Bare Branches Quotes

Fate. As a child, that word was often my only companion. It whispered to me from dark corners during lonely nights. It was the song of the birds in spring and the call of the wind through bare branches on a cold winter afternoon. Fate. Both my anguish and my solace. My escort and my cage. ~ Leslye Walton

Parker stared at the bare branches along Saint Marks Place as they swayed with the wind, reaching for one another, and longed for the warmth of a million little leaves and their multicolored smiles. ~ Abby Slovin

It was like hundreds of roads he'd driven over - no different - a stretch of tar, lusterless, scaley, humping toward the center. On both sides were telephone poles, tilted this way and that, up a little, down...

Billboards - down farther an increasing clutter of them. Some road signs. A tottering barn in a waste field, the Mail Pouch ad half weathered away. Other fields. A large wood - almost leafless now - the bare branches netting darkly against the sky. Then down, where the road curved away, a big white farmhouse, trees on the lawn, neat fences - and above it all, way up, a television aerial, struck by the sun, shooting out bars of glare like neon. ("Thompson") ~ George A. Zorn

It was a day in March, and the sky was a faint green with the first hint of spring. In Central Park, five hundred feet below, the earth caught the tone of the sky in a shade of brown that promised to become green, and the lakes lay like splinters of glass under the cobwebs of bare branches. ~ Ayn Rand

How torturous is the "churchly" language one must speak in church - the tone, style, habit. It is all artificial; there is a total absence of a simple human language. With what a sigh of relief one leaves this world of cassocks, and kissing and church gossip. As soon as one leaves, one sees: wet bare branches, fog which floats over fields, trees, homes. Sky. Early dusk. And it all tells an incredibly simple truth. ~ Alexander Schmemann

The last caravan they robbed had been filled with fine clothing, pieces of which were strewn about their camp. Trousers hung from trees, shirts danced in the breeze. The bright colors on bare branches gave everything a festival air.

Petru wrestled with an intricately brocaded vest, struggling to get it across his shoulders. He spun in one direction and then the other. Nicolae watched, lips a single straight line but eyes dancing with mirth.

"That would fit better if it were designed for a man," Matei said as he walked by. Matei's purse was full now, but he still looked hungry.

Petru stopped spinning and ripped off the vest in horror. Nicolae burst into laughter. "You could have told me!" Petru said.

"But it set off the color of your eyes so nicely."

Petru glared murderously. Then he looked over at Lada and held the vest out. She raised a single eyebrow at the delicate colors and needlework. Muttering to himself, Petru threw the vest at Nicolae's head and walked away ~ Kiersten White

The garden was the most beautiful place Margherita had ever seen. In spring, it was a sea of delicate blossom. In summer, it was green and fruitful. In autumn, the trees blazed gold and red and orange, as vivid as Margherita's hair. Even in winter, it was beautiful, with bare branches against the old stone walls and green hedges in curves and curlicues about beds of winter-flowering herbs and flowers. ~ Kate Forsyth

Then, without really realizing it, I start to think of one thing I did wrong for each tree I look at. Wide oak - I didn't tell anyone when Ingrid cut herself. Baby oak - the time I told her I was getting sick of hearing about Jayson's arms and his blue shirt. Tall tree with bare branches - the way I would leave when she got depressed and stopped talking. I should have stayed. I should have just sat quietly , so she knew I was with her. ~ Nina LaCour

The truth is dark under your eyelids.
What are you going to do about it?
The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.
All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.
When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.

A meek little lamb you grew your wool
Till they came after you with huge shears.
Flies hovered over open mouth,
Then they, too, flew off like the leaves,
The bare branches reached after them in vain.

Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldier
Of a defeated army, you'll stay at your post,
Head bared to the first snow flake.
Till a neighbor comes to yell at you,
You're crazier than the weather, Charlie. ~ Charles Simic

A man doesn't have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn't have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn't have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn't learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there's time for everything.
~ Yehuda Amichai

I watch a white landscape that turns pale green, dark green, yellow and red, brown under bare branches, until snow falls again. ~ Donald Hall

He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they'd been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real, like walking around in a desolate dream, but one he didn't want to wake up from. ~ R.D. Ronald

With a start, I realized that the room smelled like him. I had never even noticed that he had a scent. I shut my eyes and breathed deeply. What was it? The crisp edge of a winter wind. Bare branches. The smell of absence, the smell of night. ~ Leigh Bardugo

The courtyard kept changing, dazzling her with the flowers that bloomed between one day and the next, with the bare branches of trees that were swollen with the buds of new leaves and then fuzzed with green. Every day, she drove a familiar road through a new place. ~ Anne Bishop

