Shadow Quotes - Page 31

• And she understood, all by herself, without reading it in a novel or hearing it on a radio program, that falling passionately in love with someone, without reservation or holding back, was good for the heart. For its valves and its arteries and that invisible shadow of the heart clled the soul. Falling in love was good for the soul.

  Paulette Jiles

  Falling In Love, Reading, Heart

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• Men throw huge shadows on the lawn, don't they? Then, all their lives, they try to run to fit the shadows. But the shadows are always longer.

  Ray Bradbury

  Running, Men, Trying

  Ray Bradbury (1980). “The Stories of Ray Bradbury”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• The eye of a man should be still more reverent before the rising of a young maiden than before the rising of a star. The possibility of touch should increase respect. The down of the peach, the dust of the plum, the radiated crystal of snow, the butterfly’s wing powdered with feathers, are gross things beside that chastity that does not even know it is chaste. The young maiden is only the glimmer of a dream and is not yet statue. Her alcove is hidden in the shadows of the ideal. The indiscreet touch of the eye desecrates this dim penumbra. Here, to gaze, is to profane.

  Victor Hugo

  Dream, Stars, Butterfly

  Victor Hugo (1987). “Les Misérables”, Signet Classics

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• Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds.

  Lucy Maud Montgomery

  Girl, Sea, Vision

  Lucy Maud Montgomery (2004). “Anne of Green Gables”, p.354, 1st World Publishing

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• When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Fear, Reality

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “Walden”, p.69, Xist Publishing

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• Is it thy will, thy image should keep open My heavy eyelids to the weary night? Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken, While shadows like to thee do mock my sight? Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee So far from home into my deeds to pry, To find out shames and idle hours in me, The scope and tenor of thy jealousy? O, no! thy love, though much, is not so great: It is my love that keeps mine eye awake: Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat, To play the watchman ever for thy sake: For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere, From me far off, with others all too near.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Eye, Home

  William Shakespeare (1838). “The Pictorial edition of the works of Shakspere, ed. by C. Knight. [8 vols., including a vol. entitled William Shakspere, by C. Knight].”

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• Anyone who says, “Here’s my address, write me a poem,” deserves something in reply. So I’ll tell you a secret instead: poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes, they are sleeping. They are the shadows drifting across our ceilings the moment before we wake up. What we have to do is live in a way that lets us find them.

  Naomi Shihab Nye

  Writing, Sleep, Shoes

  "Valentine for Ernest Mann". Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952.

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• People believe, thought Shadow. It's what people do. They believe, and then they do not take responsibility for their beliefs; they conjure things, and do not trust the conjuration. People populate the darkness; with ghost, with gods, with electrons, with tales. People imagine, and people believe; and it is that rock solid belief, that makes things happen.

  Neil Gaiman

  Life, Believe, Responsibility

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• Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right.

  Libba Bray

  Dark, Play, Light

  Libba Bray (2010). “A Great and Terrible Beauty”, p.168, Simon and Schuster

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• In great deeds, something abides. On great fields, something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls… generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadow of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.

  Joshua Chamberlain

  Dream, Heart, Soul

  Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1994). “Bayonet! Forward: my Civil War reminiscences”, Butternut & Blue

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• I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.

  Sylvia Plath

  Depression, Beautiful, Moving

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.75, Hamilton Books

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• When the groundhog casts his shadow And the small birds sing And the pussywillows happen And the sun shines warm And when the peepers peep Then it is Spring

  Margaret Wise Brown

  Spring, Shining, Bird

  Margaret Wise Brown (1997). “Pussy Willow”, Golden Books

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• It’s a story of love, of hatred, and of the dreams that live in the shadow of the wind.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  Dream, Wind, Hatred

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon (2005). “The Shadow of the Wind”, p.171, Penguin

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• There are times in your life when, despite the steel weight of your memories and the sadness that seems to lie at your feet like a shadow, you suddenly and strangely feel perfectly okay.

  Kevin Brockmeier

  Memories, Lying, Sadness

  Kevin Brockmeier (2008). “The View from the Seventh Layer: Stories”, p.111, Vintage

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• Catching sight of himself in the long mirrors that ran along the walls, he stiffened in shock...His eyes were surrounded by black shadows, his shirt smeared with dried blood and filthy mud... "Admiring yourself?" The Inquisitor's voice cut through his reverie. "You won't look so pretty when the Clave gets through with you." "You do seem obsessed with my look...Could it be that you're attracted to me?" "Don't be revolting...You could be my son.

  Cassandra Clare

  Wall, Eye, Son

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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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• You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.

  Khalil Gibran

  Sun, Turns

  Khalil Gibran “The New Frontier and Sand and Foam”, Library of Alexandria

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• Til shade is gone, til water is gone Into the shadow with teeth bared Screaming defiance with the last breath To spit in Sightblinder’s eye on the Last Day.

  Robert Jordan

  Eye, Water, Teeth

  Robert Jordan (2010). “The Fires of Heaven: Book Five of 'The Wheel of Time'”, p.88, Macmillan

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• Well. Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat's ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise they'd not long since been rooted out. There is something subversive about this garden of Serena's, a sense of buried things bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently.

  Margaret Atwood

  Beautiful, Cat, Heart

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.153, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• God is dead, but considering the state the species man is in, there will perhaps be caves, for ages yet, in which his shadow will be shown.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  God, Men, Religion

  'Die fröhliche Wissenschaft' (1882) bk. 3, sect. 108

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• You know, there's a big world out there filled with desperate orphans who would gladly swim across an ocean of thumbtacks just to be eclipsed by the long shadow that is cast by my accomplishments.

  Daniel Handler

  Ocean, Long, Accomplishment

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• No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves. Turn the page: you, looking, are newly confused. You know me too well to know me. Or not too well: too much.

  Margaret Atwood

  Confused, Eye, Ideas

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Tent”, p.23, Anchor

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• It was a full moon and, shining on all the snow, it made everything almost as bright as day -- only the shadows were rather confusing.

  C. S. Lewis

  Moon, Snow, Shining

  C.S.Lewis (2016). “The Chronicles of Narnia Vol I: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, p.66, ENRICH CULTURE GROUP LIMITED

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• Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?" A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Laughter, Land, Water

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.640, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow which turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Love, Disappointment, Spring

  "Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder". Book by Evelyn Waugh, 1945.

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