Withered Quotes - Page 2

• All around me darkness gathers, Fading is the sun that shone, We must speak of other matters, You can be me when I'm gone Flowers gathered in the morning, Afternoon they blossom on, Still are withered in the evening, You can be me when I'm gone.

  Neil Gaiman

  Morning, Flower, Darkness

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• Man makes very much such a nest for his domestic animals, of withered grass and fodder, as the squirrels and many other wild creatures do for themselves.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Animal, Men, Squirrels

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.129

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• Faith, and hope, and patience and all the strong, beautiful, vital forces of piety are withered and dead in a prayerless life. The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal Christian graces have their being, bloom, and fruitage in prayer.

  Edward McKendree Bounds

  Beautiful, Christian, Strong

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• In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts.

  Alain de Botton

  Love, Princess, Men

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.52, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The thorn tree just began to bud
  And greening stained the sheltering hedge,
  An many a violet beside the wood
  Peeped blue between the withered sedge;
  The sun gleamed warm the bank beside,
  'Twas pleasant wandering out a while
  Neath nestling bush to lonely hide,
  Or bend a musings o'er a stile.

  John Clare

  Lonely, Spring, Blue

  John Clare (2012). “Careless Rambles by John Clare: A Selection of His Poems Chosen and Illustrated by Tom Pohrt”, p.71, Counterpoint Press

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• Cold be hand and heart and bone, and cold be sleep under stone: never more to wake on stony bed, never, till the Sun fails and the Moon is dead. In the black wind the stars shall die, and still on gold here let them lie, till the dark lord lifts his hand over dead sea and withered land.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Stars, Lying, Heart

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings”, p.107, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a firm believer in preventive prevarication--in other words, lying early in order to free myself later on.

  Rachel Cohn

  Lying, Order, Glare

  Rachel Cohn, David Levithan (2010). “Dash & Lily's Book of Dares”, p.17, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Alice! A childish story take,
  And with a gentle hand,
  Lay it where Childhood's dreams are twined
  In Memory's mystic band,
  Like pilgrim's withered wreath of flowers
  Plucked in far-off land.

  Lewis Carroll

  Dream, Memories, Flower

  Lewis Carroll (2012). “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and What the Tortoise Said to Achilles and Other Riddles”, p.10, Graphic Arts Books

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• Kings built tombs more splendid than the houses of the living and counted the names of their descent dearer than the names of their sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry or in high cold towers asking questions of the stars. And so the kingdom of Gondor sank into ruin, the line of kings failed, the white tree withered and the rule of Gondor was given over to lesser men.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Kings, Stars, Son

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• ...for, however all other feelings may be withered in a woman's nature, there is always one bright smiling spot in the maternal breast, and that is where a dearly-beloved child is concerned.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Children, Feelings, May

  Alexandre Dumas (1846). “The Count of Monte-Cristo”, p.38

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• I was born to love - but none of you wanted to believe it, and that misunderstanding was crucial in forming my character. It's true that nature was strangely inconsistent in giving me a warm heart, but also a face that was like a stone mask and a tongue that was heavy and slow. She refused me what she bestowed freely on even the most loutish of my fellow men. . . . People judged my inner character by my outer covering, and like a sterile fruit, I withered under the rough husk I couldn't slough off.

  George Sand

  Believe, Heart, Character

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• The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o'clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps.

  T. S. Eliot

  Lonely, Horse, Winter

  Prufrock (1917) "Preludes"

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• The dragon is withered, His bones are now crumbled; His armour is shivered, His splendour is humbled! Though sword shall be rusted, And throne and crown perish With strength that men trusted And wealth that they cherish, Here grass is still growing, And leaves are yet swinging, The white water flowing, And elves are yet singing Come! Tra-la-la-lally! Come back to the valley!

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Men, Dragons, White

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Hobbit”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If she had been left alone she would have gone on, in her own way, enjoying herself thoroughly, until people found one day that she had turned imperceptibly into one of those women who have become old without ever having been middle aged: a little withered, a little acid, hard as nails, sentimentally kindhearted, and addicted to religion or small dogs.

  Doris Lessing

  Dog, People, One Day

  Doris Lessing (1973). “The Grass is Singing”, p.46, Heinemann

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• France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter - it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Country, Tired, Heart

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, Matthew J. Bruccoli (1995). “The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection”, p.512, Simon and Schuster

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• he dared to explore her withered neck w/his fingertips…her hips w/their decaying bones, her thighs with their aging veins.

  Gabriel Garcia Marquez

  Lust, Veins, Hips

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• When he takes the knife to the canvass the servants find him lying dead with a knife through is heart and "withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage." and the portrait "in all the wonders of his exquisite youth and beauty." p 349

  Oscar Wilde

  Lying, Heart, Knives

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• Who gathers the withered rose?

  William Faulkner

  Rose

  William Faulkner (2006). “Novels, 1926-1929”

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• The hearts of women are like those little pieces of furniture with secret hiding - places, full of drawers fitted into each other; you go a lot of trouble, break your nails, and in the bottom find some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness!

  Gustave Flaubert

  Flower, Heart, Dust

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• 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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• The morning air of the pasture turned steadily cooler. Day by day, the bright golden leaves of the birches turned more spotted as the first winds of winter slipped between the withered branches and across the highlands toward the southeast. Stopping in the center of the pasture, I could hear the winds clearly. No turning back, they pronounced. The brief autumn was gone.

  Haruki Murakami

  Morning, Autumn, Winter

  "A Wild Sheep Chase". Book by Haruki Murakami, December 31, 1989.

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• ...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Mother, Fear, Children

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2015). “The Brothers Karamazov”, p.1064, First Avenue Editions

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• They come to us, these restless dead, Shrouds woven from the words of men, With trumpets sounding overhead (The walls of hope have grown so thin And all our vaunted innocence Has withered in this endless frost) That promise little recompense For all we risk, for all we've lost.

  Mira Grant

  Wall, Men, Risk

  Mira Grant (2010). “Feed: The Newsflesh Trilogy:”, p.111, Hachette UK

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• The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine. "In return for the odor of my jasmine, I'd like all the odor of your roses." "I have no roses; all the flowers in my garden are dead." "Well then, I'll take the withered petals and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain." the wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself: "What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?

  Antonio Machado

  Flower, Garden, Wind

  Antonio Machado, “The Wind, One BrILLIant Day”

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• However, withered, I still feel myself to be exactly the same person I've always been. Hard to explain that to the young. we may look truly reptilian, but we're not a separate tribe.

  Ian Mcewan

  Looks, May, Tribes

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