Midsummer Quotes - Page 3

• A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh.

  Stephen King

  Dream, Stupid, Night

  "Duma Key". Book by Stephen King, January 22, 2008.

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• I am better off with vegetables at the bottom of my garden than with all the fairies of the Midsummer Night's Dream.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Dream, Night, Garden

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• If eternity had a season, it would be midsummer. Autumn, winter, spring are all change and passage, but at the height of summer the year stands poised. It's only a passing moment, but even as it passes the heart knows it cannot change.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Summer, Spring, Heart

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2009). “Powers”, p.74, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• O Winter! frozen pulse and heart of fire,
  What loss is theirs who from thy kingdom turn
  Dismayed, and think thy snow a sculptured urn
  Of death! Far sooner in midsummer tire
  The streams than under ice. June could not hire
  Her roses to forego the strength they learn
  In sleeping on thy breast.

  Helen Hunt Jackson

  Heart, Sleep, Loss

  Helen Hunt Jackson (1891). “A Calendar of Sonnets”, p.3, Library of Alexandria

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• If you expect me to believe that a lawyer wrote A Midsummer Night's Dream, I must be dafter than I look.

  Jasper Fforde

  Dream, Believe, Night

  Jasper Fforde (2013). “The Thursday Next Collection 1-3: The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots”, p.37, Hachette UK

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• Provide of thine own, to have all things at hand;
  Less work and the workman, unoccupied, stand.
  Make dry over-head both hovel and shack.
  Wash sheep (for the better) where water doth run;
  Let him go cleanly, and dry in the sun.
  Thy houses and and barns would be looked upon;
  And all things a[...]ed, ere harvest come on.
  At midsummer, down with the brambles and brakes;
  And after, abroad, with thy forks and thy rakes;
  Set movers a mowing, where meadow is grown;
  The longer now standing, the worse to be mown.

  Thomas Tusser

  Running, Hands, June

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• I'd love to play Puck in 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.'

  Daniel Radcliffe

  Dream, Night, Play

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• Most of you have been where I am tonight. The crash site of unrequited love. You ask yourself, How did I get here? What was it about? Was it her smile? Was it the way she crossed her legs, the turn of her ankle, the poignant vulnerability of her slender wrists? What are these elusive and ephemeral things that ignite passion in the human heart? That's an age-old question. It's perfect food for thought on a bright midsummer's night.

  Sybil Adelman

  Love You, Unrequited Love, Passion

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• We will meet; and there we may rehearse most obscenely and courageously.

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, Night, May

  "Shakespeare's Comedy of A Midsummer-night's Dream".

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• To grow old is to lose everything. Aging, everybody knows it. Even when we are young, we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads when a grandfather dies. Then we row for years on the midsummer pond, ignorant and content.

  Donald Hall

  Years, Ignorant, Grandfather

  Donald Hall (2015). “The Selected Poems of Donald Hall”, p.133, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Now I am . . . like anyone with a strong preference for the fly rod, totally indifferent to how large a fish I catch by comparison with other fishermen. So when a fifteen-year-old called Fred, fishing deep in midsummer with a hideous plastic worm, caught a four and a half pounder . . . I naturally felt no resentment beyond wanting to break the kid's thumbs.

  Vance Bourjaily

  Strong, Kids, Years

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• A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Flower, Night, June

  Charlotte Bronte (2016). “Jane Eyre (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.286, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

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• Baseball is slovenly and excessive in midsummer, with its onrolling daily cascade of line scores and box scores, shifting statistics, highlights and lowlights, dingers and shutouts, streaks and slumps.

  Roger Angell

  Sports, Baseball, Slumps

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• The midsummer sun shines but dim, The fields strive in vain to look gay; But when I am happy in Him December's as pleasant as May.

  John Newton

  Gay, Shining, Looks

  John Newton (1847). “One Hundred and Twenty Nine Letters from the Rev. John Newton ... to the Rev. William Bull, of Newport Pagnell: Written During a Period of Thirty-two Years, from 1773 to 1805 ...”, p.5

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• The old stage coach was rumbling along the dusty road that runs from Maplewood to Riverboro. The day was as warm as midsummer, though it was only the middle of May, and Mr. Jeremiah Cobb was favoring the horses as much as possible, yet never losing sight of the fact that he carried the mail. The hills were many, and the reins lay loosely in his hands as he lolled back in his seat and extended one foot and leg luxuriously over the dashboard. His brimmed hat of worn felt was well pulled over his eyes, and revolved a quid of tobacco in his left cheek.

