Fonnesbeck Nursery Quotes

In the old stories, despite the impossibility of the incidents, the interest is always real and human. The princes and princesses fall in love and marry
nothing could be more human than that. Their lives and loves are crossed by human sorrows ... The hero and heroine are persecuted or separated by cruel stepmothers or enchanters; they have wanderings and sorrows to suffer; they have adventures to achieve and difficulties to overcome; they must display courage, loyalty and address, courtesy, gentleness and gratitude. Thus they are living in a real human world, though it wears a mythical face, though there are giants and lions in the way. The old fairy tales which a silly sort of people disparage as too wicked and ferocious for the nursery, are really 'full of matter,' and unobtrusively teach the true lessons of our wayfaring in a world of perplexities and obstructions. ~ Andrew Lang

At length, when I considered it, I realized that the best of my actions were small things. Picking flowers and cooking food for my mother when she had been unwell, spending an afternoon with the children, sending money to my sister or kissing Henry's tiny head as he slept in the nursery before I left. I thought of every detail and afterwards I felt better. Hellfire and brimstone have never appealed to me and I admit I become easily confused thinking of right and wrong. But I do understand kindness. ~ Sara Sheridan

The Ballad of Lucy Jordan
The morning sun touched lightly on the eyes of Lucy Jordan
In a white suburban bedroom in a white suburban town
As she lay there 'neath the covers dreaming of a thousand lovers
Till the world turned to orange and the room went spinning round.

At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never
Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.
So she let the phone keep ringing and she sat there softly singing
Little nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair.

Her husband, he's off to work and the kids are off to school,
And there are, oh, so many ways for her to spend the day.
She could clean the house for hours or rearrange the flowers
Or run naked through the shady street screaming all the way.

At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never
Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair
So she let the phone keep ringing as she sat there softly singing
Pretty nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair.

The evening sun touched gently on the eyes of Lucy Jordan
On the roof top where she climbed when all the laughter grew too loud
And she bowed and curtsied to the man who reached and offered her his hand,
And he led her down to the long white car that waited past the crowd.

At the age of thirty-seven she knew she'd found forever
As she rode along t ~ Marianne Faithfull

You are lovable. Can you show me any baby in any nursery who isn't priceless? No. There's no such thing as a worthless newborn. And the essential value that was born into brand-new-baby you can never be extinguished. This means that even if you think you're being absolutely honest, believing yourself to be anything other than astonishing, incomparable, and infinitely precious makes you a habitual liar. ~ Martha Beck

Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater,
Had a wife and couldn't keep her.
Of course you cannot keep a wife-
Everyone's got to live their life! ~ Kristen McKee

If the people in our congregation become other-directed instead of self-directed in the adoption of unwanted children, they are going to be other-directed instead of self-directed in their verbal witness to people in their community. On the other hand, the same self-interest that sears over the joy of birth will sear over the joy of the new birth. The numbness to earthly adoption is easily translated to numbness to spiritual adoption. But if people in our churches learn not to grumble at the blessing of minivans filled with children - some of whom don't look anything alike - they're going to learn not to grumble at the blessing of a congregation filling with new people, some of whom don't look anything alike. If our churches learn to rejoice in newness of life in the church nursery, they'll more easily rejoice at newness of life in the church baptistery, and vice versa. ~ Russell D. Moore

Rachel, who before her marriage had been a promising pianist, and now sat with the baby on her knee, picking out nursery tunes with one finger. Nev said it wouldn't be like that, and she believed him - or at least she believed he meant it - but it would, because marriage changed everything. It had its own logic, its own laws, and they were independent of the desires and intentions of those who entered into it. She felt a moment's pleasure in the cynicism of this perception, though God knows it was depressing enough. ~ Pat Barker

Presently Arnaud folded the paper napkin, in the same careful way he always folded a table napkin, and said I ought to follow Chantal's suggestion and get a job in teaching a nursery school. (So Maman had mentioned that to Mme. Pons, too) I should teach until I had enough working time behind me to claim a pension. It would be good for me in my old age to have an income of my own. Anything could happen. He could be killed in a train crash or called up for a war. My father could easily be ruined in a lawsuit and die covered with debts. There were advantages to teaching, such as long holidays and reduced train fares.
"How long would it take?" I said. "Before I could stop teaching and get my pension."
"Thirty-five years," said Arnaud. "I'll ask my mother. She had no training, either, but she taught private classes. All you need is a decent background and some recommendations. ~ Mavis Gallant

