Henry Williamson Quotes

..my feelings for the countryside…the beauty and the wildness, the enchantment of so much colour and life and warmth of the sun. Most people are restless in the country, they feel a vacancy, and want to get back to the shops and pavements and traffic; what they call life. Sometimes this war seems to have come directly out of that restlessness. ~ Henry Williamson

Regeneration can come only through a change of heart in the individual. ~ Henry Williamson

Would the day come when scientists accepted that the ancients, who gave personalities to all natural phenomena, had divined the actual truth? ~ Henry Williamson

Music comes from an icicle as it melts, to live again as spring water. ~ Henry Williamson

Peace in Europe can only come through union in one economic system. The United States of Europe are overdue. ~ Henry Williamson

Since childhood she had walked the Devon rivers with her father looking for flowers and the nests of birds, passing some rocks and trees as old friends, seeing a Spirit everywhere, gentle in thought to all her eyes beheld. ~ Henry Williamson

Of course when one opens a coffin, one destroys it. Nevertheless a delicate odour of cedarwood will come forth. ~ Miguel Serrano

When the soil's fertility is being conserved instead of raped, when village life is a social unity, when pride of craftsmanship returns, when everyone works for the sake of adding beauty and importance to life, when every river is clean and bright, and the proud words 'I serve' are in everyone's heart and purpose. Then my country will be good enough for me. ~ Henry Williamson

All the experience of the greatest city in the world could not withhold me. ~ Henry Williamson

Yet otters have not been hunters in water long enough for the habit to become an instinct. ~ Henry Williamson

The fundamental love that a man needs in his life, if he is to have steady spiritual ease is the love of place where he was a child, and first became aware of the light, and the objects which the light illumined ... It is the hurt child become man that seeks the wilderness, wherein to rebuild himself. ~ Henry Williamson

I must return to my old comrades of the Great War - to the brown, the treeless, the flat and grave-set plain of Flanders - to the rolling, heat-miraged downlands of the Somme - for I am dead with them, and they live in me again. ~ Henry Williamson

Life is big business, fornication, and death. Civilisation is ... the sterilising of truth ... Civilisation is world-citizenship and freedom from tradition, based on rootless eternal wandering in the mind that had nothing to lose and everything to gain including the whole world. ~ Henry Williamson

Education must be aimed at creating a wider imagination in the child, not at suppressing. The child's mind must be set free. ~ Henry Williamson

If salt ocean is the Great Mother from whom all life has sprung, fresh water is the Nurse entrusted to nourish life within her wanderings and around her wave-lapped margins. ~ Henry Williamson

The slow rhythm of the body, the insistent rhythm of the wit, were they becoming irreconcilable in modern civilisation? The sedentary life, frustration and irritability; work with the body, fatigue - and peace of mind. ~ Henry Williamson

The whole of the Universe is run by God, which is one vast Imagination, struggling against the almost irresistible brute forces of the cosmos. ~ Henry Williamson

He that respects himself is safe from others. He wears a coat of mail that none can pierce. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I can appreciate that," says Henry. He's adding to the list. I look over his shoulder. Sex Pistols, the Clash, Gang of Four, Buzzcocks, Dead Kennedys, X, the Mekons, the Raincoats, the Dead Boys, New Order, the Smiths, Lora Logic, the Au Pairs, Big Black, Pil, the Pixies, the Breeders, Sonic Youth ...
Henry, they're not going to be able to get any of that up here." He nods, and jots the phone number and address for Vintage Vinyl at the bottom of the sheet. "You do have a record player, right?"
My parents have one," Bobby says. Henry winces.
What do you really like?" I ask Jodie. I feel as though she's fallen out of the conversation during the male bonding ritual Henry and Bobby are conducting.
Prince," she admits. Henry and I let out a big Whoo! And I start singing "1999" as loud as I can, and Henry jumps up and we're doing a bump and grind across the kitchen. Laura hears us and runs off to put the actual record on and just like that, it's a dance party. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

I might like to believe that every day, every hour, every minute of every hour of every day with Henry was *not* the happiest time I ever knew. I might like to believe that I am remembering it that way only because the happiest time ever makes it a better story. Because that's all you have left after people are gone from you, some things and some stories. ~ Binnie Kirshenbaum

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

The story was certainly current at court, and in 1535 a Member of Parliament, Sir George Throckmorton, accused Henry to his face of 'meddling' with both Anne's mother and sister Mary.
'Never with the mother,' Henry said. ~ Alison Weir

Perhaps it was the fact of having no father that pushed him along the road toward the discovery of the self, which is the final process of identification with the world and the realization consequently of the uselessness of ties. ~ Henry Miller

Stop-motion is sort of twitchy; you can feel the life in it. If we were to remove that completely, there'd be no point in it. ~ Henry Selick

There it was, that dreaded word: love. I did not want to be loved, that was the burden. Unwanted love was the greatest burden of all. ~ Margaret George The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

When I am in situations where I break out of the pattern, it's hard on me. Once you get used to regular scripture study, you miss it if you don't have it. It's like food - you have to have it. I know that I need the scriptures like I need food. I don't miss a regular meal, and I don't miss regular scripture study. ~ Henry B. Eyring

Sound is a movement which is handed on from atom to atom in a gas through which the sound is passing, just as a chain of workers pass buckets of water to a fire. The quicker the workers move their hands and arms, the quicker the water moves. ~ William Henry Bragg

...it was actually the first time I've been shot at." "Congrats? It's New Orleans. I'm sure that won't be the last, though it doesn't sound like something to put on a cake." "Greetin' card either. ~ K.D. Williamson

