Twigs Quotes - Page 3

• Nature has many scenes to exhibit, and constantly draws a curtain over this part or that. She is constantly repainting the landscape and all surfaces, dressing up some scene for our entertainment. Lately we had a leafy wilderness; now bare twigs begin to prevail, and soon she will surprise us with a mantle of snow. Some green she thinks so good for our eyes that, like blue, she never banishes it entirely from our eyes, but has created evergreens.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eye, Winter, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.2799, Delphi Classics

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• November’s days are thirty: November’s earth is dirty, Those thirty days, from first to last; And the prettiest things on ground are the paths.... Few care for the mixture of earth and water, Twig, leaf, flint, thorn, Straw, feather, all that men scorn, Pounded up and sodden by flood, Condemned as mud.

  Edward Thomas

  Nature, Dirty, Men

  Edward Thomas (2012). “Poems of Edward Thomas”, p.28, Other Press, LLC

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• He was sure that he was not the cause of the abrupt silence. His passage through the canyon had not previously disturbed either birds or cicadas. Something was out there. An intruder of which the ordinary forest creatures clearly did not approve. He took a deep breath and held it again, straining to hear the slightest movement in the woods. This time he detected the rustle of brush, a snapping twig, the soft crunch of dry leaves-and the unnervingly peculiar, heavy, ragged breathing of something big.

  Dean Koontz

  Breathing, Silence, Bird

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• Peering down into the water where the morning sun fashioned wheels of light, coronets fanwise in which lay trapped each twig, each grain of sediment, long flakes and blades of light in the dusty water sliding away like optic strobes where motes sifted and spun.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Morning, Light, Long

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.7, Pan Macmillan

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• Men have learned to shoot without missing their mark and I have learned to fly without perching on a twig.

  Chinua Achebe

  Men, Missing, Mark

  Chinua Achebe (1992). “Things Fall Apart”, Everyman's Library

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• Rain-diamonds, this winter morning, embellish the tangle of unpruned pear-tree twigs; each solitaire, placed, it appears, with considered judgement, bears the light beneath the rifted clouds - the invisible shared out in endless abundance.

  Denise Levertov

  Morning, Rain, Winter

  Denise Levertov, “Bearing The Light”

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• The origin of Homo sapiens, as a tiny twig on an improbable branch of a contingent limb on a fortunate tree, lies well below the boundary.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Tree, Branches, Tiny

  "Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History".

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• Criticism is properly the rod of divination: a hazel switch for the discovery of buried treasure, not a birch twig for the castigation of offenders.

  Arthur Symons

  Discovery, Criticism, Treasure

  Arthur Symons (1906). “An Introduction to the Study of Browning”

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• You know those things that you throw the twigs into and it spits them out? That's what I do. The branches are like life, and I throw them into my head and some of it comes out as humor.

  Steven Wright

  Branches, Spit, Knows

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• I used to be so twig skinny that I couldn't eat enough, because I was just naturally skinny. Until I went to China.

  Lisa Ling

  Skinny, Enough, Used

  "I'm A Runner: Lisa Ling". Interview with Sarah Lorge Butler, www.runnersworld.com. June 1, 2005.

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• Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.

  Walter Benjamin

  Ignorance, Feet, Cities

  Walter Benjamin (1996). “Selected Writings: 1927-1934”, p.598, Harvard University Press

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• Modern art must strike out from the old. The new is not revealed to those whose eyes are fastened in worship upon the old…Have you ever seen an inch worm crawl up a leaf or twig, and then clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something to reach? That's like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have a footing.

  Albert Pinkham Ryder

  Art, Eye, Air

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• Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth, had need to remember what every name he uses stands for; and to place it accordingly; or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twigs; the more he struggles, the more belimed.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Truth, Struggle, Men

  Thomas Hobbes (2008). “Leviathan”, p.36, Simon and Schuster

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• Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.

  Willard Van Orman Quine

  Growing Up, Elephants, Different

  Willard Van Orman Quine, Patricia Smith Churchland, Dagfinn Follesdal (2013). “Word and Object”, p.8, MIT Press

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• It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Art, Nature, Mirrors

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.34, Xist Publishing

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• Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Voice, Bird, Sound

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.233, Delphi Classics

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• For it seems that long before the first enterprising man bent some twigs into a leaky roof, many animals were already accomplished builders.

  Bernard Rudofsky

  Animal, Men, Long

  1964 Architecture without Architects.

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• Not to find one's way around a city does not mean much. But to lose one's way in a city, as one loses one's way in a forest, requires some schooling. Street names must speak to the urban wanderer like the snapping of dry twigs, and little streets in the heart of the city must reflect the times of day, for him, as clearly as a mountain valley. This art I acquired rather late in life; it fulfilled a dream, of which the first traces were labyrinths on the blotting papers in my school notebooks.

  Walter Benjamin

  Notebook, Dream, Art

  Walter Benjamin, Marcus Paul Bullock, Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, Gary Smith (2002). “Selected Writings: 1935-1938”, p.352, Harvard University Press

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• He is very fond of me, almost too fond. I could do with less caressing and more rationality. I should like to be less of a pet and more of a friend, if I might choose; but I won't complain of that: I am only afraid his affection loses in depth where it gains in ardour. I sometimes liken it to a fire of dry twigs and branches compared with one of solid coal, very bright and hot; but if it should burn itself out and leave nothing but ashes behind.

  Anne Bronte

  Fire, Pet, Depth

  Anne Bronte (2009). “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.301, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Everyone's the anti-Teddy Roosevelt. Speak loudly and carry a brittle twig.

  Alec Sulkin

  Speak, Teddy

  Twitter post from May 24, 2013

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• My writing is very organic. It's what I am. My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig. So I think of it as something that's very essential to my being.

  Alice Walker

  Mother, Writing, Thinking

  Source: www.timeout.com

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• Stones and bones; snow and frost; seeds and beans and polliwogs. Paths and twigs, assorted kisses, We all know who Daddy misses! His two little frogs of girls, that’s who. They know where they are, do you, do you?

  Alice Sebold

  Girl, Kissing, Two

  Alice Sebold (2014). “The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic”, p.106, Pan Macmillan

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• I lift my arm out of the water. It's a log. Put it back under and it blows up even bigger. People see the log and call it a twig. They yell at me because I can't see what they see. Nobody can explain to me why my eyes work different than theirs. Nobody can make it stop.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Eye, Blow, People

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2009). “Wintergirls”, p.150, Penguin

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• We're trying to make our current house look domestic so that somebody will want to buy it. We're making a lot of simple, obvious improvements that never would have occurred to us to make while we actually lived here, because, tragically, we both happen to be domestically impaired. If we were birds, our nest would consist of a single twig with the eggs attached via Scotch tape.

  Dave Barry

  Simple, Eggs, Scotch

  Dave Barry (2010). “Dave Barry Talks Back”, p.71, Crown Archetype

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• Seek first the kingdom of wealth and you'll worry over every dollar. Seek first the kingdom of health and you'll sweat every blemish and bump. Seek first the kingdom of popularity, and you'll relive every conflict. Seek first the kingdom of safety, and you'll jump at every crack of the twig. But seek first His kingdom and you will find it. On that, we can depend and never worry.

  Max Lucado

  Sweat, Safety, Worry

  Max Lucado (2012). “Fearless: Imagine Your Life Without Fear”, p.51, Thomas Nelson Inc

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