Withered Quotes

• No matter what we are, and what we sing, Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel

  Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Matter, Laurels, Leafs

  Edwin Arlington Robinson, “Three Quatrains”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.

  Graham Greene

  Pregnancy, Curiosity, Age

  Graham Greene (2011). “A Sort Of Life”, p.98, Random House

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Worry, Despair, Action

  35 Copy quote

• How withered away one can be from a life of unremitting toil.

  Joanna Russ

  Toil

  "The Female Man". Book by Joanna Russ (Part 2, Chapter 5, p. 22), February 1975.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Dirty, stained, withered, broken things seem beautiful to me.

  Yohji Yamamoto

  Beautiful, Dirty, Broken

  "Yohji Yamamoto: Talking to Myself". Book by Peter Lindbergh et al., 2002.

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• Carve your name on hearts, not on marble

  Charles Spurgeon

  Christian, Kindness, Tombstone

  18 Copy quote

• A good character is the best tombstone.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Kindness, Tombstone, Character

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 44), 1895.

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

  Robert Frost

  Love, Beautiful, Rain

  Robert Frost (2004). “A Boy's Will”, p.13, 1st World Publishing

  67 Copy quote

  Show source

• A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Love, Inspirational, Kindness

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1868). “John Ploughman's Talk; or, plain advice for plain people”, p.162

  95 Copy quote

  Show source

• Conjugal love, or the friendship of spouses, persists after sexual desires have weakened, withered, and disappeared.

  Mortimer Adler

  Lost Friendship, Desire, Conjugal

  "Desires, Right & Wrong: The Ethics of Enough".

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

  Chanakya

  Family, Son, Tree

  13 Copy quote

• Death, lonely death, Beneath the withered leaves.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Lonely, Withered Leaves

  6 Copy quote

• When he is forsaken, Withered and shaken, What can an old man do but die?

  Thomas Hood

  Men, Age, Old Man

  Thomas Hood (1860). “The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood”, p.145

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My dear young lady, crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone. The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.

  Charles Dickens

  Crime, Victim, Young

  Charles Dickens (1839). “Oliver Twist”, p.116

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have come to think that life is a far more limited thing than those in the midst of its maelstorm realize. That light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment -
  perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and failed to grasp its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of one's life in hopeless depth of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look forward to anything. All that such a person holds in his hands is the withered corpse of what should have been.

  Haruki Murakami

  Loneliness, Twilight, Thinking

  "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle". Book by Haruki Murakami, August 25, 1995.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Who is to decide which is the grimmer sight: withered hearts, or empty skulls?

  Honore de Balzac

  Heart, Skulls, Sight

  5 Copy quote

• Love likes not the falling fruit,
  Nor the withered tree.

  Walter Raleigh

  Fall, Tree, Likes

  5 Copy quote

• But first, on earth as vampire sent, Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent, Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race. There from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life, Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid living corse. Thy victims ere they yet expire Shall know the demon for their sire, As cursing thee, thou cursing them, Thy flowers are withered on the stem.

  Lord Byron

  Daughter, Flower, Blood

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.768, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Flowers that grow where old ones have withered serve to remind us that death will one day come to us all.

  Arthur Golden

  Flower, One Day, Grows

  4 Copy quote

• I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet ... the evenings in late autumn time, when the white mist creeps across the fields, making it seem as though old Earth, feeling the night air cold to its poor bones, were drawing ghostly bedclothes round its withered limbs.

  Jerome K. Jerome

  Lying, Autumn, Night

  Jerome K. Jerome (2015). “Silhouettes”, p.5, Read Books Ltd

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vain are the thousand creeds That move men's hearts, unutterably vain; Worthless as withered weeds, Or idlest froth amid the boundless main.

  Emily Bronte

  Weed, Moving, Heart

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2014). “Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell”, p.212, The Floating Press

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him.

  Laurence Sterne

  Adversity, Comfort, May

  Laurence Sterne (1805). “The Works of Laurence Sterne, A. M.: The sermons of Mr. Yorick”, p.420

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung To their first fault, and withered in their pride.

  Robert Browning

  Pride, Men, Firsts

  Robert Browning (1994). “The Works of Robert Browning”, p.50, Wordsworth Editions

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing is more democratic, less judgmental, than water. Water doesn't care whether flesh is withered or fresh; it caresses aged flesh and firm flesh with equal love.

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison

  Sports, Water, Care

  Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (1997). “An Accidental Autobiography”, Mariner Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If a little flower could speak, it seems to me that it would tell us quite simply all that God has done for it, without hiding any of its gifts. It would not, under the pretext of humility, say that it was not pretty, or that it had not a sweet scent, that the sun had withered its petals,or the storm bruised its stem, if it knew that such were not the case.

  Therese of Lisieux

  Sweet, Flower, Humility

  Saint Therese of Lisieux (2007). “The Story of the Soul”, p.27, Cosimo, Inc.

  20 Copy quote

  Show source