Branches Quotes - Page 28

• And at that moment a wind came out of the northwest, and entered the woods and bared the golden branches, and danced over the downs, and led a company of scarlet and golden leaves, that had dreaded this day but danced now it had come; and away with a riot of dancing and glory of colour, high in the light of the sun that had set from the sight of the fields, went wind and leaves together.

  Lord Dunsany

  Light, Sight, Wind

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• ...The girls chirped and chatted like uncaged warblers. They were delirious with joy... Intoxications of life’s morning! Enchanted years! The wing of a dragonfly trembles! Oh, reader, whoever you may be, do you have such memories? Have you walked in the underbrush, pushing aside branches for the charming head behind you? Have you slid laughing, down some slope wet with rain, with the woman you loved?

  Victor Hugo

  Girl, Morning, Memories

  Victor Hugo, Charles Edwin Wilbour (1987). “Les misérables”, Dutton Adult

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• His face was very heavily creased, and into each crease he had tucked some worry or other, so that it wasn't really his face any longer, but more like a tree that had nests of birds in all of the branches. He had to struggle constantly to manage it and always looked worn out from the effort.

  Arthur Golden

  Struggle, Worry, Effort

  Arthur Golden (2008). “Memoirs Of A Geisha”, p.9, Random House

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• Oshima's silent for a time as he gazes at the forest, eyes narrowed. Birds are flitting from one branch to the next. His hands are clasped behind his head. "I know how you feel," he finally says. "But this is something you have to work out on your own. Nobody can help you. That's what love's all about, Kafka. You're the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.

  Haruki Murakami

  Eye, Dark, Hands

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• I have always had a special affinity for libraries and librarians, for the most obvious reasons. I love books. (One of my first Jobs was shelving books at a branch of the Chicago Public Library.) Libraries are a pillar of any society. I believe our lack of attention to funding and caring for them properly in the United States has a direct bearing on problems of literacy, productivity, and our inability to compete in today's world. Libraries are everyman's free university.

  John Jakes

  Jobs, Believe, Book

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• I've lived to bury my desires and see my dreams corrode with rust now all that's left are fruitless fires that burn my empty heart to dust. Struck by the clouds of cruel fate My crown of Summer bloom is sere Alone and sad, I watch and wait And wonder if the end is near. As conquered by the last cold air When Winter whistles in the wind Alone upon a branch that's bare A trembling leaf is left behind.

  Alexander Pushkin

  Summer, Dream, Heart

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• Since the branch of philosophy on which we are at present engaged differs from the others in not being a subject of merely intellectual interest — I mean we are not concerned to know what goodness essentially is, but how we are to become good men, for this alone gives the study its practical value — we must apply our minds to the solution of the problems of conduct.

  Aristotle

  Philosophy, Mean, Men

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

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• If it is perfectly acceptable for a widow to disfigure herself or commit suicide to save face for her husband's family, why should a mother not be moved to extreme action by the loss of a child or children? We are their caretakers. We love them. We nurse them when they are sick. . . But no woman should live longer than her children. It is against the law of nature. If she does, why wouldn't she wish to leap from a cliff, hang from a branch, or swallow lye?

  Lisa See

  Mother, Suicide, Children

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• There would be hard times, but what did I care if we had hard times? The branches of my love were wide, and they caught the rain and the snow. We would be okay, the two of us together. We would be okay.

  Carolyn Parkhurst

  Rain, Hard Times, Two

  Carolyn Parkhurst (2003). “The Dogs of Babel”, Large Print Press

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• Look, Gail." Roark got up, reached out, tore a thick branch off a tree, held it in both hands, one fist closed at each end; then, his wrists and knuckles tensed against the resistance, he bent the branch slowly into an arc. "Now I can make what I want of it: a bow, a spear, a cane, a railing. That's the meaning of life." "Your strength?" "Your work." He tossed the branch aside. "The material the earth offers you and what you make of it . . .

  Ayn Rand

  Hands, Tree, Looks

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.711, Penguin

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• I wanted to tell them that, in Kabul, we snapped a tree branch and used it as a credit card. Hassan and I would take the wooden stick to the bread maker. He'd carve notches on our stick with his knife, one notch for each loaf of naan he'd pull for us from the tandoor's roaring flames. At the end of the month, my father paid him for the number of notches on the stick. That was it. No questions. No ID.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Father, Flames, Knives

  Khaled Hosseini (2004). “The Kite Runner”, p.104, Penguin

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• Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

  Bertrand Russell

  Philosophy, Claims, Made

  Bertrand Russell (2009). “Our Knowledge of the External World”, p.1, Routledge

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• At a well in a yard they met a man who was beating a boy. The stick burst into a flower in the mans hand. He tried to drop it, but it stuck to his hand. His arm became a branch, his body the trunk of a tree, his feet took root.

  C. S. Lewis

  Flower, Boys, Men

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• A tree may look as beautiful as ever; but when you notice the insects infesting it, and the tips of the branches that are brown from disease, even the trunk seems to lose some of its magnificence.

  Arthur Golden

  Beautiful, Tree, Looks

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• The same wind that uproots trees makes the grass shine. The lordly wind loves the weakness and the lowness of grasses. Never brag of being strong. The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are. It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves. It leaves the leaves alone.

  Rumi

  Strong, Cutting, Wind

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• Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches, and here is my heart which beats only for you.

  Paul Verlaine

  Love, Flower, Heart

  1874 Romances sans paroles, 'Aquarelles, Green'

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• I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart? I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches? - Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

  Sylvia Plath

  Heart, Sleep, Dark

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “Ariel: The Restored Edition”, p.35, Faber & Faber

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• Fiction is a branch of neurology: the scenarios of nerve and blood vessels are the written mythologies of memory and desire.

  J. G. Ballard

  Memories, Blood, Desire

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• The tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.

  Nick Harkaway

  Errors, Swings, Tree

  "The Gone-Away World". Book by Nick Harkaway, June 2008.

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• Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.

  John Keats

  Dream, Stars, Night

  John Keats (1818). “The Complete Works of John Keats”, p.132

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• Divinity must live within herself: Passions of rain, or moods in the falling snow; Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued Elations when the forest blooms; gusty Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights; All pleasures and all pains, remembering The boughs of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.

  Wallace Stevens

  Summer, Pain, Loneliness

  Wallace Stevens (2002). “Harmonium”, p.105, Icaria Editorial

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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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• A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree. Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Summer, Dad, Block

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• Thunder rumbled. My heart beat faster. I turned away from Evernight for the last time and looked back at the flower as it trembled upon its branch. A single petal was torn away by the wind. Pushing my hands through the thorns, I felt lashes of pain across my skin, but i kept going determined. But when my fingertip touched the flower, it instantly darkened, withering and drying as each petal turned black.

  Claudia Gray

  Pain, Flower, Heart

  Claudia Gray (2010). “Evernight (Evernight, Book 1)”, p.7, HarperCollins UK

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• As you get older, the heart shed its leaves like a tree. You cannot hold out against certain winds. Each day tears away a few more leaves; and then there are the storms that break off several branches at one go. And while nature’s greenery grows back again in the spring, that of the heart never grows back.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Spring, Heart, Break Off

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