Spring Quotes - Page 13

• Every spring he vowed to quit teaching school, and every summer he missed his pupils and searched for them on the streets.

  Annie Dillard

  Summer, Teaching, School

  Annie Dillard (1994). “The Annie Dillard reader”, Harpercollins

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Lofty mountains are full of springs; great hearts are full of tears.

  Philibert Joseph Roux

  Heart, Tears, Mountain

  8 Copy quote

• It is mediocrity which makes laws and sets mantraps and spring-guns in the realm of free song, saying thus far shalt thou go and no further.

  James Russell Lowell

  Song, Gun, Law

  James Russell Lowell, Edward Everett Hale (1902). “Early prose writings of James Russell Lowell”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• That love for one, from which there doth not spring Wide love for all, is but a worthless thing.

  James Russell Lowell

  Love, Wide, Worthless

  James Russell Lowell (1841). “A year's life”, p.159

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ambition is a meteor-gleam; Fame a restless airy dream; Pleasures, insects on the wing Round Peace, th' tend rest flow'r of spring.

  Robert Burns

  Dream, Ambition, Wings

  Robert Burns (1901). “The Poetry of Robert Burns: Posthumous pieces”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wag the world how it will, Leaves must be green in Spring.

  Herman Melville

  World, Green, Wags

  Herman Melville (1866). “Battle-pieces and aspects of the war [poems].”, p.68

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears.

  Chief Seattle

  Men, White Man, Cities

  Seattle (Chief) (1976). “Chief Seattle's Testimony”

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a difficult matter for man to realize the extreme importance of social discriminations which seem outwardly insignificant but which produce in woman moral and intellectual effects so profound that they appear to spring from her original nature.

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Men, Profound, Intellectual

  Simone de Beauvoir (1953). “The second sex”, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It were as wise to cast a violet into a crucible that you might discover the formal principle of its color and odor, as seek to transfuse from one language into another the creations of a poet. The plant must spring again from its seed, or it will bear no flower -- and this is the burthen of the curse of Babel.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Wise, Flower, Color

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1852). “A defence of poetry. Essay on the literature, arts, and manners of the Athenians. Preface to the Banquet of Plato. The banquet”, p.10

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• The temptations to wrong are many; they spring out of a corrupt nature.

  Matthew Simpson

  Temptation

  Matthew Simpson (1885). “Sermons”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they are exposed to at Court or at war, from which so many quarrels, passions, risky, often ill-conceived actions and so on are born, I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room.

  Blaise Pascal

  War, Passion, Home

  "Pensées and Other Writings".

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Fantasy is no good unless the seed it springs from is a truth, a truth about human beings.

  Eudora Welty

  Fantasy, Humans, Seeds

  Eudora Welty (1975). “Fairy Tale of the Natchez Trace: A Paper Read at the Annual Dinner Meeting of the Mississippi Historical Society, Jackson, Mississippi, March 7, 1975”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• People were always asking for good sound proofs; doubt springs eternal in the human breast, even in countries where the Inquisition can read your very thoughts in your eyes.

  Thornton Wilder

  Country, Eye, People

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Bridge of San Luis Rey: A Novel”, p.9, Harper Collins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In Winter the bare boughs that seem to sleep Work covertly, preparing for their Spring.

  Rumi

  Sleep, Winter, Preparing

  6 Copy quote

• Saints can spring from any soil.

  John Steinbeck

  Saint, Soil

  John Steinbeck (1952). “East of Eden, And, The Wayward Bus”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art and ideology often interact on each other; but the plain fact is that both spring from a common source. Both draw on human experience to explain mankind to itself; both attempt, in very different ways, to assemble coherence from seemingly unrelated phenomena; both stand guard for us against chaos.

  Kenneth Tynan

  Art, Different, Coherence

  Kenneth Tynan (1961). “Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Writings”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• A good critic is the sorcerer who makes some hidden spring gush forth unexpectedly under our feet.

  Francois Mauriac

  Feet, Criticism, Critics

  4 Copy quote

• For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world... I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: "I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.

  Primo Levi

  Science, Law, Clouds

  "The Periodic Table". Book by Primo Levi, 1975.

  32 Copy quote

  Show source

• Who among us has not, in moments of ambition, dreamt of the miracle of a form of poetic prose, musical but without rhythm and rhyme, both supple and staccato enough to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of our souls, the undulating movements of our reveries, and the convulsive movements of our consciences? This obsessive ideal springs above all from frequent contact with enormous cities, from the junction of their innumerable connections.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Ambition, Cities, Miracle

  Charles Baudelaire (2001). “The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo”, p.30

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Looking out of my window this lovely spring morning I see an azalea in full bloom. No, no! I do not see that; though that is the only way I can describe what I see. That is a proposition, a sentence, a fact; but what I perceive is not proposition, sentence, fact, but only an image which I make intelligible in part by means of a statement of fact. This statement is abstract; but what I see is concrete.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Morning, Mean, Azaleas

  23 Copy quote

• One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune, one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Business, Responsibility, Doe

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.311, Penguin

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• We bloomed in Spring. Our bodies are the leaves of God. The apparent seasons of life and death our eyes can suffer; but our souls, dear, I will just say this forthright: they are God Himself, we will never perish until He does.

  Teresa of Avila

  Death, Eye, Soul

  6 Copy quote

• Great use they have, when in the hands
  Of one like me, who understands,
  Who understands the time and place,
  The person, manner, and the grace,
  Which fools neglect; so that we find,
  If all the requisites are join'd,
  From whence a perfect joke must spring,
  A joke's a very serious thing.

  Charles Churchill

  Humor, Hands, Perfect

  Charles Churchill, William Tooke (1804). “The Poetical Works of Charles Churchill”, p.200

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Republic needed to be passed through chastening, purifying fires of adversity and suffering: so these came and did their work and the verdure of a new national life springs greenly, luxuriantly, from their ashes.

  Horace Greeley

  Adversity, Fire, Suffering

  17 Copy quote

• Life and death are nothing but the mind. Years, months, days, and hours are nothing but the mind. Dreams, illusions, and mirages are nothing but the mind. The bubbles of water and the flames of fire are nothing but the mind. The flowers of the spring and the moon of the autumn are nothing but the mind. Confusions and dangers are nothing but the mind.

  Dogen

  Dream, Flower, Autumn

  183 Copy quote