Briefest Quotes

#1. What is there to forgive? ... Ignore forgive and concentrate on living. Life for you is short; far too short to allow small jealousies to infringe on the happiness which can be yours only for the briefest of times.

Jasper Fforde

#2. Once in a while, we get the briefest of glimpses of the magnificent beauty that resides in this universe. Life which happens within incomprehensible tumult, occasionally transforms itself into a clear vision of pure ecstasy in a still transcendent moment.

Srini Chandra

#3. For the briefest instant, his brain was the only thing that reacted. Mistake, thought his brain. Then the mouthful of water, mixed with what remained of the almond toffee crunch, fire hosed out of his mouth, arced across the table and hit Mary Turlington just above her bosom.

Stuart McLean

#4. He and Harmony had been wed a week now, and still the briefest glance at his wife awakened the savage in him. The smallest movement or casual touch made him want to rip off her clothes and press her back on the table and rut on her wildly. His mother would not have approved.

Annabel Joseph

#5. And for the briefest instant, it almost feels like we're together again.

Nicholas Sparks

#6. An actor can remember his briefest notice well into senescence and long after he has forgotten his phone number and where he lives.

Jean Kerr

#7. For the briefest of moments his eyes sparkled before dimming again. However much I would love to get into a discussion about chastity belts, now is not the time. The people we were fighting were not human in the strictest sense of the word.

Michelle Smart

#8. Case turned back, in time to catch the briefest flash of a black rose, its petals sheened like leather, the black stem thorned with bright chrome.

William Gibson

#9. Gansey turned the key. The engine turned over once, paused for the briefest of moments - and then roared to deafening life. The Camaro lived to fight another day. The radio was even working, playing the Stevie Nicks song that always sounded to Gansey like it was about a one-winged dove.

Maggie Stiefvater

#10. In these anxious times many of us are less astonished that reason is ever suspended than that it should ever prevail, even during the briefest of intervals.

Morton Irving Seiden

#11. The easily perceptible linear thread through our lives causes a basic misunderstanding when we tend to give the same weight to years, months, and days. The briefest moments can have an explosive power that overwhelms the time around them including what preceded them.

David Burkett

#12. We're on this planet for the briefest of moments in cosmic terms, and I want to spend that time thinking about what I consider the deepest questions.

Brian Greene

#13. It is the briefest yet wisest maxim which tells us to meddle not.

Charles Caleb Colton

#14. I've never written a song that's hopeless. I'm not a hopeless person. I'm crazily optimistic. I crazily see the good in people. - singer Michael Stipe of R.E.M. Focusing on the tiniest details, finding magic in even the smallest inspirations, embracing the briefest moments-that's where passion is.

Linda Kaplan Thaler

#15. For the briefest of moments he looked like someone who'd been staggering through the Mojave Desert, half-dead from sun, and had seen a glimmer of water up ahead only to have it turn out to be a mirage.

Cassandra Clare

#16. I could have had a session of defecography, which is a diagnostic test in which X-rays are taken to assess anatomical problems occurring during the process of defecation. I gave it the briefest of thoughts before recognizing that this is beyond the pale - even for me.

Mary Roach

#17. My briefest ever definition of science fiction is 'Hubris clobbered by Nemesis.'

Brian Aldiss

#18. Sometimes the briefest moments capture us, force us to take them in, and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference to them.

Lucy Grealy

#19. How gratifying it is to amuse. How easy it gets to toss off a witticism to ease any awkwardness, to sidestep any solemnity. When you amuse, it even seems, for the briefest possible moment that you are who you appear to be, so clever and confident and at ease.

Caroline Kettlewell

#20. The colorful sky stretched before us - magnificent - as if it was trying to make up for the ugliness of our lives, our constant struggles. And for just the briefest, most fleeting of moments, maybe it did.

Mia Sheridan

#21. Very slowly, he turned a full circle, taking in the nothingness of it all. It seemed his lungs could never be large enough to breathe in this much air, his eyes could never see this much space, nor could he near the full extent of the rolling, roaring ocean. For the briefest moment, he had no edges.