I go downstairs and the books blink at me from the shelves. Or stare. In a trick of the light, a row of them seems to shift very slightly, like a curtain blown by the breeze through an open window. Red is next to blue is next to cream is adjacent to beige. But when I look again, cream is next to green is next to black. A tall book shelters a small book, a huge Folio bullies a cowering line of Quartos. A child's nursery rhyme book does not have the language in which to speak to a Latin dictionary. Chaucer does not know the words in which Henry James communicates but here they are forced to live together, forever speechless. ~ Susan Hill

So the dubbed conceit
Played nursery of cheat
To clear the I of sleet ... ~ Allen Tate

Mr. and Mrs. Darling and Nana rushed into the nursery too late. The birds were flown ~ J.M. Barrie

A 5 yr. old's definition of nursery school: "A place where they teach children who hit, not to hit, and children who don't hit, to hit back." ~ James E. Myers

You've always been one of many," she said brutally. "There are dozens of us Howard girls, all with good breeding, all well taught, all pretty, all young, all fertile. They can throw one after another on the table and see if one is lucky. It's no real loss to them if one after another is taken up and then thrown aside. There's always another Howard girl conceived, there's always another whore in the nursery. You were one of many before you were even born. If he does not cleave to you then you go back to William, they find another Howard girl to tempt him, and the dance starts all over again. ~ Philippa Gregory

This little piggy went to Hades
This little piggy stayed home
This little piggy ate raw and steaming human flesh
This little piggy violated virgins
And this little piggy clambered over a heap of dead bodies to get to the top ~ Neil Gaiman

Tradition in the nursery has acted as a severe editor. ~ Walter Jerrold

Change is the nursery Of musicke, joy, life and eternity. ~ John Donne

She felt, with her hand on the nursery door, that community of feeling with other people which emotion gives as if the walls of partition had become so thin that practically (the feeling was one of relief and happiness) it was all one stream ... ~ Virginia Woolf

Wee, wee, wee, wee, all the way home," Hazlit quoted the nursery rhyme. Portmaine paused before sipping his own drink. "Did Maggie Windham strike you on the head?" "No. She hired me, and it took me half my walk home to figure out what she's truly about." "She wants to have her way with your tender young flesh," Portmaine suggested. "You're overdue to get your wick dipped, you know." "Your concern is touching, Archer." "You always get short-tempered when you've neglected your romping. Maybe you should go a round or two with Lady Norcross." "Maybe I should find a partner who can think beyond his next swiving." "I like swiving." Portmaine pushed off the desk and refilled his drink, then came to rest on the sofa a couple of feet from Hazlit. "It's normal to like swiving. Lady Norcross apparently understands this. You used to understand this. I certainly understand it. More brandy?" "You're outpacing me," Hazlit said, smiling slightly at Portmaine's predictable simplicity. "And ~ Grace Burrowes

Ellen came out of the nursery from checking on Grace and said, "I love her so much it's just ... " "Excruciating," supplied her mother. "I know. It doesn't really get any better. You just learn to live with it. ~ Liane Moriarty

Anyway," Beau - clearly eager to change the subject - pointed down the hall, "let's talk about the color Jethro decided to paint the second bedroom."

"What's wrong with green?" Jethro grinned slyly. His poker face had always sucked.

"Nothing is wrong with green, but that's a very odd shade of green. What was it called again?"

"Sweet pea," Duane supplied flatly for his twin. "It was called sweet pea and I believe it was labeled as nursery paint."

"Nursery paint, huh? You have something to tell us, Jethro?" Beau teased, mirroring Jethro's grin. "No news to share? No big bombshell to drop?"

Jethro glanced at me. "I can't believe you didn't tell them yet."

"Why would I? I'm good at keeping secrets." I shoved my hands in my pockets, making sure I looked innocent. "And I'm not the one who's pregnant."

"I knew it!" Beau attacked Jethro, pulling him into a quick man-hug.

Jethro's grin widened to as large as I've ever seen it. "How could you possibly know?"

Duane clapped Jethro on the back as soon as Beau released him. "Because you've always wanted kids, and weren't one to futz around once you made up your mind."

"You should have painted it vomit green, to disguise all the baby vomit you're going to have to deal with," Beau suggested.

"And shit brown," Duane added. "Don't forget about the shit."