On a bare branch a crow is perched - autumn evening ~ Matsuo Basho

A Short Testament

Whatever harm I may have done
In all my life in all your wide creation
If I cannot repair it
I beg you to repair it,

And then there are all the wounded
The poor the deaf the lonely and the old
Whom I have roughly dismissed
As if I were not one of them.
Where I have wronged them by it
And cannot make amends
I ask you
To comfort them to overflowing,

And where there are lives I may have withered around me,
Or lives of strangers far or near
That I've destroyed in blind complicity,
And if I cannot find them
Or have no way to serve them,

Remember them. I beg you to remember them

When winter is over
And all your unimaginable promises
Burst into song on death's bare branches. ~ Anne Porter

At the lip of a cliff, I look out over Lake Superior, through the bare branches of birches and the snow-covered branches of aspens and pines. A hard wind blows snow up out of a cavern and over my face. I know this place, I know its seasons - I have hiked these mountains in the summer and walked these winding pathways in the explosion of colour that is a northern fall. And now, the temperature drops well below zero and the deadly cold lake rages below, I feel the stirrings of faith that here, in this place, in my heart, spring will come again.
But first the winter must be waited out. And that waiting has worth. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Enormous morning, ponderous, meticulous; gray light streaking each bare branch, each single twig, along one side, making another tree, of glassy veins. ~ John Banville

I dream dark dreams.
I dream of a figure moving through the forest, of children flying from his path, of young women crying at his coming. I dream of snow and ice, of bare branches and moon-cast shadows. I dream of dancers floating in the air, stepping lightly even in death, and my own pain is but a faint echo of their suffering as I run. My blood is black on the snow, and the edges of the world are silvered with moonlight. I run into the darkness, and he is waiting.
I dream in black and white, and I dream of him.
I dream of Caleb, who does not exist, and I am afraid. ~ John Connolly

A spring sun was shining on the rue St. Honore, as I ran down the church steps. On one corner stood a barrow full of yellow jonquils, pale violets from the Riviera, dark Russian violets, and white Roman hyacinths in a golden cloud of mimosa. The street was full of Sunday pleasure-seekers. I swung my cane and laughed with the rest. Someone overtook and passed me. He never turned, but there was the same deadly malignity in his white profile that there had been in his eyes. I watched him as long as I could see him. His lithe back expressed the same menace; every step that carried him away from me seemed to bear him on some errand connected with my destruction.

I was creeping along, my feet almost refusing to move. There began to dawn in me a sense of responsibility for something long forgotten. It began to seem as if I deserved that which he threatened: it reached a long way back - a long, long way back. It had lain dormant all these. years: it was there though, and presently it would rise and confront me. But I would try to escape; and I stumbled as best I could into the rue de Rivioli, across the Place de la Concorde and on to the Quai. I looked with sick eyes upon the sun, shining through the white foam of the fountain, pouring over the backs of the dusky bronze river-gods, on the far-away Arc, a structure of amethyst mist, on the countless vistas of grey stems and bare branches faintly green. Then I saw him again coming down one of the chestnut alleys of the Cours ~ Robert W. Chambers

The sciences are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in the neighborhood of each other; nor is there any branch of learning but may be helped and improved by assistance drawn from other arts. ~ William Blackstone

Panting and gasping, Harry slowed down, skirting the Willow's swiping branches, peering through the darkness toward its thick trunk, trying to see the single knot in the bark of the old tree that would paralyze it. Ron and Hermione caught up, Hermione so out of breath she could not speak. "How - how're we going to get in?" panted Ron. "I can - see the place - if we just had - Crookshanks again - " "Crookshanks?" wheezed Hermione, bent double, clutching her chest. "Are you a wizard, or what?" "Oh - right - yeah - ~ J.K. Rowling

N the harshest days of leaf-bare clanmate turns upon clanmate danger lurks behind familiar faces and one more warrior may be lost forever ~ Erin Hunter

Sweet stars above, Red." In a moment of sheer impulse, she leaned forward and nipped his exposed throat. A subtle growl rumbled in his chest, reverberating notes of approval and pleasure. For an alpha to bare his throat to her, it could mean only one thing. He truly did see her as his equal. "I love you," she whispered. "My wolf." How had it taken her so long to realize she'd been falling in love with him? "Yours always, Red," he said, his voice raw with emotion. "Ride ~ Vivienne Savage

Lord, when my spirit shall return to thee, At the foot of a friendly tree let my body be buried, That this dust may rise and rejoice among the branches. ~ Henry Van Dyke

