Ripeness Quotes

• It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Spirit, Worms, Fallibility

  Friedrich Nietzsche, R. J. Hollingdale (1996). “Nietzsche: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits”, p.292, Cambridge University Press

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• The West is color. Its colors are animal rather than vegetable, the colors of earth and sunlight and ripeness.

  Jessamyn West

  Animal, Color, Vegetables

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• Men must endure Their going hence, even as their coming hither. Ripeness is all.

  William Shakespeare

  Life, Death, Men

  'King Lear' (1605-6) act 5, sc. 2, l. 9

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• Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect...

  George Santayana

  Skepticism, Intellect, Chastity

  "Scepticism and Animal Faith". Book by George Santayana, 1923.

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• Even while the Earth sleeps we travel.

  Khalil Gibran

  Sleep, Earth

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.

  George Santayana

  Thinking, Firsts, Surrender

  Scepticism and Animal Faith ch. 9 (1923)

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• We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us.

  Khalil Gibran

  Sunset, Sunrise, Way

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun.

  John Keats

  Fall, Autumn, Gourds

  "To Autumn" l. 1 (1820)

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• The ripeness of adolescence is prodigal in pleasures, skittish, and in need of a bridle.

  Plutarch

  Needs, Youth, Pleasure

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• Chronological time is what we measure by clocks and calendars; it is always linear, orderly, quantifiable, and mechanical. Kairotic time is organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and aperiodic; it is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change the direction of his life.

  Sam Keen

  Men, Calendars, Cadence

  Sam Keen (1994). “Hymns to an Unknown God: Awakening the Spirit in Everyday Life”, Bantam

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• Genius has no youth, but starts with the ripeness of age and old experience.

  Mark Twain

  Age, Genius, Youth

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.141, Courier Corporation

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• Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

  Joseph Heller

  Fall, Men, Fire

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.404, Simon and Schuster

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• To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing - the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Hair, Hands, Giving

  "Housekeeping". Book by Marilynne Robinson, 1980.

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• One reason writers write is out of revenge. Life hurts; certain ideas and experiences hurt; one wants to clarify, to set out illuminations, to replay the old bad scenes and get the Treppenworte said -- the words one didn't have the strength or ripeness to say when those words were necessary for one's dignity or survival.

  Cynthia Ozick

  Hurt, Revenge, Writing

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• Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollably. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all. I'm cold,' Snowden said. 'I'm cold.

  Joseph Heller

  Fall, Men, Fire

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.404, Simon and Schuster

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• I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.

  Gary Shteyngart

  Teenage, Love You, Ducks

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• Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer; there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.

  George Santayana

  Long, Lasts, Firsts

  George Santayana (1937). “The Works of George Santayana: Scepticism and animal faith. Some meanings of the word "is". Literal and symbolic knowledge. The unknowable”

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• It is one of the greatest problems. It will appear very paradoxical, but this is true - before you can lose your ego, you must attain it. Only a ripe fruit falls to the ground. Ripeness is all. An unripe ego cannot be thrown, cannot be destroyed. And if you struggle with an unripe ego to destroy and dissolve it, the whole effort is going to be a failure. Rather than destroying it, you will find it more strengthened, in new and subtle ways.

  Rajneesh

  Fall, Struggle, Effort

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• October is the opal month of the year. It is the month of glory, of ripeness. It is the picture-month.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Years, Opal, Months

  Henry Ward Beecher, William Drysdale (1887). “Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit”

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• Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.

  Gretel Ehrlich

  Autumn, Long, Water

  Gretel Ehrlich (1986). “The Solace of Open Spaces”, Penguin Group USA

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• We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another, and no sunrise finds us where left by sunset. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of that tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind to be scattered.

  Khalil Gibran

  Spiritual, Heart, Sunset

  Khalil Gibran, “The Farewell XXVIIi”

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• Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

  John Keats

  Friendship, Summer, Running

  John Keats, Helen Vendler (1990). “Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard”, p.222, Harvard University Press

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• All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.

  W. H. Auden

  Wall, Silence, Sides

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• God gives us love. Something to love
  He lends us; but when love is grown
  To ripeness, that on which it throve
  Falls off, and love is left alone.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Love, Life, Fall

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated)”, p.2607, Delphi Classics

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• Autumn is the eternal corrective. It is ripeness and color and a time of maturity; but it is also breadth, and depth, and distance. What man can stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see the span of his world and the meaning of the rolling hills that reach to the far horizon?

  Hal Borland

  Distance, Fall, Autumn

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