Leafs Quotes - Page 19

• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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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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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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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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• There is an eternal love between the water drop and the leaf. When you look at them, you can see that they both shine out of happiness.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Love, Happiness, Water

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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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• 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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• It suddenly hit me one day: after we're married I'll be called Mrs T Leaf!

  Tamsin Greig

  One Day, Married

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com. 1997.

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• The dream on the pillow,
  That flits with the day,
  The leaf of the willow
  A breath wears away;
  The dust on the blossom,
  The spray on the sea;
  Ay,--ask thine own bosom--
  Are emblems of thee.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Dream, Dust, Sea

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• I can pass days
  Stretch'd in the shade of those old cedar trees,
  Watching the sunshine like a blessing fall,--
  The breeze like music wandering o'er the boughs,
  Each tree a natural harp,--each different leaf
  A different note, blent in one vast thanksgiving.

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon

  Nature, Fall, Sunshine

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1838). “Poetical works complete”, p.124

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• The ash her purple drops forgivingly
  And sadly, breaking not the general hush;
  The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea,
  Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush;
  All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze,
  Ere the rain falls, the cautious farmer burns his brush.

  James Russell Lowell

  Fall, Rain, Sunset

  James Russell Lowell (2012). “The Vision of Sir Launfal And Other Poems by James Russell Lowell, With a Biographical Sketch and Notes, a Portrait and Other Illustrations”, p.70, tredition

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• 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

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• 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”

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