He buried her beside her husband. After the services were over and the few mourners had gone, he stood alone in a cold November wind and looked at the two graves, one open to its burden and the other mounded and covered by a thin fuzz of grass. He turned on the bare, treeless little plot that held others like his mother and father and looked across the flat land in the direction of the farm where he had been born, where his mother and father had spent their years. He thought of the cost exacted, year after year, by the soil; and it remained as it had been - a little more barren, perhaps, a little more frugal of increase. Nothing had changed. ~ John Edward Williams

The ripped open houses with their exposed arrangements, their laid bare secrets, are like portraits. Each one has its own individual facial expression. More identity is on display in the midst of the destruction. More intimacy. It makes her realise how vulnerable these achievements are. Identity. Intimacy. ~ Glenn Haybittle

It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That is was enough to trust that what I'd done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn't need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life - like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.
How wild it was, to let it be. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Jesus never commanded believers to produce fruit. Fruit is the *purpose* of the branch, but it is not the *responsibility* of the branch. The branch cannot produce anything on it's own. However, if it remains attached to the vine, it will receive life-sustaining sap, nourishment, strength, everything it needs. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

Every day time stopped and Sobran saw Xas, the sun reflecting off his raised wings, white chest watermarked by tears dried in fine dust; bare skin and colourless nipples, as innocent as a child's; the double signature, seagreen and vermilion, awake and vivid; a whitelipped white face and eyes, abysmal, inimical, like the sea seen through holes in an icefield. It was like being in love, this remembering, because Sobran couldn't put Xas out of his mind. And it was like shame. Because he grew so tired defending himself from the pain of this one recollection, Sobran forgot everything else he knew about the angel. ~ Elizabeth Knox

You guys just wait and see. We'll stand taller than these mountains. We'll bare open our hearts for the world to grab. We'll see lights where there was dimness. We'll testify together to what we have seen and felt. Life will go on
all of us
crawling; stumbling, falling perhaps. But we will be the strong ones. Our hearts will shine brightly. ~ Douglas Coupland

The history omankind seems like kite flying; sometimes, when the wind is favorable, we let go the string a little and the kite soars a little higher; sometimes the wind is too rough and we have to lower it a little, and sometimes it gets caught among the tree branches; but to reach the upper strata of pure bliss-ah, perhaps never. ~ Lin Yutang

The potion drunk by lovers is prepared by no one but themselves. The potion is the sum of one's whole existence. Every word spoken in the past accumulated forms and color in the self. What flows through the veins besides blood is the distillation of every act committed, the sediment of all the visions, wishes, dreams, and experiences. All the past emotions converge to tint the skin and flavor the lips, to regulate the pulse and produce crystals in the eyes.
The fascination exerted by one human being over another is not what he emits of his personality at the present instant of encounter but a summation of his entire being which gives off this powerful drug capturing the fancy and attachment.
No moment of charm without long roots in the past, no moment of charm is born on bare soil, a careless accident of beauty, but is the sum of great sorrows, growths, and efforts.
But love, the great narcotic, was the hothouse in which all the selves burst into their fullest bloom ... ~ Anais Nin

The Storms of This Life
Watching the distant clouds building and growing forevermore
The harsh wind begins rushing thru the leaves with the branches bending to and fro
In the attempts to not give in again I'm standing firm on all that I know
And extending out my hand reaching beyond the heavens above
Grasping for His strength to hold on, along with the endurance to make it thru
Praying that the ground beneath me will not erode nor engulf all that I love ~ Christine Upton

I don't regret my painful times, i bare my scars as if they were medals. I know that freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that that smile dimmed by tears ~ Paulo Coelho

All mammals undergo a certain degree of diversification. Darwin knew that. When he drew a family tree, it had many branches on it. ~ Donald Johanson

In the northern hemisphere, always dressing according to the season: bare arms in spring (however cold it is) and woolen jacket in winter (however hot it is). ~ Paulo Coelho

As the story grew, it put down roots into the past and threw out unexpected branches . ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

For there is hope for a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its shoots will not cease. Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth branches like a young plant. But man dies, and is laid low; man breathes his last, and where is he? ~ Job

The first draft is just a skeleton-just bare bones. It's like the very first rehearsal of a play, where the director moves the actors around mechanically to get a feel of the action. ~ Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

hear him breathing behind me, loud and fast. "Are you all right, Four?"

"Are you human, Tris? Being up this high..." He gulps for air. "It doesn't scare you at all?"

