaze swiveled to Zoe."Why didn't you have us pick upsomething?""Because that's not my job!" Zoelifted her head up high. "We're here tokeep Jill's cover and make sure she stays off the radar. It's not my job tofeed you guys.""In which sense?" I asked. I knewperfectly well that was a mean thing tosay to her but couldn't resist. It took her a moment to pick up the double meaning.First she paled; then she turned an angry red."Neither! I'm not your concierge.Neither is Sydney. I don't know why shealways takes care of that stuff for you.She should only be dealing with thingsthat are essential for your survival.Ordering pizza isn't one of them."I faked a yawn and leaned back intothe couch. "Maybe she figures if we'rewell fed, you two won't look thatappetizing."Zoe was too horrified to respond,and Eddie shot me a withering look."
Author: Richelle Mead

43. "It is funny, but it strikes me that a person without anecdotes that they nurse while they live, and that survive them, are more likely to be utterly lost not only to history but the family following them. Of course this is the fate of most souls, reducing entire lives, no matter how vivid and wonderful, to those sad black names on withering family trees, with half a date dangling after and a question mark."
Author: Sebastian Barry

44. "Without the withering criticism by nominalism, medieval Christian philosophy and theology would not have relinquished their claim to the role of knowledge in discovering the nature of things in light of higher principles; instead, it caused them to leave the field of battle without any defense before the onslaught of secularism, rationalism, and empiricism, which were, as a result, able to gain a remarkably easy victory."
Author: Seyyed Hossein Nasr

45. "Mr. Herbert DemarestAlexander Hamilton Jr. High2236 Bedford AvenueBrooklyn NYDear Mr Demarest, Then why don't you give him 'Withering Heights'? At least Heathcoat knew how to kick some ass.Chas. Banks3d Base"
Author: Steve Kluger

46. "And wasn't that a great moment in baseball history," Holly Grace replied with withering sarcasm. "Helen Keller pitching and Little Stevie Wonder catching."
Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips

47. "There is still a chance to change things. We can provide fresh drinking water to all people. We can make sure crops are not regulated for profit; we can ensure that they are not genetically altered to benefit manufacturers. Our people are dying because we are feeding them poison. Animals are dying because we are forcing them to eat waste, forcing them to live in their own filth, caging them together and abusing them. Plants are withering away because we are dumping chemicals into the earth that make them hazardous to our health. But these are things we can fix."
Author: Tahereh Mafi

48. "Well, the news has got around. The Duchess of Keepsake has invited us to a ball, Sir Henry and Lady Withering have invited us to a ball, and Lord and Lady Hangfinger have invited us to... yes, a ball." "Well, that's a lot of..." "Don't you dare, Sam."
Author: Terry Pratchett

49. "Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind. Withering my intuition leaving all these opportunities behind. Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line. Reaching out to embrace the random. Reaching out to embrace whatever may come. I embrace my desire to feel the rhythm, to feel connected enough to step aside and weep like a widow to feel inspired, to fathom the power, to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain, to swing on the spiral of our divinity and still be a human. With my feet upon the ground I lose myself between the sounds and open wide to suck it in. I feel it move across my skin. I'm reaching up and reaching out. I'm reaching for the random or what ever will bewilder me. And following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been. We'll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one's been. Spiral out. Keep going..."
Author: Tool

50. "In the molten fire where he lay he could watch the slow machinations of eternity, the cosmic miracle of each second being born, eggshaped, silverplated, phallic, time thrusting itself gleaming through the worn and worthless husk of the microsecond previous, halting, beginning to show the slow and infinitesimal accreations of decay in the clocking away of life in a mechanism encoded at the moment of conception, withering, shunted aside by time's next orgasmic thrust, and all to the beating of some galactic heart, to voices, a madman's mutterings from a snare in the web of the world."
Author: William Gay

Withering Quotes Pictures