"Y'all are the best." Jethro placed his hands over his chest ~ Penny Reid

Rock City begins as an ornamental garden on a mountain side: its visitors walk a path that takes them through rocks, over rocks, between rocks. They throw corn into a deer enclosure, cross a hanging bridge, and peer out through a-quarter-a-throw binoculars at a view that promises them seven states on the rare sunny days when the air is perfectly clear. And from there, like a drop into some strange hell, the path takes visitors, millions upon millions of them every year, down into caverns, where they stare at black-lit dolls arranged into nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale dioramas. When they leave, they leave bemused, uncertain of why they came, of what they have seen, of whether they had a good time or not. ~ Neil Gaiman

Not to be, but to seem, virtuous - it is a formula whose utility we all discovered in the nursery. ~ C.S. Lewis

I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece. ~ Bobby McFerrin

Fate has always been the realm of the gods, though even the gods are subject to it.
In ancient Greek mythology, the Three Sisters of Fate spin out a person's destiny within three nights of their birth. Imagine your newborn child in his nursery. It's dark and soft and warm, somewhere between two and four a.m., one of those hours that belong exclusively to the newly born or the dying.
The first sister - Clotho - appears next to you. She's a maiden, young and smooth. In her hands she holds a spindle, and on it she spins the thrads of your child's life.
Next to her is Lachesis, older and more matronly than her sister. In her hands, she holds the rod used to mesure the thread of life. The length and destiny of your child's life is in her hands.
Finally we have Atropos - old, haggardly. Inevitable. In her hands she holds the terrible shears she'll use to cut the thread of your child's life. She determines the time and manner of his or her death.
Imagine the awesome and awful sight of these three sisters pressed together, presiding over his crib, dermining his future.
In modern times, the sisters have largely disappeared from the collective consiousness, but the idea of Fate hasn't. Why do we still believe? Does itmake tragedy more bearable to believe that we ourselves had no hand in it, that we couldn't have prevented it? It was always ever thus.
Things happen for a reason, says Natasha's mother. What she means is Fate has a Reason and, though yo ~ Nicola Yoon

I don't cook anything fancy. Sheba's appetite isn't up to much and I've never been one for sauces. We eat nursery food mainly. Beans on toast, Welsh rarebit, fish fingers. Sheba leans against the oven and watches me while I work. At a certain point, she usually asks for wine. I have tried to get her to wait until she's eaten something, but she gets very scratchy when I do that, so these days I tend to give in straightaway and pour her a small glass from the carton in the fridge. You choose your battles. Sheba is a bit of a snob about drink and she keeps whining at me to get a grander sort. 'Something in a bottle, at least', she says. But I continue to buy the cartons. we are on a tight budget these days. And for all her carping, Sheba doesn't seem to have too much trouble knocking back the cheap stuff. ~ Zoe Heller

He believed that a burger joint ought to look like a join, not like a surgery, not like a nursery with pictures of clowns and funny animals on walls, not like a bamboo pavilion on a tropical island, not like a glossy plastic replica of a 1950s diner that never actually existed. If you were going to eat charred cow smothered in cheese, with a side order of potato strips made as crisp as ancient papyrus by immersion in boiling oil, and if you were going to wash it all down with either satisfying quantities of icy beer or a milkshake containing the caloric equivalent of an entire roasted pig, then this fabulous consumption ought to occur in an ambience that virtually screamed guilty pleasure, if not sin. ~ Dean Koontz

For example, Adria came home from nursery school one day with a picture she was excited to show off. She immediately interrupted something important her mother was doing and wanted her mom to celebrate her picture with her. Another time, her mother might ~ Carol Tuttle

Generations of British writers would look up to Roget as a kindred soul who could offer both emotional as well as intellectual sustenance. In the stage directions to Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie includes an homage to Roget: The night nursery of the Darling family, which is the scene of our opening Act, is at the top of a rather depressed street in Bloomsbury. We might have a right to place it where we will, and the reason Bloomsbury is chosen is that Mr. Roget once lived there. So did we in the days when his Thesaurus was our only companion in London; and we whom he has helped to wend our way through life have always wanted to pay him a little compliment. For Barrie, Roget's masterpiece was synonymous with virtue itself. To describe the one saving grace of the play's villain, Captain Hook, Barrie adds, "The man is not wholly evil--he has a Thesaurus in his cabin. ~ Joshua Kendall

Time was also (as an infant) I knew no Latin; but this I learned without fear or suffering, by mere observation, amid the caresses of my nursery and jests of friends, smiling and sportively encouraging me. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

My dad was an actor, and my older sister is an actress, and so I very much remember thinking, "Well, of course I'll do that as well." But I never imagined myself as an actor who would be in films. I always only thought of myself being in a play or a musical and maybe the odd episode of [U.K. '80s TV drama] Casualty. My backup plan was to do something with children, to start a nursery school or work with underprivileged kids. And I still dream of maybe doing that in some way. I've always got children in my house, always. ~ Kate Winslet

If anyone else comes after your friends, you know what you have to do. Crush them. Make them an example that no one will forget. Hellequin's turned into a nursery rhyme to be told to naughty children - you need to make sure it's the adults who start checking under the bed. ~ Steve McHugh

