Spring And All Quotes

A ward, and still in bonds, one day
I stole abroad;
It was high spring, and all the way
Primrosed and hung with shade;
Yet was it frost within,
And surly winds
Blasted my infant buds, and sin
Like clouds eclipsed my mind. ~ Henry Vaughan

And her heart sprang in Iseult, and she drew
With all her spirit and life the sunrise through
And through her lips the keen triumphant air
Sea-scented, sweeter than land-roses were,
And through her eyes the whole rejoicing east
Sun-satisfied, and all the heaven at feast
Spread for the morning; and the imperious mirth
Of wind and light that moved upon the earth,
Making the spring, and all the fruitful might
And strong regeneration of delight
That swells the seedling leaf and sapling man,
Since the first life in the first world began
To burn and burgeon through void limbs and veins,
And the first love with sharp sweet procreant pains
To pierce and bring forth roses; yea, she felt
Through her own soul the sovereign morning melt,
And all the sacred passion of the sun;
And as the young clouds flamed and were undone
About him coming, touched and burnt away
In rosy ruin and yellow spoil of day,
The sweet veil of her body and corporal sense
Felt the dawn also cleave it, and incense
With light from inward and with effluent heat
The kindling soul through fleshly hands and feet.
And as the august great blossom of the dawn
Burst, and the full sun scarce from sea withdrawn
Seemed on the fiery water a flower afloat,
So as a fire the mighty morning smote
Throughout her, and incensed with the influent hour
Her whole soul's one great mystical red flo ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

The imagination, intoxicated by prohibitions, rises to drunken heights to destroy the world. Let it rage, let it kill. ~ William Carlos Williams

The people's awe and innate fear will hold injustice back by day, by night, so long as the people leave the laws intact, just as they are: muddy the cleanest spring, and all you'll have to drink is muddy water. ~ Aeschylus

As the Little House settled down on her new foundation, she smiled happily. Once again she could watch the sun and moon and stars. Once again she could watch Spring and Summer and Fall and Winter come and go. Once again she was lived in and taken care of. Never again would she be curious about the city ... Never again would she want to live there ... The stars twinkled above her ... A new moon was coming up ... It was Spring ... And all was quiet and peaceful in the country. ~ Virginia Lee Burton

Although I did point out that even the innumerable charms of Delight would be long exhausted by the end of our fortnight, he merely laughed and said I didn't understand the purpose of a honeymoon. And, indeed, he was quite convincing about that; and all I shall record here is that we missed both breakfast and the luncheon buffet at the hotel our first day, and that I came to understand why so many young wives produce children three-quarters of a year after their weddings. ~ Elizabeth C. Bunce

So it was that the Red Tower put into production its terrible and perplexing line of unique novelty items. Among the objects and constructions now manufactured were several of an almost innocent nature. These included tiny, delicate cameos that were heavier than their size would suggest, far heavier, and lockets whose shiny outer surface flipped open to reveal a black reverberant abyss inside, a deep blackness roaring with echoes. Along the same lines was a series of lifelike replicas of internal organs and physiological structures, many of them evidencing an advanced stage of disease and all of them displeasingly warm and soft to the touch. There was a fake disembodied hand on which fingernails would grow several inches overnight, every night like clockwork. Numerous natural objects, mostly bulbous gourds, were designed to produce a long deafening scream whenever they were picked up or otherwise disturbed in their vegetable stillness. Less scrutable were such things as hardened globs of lava into whose rough igneous forms were set a pair of rheumy eyes that perpetually shifted their gaze from side to side like a relentless pendulum. And there was also a humble piece of cement, a fragment broken away from any street or sidewalk, that left a most intractable stain, greasy and green, on whatever surface it was placed. But such fairly simple items were eventually followed, and ultimately replaced, by more articulated objects and constructions. One example of this complex type of ~ Thomas Ligotti

Lying asleep between the strokes of night
I saw my love lean over my sad bed,
Pale as the duskiest lily's leaf or head,
Smooth-skinned and dark, with bare throat made to bite,
Too wan for blushing and too warm for white,
But perfect-coloured without white or red.
And her lips opened amorously, and said
I wist not what, saving one word
Delight.
And all her face was honey to my mouth,
And all her body pasture to my eyes;
The long lithe arms and hotter hands than fire,
The quivering flanks, hair smelling of the south,
The bright light feet, the splendid supple thighs
And glittering eyelids of my soul's desire. ~ Algernon Charles Swinburne

Then winter ended and spring came, and I thought, even if I don't believe there's a poem in anything anymore, maybe I'll write a story. A lot of people do that when they can't seem to figure out who or what they love. It might be an oversimplification, but they seem to write poetry when they do know. ~ Jennifer Egan

It gets super dark. I did a bunch of intense indie movies when I was starting out in my career and I was always in a bad mood because, when you're dealing with the subject matter of losing your baby, getting raped and all that stuff, it's not fun to go through. You really have to go there. ~ Busy Philipps

