Brooding Quotes

“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise. But still he wandered through the streets of the town, always silent and alone.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“. . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker . . .”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“I hate it when storm clouds roll in, heralded by dazzling claps of thunder and lightning that boast an ocean of tears. This majestic performance of bad temper manages to overshadow my pathetic attempts at pouting. No one broods like Mother Nature, hence she steals all the attention I was sulking after.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“Dagmar tried to stand, and Gwenvael caught her hand, pulling her back down. "You can't leave me. I'm tortured and brooding. You need to show me how much you adore me so I can learn to love myself again."

"You've never stopped loving yourself."

"Because I'm amazing.”
― G.A. Aiken, What a Dragon Should Know

“I don't know that I brood. I just occasionally take time out to silently consider the specific ways in which others have wronged me.”
― Richard Ayoade, Ayoade on Ayoade: A Cinematic Odyssey

“What dreams lie dormant hidden in the womb of your soul, quietly waiting, incubating seeking opportunity to come forth?
Like the female cycle that comes every 28 days, over and over again, dreams come to rest in the soil of your mind. They compel you. They disturb you. They haunt you with visions of possibility.
They prompt you to walk restlessly through life knowing that you may someday stop, listen and decide to nourish them with faith and action.
Yield to the silent urging. Listen. Hear. Receive.
Let the dream speak. For it will burst forth from the womb of your spirit. It frees into existence something that lives, brooding in the corner your mind. Hold the seed. Grow the seed. Birth the seed. And life will begin anew.”
― Stella Payton

“she is a girl who cannot walk her troubles off, or work them off; she is a girl to sit around and glare.”
― Dodie Smith

“Open your eyes, boy. Your eyes. Open your eyes and no more turn aside and brood.”
― Will Christopher Baer, Penny Dreadful

“It was his power, his gift, suddenly to shed all superfluities, to shrink and diminish so that he looked barer and felt sparer, even physically, yet lost none of his intensity of mind, and so to stand on his little ledge facing the dark of human ignorance, how we know nothing and the sea eats away the ground we stand on - that was his fate, his gift. But having thrown away, when he dismounted, all gestures and fripperies, all trophies of nuts and roses, and shrunk so that not only fame but even his own name was forgotten by him, he kept even in that desolation a vigilance which spared no phantom and luxuriated in no vision, and it was in this guise that he inspired in William Bankes (intermittently) and in Charles Tansley (obsequiously) and in his wife now, when she looked up and saw him standing at the edge of the lawn, profoundly, reverence, and pity, and gratitude too, as a stake driven into the bed of a channel upon which the gulls perch and the waves beat inspires in merry boat-loads a feeling of gratitude for the duty it is taking upon itself of marking the channel out there in the floods alone.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“When you are brooding, people say you’re too brooding and when you are lively, people say you’re too lively. You can never win. Together the two of us made an excellent pairing. I accepted her for being so vivacious, and she accepted me in my depths and together there was a balance. Really, inside of every gloomy man resides a part of him that wants to be vibrant, and I saw the opposite in Sarah. She always wanted to be more deep, deliberate, and introspective.”
― Michael Whone, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

“Now, brooder is an interesting word. People who worry a lot in silence are known as brooders. But then again so is a hen sitting on her eggs. The more I get to know chickens, the more I realize half our language comes from chickens. Well, not half. But an awful lot considering this isn't Latin or anything. Cooped up. Egghead. Hatch a plan. Henpecked. Pecker. Cock. Chickenshit. Chicken-scratch. A lot of chicken words are meant to deliver attitude, which isn't surprising to me now that I have chickens. Chickens aren't background animals like fish or sheep or horses. Chickens are in-your-face animals. Chickens if you have them, come to bracket your days. The rooster hollers all morning, and then in the evening the hens have left you their mysterious gift of eggs.

Silkies are said to be excellent brooders, to have a tendency toward "broodiness." This, too, is usually meant as a compliment.”
― Jeanne Marie Laskas, Growing Girls: The Mother of All Adventures

“Mother's intentions were always sound, never muddy; I don't imagine that she troubled herself to feel very guilty. But the Rev. Mr. Merrill was a man who took to wallowing in guilt; his remorse, after all, was all he had to cling to-especially after his scant courage left him, and he was forced to acknowledge that he would never be brave enough to abandon his miserable wife and children for my mother. He would continue to torture himself, of course, with the insistent and self-destructive notion that he loved my mother. I suppose that his "love" of my mother was as intellectually detached from feeling and action as his "belief" was also subject to his immense capacity for remote and unrealistic interpretation. My mother was a healthier animal; when he said he wouldn't leave his family for her, she simply put him out of her mind and went on singing.