M.L. Stedman

#22. There is more refreshment and stimulation in a nap, even of the briefest, than in all the alcohol ever distilled.

Ovid

#23. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.

George Orwell

#24. The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, it
turns ever more perfect. And when it's perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits the
ground it gets all mushed up. So it's only absolutely perfect when it's falling through the air,
this way and that, for the briefest time!.!.!.

David Mitchell

#25. The faintest gleam of their lost memories glimmered for the briefest moment in their hearts.

Haruki Murakami

#26. Manassa naught,
a padded white envelope
with no return address,
landlocked and antiseptic,
exploited like a gas station.
Beauty
passes through in the briefest of cameos.

Brian D'Ambrosio

#27. Women are terrifying to men,' he whispered, 'because they can break them with the simplest word or briefest glance.'

Now she smiled. 'Not if they care for them.

Ian C. Esslemont

#28. I read once that despair... is when you are no longer able to sustain, even for the briefest moment, the notion that all will be well in the end.

Celeste Bradley

#29. A natural action is accomplished in the briefest manner.

Leonardo Da Vinci

#30. And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?'

John Malkovich

#31. For the briefest moment, Jack's face formed the faintest smile as he considered fear and anxiety, the latter two of which often caused people to forget what truly mattered most.

Jermaine Watkins

#32. The words "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" which I saw on an Italian movie poster, are perhaps the briefest statement imaginable of the basic appeal of movies

Pauline Kael

#33. Without intention, all these postures, these breathing practices, meditations, and the like can become little more than ineffectual gestures. When animated by intention, however, the simplest movement, the briefest meditation, and the contents of one breath cycle are made potent.

Donna Farhi

#34. A marker drawn to show our end, is etched into its line.
The briefest moment shared with you - the longest on my mind.

Lang Leav

#35. I know he sees it, because for the briefest moment he drops his expressionless mask and the look in his eyes shows me he feels the same way. A mirror of every part of myself I can't bear to face.

Sara Raasch

#36. For the Romantic, it is only the briefest of steps from a glimpse of a stranger to the formulation of a majestic and substantial conclusion: that he or she may constitute a comprehensive answer to the unspoken questions of existence. The

Alain De Botton

#37. Given the cause nature produces the effect in the briefest manner that it can employ.

Leonardo Da Vinci

#38. I don't believe in wishes coming true. But if I do, what would I wish for? Normally I have such willpower. Like a dieter resisting a cookie, I don't even let myself go there. But for the briefest second, I do.

Gayle Forman

#39. If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism, we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism.

Vladimir Lenin

#40. Out of this pack-persecution he learned two important things: how to take care of himself in a mass-fight against him; and how, on a single dog, to inflict the greatest amount of damage in the briefest space of time.

Jack London

#41. It was an exact fit, and for the briefest of moments, she had the odd wish that she could be key-shaped and could find a space where she fit so perfectly.

Jessica Lawson

#42. 17. Butterfly
A butterfly fluttered its wings in a wind thick with the smell of seaweed. His dry lips felt the touch of the butterfly for the briefest instant, yet the wisp of wing dust still shone on his lips years later.

Ryunosuke Akutagawa

#43. They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works - although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn't see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest.

Wendell Berry

#44. Recognize the cunning man not by the corpses he pays homage to but by the living writers he conspires against with the most shameful weapon, Silence, or the briefest review.

Edward Dahlberg

#45. They say that humans can read each other in a hundred subtle ways, that we can detect messages in the subtlest movements of a body, in the briefest expressions of a face, but somehow, on that day, I had communicated with amazing efficiency the exact opposite of what I most wanted in the world.

Karen Thompson Walker

#46. A moment later, he plopped down on the sand beside her, and when they accidentally touched, Gabby had the briefest flash of them sitting together just like this on a hundred different weekends in the future.

Nicholas Sparks

#47. A woman's power of imitation and adaptation make her capable of confronting you with your own arguments after even the briefest acquaintance: how much more so if a state of intimacy exists.

Anthony Powell