Hope Mirrlees Quotes

Besides, there was that foolish feeling of his that reality was not solid, and that facts were only plastic toys; or, rather, that they were poisonous plants, which you need not pluck unless you choose. And, even if you do pluck them, you can always fling them from you and leave them to wither on the ground. He ~ Hope Mirrlees

All the world over we are very conscious of the trees in spring, and watch with delight how the network of twigs on the wych-elms is becoming spangled with tiny puce flowers, like little beetles caught in a spider's web, and how little lemon-colored buds are studding the thorn. While as to the long red-gold buds of the horse-chestnuts - they come bursting out with a sort of a visual bang. And now the beech is hatching its tiny perfectly-formed leaves ~ Hope Mirrlees

But these are sad times, the 'prentices wanting to be masters, and every little tradesman wanting to be a Senator, and every dirty little urchin thinking he can give
impudence to his betters! ~ Hope Mirrlees

A bad conscience makes a very good ghost. ~ Hope Mirrlees

Was it possible that Ranulph, too, was a real person, a person inside whose mind things happened? He had thought that he himself was the only real person in a field of human flowers. For Master Nathaniel that was a moment of surprise, triumph, tenderness, alarm. ~ Hope Mirrlees

At last they settled down to their long watch - squatting round the fire, and laughing for sheer love of adventure as good campaigners should; for were there not marching towards them some eight dark hours equipped with who could say what curious weapons from the rich arsenal of night and day? ~ Hope Mirrlees

The law plays fast and loose with reality- and no one really believes it. ~ Hope Mirrlees

You are, so to speak, a bad sailor, and the motion of life makes you brain-sick. ~ Hope Mirrlees

There had always been something rather brutal about (..._) common sense. ~ Hope Mirrlees

It is never safe to classify the souls of one's neighbors; one is apt, in the long run, to be proved a fool. You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait
a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. ~ Hope Mirrlees

Mad folks are often as dangerous as bad ones. ~ Hope Mirrlees

To the imaginative, it is always something of an adventure to walk down a pleached alley. You enter boldly enough, but soon you find yourself wishing you had stayed outside - it is not air that you are breathing, but silence, the almost palpable silence of trees. And is the only exit that small round hole in the distance? Why, you will never be able to squeeze through that! You must turn back ... too late! The spacious portal by which you entered has in its turn shrunk to a small round hole. ~ Hope Mirrlees

Pride and resentment are not indigenous to the human heart; and perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we take such pains to make them thrive. ~ Hope Mirrlees

The Written Word is a Fairy, as mocking and elusive as Willy Wisp, speaking lying words to us in a feigned voice. So let all readers of books take warning! ~ Hope Mirrlees

It was as if the future were a treacly adhesive fluid that had been spilt all over the present, so that everything he touched made his fingers too sticky to be of the slightest use. ~ Hope Mirrlees

A class struggling to assert itself, to discover its true shape, which lies hidden, as does the statue in the marble, in the hard, resisting material of life itself, be different from the same class when chisel and mallet have been laid aside, and it has actually become what it had so long been struggling to be. ~ Hope Mirrlees

And there you sit, gloating over what you have done, as if you were a martyr or a public benefactor
as complacent and smug and misunderstood as a princess from the moon forced to herd goats! ~ Hope Mirrlees

A house with old furniture has no need of ghosts to be haunted. ~ Hope Mirrlees

Poetry and visions, springing as they do from an ever-present sense of mortality, might easily appear morbid to the sturdy
common sense of a burgher-class in the making. ~ Hope Mirrlees

He says to me, Ranulph, he says ... that the past will never come again, but that we must remember that the past is made of the present, and that the present is always here. ~ Hope Mirrlees

I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things
like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)
I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.
Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't! ~ Terri Windling

In [man's] mouth is ever the bittersweet taste of life and death, unknown to the trees. Without respite he is dragged by the two wild horses, memory and hope; and he is tormented by a secret that he can never tell. ~ Hope Mirrlees

Let a thing be but a sort of punctual surprise, like the first cache of violets in March, let it be delicate, painted and gratuitous, hinting that the Creator is solely occupied with aesthetic considerations, and combines disparate objects simply because they look so well together, and that thing will admirably fill the role of a flower. ~ Hope Mirrlees

The cattle crouched round them in soft shadowy clumps, placidly munching, and dreaming with wide-open eyes. The narrow zone of colour created by the firelight was like the planet Earth - a little freak of brightness in a universe of impenetrable shadows ~ Hope Mirrlees

What's the use of crying, and retching, and belching, all day long, like your lady downstairs? Life has its sad side, and we must take the rough with the smooth. Why, maids have died on their marriage eve, or, what's worse, bringing their first baby into the world, and the world's wagged on all the same. Life's sad enough, in all conscience, but there's nothing to be frightened about in it or to turn one's stomach. I was country-bred, and as my old granny used to say, "There's no clock like the sun and no calendar like the stars." And why? Because it gets one used to the look of Time. There's no bogey from over the hills that scares one like Time. But when one's been used all one's life to seeing him naked, as it were, instead of shut up in a clock, like he is in Lud, one learns that he is as quiet and peaceful as an old ox dragging the plough. And to watch Time teaches one to sing. They say the fruit from over the hills makes one sing. I've never tasted so much as a sherd of it, but for all that I can sing. ~ Hope Mirrlees

And then the disquieting thought would come to him that perhaps after all epitaphs are not altogether to be trusted. ~ Hope Mirrlees

It was not so much a modification of the darkness, as a sigh of relief, a slight relaxing of tension, so that one felt, rather than saw, that the night had suddenly lost a shade of its density ... ah! yes; there! between these two shoulders of the hills she is bleeding to death. ~ Hope Mirrlees

Then the trees, after their long silence, began to talk again, in yellow and red. And the days began to shrink under one's very eyes. ~ Mirrlees, Hope

You should regard each meeting with a friend as a sitting he is unwillingly giving you for a portrait - a portrait that, probably, when you or he die, will still be unfinished. And, though this is an absorbing pursuit, nevertheless, the painters are apt to end pessimists. For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich may be the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with ever modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. And, finally, it is your own face that you are staring at in terror, as in a mirror by candlelight, when all the house is still. ~ Hope Mirrlees

each variety of humor is a sort of totem, making at once for unity and separation. Its votaries it unites into a closely-knit brotherhood, but it separates them sharply off from all the rest of the world. ~ Hope Mirrlees

There is not a single homely thing that, looked at from a certain angle, does not become fairy. ~ Hope Mirrlees

Sentimentality is a quality that rarely has the slightest influence on action. ~ Hope Mirrlees

And there were ruined castles covered with ivy - the badge of the old order, clinging to its own; and into the ivy doves dived, seeming to leave in their wake a trail of amethyst, just as a clump of bottle-green leaves is shot with purple by the knowledge that it hides violets. ~ Hope Mirrlees

And the man who remains calm inevitably takes command of a situation. ~ Hope Mirrlees

As Master Nathaniel jogged leisurely along his thoughts turned to the Farmer Gibberty, who many a time must have jogged along this path, in just such a way, and seen and heard the very same things that he was seeing and hearing now.
Yes, the Farmer Gibberty had once been a real living man, like himself. And so had millions of others, whose names he had never heard. And one day he himself would be a prisoner, confined between the walls of other people's memory. And then he would cease even to be that, and become nothing but a few words cut in stone. What would these words be, he wondered. ~ Hope Mirrlees

Reason I know, is only a drug, and, as such, its effects are never permanent. But, like the juice of the poppy, it often gives a temporary relief. ~ Hope Mirrlees

A relationship that has become artificial, and connected, on one side, with a sense of duty rather than with spontaneous affection, is always an uncomfortable one. ~ Hope Mirrlees

To me, the Sherlock Holmes stories are about a great friendship. Without Watson, Holmes might well have burnt out on cocaine long ago. I hope the series shows how important friendship is. ~ Jeremy Brett

The challenge today is to prod the world to face up to women locked in brothels and teenage girls with fistulas curled up on the floor of isolated huts. We hope to see a broad movement emerge to battle gender inequality around the world and to push for education and opportunities for girls around the world. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof

But confidence bred confidence, that's what her dad had always told her back in the days when she'd been a skinny, flat-chested nerd girl with a boy-intimidating vocabulary and no hope of being asked to the prom. ~ Megan Hart

The Woman Poet // Die Dichterin

You hold me now completely in your hands.

My heart beats like a frightened little bird's
Against your palm. Take heed! You do not think
A person lives within the page you thumb.
To you this book is paper, cloth, and ink,

Some binding thread and glue, and thus is dumb,
And cannot touch you (though the gaze be great
That seeks you from the printed marks inside),
And is an object with an object's fate.

And yet it has been veiled like a bride,
Adorned with gems, made ready to be loved,
Who asks you bashfully to change your mind,
To wake yourself, and feel, and to be moved.

But still she trembles, whispering to the wind:
"This shall not be." And smiles as if she knew.
Yet she must hope. A woman always tries,
Her very life is but a single "You . . ."

With her black flowers and her painted eyes,
With silver chains and silks of spangled blue.
She knew more beauty when a child and free,
But now forgets the better words she knew.

A man is so much cleverer than we,
Conversing with himself of truth and lie,
Of death and spring and iron-work and time.
But I say "you" and always "you and I."

This book is but a girl's dress in rhyme,
Which can be rich and red, or poor and pale,
Which may be wrinkled, but with gentle hands,
And only may be torn by loving nails.

Gertrud Kolmar

There was no one to be seen so she gave in freely to her sobs as she made her way home, pressed her arms against her stomach; the pain lodged in there like an ill-tempered foetus.
Let a person in and he hurts you.
There was a reason why she kept her relationships brief. Don't let them in. Once they're inside they have more potential to hurt you. Comfort yourself. You can live with the anguish as long as it only involves yourself. As long as there is no hope. ~ John Ajvide Lindqvist

Night always turns to day again as long as the sun shall rise, so shall it be for darkened dreams grown pale from compromise ~ Tracy L. Conway

We will all suffer before we win these Games, but no team here will break us. For what is Hope if not unbreakable? And what is Hope if not the natural extension of suffering, that which eventually overcomes? ~ Amanda Bouchet

The Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion primarily because it is the most extended and definitive witness we have of the Lord Jesus Christ
of our Alpha and Omega, the Key Stone, the Chief Cornerstone of the eternal gospel. Christ is our salvation, and the Book of Mormon declares that message unequivocally to the world. In its message of faith in Christ, hope in Christ, and charity in Christ, the Book of Mormon is God's "new covenant" to his children
for the last time. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

If you walk away from this, from us, my only hope is that you look back twenty years from now and remember that there is no person on earth more deserving to be cherished than you. ~ Michelle Hughes

Preserving, protecting, and restoring our waters are tasks for many lifetimes, and sometimes the effort can seem overwhelming. But as long as we stay connected with all of the many, many blessings that water provides, and continue to keep that love in the forefront of our minds and hearts, as long as we remind ourselves to hope, then our stories will help connect others to water and encourage them to do what they can to help care for this beautiful Blue Marble world. ~ Wallace J. Nichols

You'll pay," she said stonily. "You won't be like this by this time tomorrow."
"Bored and pissed off? God, I hope not. ~ MaryJanice Davidson

It is two years since I emerged from depression and I no longer want myself dead. I want myself alive. I am no longer my own enemy. Depression is the enemy. The monster lives at my gate. My hope is that, with sufficient effort and luck, I can keep it there. ~ Sally Brampton

Hope is a motivation for pressing ahead, a sustained effort and a joy that the promised will be fulfilled at the right time. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Don't judge, just love. ~ Debasish Mridha

Hope. Hope is for fools. ~ Morgan Rhodes

What a noise we'll make among the drab and dull, how we'll ... wait, I want more green. I hope I did not imply I only wanted your colors. We can't turn a cold shoulder to green, and blue, and purple, for the sake of all ordered things, hour can you dismiss purple? Call [him] back and tell him off my need of purple! ~ Shannon Hale

I hope I don't just do the exact same thing my whole life. I also feel like it's really hard to make comedy. It's almost impossible for comedy filmmakers and directors to stay relevant as they get older. ~ David Wain

God sometimes moves mountains one pebble at a time. ~ Rebecca Barlow Jordan

You'll be sorry," he said unpleasantly.
"I hope so," Alabama answered. "I like paying for the things I do-it makes me feel square with the world". ~ Zelda Fitzgerald

Even amongst fierce flames/ The golden lotus can be planted. ~ Bhagavid-Gita

The doctor looked my body over. I said: Is there any hope? He said: Yes. Reincarnation. ~ Phyllis Diller

I looked out across the Ocean, and determined to drown myself.
I was up to my chin when the shout came, and I will never forget it. Never. For it seems to me that any hope in life is such a shout; a voice that answers the silent place of despair. It is silence that most needs an answering - when I can no longer speak, hear me. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Call it "a wonder" or "a mystery" and you have an excuse to never try understanding it - an excuse to not take responsibility for it. People knew about love no more than they knew about Science, but at least most did not jump into Science headstrong, with the hope that they would figure it out as they went, or that some "mysterious" inborn trait would take care of it. ~ Lynna Merrill

We don't plant trees like we used to. A yard without trees is a yard without a future. It might as well be a cemetery. ~ Brenda Sutton Rose

Catherine Marshall writes, "Resignation is barren of faith in the love of God ... . Resignation lies down quietly in the dust of a universe from which God seems to have fled, and the door of Hope swings shut."2 ~ Richard J. Foster

When someone is missing the really hard thing is that you never really do give up hope, even though the inquest says that she is dead, even though right from the beginning we already knew that we wouldn't see her again. ~ Jackie French

I will always give you hope. Here is why. We will get through this. I want you to know this. This Easter I just chilled at home. So did you. Today I told a friend who was feeling low I told her this. We are in this moment. I know it is scary and depressing. BUT next year this will be a story. Maybe a topic of conversation on a first date. When this whole thing is over it will be "do you remember when" and we will get there. This too shall pass. ~ Johnny Corn

I feel like Obama in a way. His idea that hope means not shrinking from a fight; it's the courage to reach for something. My music is that. Those are principles I try to embody. ~ Q-Tip

Rite To Ancestors:

Hail to those who have passed through the veil
From Life to Death, to Earth from Breath.
Hail to those who suffered to gift me with blood,
Hail to those who survived to gift me with body,
Hail to those whose songs gift me with inspiration.
Hail to those whom I knew and loved in life,
Whose memory I carry with me like a word of comfort,
Hail to those who left this land long ago,
Whose names I honor like a word of hope,
Or if I know not their names, whose lives I honor still.
I live and love because you lived and loved,
I speak and struggle because you spoke and struggled,
You live in me, as I will live in those who come after me.
Grant me the patience, O my beloved Dead,
To see the long view, and remember that what I do
Affects a million million souls I will never know. ~ Galina Krasskova

We agree that there is something that happens inside of a person, a people, a community when you think you will not love, that the people around you will not live. We talk about how you develop an attitude, on that dismisses hope, that discards dreams. ~ Patrisse Khan-Cullors

As hope and fear alternate chase
Our course through life's uncertain race. ~ Walter Scott

I hope, too, that you will hear these words within your hearts, for that would be profitable. But if a thousand thieves come from outside, they cannot open the door without some fellow-thief inside who can unlock that door.
Speak a thousand words from the outside, still, so long as there is none to answer from within, the door never opens.
So too with a tree - as long as there is no moist thirst in its roots, even if you poured a thousand torrents of water over it, it would accomplish nothing. First there must be a thirst in its roots for the water to nourish it.
Although the whole world is ablaze with the sun's light, unless there is that spark of light within the eye, no one can behold that light.
The root of the matter is the receptiveness within Soul. ~ Rumi

Hope is a thing with feathers... ~ Emily Dickinson

I'm never going to give in. I'm never going to give up, and I will fight back with every breath I have.
- Dionne Warner, seven-time cancer survivor and subject of Never Leave Your Wingman ~ Deana J. Driver

Against such odds, I will stand or fall! Whether or not I can rise to surmount the trials before me, I plan to step forward and fight. ~ Janny Wurts

When you live forever and don't age, it gives you time to hope ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

He owe his wife a debt he couldn't hope to pay with any coin save one: open the cage and let the bird fly. ~ Colleen McCullough

I hope he invites me to walk with him, or at least share some local gossip. My heart is singing . . . but no duet. Duets and collaborations. All of nature longs for harmony. Girls are no different. Men need to realize, life is not a solo act. Unity is a potent force, but men don't always see the importance of unifying with a good woman. Find the right woman and watch a man's world transform into a modern-day Paradise. All I'm asking for is a little noticing and a chat or two. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

All things and all acts and this whole wonderful universe proclaim to us the Lord our Father, Christ our love, Christ our hope, our portion, and our joy. Oh, brethren, if you would know the meaning of the world, read Christ in it. If you would see the beauty of earth, take it for a prophet of something higher than itself. ~ Alexander MacLaren

You are the least sane person I've had the
misfortune to meet."
The corners of her eyes pinched a little, just for the
barest second, then cleared. "Well, there are plenty
more people for you to meet, Mr. Merrick, so do not
give up hope yet." But the tone of her voice was far
too cheerful.
He watched her for a moment. Watched as her
face cleared of anything remotely hurt or upset. "Do
you object to being called insane or my saying that I
had the misfortune of meeting you?"
"Neither, of course."
He drummed his finger on the desk, irritated and,
God, how did people live feeling guilty about things?
"You are just fine as you are," he said gruffly.
Her expression froze for a moment, then bloomed
into a smile that would slay demons. ~ Anne Mallory

I never thought I would have this … You." I grip his shirt and look up into those beautiful eyes. "I never thought I would have you. I never even let myself hope for you, dream for you, and yet somehow here you are. You have changed my whole life, Edward. You've changed me, and I couldn't do this alone."
He smiles gently and strokes my face. "Yes, you could."
"But I wouldn't be me, not who I am now. I would be some other, emptier version of me." Another tear falls and another, and my voice breaks. "You are my joy and my heart…you are my home…and I would be lost without you."
…
"You will never be lost. I will be with you always. The vows were wrong. When death comes, he can have my body…but my soul will stay with you, I swear it. ~ Emma Chase

The Dog Hair The dog is gone. We miss him. When the doorbell rings, no one barks. When we come home late, there is no one waiting for us. We still find his white hairs here and there around the house and on our clothes. We pick them up. We should throw them away. But they are all we have left of him. We don't throw them away. We have a wild hope - if only we collect enough of them, we will be able to put the dog back together again. ~ Lydia Davis

In the middle of the night, when Laila woke up thirsty, she found their hands still clamped together, in the white-knuckle, anxious way of children clutching balloon strings. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Doctor Ambrosius smiled slightly. "You and all the others here, are-or rather, one day will be-magicians."
Spirit broke into a disbelieving laugh.
"Right," she said, starting to stand up. Mean, she could deal with; crazy was something else. "Thank you, Professor Dumbledore. I hope the train hasn't left yet, because- ~ Mercedes Lackey

Hope dreams into being what is possible but not yet formed. ~ Sharon Weil

Simple spells were light and fun, like a good joke. This spell was as simple as a symphony and as splendid. After adding the last runes, I swirled power through the old spells ensuring they merged with the new spells. The entire castle of spells flexed with the added power, my sign to retreat and hope it worked. Watching the spells bend and move was captivating. One moment they were crawling over each other looking for structure and the next they'd formed a fortress of magic seeking targets, calling them home....
"Jones?"
"Right behind you." He walked around to my left.
"How'd it go?"
"Good. Really good."
"I can tell. You're glowing."
I thought he was joking until I glanced at my hand. I had to look like a giant firefly.
"Narselfart!"
He laughed. "Don't worry about it. It's kinda' cute. Besides, those boys" - he jerked his head to indicate the younger cops - "aren't ever going to forget this power show. ~ N.E. Conneely

The highest form of charity is giving education with love. ~ Debasish Mridha