Leafs Quotes - Page 20

• 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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• 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

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• I wrote home to say how lovely everything was, and I used flourishing words and phrases, as if I were living life in a greeting card - the kind that has a satin ribbon on it, and quilted hearts and roses, and is expected to be so precious to the person receiving it that the manufacturer has placed a leaf of plastic on the front to protect it.

  Jamaica Kincaid

  Live Life, Home, Heart

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• Preoccupied with a single leaf, you won't see the tree.
  Preoccupied with a single tree, you'll miss the entire forest.

  Takuan Soho

  Tree, Missing, Forests

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• We need to take a leaf out of natures book. Any species that clones itself will eventually be attacked by a parasite, leading to an inevitable population crash.

  Daniel Suarez

  Book, Population, Needs

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• Clothes are nothing more than a fig leaf. And the bodies beneath are just another layer of clothing, an outfit of flesh with an impractically thin leather exterior, in various shades of pink, yellow and brown. The souls alone are real. Seen in this way, there can never be any such thing as social unease or shyness or embarrassment. All you need do is greet your fellow soul.

  Michel Faber

  Real, Yellow, Clothes

  Michel Faber (2014). “The Book of Strange New Things”, p.77, Canongate Books

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• If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.

  Charles Jencks

  Self, Tree, Looks

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• If you put a real leaf and a silk leaf side by side, youll see something of the difference between Homers poetry and anyone elses. There seem to be real leaves still alive in the Iliad, real animals, real people, real light attending everything.

  Alice Oswald

  Real, Animal, Light

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• A big tree seemed even more beautiful to me when I imagined thousands of tiny photosynthesis machines inside every leaf. So I went to MIT and worked on bacteria because that's where people knew the most about these switches, how to control the genetics.

  Cynthia Kenyon

  Beautiful, People, Tree

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• The rich, sweet smell of the hayricks rose to his chamber window; the hundred perfumes of the little flower-garden beneath scented the air around; the deep-green meadows shone in the morning dew that glistened on every leaf as it trembled in the gentle air: and the birds sang as if every sparkling drop were a fountain of inspiration to them.

  Charles Dickens

  Sweet, Morning, Nature

  Charles Dickens (1838). “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club”, p.52

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• Home ownership was the fig leaf for the rise in subprime lending. But that was really about cash-out refinancings, not buying homes.

  Bethany McLean

  Home, Cash, Buying

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• I leaf through books, I do not study them. What I retain of them is something I no longer recognize as anyone else's.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Book, Learning, Study

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.494, Stanford University Press

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• And if I should live to be
  The last leaf upon the tree
  In the spring,
  Let them smile, as I do now,
  At the old forsaken bough
  Where I cling.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

  Spring, Tree, Age

  "The Last Leaf " l. 43 (1831)

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• I'm a slave to this leaf in a diary that lists what I must do, what I must say, every half hour.

  Golda Meir

  Diaries, Schedules, Half

  Interview with Oriana Fallaci, Ms. Magazine, April 1973.

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• If you meet a cross-eyed person
  you must plunge into the grass,
  alongside the chilly ants,
  fish through the green fingernails
  and come up with the four-leaf clover.

  Anne Sexton

  Magic, Four, Green

  Anne Sexton (1975). “The Awful Rowing Toward God”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

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• National security is the fig leaf against freedom of information.

  Ralph Nader

  Information, Figs, National Security

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• Knowledge is not a loose-leaf notebook of facts. Above all, it is a responsibility for the integrity of what we are, primarily of what we are as ethical creatures.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Notebook, Integrity, Responsibility

  Jacob Bronowski (1976). “The ascent of man”

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• how seasonably
  leaf and blossom uncurl
  and living things arrange their death,
  while someone from afar off
  blows birthday candles for the world.

  Irving Layton

  Blow, World, Afar

  Irving Layton (1977). “The Selected Poems of Irving Layton”, p.12, New Directions Publishing

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• Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning.

  Anne Spencer

  Guilt, Innocence, Figs

  Anne Spencer, “At The Carnival”

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• All over France, in every city there stand cathedrals like this one, triumphant monuments of the past. They tower over the homes of our people like mighty guardians, keeping alive the invincible faith of the Christian. Every arch, every column, every statue is a carved leaf out of our history, a book in stone, glorifying the spirit of France.

  Sonya Levien

  Christian, Book, Home

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• Life loiters at the book's first page,--
  Ah! could we turn the leaf.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Book, Reading

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Emerson: Poems”, p.136, Everyman's Library

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• The work of vegetation begins first in the irritability of the bark and leaf-buds.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Bud, Firsts

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.107, Harvard University Press

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