Dry Leaves Quotes

• Birth, life, and death― each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.

  Toni Morrison

  Life, Death, Nature

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

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• As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky. So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, with the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.

  Clement Clarke Moore

  Christmas, Sky, Flew Up

  Clement Clarke Moore (1934). “The Night Before Christmas: (A Visit from St. Nicholas).”, p.21, Courier Corporation

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• If you are bitter you are like a dry leaf that you can squash and you can blow away by the wind. There is much more wisdom in forgiveness.

  Vusi Mahlasela

  Blow, Wind, Squash

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• it is all ash and dry leaves and grief gone like an ocean liner.

  Charles Bukowski

  Grief, Ocean, Ashes

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “What Matters Most is How Well You”, p.35, Harper Collins

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• Not a creature was stirring, not even an elf.

  Charlaine Harris

  Christmas, Holiday Traditions, St Nicholas

  Charlaine Harris (2012). “Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel”, p.98, Penguin

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• Come, come thou bleak December wind,
  And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
  Flash, like a Love-thought, thro'me, Death
  And take a Life that wearies me.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Blow, Wind, Tree

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2011). “Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.5, Faber & Faber

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• He types his labored column - weary drudge! Senile fudge and solemn: spare, editor, to condemn these dry leaves of his autumn.

  Robertson Davies

  Autumn, Editors, Fudge

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• Dry leaves upon the wall, Which flap like rustling wings and seek escape, A single frosted cluster on the grape Still hangs--and that is all.

  Sarah Chauncey Woolsey

  Wall, Wings, Dry

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• O sweet September, thy first breezes bring The dry leaf's rustle and the squirrel's laughter, The cool fresh air whence health and vigor spring And promise of exceeding joy hereafter.

  George Arnold

  Sweet, Laughter, Spring

  George Arnold (1867). “Poems Grave and Gay”, p.45

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• We live in an age of prejudice, dissimulation and paradox, wherein, like dry leaves caught in a whirlpool, some of us are tossed helpless . . . ever struggling between our honest convictions and fear of that cruelest of tyrants -- PUBLIC OPINION.

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Struggle, Tyrants, Age

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• I was born to find goblins in their caves / And chase moonlight / To see shadows and seek hidden rivers / To hear the rain fall on dry leaves / And chat a bit with death across foggy nights.

  James Kavanaugh

  Rain, Fall, Night

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• Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Writing, Long, House

  Rainer Maria Rilke, “Autumn Day”

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• This is a diseased century. We diagnosed the disease and its causes with microscopic exactness, but whenever we applied the healing knife a new sore appeared. Our will was hard and pure, we should have been loved by the people, but they hate us. Why are we so odious and detested? We brought you truth and in our mouth it sounded like a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voice is heard the trees wither and there is a rustling of dry leaves. We brought you the promise of the future, but our tongue stammered and barked.

  Arundhati Roy

  Lying, Hate, Live Life

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• And we'd sit in the dry leaves that whispered a little with the slow respiration of our waiting and with the slow breathing of the earth and the windless october, the rank smell of the lantern fouling the brittle air, listening to the dog and the echo of louis' voice dying away

  William Faulkner

  Dog, Echoes, Air

  William Faulkner “The Sound and the Fury”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• He was sure that he was not the cause of the abrupt silence. His passage through the canyon had not previously disturbed either birds or cicadas. Something was out there. An intruder of which the ordinary forest creatures clearly did not approve. He took a deep breath and held it again, straining to hear the slightest movement in the woods. This time he detected the rustle of brush, a snapping twig, the soft crunch of dry leaves-and the unnervingly peculiar, heavy, ragged breathing of something big.

  Dean Koontz

  Breathing, Silence, Bird

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• But what I really want is to just swim around in a warm baby pool of these friends, jump in their dry leaf pile-to rub them all over myself, without words and clothes.

  Dave Eggers

  Baby, Clothes, Swim

  Dave Eggers (2014). “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Picador Classic”, p.367, Pan Macmillan

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• Was genius ever ungrateful? Mere talents are dry leaves, tossed up and down by gusts of passion, and scattered and swept away; but, Genius lies on the bosom of Memory, and Gratitude at her feet.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Gratitude, Memories, Lying

  Walter Savage Landor, Charles George Crump (1909). “Imaginary Conversations: Dialogues of literary men. Dialogues of famous women. Miscellaneous dialogues”

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• Chilled-looking people walking along the riverside, the snow beginning, faintly, to pile up on the roofs of cars, the bare trees shaking their heads left and right, dry leaves tossing in the wind. The silver of the metal window sash sparkling coldly. Soon after, I heard sensei call, "Mikage! Are you awake? It's snowing, look! It's snowing!" "I'm coming!" I called out, standing up. I got dressed to begin another day. Over and over, we begin again.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Wind, People, Snow

  Banana Yoshimoto (1993). “Kitchen”

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• Several times in my life I've gone through long periods without sex or any other kind of physical contact. The hunger it produces is deep and low; it's possible to lose track of it, to forget or fail to perceive how it's emptied everything out of you and made the world papery and thin. Touch starved, you brush against existence like a stick against dry leaves. You become insubstantial yourself, a hungry ghost.

  Hari Kunzru

  Sex, Track, Long

  "My Revolutions". Book by Hari Kunzru, 2007.

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• As a magnifying glass concentrates the rays of the sun into a little burning knot of heat that can set fire to a dry leaf or a piece of paper, so the mystery of Christ in the Gospel concentrates the rays of God's light and fire to a point that sets fire to the spirit of man. ... Through the glass of His Incarnation He concentrates the rays of His Divine Truth and Love upon us so that we feel the burn, and all mystical experience is communicated to men through the Man Christ.

  Thomas Merton

  Spiritual, Men, Fire

  Thomas Merton (2007). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.150, New Directions Publishing

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