But as incapable as he was of a heartfelt response to a real situation, the Rev. Mr. Merrill was tirelessly capable of thinking; he pondered and brooded and surmised and second-guessed my mother to death.”
― John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“It’s like they were worried that I’d be alone all day brooding and painting my cabin black or something—sheesh.”
― Melissa C. Walker, Unbreak My Heart

“We can learn a lot from young children and infants who are able to shift from agitation to amusement in a moment simply by having their needs met. Once crying newborns get fed, held, or changed, they don’t brood for another hour about how mad they are that it took so long for their caregivers to respond; they shift instantly. Unfortunately, we lose this ability and develop instead a habit of thinking and rationalizing our way through problems.”
― Rob Ryan Sullivan

“Left alone, Miss Verney felt so old, lonely and helpless that she began to cry. No builder would tackle that shed, not for any price she could afford. But crying relieved her and she soon felt quite cheerful again. It was ridiculous to brood, she told herself.”
― Jean Rhys, Sleep It Off Lady: Stories

“I know you’re fond of brooding, but I’m an old man. Your silences make me wonder whether I’ve actually gone deaf.”
― Deborah Hewitt, The Nightjar

“He stopped several feet away, assessing them with one smooth glance, and in that instant Miranda could have sworn she saw something flicker in his dark, dark eyes. Curiosity? Confusion? Whatever it might have been, in the very next second it was gone, replaced by polite detachment.”
― Richie Tankersley Cusick, Starstruck

“I had been brooding earlier that morn over my most probable future, which had seemed so dim that I would probably need night vision goggles to see my way through it.”
― Andrew James Pritchard, Sukiyaki

“Death. I have fed that foul beast a feast, and yet it still hungers.”
― Emmanuel M. Arriaga, The Rift War

“Darkness lingered in those blue eyes, like ghosts haunted him despite only the two of them standing in this cabin.”
― Katherine McIntyre, Forged Alliances

“Her gaze on Vane, Patience wished she could see his eyes. His expression was unreadable. Shoulders propped against the stone arch, arms folded cross his chest, he watched her like a hawk. A brooding, potentially menacing hawk. Or a wolf anticipating a meal.”
― Stephanie Laurens, A Rake's Vow

“Major Fosdick was cleaning his guns in the drawing-room because it was the most comfortable room in the house. While he did this he brooded. He enjoyed cleaning his guns and he enjoyed brooding so that the afternoon was passing pleasantly enough and its charm was disturbed only by the presence of his wife, who sat opposite him, mending a flannel undergarment and making disjointed conversation about subjects in which he was not interested.”
― Anthony Powell, From a View to a Death

“Brooding's different,' he muttered to the empty chair across from him. 'Could be any subject, for one thing. A subject not at all cynical. Like the meddling of the gods – no, all right, not like that one. Smithing, yes. Horseshoes. Nothing cynical about horseshoes . . . I don't think. Sure. Keeping horses comfortable. So they can gallop into battle and die horribly.' He fell silent. Scowling.”
― Steven Erikson, Reaper's Gale

“Every dream like an eagle's egg has three phases; incubation (brooding) period were all the facts about the dream are collected and carefully analyzed; nurturing period were much is invested initially and very little may be realized immediately and flying period were the dream has broken loose and it becomes a reality to the dreamer”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua

“How could he get it?’ Milva said, grimacing. ‘He’s just “me, me, by
myself, all alone”. A lone wolf! But you can see he’s no hunter, that he’s a
stranger to the forest. Wolves don’t hunt alone! Never! A lone wolf, ha,
what twaddle, foolish townie nonsense. But he doesn’t understand that!’
‘Oh, he does, he does,’ Regis cut in, smiling through pursed lips, as was
his custom.
‘He only looks stupid,’ Dandelion confirmed. ‘But I do keep hoping
he’ll finally decide to strain his grey matter. Perhaps he’ll come to some
useful conclusions. Perhaps he’ll realize the only activity that’s worth doing
alone is wanking.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, Baptism of Fire

“Lord Bentley seemed to have given up conversation in favor of smoldering looks. After having been professionally smoldered by Mallery, she found Lord Bentley's attempt to be just sad.”
― Shannon Hale, Midnight in Austenland