A gardener is asked to plant five rows of cherry trees with four trees in each row. His employer gives him exactly enough money to buy twenty trees from the local nursery, and jokingly tells him that he can keep whatever change there is. On the way to the nursery, the gardener realizes that it if he buys just ten trees, it will still be possible to plant five rows with four trees in each, and he can keep half the money he has been given. How does he plan to plant the trees? ~ Peter Keyne

Many Christians, including BioLogos, like to throw out the "you can't take the Bible literally" argument. They think it is the ultimate zinger that will end any debate in their favor. But if we shouldn't take the Bible literally, why should we believe God is real in the literal sense? Perhaps God is a metaphor also. Maybe God is really a metaphor for nature or chance. Heaven forbid! However, BioLogos insists on having it both ways: God is literally true but the Bible is not. That's like saying Mother Goose is literally true but her nursery rhymes are not. ~ G.M. Jackson

Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable. ~ Neil Gaiman

Wherever is found what is called a paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

I always knew that Neil Kinnock belonged in the economic nursery. Now, God help us we've got twins. ~ Michael Heseltine

We left the nursery in silence, Ma smoking a roll-up, looking like she hadn't slept in a week or maybe like she had slept for a whole week. When the nursery was just a grubby finger smudge behind us Ma looked down at me and said in her poshed-up telephone voice: "Will you speak to Janie about swearing? Fuckin' busybody!"

I laughed and swung our linked hands.

"Aye, fuckin' busybody."

Pleas of laughter escaped us and spiraled up into the hot, blue Scottish sky. We laughed all the way home ~ Kerry Hudson

A nursery rhyme shapes your bones and nerves, and it shapes your mind. They are powerful, nursery rhymes, and immensely old, and not toys, even though they are for children." "But they make no sense!" Summer protested "Ah, well," said Ben. "Sometimes sense hides behind walls. You must find a window and stick your head right in before you can see it. ~ Katherine Catmull

He had never been interested in stories at any age, and had never quite understood the basic concept. He'd never read a work of fiction all the way through. He did remember, as a small boy, being really annoyed at the depiction of Hickory Dickory Dock in a rag book of nursery rhymes because the clock in the drawing was completely wrong for the period. ~ Terry Pratchett

Ask me again if I want kids," he says.
"Why? Are you changing your answer?"
"I am. Ask me again."
"Do you want kids?"
He smiles at me. "I only want kids if I can have them with you. I want to have lots of kids with you. I want to watch your belly grow and I want to watch you hold our baby for the first time and I want to watch you cry because you're so deliriously happy. And at night I want to stand outside the nursery and watch you rock our babies to sleep while you sing to them. I can't think of anything I want more than to make you a mother. ~ Colleen Hoover

My abortion was a normal medical procedure that got tangled up in my bad relationship, my internalized fatphobia, my fear of adulthood, my discomfort with talking about sex; and one that, because of our culture's obsession with punishing female sexuality and shackling women to the nursery and the kitchen, I was socialized to approach with shame and describe only in whispers. But the procedure itself was the easiest part. Not being able to have one would have been the real trauma. ~ Lindy West

Snow White one, Snow White two,
Sorrow is coming out for you.
Snow White three, Snow White four,
Black as night, go lock your door.
Snow White five, Snow White six,
Blood red lips and crucifix
Snow White seven, Snow White eight,
White as snow, don't stay out late.
Snow White Nine, Snow White ten,
Snow White now killed snow white then ~ Cameron Jace

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of Communism. All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this specter; Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German police spies.
Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as Communistic by its opponents in power? Where the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of Communism, against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?
Two things result from this fact.
I. Communism is already acknowledged by all European powers to be in itself a power.
II. It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the Specter of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself. ~ Karl Marx

We're doing a partial green nursery and trying as hard as we can to do as much organic stuff for our nursery as we can. ~ Lisa Ling

A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me."
He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet.
Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse."
Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place.
Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win? ~ Mette Ivie Harrison

Hollywood and Disneyland are the legacy of Europe's cultural imperialism. We gave them nursery rhymes and they gave back film. Televised riots are as American as Barbie/ Big Macs. Tomorrow the riots will be forgotten but Mickey mouse will still be there. Welcome to Disneyland. ~ Richey Edwards

And finally, I've always drawn a great deal of moral comfort from Humpty Dumpty. The part I like the best? 'All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.' That's because there is no Humpty Dumpty, and there is no God. None, not one, no God, never was. ~ George Carlin

Towns were the nursery of freedom. ~ Lord Acton