What I like doing is writing and recording and much more on the, I guess, the - on that creative level. It's fun interpreting songs and all that, but I wouldn't like it as a living. ~ David Bowie

Sometimes, you can feel or see how a movie can ... how you can do it. Sometimes it's just like seeing, "Can that work? Will people buy that? Can we do that?" And all those checkmarks. ~ Tina Fey

There's a kind of sick security some people get out of keeping away from people with disabilities. They are running away from any situation that's not totally pure and all-American and that requires them to do any thinking. ~ Major Owens

Meanwhile spring arrived. My old dejection passed away and gave place to the unrest which spring brings with it, full of dreams and vague hopes and desires. ~ Leo Tolstoy

...until the weeds were all wilted in a heap, and all I could think was how there would be more weeds tomorrow and wouldn't it be easier for the world if everything just stayed still, just stopped growing all together? Maybe it would, but we won't do that, we won't stop, plants don't, people don't, we keep showing up and living and trying to do something and dying and what was it that all these vines and leaves were struggling toward year after century after eternity? ~ Catherine Lacey

Chrysanthemums," my friend commented as we moved through our garden stalking flower-show blossoms with decapitating shears, "are like lions. Kingly characters. I always expect them to spring. To turn on me with a growl and a roar. ~ Truman Capote

The foolish race of mankind are swarming below in the night; they shriek and rage and quarrel - and all of them are right. ~ Heinrich Heine

I gave you my love, I gave you my heart, I gave you everything you ever wanted and all you did was take it for granted ... leaving me broken hearted. ~ Chris Elam

Performing arts buildings are complex. The acoustics, the sight lines and all that have to just be perfect. So you begin with just making these things sublime as musical instruments. And if you fail there, you have failed it all. ~ Moshe Safdie

I find no peace, and all my war is done,
I fear and hope; I burn and freeze like ice;
I fly above the wind yet can I not arise;
And naught I have and all the world I seize on.
That looseth nor locketh holdeth me in prison,
And holdeth me not, yet can I scape nowise;
Nor letteth me live nor die at my devise,
And yet of death it giveth none occasion.
Without eyen I see, and without tongue I plain;
I desire to perish, and yet I ask health;
I love another, and thus I hate myself;
I feed me in sorrow, and laugh in all my pain.
Likewise displeaseth me both death and life
And my delight is causer of this strife. ~ Thomas Wyatt

I don't want to feel like a failure to my daughter. She's the best thing I've ever done. Buffy - pretty great and all, but Charlotte's way better. ~ Sarah Michelle Gellar

How long, Klara wondered now, how long after the mortar set did the joy remain? When one embraces a moment of rapture from the past, either by trying to reclaim it or by refusing to let it go, how can its brightness not tarnish, turn grey with longing and sorrow, until the wild spell of the remembered interlude is lost altogether and the memory of sadness claims its rightful place in the mind? And what is it we expect from the sun-drenched past? There is no formula for re-entry, nothing we can do to enable reconstruction. The features of an absent loved one's face are erased one by one, the timbre of the voice drowned by the noise of the world. Fondly recalled landscapes are savagely altered; we lose them tree by tree. Even the chestnut tree outside Klara's window would die a slow, rotting death until it would fall one night in a summer storm when everything in Klara wanted it to remain standing, blossoming in spring, leafy in summer, the only access, she secretly believed, to the window of her former self. ~ Jane Urquhart

Do you play tennis, Senator?"
"Now and then," he said with a ghost of a smile. He didn't add he'd lettered i the sport at Harvard.
"I'd imagine chess would be your game-plotting,long-term strategy."
His smile remained enigmatic as he reached for his wine. "We'll have to have a game."
Shelby's low laugh drifted over him. "I believe we already have."
His hand brushed lightly over hers. "Want a rematch?"
Shelby gave him a look that made his blood spring hotly. "No.You might not outmaneuver me a second time. ~ Nora Roberts

All ceremony depends on symbol; and all symbols have been vulgarized and made stale by the commercial conditions of our time...Of all these faded and falsified symbols, the most melancholy example is the ancient symbol of the flame. In every civilized age and country, it has been a natural thing to talk of some great festival on which "the town was illuminated." There is no meaning nowadays in saying the town was illuminated...The whole town is illuminated already, but not for noble things. It is illuminated solely to insist on the immense importance of trivial and material things, blazoned from motives entirely mercenary...It has not destroyed the difference between light and darkness, but it has allowed the lesser light to put out the greater...Our streets are in a permanent dazzle, and our minds in a permanent darkness. ~ G.K. Chesterton

