Leafs Quotes - Page 17

• But words have been used too often; touched and turned, and left exposed to the dust of the street. The words we seek hang close to the tree. We come at dawn and find them sweet beneath the leaf.

  Virginia Woolf

  Sweet, Dust, Tree

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.69, Wordsworth Editions

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thoughts must come naturally, like wild-flowers; they cannot be forced in a hot-bed, even although aided by the leaf-mould of your past.

  Alexander Smith

  Flower, Past, Bed

  Alexander Smith, Peter Pauper Press (1947). “Dreamthorp: eight essays”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Mansions once
  Knew their own masters, and laborious hinds,
  That had surviv'd the father, serv'd the son.
  Now the legitimate and rightful lord
  Is but a transient guest, newly arrived,
  And soon to be supplanted. He that saw
  His patrimonial timber cast its leaf,
  Sells the last scantling, and transfers the price
  To some shrewd sharper ere it buds again. Estates are landscapes, gazed upon awhile,
  Then advertised and auctioneer'd away.

  William Cowper

  Father, Son, Bud

  William Cowper (1828). “The Poems of William Cowper”, p.227

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  49 Copy quote

• 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”

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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 “John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir”, p.95, Univ of Wisconsin Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

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

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Light, Rose, Dew

  4 Copy quote

• So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie; and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head into the shop. What! no soap? So he died, and she very imprudently married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the heels of their boots.

  Samuel Foote

  Humorous, Cutting, Garden

  Quoted in Maria Edgeworth, Harry and Lucy (1825).

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.

  John Keats

  Summer, Nature, Light

  'Hyperion: A Fragment' (1820) bk. 1, l. 7

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The jungle looked back at them with a vastness, a breathing moss-and-leaf silence, with a billion diamond and emerald insect eyes.

  Ray Bradbury

  Eye, Breathing, Silence

  Ray Bradbury (2013). “Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales”, p.34, Harper Collins

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Fall, Men, Cities

  "The Flies". Play by Jean-Paul Sartre, Orestes to Electra, Act 2, 1943.

  55 Copy quote

  Show source

• So passeth, in the passing of a day, Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower; No more doth flourish after first decay, That erst was sought to deck both bed and bower Of many a lady and many a paramour. Gather therefore the rose whilst yet in prime, For soon comes age that will her pride deflower. Gather the rose of love whilst yet in time, Whilst loving thou mayst loved be with equal crime.

  Edmund Spenser

  Flower, Pride, Rose

  'The Faerie Queen' (1596) bk. 2, canto 12, st. 75

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Old men, what are they? Fast fading the leaf, Three-footed they walk, yet frail as a child, As a dream set afloat in the daylight.

  Aeschylus

  Dream, Children, Men

  Aeschylus (2014). “The Oresteia: Agamemnon, Choephoroe, Eumenides”, p.5, Everyman's Library

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• How many mysteries have you seen in your lifetime? How many nets pulled full over the boat's side, each silver body ready or not falling into submission? How many roses in early summer uncurling above the pale sands then falling back in unfathomable willingness? And what can you say? Glory to the rose and the leaf, to the seed, to the silver fish. Glory to time and the wild fields, and to joy. And to grief's shock and torpor, its near swoon.

  Mary Oliver

  Summer, Grief, Fall

  Mary Oliver (2017). “Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver”, p.132, Penguin

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• No matter what we are, and what we sing, Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel

  Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Matter, Laurels, Withered

  Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Three Quatrains”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Children are the boldest philosophers. They enter life naked, not covered by the smallest fig leaf of dogma, absolutes, creeds. This is why every question they ask is so absurdly naïve and so frighteningly complex.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Children, Philosophy, Naked

  "On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters" by Yevgeny Zamyatin, translated by Mirra Ginsburg, in "A Soviet Heretic : Essays" by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1970), 1923.

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every leaf is a spacious plain; every line a flowing brook; every period a lofty mountain.

  James Hervey

  Bible, Mountain, Lines

  James Hervey (1816). “Mediations and Contemplations: Containing Meditations Among the Tombs, Reflections on a Flower-garden, A Descant Upon Creation, Contemplations on the Night, Contemplations on the Starry Heavens, A Winter-piece ...”, p.136

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane, East wind and frost are safely gone; With zephyr mild and balmy rain The summer comes serenely on; Earth, air, and sun and skies combine To promise all that's kind and fair: But thou, O human heart of mine, Be still, contain thyself, and bear.

  Arthur Hugh Clough

  Summer, Rain, Heart

  Arthur Hugh Clough (1874). “Poems: With a Memoir”, p.151

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• If Broadway was a river running from the top of Manhattan down to the Battery, undulating with traffic and commerce and lights, then the east-west streets were eddies where, leaf-like, one could turn slow circles from the beginning to the ever shall be, world without end.

  Amor Towles

  Running, Light, Circles

  Amor Towles (2011). “Rules of Civility: A Novel”, p.84, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth. Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Country, Pain, Ignorance

  "Main Street". Book by Sinclair Lewis, 1920.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• All perfect things are saddening in effect. The autumn wood robed in its scarlet clothes, The matchless tinting on the royal rose Whose velvet leaf by no least flaw is flecked. Love's supreme moment, when the soul unchecked Soars high as heaven, and its best rapture knows, These hold a deeper pathos than our woes, Since they leave nothing better to expect.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Autumn, Clothes, Perfection

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox (2012). “Leafs On An Idle Breeze - My Inspirational Poems (Annotated Edition)”, p.658, Jazzybee Verlag

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• What we take to be our strongest tower of delight, only stands at the caprice of the minutest event the falling of a leaf, the hearing of a voice, or the receipt of one little bit of paper scratched over with a few small characters by a sharpened feather.

  Herman Melville

  Fall, Character, Voice

  Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.69, Northwestern University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source