I look over my shoulder at the ground. If I fall now, I will die. But I don't think I will fall. A gust of air presses against my left side, throwing my body weight to the right. I gasp and cling to the rungs, my balance shifting. Four's cold hand clamps around one of my hips, one of his fingers finding a strip of bare skin just under the hem of my T-shirt. He squeezes, steading me and pushing me gently to the left, restoring my balance. Now I can't breathe. I pause, staring at my hands, my mouth dry. I feel the ghost of where his hand was, his fingers long and narrow.

"You okay?" he asks quietly.

"Yes," I say, my voice strained. ~ Veronica Roth

Behold, when thy face is made bare, he that loved thee shall hate;
Thy face shall be no more fair at the fall of thy fate
For thy life shall fall as a leaf and be shed as the rain;
And the veil of thine head shall be grief, and the crown shall be pain. ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

Wisconsin was covered several inches deep in snow -- very beautiful, with light ice-floes on the lakes and rivers, and the bare trees and tall grasses like brown feathers against the snow. As the sun set it was reflected in the ice-covered lakes and the light snow -- but all the same I'm glad that most of my [lecture] tour has been in summer and autumn weather. As soon as winter comes there is an extraordinary effect of desolation in these miles upon miles of uninhabited prairies and hills. ~ Vera Brittain

I turn and walk back to the home shore whose tall yellow bluffs still bare of snow I can see nearly half a mile to the north. I find my way as I came, over dusty sandbars and by old channels, through shrubby stands of willows. The cold, late afternoon sun breaks through its cloud cover and streaks the grey sand mixed with snow.

As it has fallen steadily in the past weeks, the river has left behind many shallow pools, and these are now roofed with ice. When I am close to the main shore I come upon one of them, not far from the wooded bank. The light snow that fell a few days ago has blown away; the ice is polished and is thick enough to stand on. I can see to the bottom without difficulty, as through heavy dark glass.

I bend over, looking at the debris caught there in the clear, black depth of the ice: I see a few small sticks, and many leaves. There are alder leaves, roughly toothed and still half green; the more delicate birch leaves and aspen leaves, the big, smooth poplar leaves, and narrow leaves from the willows. They are massed or scattered, as they fell quietly or as the wind blew them into the freezing water. Some of them are still fresh in color, glowing yellow and orange; others are mottled with grey and brown. A few older leaves lie sunken and black on the silty bottom. Here and there a pebble of quartz is gleaming. But nothing moves there. It is a still, cold world, something like night, with its own fixed planets and stars. ~ John Meade Haines

And then, Kell watched with horror as his echo began to unfasten his tunic, one button at a time.
Kell gave a small, strangled laugh. "You've got to be kidding me." Lila only smiled and rolled the stone in her palm as the Kell that wasn't Kell slid slowly, teasingly, out of his tunic and stood there, bare chested. His fingers began to undo the belt at his waist.
"Okay, enough," said Kell. "Dispel it."
She sighed. "You're no fun."
"This isn't fun."
"Maybe not for you," she said with a smirk as the other Kell continued his striptease, sliding the belt from its loops. ~ V.E. Schwab

How much the pain grew inside him after Ossie died until the only way to deal with it was to throw himself into the fray. And the whole time, Vanessa's body was wrapped around him like she was the only one being strong as a shield while he stripped his life bare. ~ Melissa Cutler

He did not appear to be a very tall man; what I could see of legs seemed stumpy, though heavily muscled. His chest was broad and deep. Later I learned that he swam in the sea almost every morning. His thick strong arms were circled with leather wristbands and a bronze armlet above his left elbow that gleamed with polished onyx and lapis lazuli ... Puckered white scars from old wounds stood out against the dark skin of his arms, parting the black hairs like roads through a forest ... Odysseos wore a sleeveless tunic, his legs and feet bare, but he had thrown a lamb's fleece across his wide shoulders. His face was thickly bearded with dark curly hair that showed a trace of grey. His heavy mop of ringlets came down to his shoulders and across his forehead almost down to his black eyebrows. Those eyes were as grey as the sea outside on this rainy afternoon, probing, searching, judging. ~ Ben Bova

We are all leaves on different branches of the same tree. ~ Laura Lynne Jackson

The clash of monotheisms occurs when faith, which is mysterious and ineffable and which eschews all categorizations, becomes entangled in the gnarled branches of religion. ~ Reza Aslan

The bushes are thick and smell like unripe bananas. Stiff branches and monster-sized leaves block the path, but I walk forward anyway, praying I don't end up falling off a cliff because I can't see where I'm going. I fully comprehend right now why those explorers on TV walk through the jungle dramatically whacking at leaves with three-foot-long machetes. I never thought I'd need one in LA. ~ Rachel A. Marks

I'm most comfortable in my bare shorts without any underwear and a T-shirt if I'm home. I definitely like to sleep naked. I don't know how girls do it with thongs. Forget that! ~ Adam Rodriguez