  Kate Douglas Wiggin

  Running, Horse, Book

  Kate Douglas Wiggin (2016). “CHILDREN’S BOOKS – Premium Illustrated Collection: 11 Novels & 120+ Short Stories, Fairy Tales, Fables & Poems for Children (Including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm Series & The Arabian Nights): New Chronicles of Rebecca, A Summer in a Cañon, Polly Oliver's Problem, The Birds' Christmas Carol, The Romance of a Christmas Card, Timothy's Quest, The Fairy Ring, Golden Numbers and many more”, p.14, e-artnow

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• Midsummer Night was roasting hot. The shore, of red granite, glowed with the heat; the dark blood of the earth seemed to be rising from below. There was a sharp, unbearable smell of birds, of cod, of green decaying seaweed. Through the mist the huge ruddy sun loomed nearer and nearer. And in the sea, dark blood welled up to meet it - in bloated, rearing, huge white waves. Night. The mouth of the bay between two cliffs was like a window. A window shutting out curious eyes with a white shade-white woolly fog. And all that you could see was that behind it something red was happening. (The North)

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Eye, Dark, Night

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• For hours she had lain in a kind of gentle torpor, not unlike that sweet lassitude which masters one in the hush of a midsummer noon, when the heat seems to have silenced the very birds and insects, and, lying sunk in the tasselled meadow grasses, one looks up through a level roofing of maple-leaves at the vast, shadowless, and unsuggestive blue.

  Edith Wharton

  Sweet, Lying, Blue

  Edith Wharton (2001). “Early Short Fiction”, p.50, Electric Book Company

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• The quality of life, which in the ardour of spring was personal and sexual, becomes social in midsummer.

  Henry Beston

  Spring, Quality, Social

  Henry Beston (1956). “The Outermost House”

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• All furnished, all in arms;
  All plum'd like estridges that with the wind
  Bated like eagles having lately bathed;
  Glittering in golden coats like images;
  As full of spirit as the month of May
  And gorgeous as the sun at midsummer;
  Wanton as youthful goats, wild as young bulls.

  William Shakespeare

  Eagles, Wind, Plums

  William Shakespeare (1806). “The Plays of William Shakespeare: With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators”, p.298

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• Actually I think 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' could sit very very perfectly in the middle of a Disney world I think.

  Kenneth Branagh

  Dream, Night, Thinking

  "Kenneth Branagh Talks Updating ‘Cinderella’ and Working With Disney". Interview with Kara Warner, screenrant.com. March 12, 2015.

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• Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Men, Fire

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2282, Delphi Classics

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• And so it was settled. Sam Gamgee married Rose Cotton in the spring of 1420 (which was also famous for its weddings), and they came and lived at Bag End. And if Sam thought himself lucky, Frodo knew that he was more lucky himself; for there was not a hobbit in the Shire that was looked after with such care. When the labours or repair had all been planned and set going he took to a quiet life, writing a good deal and going through all his notes. He resigned the office of Deputy Mayor at the Free Fair that Midsummer, and dear old Will Whitfoot had another seven years of presiding at Banquets.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Spring, Writing, Years

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• The Revelation of the Báb may be likened to the sun, its station corresponding to the first sign of the Zodiac—the sign Aries—which the sun enters at the vernal equinox. The station of Bahá’u’lláh's Revelation, on the other hand, is represented by the sign Leo, the sun's midsummer and highest station. By this is meant that this holy Dispensation is illumined with the light of the Sun of Truth shining from its most exalted station, and in the plenitude of its resplendency, its heat and glory.

  Shoghi Effendi

  Light, Hands, Zodiac

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• We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,--at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives onthe sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beach, Men, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau (2008). “Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic”, p.242, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Each religion is a brave guess at the authorship of Hamlet. Yet, as far as the play goes, does it make any difference whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote it? Would it make any difference to the actors if their parts happened out of nothingness, if they found themselves acting on the stage because of some gross and unpardonable accident? Would it make any difference if the playwright gave them the lines or whether they composed them themselves, so long as the lines were properly spoken? Would it make any difference to the characters if 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was really a dream?

  Lewis Mumford

  God, Dream, Character

  "My Works and Days". Book by Lewis Mumford. Chapter 2, 1979.

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