Foliage Quotes

• Research cannot be forced very much. There is always danger of too much foliage and too little fruit.

  Theobald Smith

  Science, Research, Littles

  52 Copy quote

• Rise and put on your foliage, and be seen
  To come forth, like the springtime, fresh and green

  Robert Herrick

  Green, Springtime, Celebration

  Robert Herrick (1900). “Poems of Robert Herrick: a selection from Hesperides and Noble numbers”

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• I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.

  Edward Steichen

  Nature, Real, Light

  Edward Steichen, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1963). “A Life in Photography”, Random House Value Pub

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• I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Real, Light

  Edward Steichen, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1963). “A Life in Photography”, Random House Value Pub

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• The foliage has been losing its freshness through the month of August, and here and there a yellow leaf shows itself like the first gray hair amidst the locks of a beauty who has seen one season too many.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

  Fall, Autumn, August

  7 Copy quote

• But you have to take all of those things, you have to take into consideration the paths, the roadways, how much cloud cover there is, how much foliage cover there is, whether there are streams, all of that comes into play.

  Richard Serra

  Clouds, Play, Path

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• Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Fruit, Produce, Erudition

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook C 26, 1799.

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• My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.

  Emily Bronte

  Rocks, Delight, Littles

  "Wuthering Heights".

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• My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will changeit,I'mwellaware, aswinterchangesthetrees. My Love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneatha source of little visible delight but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff.

  Emily Bronte

  Time, Winter, Rocks

  9 Copy quote

• The smell of manure, of sun on foliage, of evaporating water, rose to my head; two steps farther, and I could look down into the vegetable garden enclosed within its tall pale of reeds - rich chocolate earth studded emerald green, frothed with the white of cauliflowers, jeweled with the purple globes of eggplant and the scarlet wealth of tomatoes.

  Doris Lessing

  Summer, Garden, Eggplant

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• May I strike my heart's keys clearly, and may none fail because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings. May the tears that stream down my face make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom.... How we waste our afflictions!... [T]hey're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year—; not only a season—: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Heart, Dark, Years

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• Facts are the barren branches on which we hang the dear, obscuring foliage of our dreams.

  Natalie Babbitt

  Dream, Branches, Facts

  Natalie Babbitt (2010). “Kneeknock Rise”, p.8, Macmillan

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• Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream.

  Aristophanes

  Dream, Race, Darkness

  Aristophanes (2012). “The Birds”, p.21, Courier Corporation

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• How can the seed know that by dying in the soil it will become a great tree? It will not be there to witness the happening. How can the seed know that one day, if it dies, there will be great foliage, green leaves, great branches, and flowers and fruits? How can the seed know? The seed will not be there. The seed has to disappear before it can happen. The seed has never met the tree. The seed has to disappear and die. Only very few people have that much courage. It really needs guts to discover truth. You will die as yourself. You will certainly be born.

  Rajneesh

  Flower, People, Tree

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• Sex is the root of which intuition is the foliage and beauty is the flower.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Sex, Flower, Roots

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2004). “D. H. Lawrence: Late Essays and Articles”, p.145, Cambridge University Press

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• Look not at the face, young girl, look at the heart. The heart of a handsome young man is often deformed. There are hearts in which love does not keep. Young girl, the pine is not beautiful; it is not beautiful like the poplar, but it keeps its foliage in winter.

  Victor Hugo

  Beautiful, Girl, Heart

  Victor Hugo (2010). “The Works of Victor Hugo”, p.597, BookCaps Study Guides

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• Early religions were like muddy ponds with lots of foliage. Concealed there, the fish of the soul could splash and feed. Eventually, however, religions became aquariums. Then hatcheries. From farm fingerling to frozen fish stick is a short swim.

  Tom Robbins

  Aquariums, Swim, Soul

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.194, Bantam

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• As artist Nature splashes color across the vast canvas of the sky with the radiance and splendor of sunrise and sunset. She arches rainbows against the passing storm, creates flowers and foliage, sets autumn woods on fire with the beauty of turning leaves and touches mountaintops with snow crystals.

  Wilferd Peterson

  Flower, Sunset, Autumn

  WILFERD A. PETERSON (1968). “ART OF LIVING”

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• Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined future, of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was charged with purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, and one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind- loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by the high, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so many and so long ago, still come back, but briefly, like fireflies in the perfumed heat of summer night.

  Mark Strand

  Summer, Strong, Passion

  Mark Strand (2014). “Collected Poems”, p.406, Knopf

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• In the sheltered heart of the clumps last year's foliage still clings to the lower branches, tatters of orange that mutter with the passage of the wind, the talk of old women warning the green generation of what they, too, must come to when the sap runs back.

  Jacquetta Hawkes

  Running, Women, Heart

  Jacquetta Hawkes (1952). “A land”

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• Fine fruit is the flower of commodities. It is the most perfect union of the useful and the beautiful that the earth knows. Trees full of soft foliage; blossoms fresh with spring bounty; and, finally, fruit, rich, bloom-dusted, melting, and luscious.

  Andrew Jackson Downing

  Beautiful, Spring, Flower

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• What a place to be in is an old library! It seems as though all the souls of all the writers that have bequeathed their labours to these Bodleians were reposing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage; and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is fragrant as the first bloom of the sciential apples which grew amid the happy orchard.

  Charles Lamb

  Apples, Soul, Library

  Charles Lamb (1867). “Works: Including His Most Intesesting Letters”, p.320

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• It was the month of May, the month when the foliage of herbs and trees is most freshly green, when buds ripened and blossoms appear in their fragrance and loveliness. And the month when lovers, subject to the same force which reawakens the plants, feel their hearts open again, recall past trysts and past vows, and moments of tenderness, and yearn for a renewal of the magical awareness which is love.

  Thomas Malory

  Heart, Past, Tree

  Sir Thomas Malory, Keith Baines (1962). “Le morte d'Arthur”

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• The self-righteous have their fig leaves so tightly bound that they have forgotten the seeping wounds beneath the foliage.

  Mark Lowry

  Self, Forgotten, Figs

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• Here is Menard's own intimate forest: 'Now I am traversed by bridle paths, under the seal of sun and shade...I live in great density...Shelter lures me. I slump down into the thick foliage...In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines. Thickly wooded distance separates me from moral codes and cities.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Distance, Heart, Self

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