Leafs Quotes - Page 16

• A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures?

  Ivan Turgenev

  Fall, Butterfly, Movement

  Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev (1961). “Fathers and sons”, Signet Classics

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• One of the oldest secrets of alchemy is that every living thing, from the most complex creatures right down to the simplest leaf, carries the seeds of its creation within itself.

  Michael Scott

  Dna, Secret, Creation

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• Where the shadow of the bridge fell I could see down for a long way, but not as far as the bottom. When you leave a leaf in water a long time after awhile the tissue will be gone and the delicate fibres waving slow as the motion of sleep. They don't touch one another, no matter how knotted up they once were, no matter how close they lay once to the bones.

  William Faulkner

  Sleep, Bridges, Long

  William Faulkner (1946). “The Sound and the Fury: And As I Lay Dying”, New York : The Modern library

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• I can almost imagine a happiness without her, the ability to let her go, to feel our roots are connected even if I never see that leaf of grass again.'

  John Green

  Roots, Leaves Of Grass, Imagine

  John Green (2013). “Paper Towns”, p.274, A&C Black

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• remember you must live. remember you most love. remainder you mist leaf.

  Ali Smith

  Remember You, Remembers You, Mist

  Ali Smith (2015). “Hotel World”, p.26, Penguin UK

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• I leaf through the ancient philosophers and find my newest discoveries there.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Discovery, Philosopher, Ancient

  Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn (1972). “The First Circle”

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• Life is not so simple. There are many futures. The life of a single person is like a great tree: every branch, every twig, every leaf is a possible future.

  David Gemmell

  Simple, Tree, Branches

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• One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them. Filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present : like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake. I don’t know, but I t felt as if something that grew in the ground—asleep, you might say, or just feeling itself as something between roof-tip and leaf-tip, between deep earth and sky had suddenly waked up, and was considering you with the same slow care that it had given to its own inside affairs for endless years.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Memories, Thinking, Lakes

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• I would rediscover the secret of great communications and great combustions. I would say storm. I would say river. I would say tornado. I would say leaf. I would say tree. I would be drenched by all rains, moistened by all dews. I would roll like frenetic blood on the slow current of the eye of words turned into mad horses into fresh children into clots into curfew into vestiges of temples into precious stones remote enough to discourage miners. Whoever would not understand me would not understand any better the roaring of a tiger.

  Aime Cesaire

  Horse, Children, Rain

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• Time seems to pass. The world happens, unrolling into moments, and you stop to glance at a spider pressed to its web. There is a quickness of light and a sense of things outlined precisely and streaks of running luster on the bay. You know more surely who you are on a strong bright day after a storm when the smallest falling leaf is stabbed with self-awareness. The wind makes a sound in the pines and the world comes into being, irreversibly, and the spider rides the wind-swayed web.

  Don DeLillo

  Running, Strong, Fall

  Don DeLillo (2011). “The Body Artist”, p.3, Pan Macmillan

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• I am a part of all you see In Nature: part of all you feel: I am the impact of the bee Upon the blossom; in the tree I am the sap that shall reveal The leaf, the bloom that flows and flutes Up from the darkness through its roots.

  Madison Cawein

  Nature, Impact, Roots

  Madison Julius Cawein, “Penetralia”

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• The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, Kisses the blushing leaf.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Sweet, Kissing, Wind

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1859). “The poetical works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. New complete ed., with illustr, by J. Gilbert”, p.15

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• How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Life, Fall, Fugitive

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1907). “The Writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Poems”

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• If there were dreams to sell, What would you buy? Some cost a passing bell; Some a light sigh, That shakes from Life's fresh crown Only a rose-leaf down. If there were dreams to sell, Merry and sad to tell, And the crier rung the bell, What would you buy?

  Thomas Lovell Beddoes

  Dream, Light, Rose

  'Dream-Pedlary'

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• Soft as Memnon's harp at morning, To the inward ear devout, Touched by light, with heavenly warning Your transporting chords ring out. Every leaf in every nook, Every wave in every brook, Chanting with a solemn voice Minds us of our better choice.

  John Keble

  Morning, Voice, Light

  John Keble (1829). “The Christian year, thoughts in verse for the Sundays and holydays throughout the year [by J. Keble].”, p.52

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• If thou lookest on the lime-leaf, Thou a heart's form will discover; Therefore are the lindens ever Chosen seats of each fond lover.

  Heinrich Heine

  Heart, Lovers, Form

  Heinrich Heine (1866). “The Poems of Heine: Complete”, p.190

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• At times there seems to be a million ideas worth painting. However, there are days when it's a challenge to pull any idea together. On these days I go to my studio, leaf through an art history book, and tell myself that I am part of this great tradition.

  James Dean

  Art, Book, Ideas

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• One by one the objects are defined? It quickens: clarity, outline of leaf But now the stark dignity of entrance?Still, the profound change has come upon them: rooted, they grip down and begin to awaken.

  William Carlos Williams

  Profound, Down And, Dignity

  1923 Spring and All, 'Spring and All'.

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• Merely to live without a pain Is little gladness, little gain, Ah, welcome joy tho' mixt with grief-- The thorn-set flower that crowns the leaf.

  Dan Simmons

  Pain, Flower, Grief

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• This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders.

  Sarah Orne Jewett

  Summer, Country, Flower

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• The green earth sends her incense up. From many a mountain shrine; From folded leaf and dewey cup She pours her sacred wine.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Wine, Mountain, Cups

  John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Worship Of Nature”

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• Beside the grand history of the glaciers and their own, the mountain streams sing the history of every avalanche or earthquake and of snow, all easily recognized by the human ear, and every word evoked by the falling leaf and drinking deer, beside a thousand other facts so small and spoken by the stream in so low a voice the human ear cannot hear them.

  John Muir

  Fall, Drinking, Earthquakes

  John Muir, Linnie Marsh Wolfe (1979). “John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir”, p.95, Univ of Wisconsin Press

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• My dream of happiness: a quiet spot by the Jamaican seashore . . . hearing the wind sob with the beauty and the tragedy of everything. Sitting under an almond tree, with the leaf spread over me like an umbrella.

  Errol Flynn

  Dream, Wind, Tree

  Errol Flynn, Jeffrey Meyers (2002). “My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Autobiography of Errol Flynn”, p.413, Rowman & Littlefield

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• On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll; on plastic clay and leather scroll, man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, and lo! the Press was found at last!

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Men, Media, Age

  John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Library”

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• A faint blush melting through the light of thy transparent cheek like a rose-leaf bathed in dew.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Light, Rose, Dew

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