Tuesday, November 27, 2012

WINTER QUOTES










I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again. - Lewis Caroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)




Hot coffee and cold winter mornings are two of the best soul mates who ever did find each other.  ~Terri Guillemets





What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.- John Steinbeck






The first snow is like the first love. Do you remember your first snow ? - Lara Biyuts





Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories.  ~ From the movie An Affair to Remember








Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.- Edith Sitwell






Winter then in its early and clear stages, was a purifying engine that ran unhindered over city and country, alerting the stars to sparkle violently and shower their silver light into the arms of bare upreaching trees. It was a mad and beautiful thing that scoured raw the souls of animals and man, driving them before it until they loved to run. And what it did to Northern forests can hardly be described, considering that it iced the branches of the sycamores on Chrystie Street and swept them back and forth until they rang like ranks of bells. - Mark Helprin



Every mile is two in winter.  ~George Herbert




In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy. ~William Blake






Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.- Sinclair Lewis





Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours.- Robert Byrne




It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city. At all hours it was necessary to keep a lamp lighted, and Mrs. Miller lost track of the days: Friday was no different from Saturday and on Sunday she went to the grocery: closed, of course.- Truman Capote




Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. ~Author Unknown







One kind word can warm three winter months. ~Japanese Proverb




Nothing is as tedious as the limping days,
When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways,
And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom,
Assumes control of fate’s immortal loom
- Charles Baudelaire - Paris Spleen





A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.- Nathaniel Hawthorne
 








When icicles hang by the wall,
And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,
And Tom bears logs into the hall,
And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit! To-who!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doe blow,
And coughing drowns the parson's saw,
And birds sit brooding in the snow,
And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
Then nightly sings the staring owl,
To-whit! To-who!—a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

William Shakespeare -Love's Labour's Lost





January is the quietest month in the garden.  ...  But just because it looks quiet doesn't mean that nothing is happening.  The soil, open to the sky, absorbs the pure rainfall while microorganisms convert tilled-under fodder into usable nutrients for the next crop of plants.  The feasting earthworms tunnel along, aerating the soil and preparing it to welcome the seeds and bare roots to come. - Rosalie Muller Wright







Our wings serve as flippers that carry us across the ocean; not in the sky !
Why, us penguins have so much fun time in the water, we don't even want to fly !

- Jasmine Jean, Whimsy Girl



Winter came in days that were gray and still. They were the kind of days in which people locked in their animals and themselves and nothing seemed to stir but the smoke curling upwards from clay chimneys and an occasional red-winged blackbird which refused to be grounded. And it was cold. Not the windy cold like Uncle Hammer said swept the northern winter, but a frosty, idle cold that seeped across a hot land ever lookung toward the days of green and ripening fields, a cold thay lay uneasy during during its short stay as it crept through the cracks of poorly constucted houses and forced the people inside huddled around ever-burning fires to wish it gone.- Muldred D. Taylor




Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments, embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour. -  John Boswell









Brew me a cup for a winter's night.
For the wind howls loud and the furies fight;
Spice it with love and stir it with care,
And I'll toast our bright eyes,
my sweetheart fair.

~Minna Thomas Antrim







There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself.- Ruth Stout






Song falls silent, music is dumb,
But the air burns with their fragrance,
And white winter, on its knees,
Observes everything with reverent attention.

- Anna Akhmatova , The Complete Poems












Honest Winter, snow-clad, and with the frosted beard, I can welcome not uncordially; But that long deferment of the calendar's promise, that weeping gloom of March and April, that bitter blast outraging the honour of May how often has it robbed me of heart and hope ? - George R. Gissing






Deep in December
it's nice to remember
without a hurt
the heart is hollow.

Tom Jones, The Fantasticks







Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer.-  Plutarch, Moralia











Let us love winter, for it is the spring of genius.  ~Pietro Aretino




Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do - or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so.  ~Stanley Crawford








There is no season such delight can bring,
As summer, autumn, winter and the spring.

-  William Browne, Variety, 1630  










Our favourite amusement during that winter was tobogganing. In places the shore of the lake rises abruptly from the water's edge. Down these steep slopes we used to coast. We would get on our toboggan, a boy would give us a shove, and off we went! Plunging through drifts, leaping hollows, swooping down upon the lake, we would shoot across its gleaming surface to the opposite bank. What joy! What exhilarating madness ! For one wild, glad moment we snapped the chain that binds us to earth, and joining hands with the winds we felt ourselves divine  ! - Helen Keller





From December to March, there are for many of us three gardens - the garden outdoors, the garden of pots and bowls in the house, and the garden of the mind's eye.- Katherine S. White










How can those who do not garden, who have no lot in the great fraternity of those who watch the changing year as it affects the earth and its growth, how can they keep warm their hearts in winter ? - Francis King








Plow, naked man !  Sow, naked man!  Winter is farmer's lazy time.
In cold weather the farmers enjoy their gain for the most part
and they happily prepare feasts for each other.
Friendly winter is inviting and lightens their cares,
as when loaded boats at last reach port
and the happy sailors place crowns upon the sterns.
Still, then is the time to pick the oaken acorns,
the laurel's berries, the olive and the blood-red myrtle;
the time to set traps for cranes and nets for stags;
the time to chase the long-eared rabbits, to smite the does
as you whirl the thongs of a Balearic sling,
when the snow lies deep and the rivers push ice.

-  Publius Vergilius Maro, Georgics, Book I,










O, wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ?

Percy Bysshe Shelley










Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.

Bill Morgan, Jr.








The color of springtime is in the flowers; the color of winter is in the imagination.  ~Terri Guillemets



Green thoughts emerge from some deep source of stillness which the very fact of winter has released.-  Mirabel Osler 









That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

William Shakespeare, Sonnets








February is merely as long as is needed to pass the time until March. -  Dr. J. R. Stockton 






Every winter,
When the great sun has turned his face away,
The earth goes down into a vale of grief,
And fasts, and weeps, and shrouds herself in sables,
Leaving her wedding-garlands to decay -
Then leaps in spring to his returning kisses.

~Charles Kingsley








I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines. -  Henry David Thoreau 










Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face - Victor Hugo