Ripening Quotes

• The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

  Galileo Galilei

  Inspirational, Funny, Summer

  "Sun of gOd: Discover the Self-Organizing Consciousness That Underlies Everything". Book by Gregory Sams (p. 78), May 1, 2009.

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• Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

  Aristotle

  Best Friend, Friendship, Real Friends

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• Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.

  George MacDonald

  Reality, Age, Decay

  George MacDonald (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of George MacDonald (Illustrated)”, p.5832, Delphi Classics

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• Life is the blossoming of flowers in the spring, the ripening of fruit in the fall, the rhythm of the earth and of nature. Life is the cry of cicadas signalling the end of summer, migratory birds winging south in a transparent autumn sky, fish frolicking in a stream. Life is the joy beautiful music installs in us, the thrilling sight of a mountain peak reddened by the rising sun, the myriad combinations and permutations of visible and invisible phenomena. Life is all things.

  Daisaku Ikeda

  Beautiful, Summer, Spring

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• This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath, May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Summer, Flower

  'Romeo And Juliet' (1595) act 2, sc. 2, l. 118

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• To 'choose' dogma and faith over doubt and experience is to throw out the ripening vintage and to reach greedily for the Kool-Aid.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Atheist, Vintage, Doubt

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Long Live Hitch: Three Classic Books in One Volume”, p.264, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash.

  Josh Billings

  Fall, Fruit Juice, Squash

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• I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything!

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Patience, Pain, Grateful

  Rainer Maria Rilke (2001). “Letters to a Young Poet”

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• Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness! This is the state of man: today he puts forth The tender leaves of hope, tomorrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And - when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening - nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Fall, Farewell

  'Henry VIII' (1613) act 3, sc. 2, l. 352

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• If woman is inconstant, good, I am faithful to ebb and flow, I fall in season and now is a time of ripening.

  Denise Levertov

  Women, Fall, Ebb And Flow

  Denise Levertov (1983). “Poems of Denise Levertov, 1960-1967”, p.155, New Directions Publishing

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• Farewell! a long farewell to all my greatness!

  William Shakespeare

  Farewell, Greatness, Long

  'Henry VIII' (1613) act 3, sc. 2, l. 352

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• The third day comes a frost, a killing frost.

  William Shakespeare

  Farewell, Frost, November

  'Henry VIII' (1613) act 3, sc. 2, l. 352

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• Frigidity is largely nonsense. It is this generation's catchword, one only vaguely understood and constantly misused. Frigid women are few. There is a host of diffident and slow-ripening ones.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Sex, This Generation, Generations

  Phyllis McGinley (1962). “The province of the heart”

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• The Christian is like the ripening corn; the riper he grows the more lowly he bends his head.

  Alfred Bertram Guthrie

  Christian, Corn, Grows

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• The thing you are ripening toward is the fruit of your life. It will make you bright inside, no matter what you are outside. It is a shining thing.

  Stewart Edward White

  Life, Shining, Matter

  Stewart Edward White, Elizabeth Calvert Grant White (1947). “With folded wings”

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• Schemes are like fruit, they require a certain ripening.

  George R. R. Martin

  Fruit, Schemes, Certain

  George R. R. Martin (2012). “George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons”, p.759, Bantam

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• There are different kinds and degrees of love, and they change over time, ripening and deepening and changing us in the process.

  Cassandra King

  Degrees, Different, Kind

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• The highest branch of solitary amusement is reading; but even in the choice of books the fancy is first employed; for in reading, the heart is touched, till its feelings are examined by the understanding, and the ripening of reason regulate the imagination. This is the work of years, and the most important of all employments.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Book, Reading, Heart

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• Art is a ripening, an evolution, an uplifting which enables us to emerge from darkness into a blaze of light.

  Jerzy Grotowski

  Uplifting, Art, Light

  Jerzy Grotowski (2012). “Towards a Poor Theatre”, p.256, Routledge

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• Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep
  Do not stand at my grave and weep,
  I am not there, I do not sleep.
  I am in a thousand winds that blow,
  I am the softly falling snow.
  I am the gentle showers of rain,
  I am the fields of ripening grain.
  I am in the morning hush,
  I am in the graceful rush
  Of beautiful birds in circling flight,
  I am the star shine of the night.
  I am in the flowers that bloom,
  I am in a quiet room.
  I am in the birds that sing,
  I am in each lovely thing.
  Do not stand at my grave and cry,
  I am not there. I do not die.

  Mary Elizabeth Frye

  Inspirational, Beautiful, Morning

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• A man watches his pear-tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe pear at length falls into his lap.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Inspiring, Moving, Fall

  Abraham Lincoln (2002). “Conversations With Lincoln”, p.309, Transaction Publishers

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• Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--- No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever---or else swoon in death.

  John Keats

  Sweet, Art, Stars

  'Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art' (1819)

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• Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confidence in the storms of spring without fear that after them may come no summer

  Rainer Maria Rilke

  Summer, Spring, Mean

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• I had begun to think my ripening body would wither untasted on the vine.

  Jacqueline Carey

  Thinking, Body, Vines

  Jacqueline Carey (2011). “Kushiel's Dart”, p.96, Pan Macmillan

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• This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer where the spirit of autumn takes a first stealing flight, like a spy, through the ripening country-side, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about leaf and flower and human shoulders.

  Sarah Orne Jewett

  Summer, Country, Flower

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