Leafs Quotes - Page 5

• Not a single leaf moves in this country if I'm not the one moving it.

  Augusto Pinochet

  Country, Moving, Ifs

  Speech, quoted in "Las frases para el bronce de Pinochet", October 1981.

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• Words [are] more beautiful than a found fall leaf.

  William H. Gass

  Beautiful, Fall, Found

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• The sickness rolled through me in great waves. After each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over and then I would feel it rising up in me again, and the glittering white torture chamber tiles under my feet and over my head and all four sides closed in and squeezed me to pieces.

  Sylvia Plath

  White, Rising Up, Feet

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.25, Hamilton Books

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• And what a congress of stinks!- Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks, Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

  Theodore Roethke

  Life, Giving Up, Breathing

  1948 The Lost Son,'Root Cellar'.

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• There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor, or the one red leaf the snow releases in March

  Jane Hirshfield

  Light, Doors, Snow

  Jane Hirshfield (1997). “The lives of the heart”, Perennial

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• The leaf that spreads in the light is the only holiness there is. I haven't found holiness in the faiths of mortals, or in their music, not in their dreams: it's out in the open field, with the green rows looking at the sky. I don't know what it is, this holiness: but it's there, and it looks at the sky.
  Probably though this is some conditioning the Company installed to ensure I'd be a good botanist. Well, I grew up into a good one. Damned good.

  Kage Baker

  Dream, Light, Sky

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• You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.

  Mignon McLaughlin

  Writing, Growth, Pages

  Mignon McLaughlin (2014). “Aperçus: The Aphorisms of Mignon McLaughlin”, p.56, BookBaby

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• If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself.

  Pierre-Auguste Renoir

  Artist, Two, Imagination

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• I was a pebble. I was a leaf. I was the jagged branch of a tree. I was nothing to them and they were everything to me.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Tree, Branches, Pebbles

  Cheryl Strayed (2012). “Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found”, p.78, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• When I’m working with materials it’s not just the leaf or the stone, it’s the processes that are behind them that are important. That’s what I’m trying to understand, not a single isolated object but nature as a whole.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Trying, Important, Stones

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• For me looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. Place is found by walking, direction determined by weather and season. I take the opportunity each day offers: if it is snowing, I work in snow, at leaf-fall it will be leaves; a blown over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Fall, Opportunity, Weather

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• If you work, if you wait, you will find the place where the four-leaf clovers grow.

  Ella Higginson

  Waiting, Four, Clovers

  Ella Higginson, “Four-Leaf Clover”

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• The word 'vegetable' has no precise botanical meaning in reference to food plants, and we find that almost all parts of plants have been employed as vegetables - roots (carrot and beet), stems (Irish potato and asparagus), leaves (spinach and lettuce), leaf stalk (celery and Swiss chard), bracts (globe artichoke), flower stalks and buds (broccoli and cauliflower), fruits (tomato and squash), seeds (beans), and even the petals (Yucca and pumpkin).

  Charles Heiser

  Flower, Vegetables, Squash

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• The reality of truth is not to be bought, to be sold, to be repeated; it cannot be caught in books. It has to be found from moment to moment, in the smile, in the tear, under the dead leaf, in the vagrant thought, in the fullness of love.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Love, Truth, Book

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (2013). “The first and last freedom”, p.572, Rajpal & Sons

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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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• To the great tree-loving fraternity we belong. We love trees with universal and unfeigned love, and all things that do grow under them or around them - the whole leaf and root tribe. Not alone when they are in their glory, but in whatever state they are - in leaf, or rimed with frost, or powdered with snow, or crystal-sheathed in ice, or in severe outline stripped and bare against a November sky - we love them.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Love, Ice, Sky

  Henry Ward Beecher (2009). “Star Papers”, p.272, Applewood Books

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• Beyond age, leaf withered, man goes three footed no stronger than a child is, a dream that falters in daylight.

  Aeschylus

  Dream, Children, Men

  Aeschylus (2013). “Aeschylus II: The Oresteia”, p.23, University of Chicago Press

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• Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem: There's not a leaf that falls upon the ground But holds some joy of silence or of sound, Some spirits begotten of a summer dream.

  Samuel Laman Blanchard

  Summer, Dream, Lying

  Samuel Laman Blanchard, “Hidden Joys”

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• At some point, some insect has had sex with a leaf.

  Karl Pilkington

  Funny, Sex, Insects

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• It is curious that the leaf should so love the light and the root so hate it.

  Celia Thaxter

  Hate, Light, Roots

  Celia Thaxter (2008). “An Island Garden”, p.25, Applewood Books

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• When a caterpillar eats a leaf, then a thrush eats the caterpillar, or when a hawk eats the thrush only 5 to 20% of usable energy is transferred from one level to the next. ... Thus herbivores will account for a much smaller fraction of the biomass [than plants] and the carnivores for a still smaller fraction.

  Richard Heinberg

  Environmental, Energy, Levels

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• Who o'er the herd would wish to reign, Fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain! Vain as the leaf upon the stream, And fickle as a changeful dream; Fantastic as a woman's mood, And fierce as Frenzy's fever'd blood. Thou many-headed monster thing, Oh who would wish to be thy king!

  Walter Scott

  Dream, Kings, Blood

  Walter Scott (1869). “Poetical Works: Complete in One Volume with All His Introd. and Notes”, p.220

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• Happiness is threatening and misery is safe - safe for the ego. Ego can exist only in misery and through misery. Ego is an island surrounded by hell; happiness is threatening to the ego, to the very existence of the ego. Happiness rises like a sun and the ego disappears, evaporates like a dewdrop on the grass leaf.

  Rajneesh

  Islands, Ego, Safe

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• Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?

  William Butler Yeats

  Wisdom, Oil, Dancing

  "Among School Children" l. 57 (1928) See Quarles 1

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• Modern art must strike out from the old. The new is not revealed to those whose eyes are fastened in worship upon the old…Have you ever seen an inch worm crawl up a leaf or twig, and then clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something to reach? That's like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have a footing.

  Albert Pinkham Ryder

  Art, Eye, Air

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