Ripening Quotes

• Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

  Aristotle

  Best Friend, Friendship, Real Friends

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• The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

  Galileo Galilei

  Inspirational, Funny, Summer

  "Sun of gOd: Discover the Self-Organizing Consciousness That Underlies Everything". Book by Gregory Sams (p. 78), May 1, 2009.

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• Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.

  George MacDonald

  Reality, Age, Decay

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.5832, Delphi Classics

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• This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Summer, Flower

  'Romeo And Juliet' (1595) act 2, sc. 2, l. 118

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• Life is the blossoming of flowers in the spring, the ripening of fruit in the fall, the rhythm of the earth and of nature. Life is the cry of cicadas signalling the end of summer, migratory birds winging south in a transparent autumn sky, fish frolicking in a stream. Life is the joy beautiful music installs in us, the thrilling sight of a mountain peak reddened by the rising sun, the myriad combinations and permutations of visible and invisible phenomena. Life is all things.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Beautiful, Summer, Spring

  12 Copy quote

• To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Vintage, Doubt

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.264, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.

  Josh Billings

  Fall, Fruit Juice, Squash

  56 Copy quote

• I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Patience, Pain, Grateful

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

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• Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And - when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening - nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Fall, Farewell

  'Henry VIII' (1613) act 3, sc. 2, l. 352

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• If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening.

  Denise Levertov

  Women, Fall, Ebb And Flow

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.155, New Directions Publishing

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• Farewell! a long farewell to all my greatness!

  William Shakespeare

  Farewell, Greatness, Long

  'Henry VIII' (1613) act 3, sc. 2, l. 352

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• The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.

  William Shakespeare

  Farewell, Frost, November

  'Henry VIII' (1613) act 3, sc. 2, l. 352

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• The Christian is like the ripening corn; the riper he grows the more lowly he bends his head.

  Alfred Bertram Guthrie

  Christian, Corn, Grows

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• Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Sex, This Generation, Generations

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

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• The thing you are ripening toward is the fruit of your life. It will make you bright inside, no matter what you are outside. It is a shining thing.

  Stewart Edward White

  Life, Shining, Matter

  Stewart Edward White, Elizabeth Calvert Grant White (1947). “With folded wings”

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• There are different kinds and degrees of love, and they change over time, ripening and deepening and changing us in the process.

  Cassandra King

  Degrees, Different, Kind

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• The highest branch of solitary amusement is reading; but even in the choice of books the fancy is first employed; for in reading, the heart is touched, till its feelings are examined by the understanding, and the ripening of reason regulate the imagination. This is the work of years, and the most important of all employments.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Book, Reading, Heart

  3 Copy quote

• Art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.

  Jerzy Grotowski

  Uplifting, Art, Light

  Jerzy Grotowski (2012). “Towards a Poor Theatre”, p.256, Routledge

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• Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
  Do not stand at my grave and weep,
  I am not there, I do not sleep.
  I am in a thousand winds that blow,
  I am the softly falling snow.
  I am the gentle showers of rain,
  I am the fields of ripening grain.
  I am in the morning hush,
  I am in the graceful rush
  Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
  I am the star shine of the night.
  I am in the flowers that bloom,
  I am in a quiet room.
  I am in the birds that sing,
  I am in each lovely thing.
  Do not stand at my grave and cry,
  I am not there. I do not die.

  Mary Elizabeth Frye

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Morning

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• A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspiring, Moving, Fall

  Abraham Lincoln (2002). “Conversations With Lincoln”, p.309, Transaction Publishers

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• In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn’t matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn’t force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Summer, Pain, Spring

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

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• Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle.

  Ray Bradbury

  Country, Eye, Knives

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• People look with sympathetic eyes only at the blossom and the fruit, and disregard the long period of transition during which the one is ripening into the other.

  Berthold Auerbach

  Eye, Maturity, Long

  Berthold Auerbach (18??). “Little Barefoot: Or, Strive and Trust, a Tale of Village Life”

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• Your face encompasses the beauty of the whole earth. Your lips, as red as ripening fruit, gently part as if in pain. It is the smile of a corpse. Now the hand of death touches life. The chain is forged that links the thousand families that are dead to the thousand generations to come.

  Edvard Munch

  Pain, Hands, Generations

  Ragna Thiis Stang, Edvard Munch (1979). “Edvard Munch: The Man and the Artist”

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• Negotiating with memories isn't easy: how to choose between those panting to be told, those still ripening, those already shriveling, and those destined to be mangled by language and come out pulverized?

  Steve Toltz

  Memories, Language, Easy

  Steve Toltz (2008). “A Fraction of the Whole”, p.3, Spiegel & Grau

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