A lot of Americans don't have a passport, never will have a passport. Not only will they not travel, they don't want to travel. ~ Henry Rollins

It is remarkable that almost all speakers and writers feel it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridgewater, thinking it better late than never, has provided for it in his will. It is a sad mistake. ~ Henry David Thoreau

No one has died from giving a bad presentation. Well, at least one person did, President William Henry Harrison, but he developed pneumonia after giving the longest inaugural address in U.S. history. The easy lesson from his story: keep it short, or you might die. ~ Scott Berkun

There can be no barrenness in full summer. The very sand will yield something. Rocks will have mosses, and every rift will have its wind-flower, and every crevice a leaf; while from the fertile soil will be reared a gorgeous troop of growths, that will carry their life in ten thousand forms, but all with praise to God. And so it is when the soul knows its summer. Love redeems its weakness, clothes its barrenness, enriches its poverty, and makes its very desert to bud and blossom as the rose. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

When sometimes I am reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs, so many of them - as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand or walk upon - I think that they deserve some credit for not having all committed suicide long ago. I, ~ Henry David Thoreau

But if you find yourself experiencing a desire to seek God, we have great news for you: God is already at work in you. ~ Henry T. Blackaby

The act of dreaming, like a draught of fresh air in an abandoned house, situates the furniture of the mind in a new ambiance. ~ Henry Miller

Death to a good man is his release from the imprisonment of this world, and his departure to the enjoyments of another world. ~ Matthew Henry

So far as my experience goes, travelers generally exaggerate the difficulties of the way. Like most evil, the difficulty is imaginary; for what's the hurry? ~ Henry David Thoreau

Never make decisions you will live to regret later in the near future. ~ Abdulazeez Henry Musa

It would have been absurd of him to trace into ramifications the effect of the ribbon from which Miss Gostrey's trinket depended, had he not for the hour, at the best, been so given over to uncontrolled perception. What was it but an uncontrolled perception that his friend's velvet band somehow added, in her appearance, to the value of every other item – to that of her smile and of the way she carried her head, to that of her complexion, of her lips, her teeth, her eyes, her hair? What, certainly, had a man conscious of a man's work in the world to do with red velvet bands? He would n't for anything have so exposed himself as to tell Miss Gostrey how much he liked hers, yet he had none the less not only caught himself in the act – frivolous, no doubt, idiotic, and above all unexpected – of liking it: he had in addition taken it as a starting point for fresh backward, fresh forward, fresh lateral flights. ~ Henry James

Whenever any great song or album gets lost in the ether, someone is deprived of the joy of hearing it, and the great effort of those who created and recorded the work is damaged. ~ Henry Rollins

Walking humbly, you are more of a man than you were when you walked proudly. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Make prayer a habit you can't live without. ~ Abdulazeez Henry Musa

Wherever you have planted a seed, I am prepared to expect wonders. ~ Henry David Thoreau

All he knew was that the rage was still there, eating inside him, not with the slow stealth of a cancer, but with the rapid, careless ravening of a weasel gnawing at his entrails, or the constant alimentary torment that drives on the shark to his incessant feeding until only death gives him rest. ~ Chet Williamson

Our relation, all round, exists
it's a reality, and a very good one; we're mixed up, so to speak, and it's too late to change it. We must live IN it and with it ~ Henry James

And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part. ~ O. Henry

All sense of hearing and of sight enfold in the serene delight and quietude of sleep. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And here in the dust and dirt, O here, the lilies of His love appear. ~ Henry Vaughan

Certainly, the emergence of Enterprise Rent-A-Car and the Taylor family has been one of the great things that has happened in St. Louis. We are no longer headquarters for McDonnell Douglas, although the McDonnell family is still very much involved in our community. ~ William Henry Danforth

The King saw them with no common satisfaction, expressing his desire in no particular to have yt Stellar fish engraven and printed. We wish very much, Sir, yt you could procure for us a particular description of yesd Fish, viz. whether it be common there; what is observable in it when alive; what colour it then hath; what kind of motion in the water; what use it maketh of all that curious workmanship, wch Nature hath adorn'd it with? ~ Henry Oldenburg

Take things more easily. Don't ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don't question your conscience so much - it will get out of tune, like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. Don't try so much to form your character - it's like trying to pull open a rosebud. Live as you like best, and your character will form itself. ~ Henry James

I never thought I was right for TV or that TV was right for me. ~ Henry Rollins

I consider any gun that can chamber a round and send a projectile down its barrel at a high rate of speed into my body - causing me injury or death - to be an assault weapon. ~ Henry Rollins

I wouldn't want to roll the dice on Kabul by myself, because I really think getting killed is definitely a possibility there. A very good possibility. ~ Henry Rollins

But you're absolutely sure we're right?' The question carried an intensity absent from the previous conversation. 'I remember talking with Henry Kissinger,' she continued, 'and he came up and said 'What's the matter, don't you think we're going to be re-elected? You were wrong on Haldeman.' And he seemed upset and said something about it being terribly, terribly unfair.'

If there's anyone who has not been wronged, Woodward said, it is Bob Haldeman. It was the most definite statement Woodward made during lunch.

'Oh, really,' said Mrs. Graham. 'I'm glad to hear you say that, because I was worried.' She paused. 'You've reassured me. You really have.' She looked at Woodward. Her face said, Do better.

-- Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward ~ Carl Bernstein

I think that American salesmanship can be a weapon more powerful than the atomic bomb. ~ Henry J. Kaiser

The Indian's intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was exhausted. ~ Henry David Thoreau

English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets - Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included - breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. ...
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature?
...
I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this yearning for the Wild.
...
The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. ~ Henry David Thoreau