I fail to see where it would have been more uplifting for them to have been inside a church listening to a man urging them to 'contemplate the sufferings of our Lord,' which is just another way of punishing one's self for nothing. It is very much better for them to climb the rocks in their bare clean feet and meet Him face to face in their search for the eternal in beauty. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

at man's height the mouth utters its cries, tosses forth its oracles, gives vent to its puns. To allow words to come to life, bare themselves, and show us by chance, for the space of a lightning bolt bony with dice, a few of our reasons for living and dying ~ Michel Leiris

Food was becoming more abstract, more aestheticized and compartmentalized-- and indeed, after kaiseki, who can ever go back to Burger King, or even a well-made gourmet sandwich? Instead of food, I longed for other things to swell my body and buoy its lines--- lists of ancient queens, the grave and stately names for the forgotten regions of the sea, the imagined words for desire in hermetic languages; food, on the other hand, was leaving me increasingly unmoved.... I grew thinner and thinner, streamlined, my blood nourished by ever-slighter molecules, some kind of pale elongated light running the length of my body, nightmares detouring it in the most starved, and so-lightly blue-black-bruised, corners of my flesh. In this state of non-health, every step became a performance, each stride an act of contrition, a question and an answer.... On the once-dry, now-flowering branches of my skeletal limbs, the words sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch were being invisibly but indelibly written. I was a festival of new senses.
~ Cynthia Gralla

To get girls he had figured out that all you had to do was talk little, the bare minimum, and listen much, without ever passing judgment. [Mister Gregory] ~ Sveva Casati Modignani

The Wedding Ring

Although the lamp was out, above its darkness
I saw the bright reflection of a flame.
My soul is bare, stripped to the purest bareness;
It has escaped, transcended all its bounds.

A man, I held desire my dearest treasure.
but I give it, myself, my sacred pain,
my prayers, my ecstasies - all these, O Father,
I give with love to You, most loving one.

And so the hour of limitless surrender
enclosed me in a cloak of flames like wings;
empowered me with the power of Your commandment,
and clothed me in Your holy veil of fire.

So let me stretch my hand out to my brother;
I look in the Face of You, the Fount of Life,
and in the radiance of transfigured torture
I bear my cross, light as a wedding ring. ~ Zinaida Gippius

He and Marten may be needles in a haystack, but straw by straw the hay is being taken away. It's only a matter of time, hours at most, before the floor is bare and the needles and right there in front of us. ~ Allan Folsom

Naughty King (A Sexy Manhattan Fairytale: Part One) (Valentine, Michelle A.) - Your Highlight on Location 149-151 | Added on Friday, March 20, 2015 4:11:48 PM But know this: I'm going to make your life a living hell while you're here. I'll have you dying to fuck my brains out or needing to walk away before you kill me with your own bare hands. Either way - you're fucked." ========== ~ Anonymous

We do what we have to, to live. Sometimes that means breaking a rocks heart, or pushing roots down into ground that screams againest the intrusion. As for you-how else should our children climb to the star's but up our branches? We made our peace with that fact a long time ago, that we would be used and maybe forgotten. So be it. What you learn in your climbing will make all the life on this planet greater, more precious. And when it comes to that, who writes the things written in your body, your life? And who reads?-Our cases aren't that much different? ~ Diane Duane

What is the shape of space? Is it flat, or is it bent? Is it nicely laid out, or is it warped and shrunken? Is it finite, or is it infinite? Which of the following does space resemble more: (a) a sheet of paper, (b) an endless desert, (c) a soap bubble, (d) a doughnut, (e) an Escher drawing, (f) an ice cream cone, (g) the branches of a tree, or (h) a human body? ~ Rudy Rucker

Standing on the bare ground,
my head bathed by the blithe air and uplifted into infinite space,
all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or parcel of God. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A cat is a regency gentleman
elegant of pose, exquisite of manner, with spotless linen and an enthusiasm for bare knuckle fights, rampaging love affairs, duels by moonlight and the singing of glees. He expects immaculate service from his domestic staff, and possesses a range of invective that would make a navy blanch. ~ Pam Brown

Jeremy, there are many things I would do to help you, but digging a hole in the wintry earth with my bare hands so that you can bury the corpse of a dog you've killed is not one of them. ~ Mark Corrigan

Hit it with anything. Bullets, bricks, your bare hands, harsh language. ~ M.R. Carey

It was another cabin with a stoop, and a dooryard beaten bare. ~ Marilynne Robinson

I use to drink every day without a care until I released the Demons that now I must bare ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich