Mildew Quotes

Beacon, beacon, lonesome on a hill -
Waves run aground, pound 'round, what a thrill!
Water water everywhere crashes,
Shore's not lazy for it mashes, bashes…..
Summer's when tourists traipse o'er to see you,
Offering to wipe-wash your dust and mildew;
Summer painters place you with dinghy and gull,
Historians have you as subject o'er which to mull.
When feline Fog drifts gently or is heavy,
Your bright light's followed by boat bevy;
And during those calm, clear days and nights
You're that upright nautical dream exciting tiny tykes. ~ Mariecor Ruediger

As a homeowner you should know and understand what mold is and what is mildew so that if one or both presents itself, you are better and prepared to handle the situation. ~ Mold Removal Express

Down they went, into the darkness. Down ancient, worn steps coated in slippery mildew. Down into the deep recesses of the earth, far beneath the corridors of Deep-Spire. ~ Sam J. Charlton

The carpet is too soft. Also the palm tree in the lobby is unbelievable. For a long time the Maitre looks at our faces, shuffling passports in his hands. "Such dark-ringed eyes, such dark-ringed eyes. I knew a merchant from Smyrna, who also had a false front tooth. Nowadays one has to be terribly careful: informers and scorpions are everywhere."

In the elevator we stand facing the mirror, but already at the first jerk we see silvery mildew in the place of our faces. ~ Zbigniew Herbert

The wise Sekiso (Shih-shuang) said, 'Stop all your hankerings; let the mildew grow on your lips; make yourself like unto a perfect piece of immaculate silk; let your one thought be eternity; let yourself be like the dead ashes, cold and lifeless; again let yourself be like an old censer in a deserted village shrine! ~ D.T. Suzuki

He couldn't have known it, but among the original run of The History of Love, at least one copy was destined to change a life.

This particular book was one of the last of the two thousand to be printed, and sat for longer than the rest in a warehouse in the outskirts of Santiago, absorbing the humidity. From there it was finally sent to a bookstore in Buenos Aires. The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover. It was a slim volume, and its position on the shelf wasn't exactly prime: crowded on the left by an overweight biography of a minor actress, and on the right by the once-bestselling novel of an author that everyone had since forgotten, it hardly left its spine visible to even the most rigorous browser. When the store changed owners it fell victim to a massive clearance, and was trucked off to another warehouse, foul, dingy, crawling with daddy longlegs, where it remained in the dark and damp before finally being sent to a small secondhand bookstore not far from the home of the writer Jorge Luis Borges.

The owner took her time unpacking the books she'd bought cheaply and in bulk from the warehouse. One morning, going through the boxes, she discovered the mildewed copy of The History of Love. She'd never heard of it, but the title caught her eye. She put it aside, and during a slow hour in the shop she read the opening chapter, called 'The Age of Silence.'
Nicole Krauss

Often, half in a bay of the mountains and half on a headland, a small and nearly amphibian Schloss mouldered in the failing light among the geese and the elder-bushes and the apple trees. Dank walls rose between towers that were topped with cones of moulting shingle. Weeds throve in every cranny. Moss mottled the walls. Fissures branched like forked lightning across damp masonry which the rusting iron clamps tried to hold together, and buttresses of brick shored up the perilously leaning walls. The mountains, delaying sunrise and hastening dusk, must have halved again the short winter days. Those buildings looked too forlorn for habitation. But, in tiny, creeper-smothered windows, a faint light would show at dusk. Who lived in those stone-flagged rooms where the sun never came? Immured in those six-foot-thick walls, overgrown outside with the conquering ivy and within by genealogical trees all moulting with mildew? My thoughts flew at once to solitary figures…a windowed descendant of a lady-in-waiting at the court of Charlemagne, alone with the Sacred Heart and her beads, or a family of wax-pale barons, recklessly inbred; bachelors with walrus moustaches, bent double with rheumatism, shuddering from room to room and coughing among their lurchers, while their cleft palates called to each other down corridors that were all but pitch dark. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great - thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand ~ Leo Tolstoy

Something lived in there, all right. He could smell it, a stench that made him think of damp plaster and moldering sofas and ancient mattresses rotting beneath half-liquid coats of mildew. It was familiar, that smell. ~ Stephen King

Those afternoons in the library, breathing the stale sun-warmed dust of a thousand stories (accented by the collective mildew of a hundred years of rising damp), had been enchanted. Two decades ago now, and yet here, on the No. 168 bus towards Hampstead Heath, Peter was beset with an almost bodily sense of being back there. His lips twitched with the memory of being nine years old and lanky as a foal. His mood lifted as he remembered how large, how filled with possibilities, and yet, at once, how safe and navigable the world had seemed when he was shut within those four walls . ~ Kate Morton

Sure never two people were more strongly contrasted than the Baron and the Colonel. The one seems the kindly sun, cherishing the tender herbage of the field; the other, the blasting mildew, breathing its pestiferous venom over every beautiful plant and flower. However, do you, my love, only regard them as virtue and vice personified; look on them as patterns and examples; view them in no other light; for in no other can they be of any advantage to you. ~ Georgiana Cavendish

The librarian, whom I had never seen before, presided over the library like a watchdog, one of those poor dogs who are deliberately made vicious by being chained up and given little to eat; ot better, like the old, toothless cobra, pale because of centuries of darkness, who guards the king's treasure in the Jungle Book. Paglietta, poor woman, was little less than a lusus naturae: she was small, without breasts or hips, waxen, wilted, and monstrously myopic; she wore glasses so thick and concave that, looking at her head-on, her eyes, light blue, almost white, seemed very far away, stuck at the back of her cranium. She gave the impression of never having been young, although she was certainly not more than thirty, and of having been born there, in the shadows, in that vague odor of mildew and stale air. ~ Primo Levi

Have you not sometimes noted,
When we unlock some long-disuséd room
With heavy dust and soiling mildew filled,
Where never foot of man has come for years,
And from the windows take the rusty bar,
And fling the broken shutters to the air,
And let the bright sun in, how the good sun
Turns every grimy particle of dust
Into a little thing of dancing gold?
Guido, my heart is that long-empty room,
But you have let love in, and with its gold
Gilded all life. ~ Oscar Wilde

Among gardeners, enthusiasm and experience rarely exist in equal measures. The beginner dreams of home-grown bouquets and baskets of ripe fruit, the veteran of many seasons has learned to expect slugs, mildew, and frost. ~ Roger Swain

There was an air of decay that enveloped the property as if it had been kissed by dead lips glossed with mildew. ~ Keith Minshew

I am in favor of deliberately spreading methodically prepared bacteria among people and animals
mildew ... to destroy the harvests, anthrax to destroy horses and livestock, and the plague, in order to kill not only entire armies, but also the inhabitants of large regions. ~ Winston Churchill

Table salt hardens here. Books mildew. Diaries flip open. Private Property: Please Turn Around. ~ Elizabeth Graver

As you deal with thumb-crossings, or fingerings for the F-sharp-minor scale, or chromatic scales in double thirds, it is hard to accept that these will eventually allow you to probe eternity in the final movement of Beethoven's last sonata. Imagine that you are scrubbing the grout in your bathroom and are told that removing every last particle of mildew will somehow enable you to deliver the Gettysburg Address. ~ Jeremy Denk

So as I'm walking up and down the grocery aisles, I notice this distinct, mildewy, putrid odor following me. And I keep looking around for the responsible party, until I discover that she is me. I stink. When I get home, Craig rolls out of bed to help me with the groceries and I say "Honey, smell me. I stink." And he sniffs my shirt and says without surprise, "Yes, you do." And I say "Well, what IS that? It's disgusting." And he says the following:
"It's mildew. All our clothes smell like that. We always stink." I'll just give you a few seconds to digest that information. I know I needed a little time. "WHAT? WELL WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME, HUSBAND?" "I was scared to tell you. You get sensitive about ... . housekeeping stuff." "Oh. So let me clarify here. You'd rather reek all day at work and allow Chase to be THE STINKY KID IN CLASS than risk me getting mad?
"Yes. Yes, I would. Definitely. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

State Road 60 is one of those great old Florida drives. From Tampa on the west coast to Vero Beach on the east, rolling through Mulberry and Bartow and Yeehaw Junction. Phosphate mines and orange groves and cows loitering near water holes in vast open flats dotted with sabal palms, stretching for miles, making the sky big. Here and there were the kind of occasional, isolated farmhouses that made people subconsciously think: Do they get Internet? In the middle of one overgrown field stood a single concrete wall, several stories high, covered with grime and mildew, the ancient ruins of a drive-in theater. The top of the wall was the last thing to catch a warm glow from the setting sun. ~ Tim Dorsey

Vienna wasn't just a city, it was a tone that either one carries forever in one's soul or one does not. It was the most beautiful thing in my life. I was poor, but I was not alone, because I had a friend. And Vienna was like another friend. When it rained in the tropics, I always heard the voice of Vienna. And at other times too. Sometimes deep in the virgin forests I smelled the musty smell of the entrance hall in Hietzing. Music and everything I loved was in the stones of Vienna, and in people's glances and their behavior, the way pure feelings are part of one's very heart. You know when the feelings stop hurting. Vienna in winter and spring. The allés in Schönbrunn. The blue light in the dormitory at the academy, the great white stairwell with the baroque statue. Morning ridings in the Prater. The mildew in the riding school. I remember all of it exactly, and I wanted to see it again... ~ Sandor Marai

In the process of making the record, I was just so bored all the time working whatever stupid job. I felt like a stagnant pond that has algae and mildew and weird animal cells, and I felt like if I sat around not doing anything long enough, that I'd probably end up going a little bit crazy. ~ Josh Jones

She looks out the window and notices the sections of Cleveland Street gone to rot, the filigreed metal balconies of the shambling terraces like rusted lacework, the grimy tiled pub facades, the windows of the Lebanese restaurants filmed with grease. This is old Sydney, her father's town of grit and mildew. The ~ Dominic Smith

The warehouse was a part of the wharves down at the lakeside, and even the chill waters of Lake Michigan were warmer than usual. They filled the air with more than the average water-scent of mud and mildew and eau de dead fishy. ~ Jim Butcher

all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great - ideas, work - it's all dust and ashes." "But ~ Anton Chekhov

The solution to a pile of mildewed stuff is to rewash it with your regular detergent as well as a cup or two of white vinegar. A note on amounts: for a regular washing, a half cup to a full cup of white vinegar is more than enough to help cut down on smells and serve as a natural fabric softener. But when you're dealing with overpowering smells like mildew, you'll need to up the ante, and being aware of those differences will help you to apply that understanding to various laundering situations you may find on your hands. Baking soda is another option, but I prefer vinegar because I think it works better, ~ Jolie Kerr

Ornamentation, festoons, carvings, cartouches, bas-reliefs, countless surprises among the sculptures - and the tones of the facades weathered by time and rain, the pinks of fading twilight, smoky blues, misty greys, a richness of mildew, brickwork ripened by the years, the hues of a ruddy or anaemic complexion. ~ Georges Rodenbach

No, no, I will not live among the wild scenes of nature, the enemy of all that lives. I will seek the towns - Rome, the capital of the world, the crown of man's achievements. Among its storied streets, hallowed ruins, and stupendous remains of human exertion, I shall not, as here, find every thing forgetful of man; trampling on his memory, defacing his works, proclaiming from hill to hill, and vale to vale, - by the torrents freed from the boundaries which he imposed - by the vegetation liberated from the laws which he enforced - by his habitation abandoned to mildew and weeds, that his power is lost, his race annihilated for ever. ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Everything smells like mildew, and the grim commitment to filth that can only be cultivated by post-adolescent boys. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Imagine a speck of dust next to a planet a billion times the size of the earth. The speck of dust represents the odds in favor of your being born; the huge planet would be the odds against it. So stop sweating the small stuff. Don't be like the ingrate who got a castle as a present and worried about the mildew in the bathroom. Stop looking the gift horse in the mouth - remember that you are a Black Swan. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Down here, in our Cajun Magic Kingdom, I'm the Statue of Liberty. La Liberté éclairant le monde. But uptown, where the mold and the mildew still reign supreme, I go by Tiffany Proulx, which sounds like Peru, only without the pesky e inside. Most people call me Tiff, as in a fight, albeit a very small one. More like a squabble. A misunderstanding that's bound to sort itself out. Just give it a little time is all. ~ Kenneth Womack

You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame. ~ John Ruskin

Anyone who loves books the way Homer does, loves libraries, too. It doesn't matter if the library has fancy red leather chairs and gold-plated shelves that reach to a vaulted ceiling, or if the library has splintery wooden benches and shelves made of old milk crates. it's the scent that sets the book lover at ease. It's better than grandma's perfume, or freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, or even toast. It's a scent derived from paper, mildew, dust, and human endeavors. ~ Suzanne Selfors

I associate so many fond memories with food. On that damp evening, along in a tiny restaurant smelling of mildew and lobster, I was 1,600 miles from everyone I knew and loved. After one bite of the pie, I closed my eyes, and taste transported me back to the warm, familiar comfort of my grandmother's kitchen. She always had a pie sitting on the kitchen counter, ready to serve, and a fresh pot of coffee brewing. ~ Debi Tolbert Duggar

We no longer pay attention to the clocks. Why should we? Noon is the taste of sawdust, and the feel of a splinter under a nail. Morning is mud and crumbling caulk. Evening is the smell of cooked tomatoes and mildew. And night is shivering, and the feel of mice sniffing around our skin. ~ Lauren Oliver

I like moments of staleness and mildew, simply because it creates the lane for change. ~ Lyor Cohen

I'll tell you truly: I value my thought and work terribly, but in essence - think about it - this whole world of ours is just a bit of mildew that grew over a tiny planet. And we think we can have something great - thoughts, deeds! They're all grains of sand ~ Leo Tolstoy

Not until the lamp is utterly shattered," she said, "and all pages everywhere sealed up in mildew - but then one would only cease to be, wouldn't one? Till then, simply changelessness. How deliciously restful. It's what one wanted, isn't it, what one had prepared for and sought after - what one had invented out of all the terrible longings and dissatisfactions, never knowing that this exactly was what one was inventing - and yet having no other reason, all along, but this. How pleasant and odd that it should be so ... . ~ John Crowley

The flashlight beam swept side to side, cutting a darkness clogged with clouds of dust so thick he could almost grasp them, fouled with the murky stink of mildew. ~ Cole McCade

Life appears: a complex dampness, destined to an intricate future and charged with secret virtues, capable of challenge and creation. A kind of precarious slime, of surface mildew, in which a ferment is already working. A turbulent, spasmodic sap, a presage and expectation of a new way of being, breaking with mineral perpetuity and boldly exchanging it for the doubtful privilege of being able to tremble, decay, and multiply. ~ Roger Caillois

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, and not trulycumulative treasure; where immortal works stand side by side with anthologies which did not survive their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from these to the binding of those; and happily I am reminded of what poetry is,
I perceive that Shakespeare and Milton did not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such a dust-hole! ~ Henry David Thoreau

You do not seem to realize that beauty is a liability rather
than
an asset - that in view of the fact that spirit creates form
we are justified in supposing
that you must have brains. For you, a symbol of the
unit, stiff and sharp,
conscious of surpassing by dint of native superiority and
liking for everything
self-dependent, anything an

ambitious civilization might produce: for you, unaided, to
attempt through sheer
reserve, to confuse presumptions resulting from
observation, is idle. You cannot make us
think you a delightful happen-so. But rose, if you are
brilliant, it
is not because your petals are the without-which-nothing
of pre-eminence. Would you not, minus
thorns, be a what-is-this, a mere
perculiarity? They are not proof against a worm, the
elements, or mildew;
but what about the predatory hand? What is brilliance
without co-ordination? Guarding the
infinitesimal pieces of your mind, compelling audience to
the remark that it is better to be forgotten than to be re-
membered too violently,
your thorns are the best part of you. ~ Marianne Moore