That night, after we'd had our tea, Kevin and I went bird-watching. Not the usual sort, plodding round the fields with great binoculars round your neck (though I did take my work binoculars). No, we go up in the big trees in the wood, where the birds live. Right to the tops we go, where the branches sway and swing like a comfy bed, and you can look along the green billows of the tree-tops. In spring, we take the eggs out of the nests, handling them gentle, like, and putting them back afterwards of course. An' getting away quickly, so the hen-bird can come back and sit on them again. That's a wonder of life to me; to hold a speckled egg in the palm of your hand, and think what a marvellous thing it's going to become, a bird that flies and feeds and takes its chance with the cats, and breeds its own young and dies back into the dust in the end. Why does anyone need those crazy Christian dreams of Heaven, wi' angels playin' their harps on fleecy clouds, when they can have a wood at sunset, when you can look down from a low branch and see young rabbits playing, or even young foxes tumbling over and over and squeaking when they nip each other with their sharp little teeth? ~ Robert Westall

Trip Advisor: Travel America with Haiku [Texas]
Grackles roosting,
sentinels on miles of phone line.
Don't Mess with Texas.

Austin rush hour, "Go
down Mopac. You don't wanna
mess with I-35."

Athens, Texas,
Blackeyed Pea Capital of the World.
Yup, just another shithole.

Killeen, Texas,
Kill City, Boyz from Fort Hood.
Spending every paycheck.

Texas A&M;,
Aggies football, the wired 12th man.
Too lazy to plant in the Spring.

Fredericksburg, Texas.
Polka Capital of Texas but
I could swear I saw Hitler there.

Ft. Worth, Texas,
Where the West Begins and
a great place to leave.

San Antonio, Texas,
Fiesta! Alamo City! Northstar Mall!
I've been to better tourist traps.

Dallas, Texas,
D-Town, City of Hate.
Don't miss the Galleria.

Lubbock, Texas,
Oil wells, Hub of the Plains.
Stinks like an armpit.

Waco, Texas,
The Buckle of the Bible Belt.
Lossen it up a notch.

Neck dragon tattoo, piercings,
purple haired kindergarten teacher.
Keep Austin weird. ~ Beryl Dov

Eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace; ~ Charles Dickens

Dreams decompose, darling, < ... > like anything else. And they give off gases, some of which are poisonous and all of which are unpleasant, and so one goes away from the place in which the dreams were dreamed, and are now decomposing before your very eyes. Otherwise, you might die, dear, of monoxide poisoning. ~ Andrew Holleran

If I were a place, the area of South Bank, in London. Between the Hayward Gallery, National Theatre and all other activities, I'm never bored. I would also say New York for the breathtaking skyline formed by the buildings and the fast pace of the city, whatever the time of day. ~ Robert Pattinson

Lucy reached in her bag and pulled out the book, knowing exactly where to search. I thank my Maker, that, in the midst of judgment, he has remembered mercy. I humbly entreat my Redeemer to give me strength to lead henceforth a purer life than I have done hitherto. There it was. Mercy. Grace. And just as she'd told James, fiction conveyed change and truth and was loved and digested again and again because it reflected the worst, the best, and all the moments in between of the human experience. ~ Katherine Reay

Creative people often feel highs of joy and lows of sorrow that others may never experience, and perhaps could not even handle if they did. Little wonder many outside the creative world mistake (or dismiss) eccentric responses of the spirit as weakness or mental illness. But in the end, these dismissive souls will never know what it is to be moved by tears by the beauty of rose or brought to joy by sunlight filtering through the leaves of spring or autumn. The creative walk in glades invisible to those outside their realms. ~ Duncan Long

I knew if there was ever a girl who could love me, warts and all, it would be the girl who went to the pound and adopted the ugliest, meanest piece of crap she could find." My heart swelled, my smile following. "All because she believed that under every rough exterior was a soul begging to be loved and accepted. ~ Nicole Williams

But what I love is the end of your poem, when the urn talks to us. It says this: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--- that is all / ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' I keep trying to figure out exactly what you mean, but that sentence is like a circle. If beauty is truth, and if truth is beauty, they are defined by each other, so how do we know the meaning of either? I think that we make our own meanings, by putting ourselves into them. ~ Ava Dellaira

Freedom of the press can never be the licence to say anything one desires. Freedom of the press is not the freedom to slander and attack and must never be used to fight other people's wars. It does not mean manipulating a story into speaking your views. One might think it common sense but in the world of journalism a lot of what makes sense is lost to the lure of favouritism, greed and fame. Sadly, in this truth-telling business truth is hard to find. ~ Aysha Taryam

But we don't get to choose what sticks. How many times I have run my fingers along a picket fence and thought, "This! I will remember this moment always!" and all that remains is the memory of a desire to hold on to a memory. ~ Abigail Thomas

All men were made brothers. The earth is the mother of all people, and all people should have equal rights upon it. You might as well expect the rivers to run backward as that any man who was born free should be content when penned up and denied liberty to go where he pleases. ~ Chief Joseph

Let me tell you what I think about your fucking rules," he said, his voice dripping with venom as he pushed past Liam. "You sit up in your room and you pretend like you want what's best for everyone, but you don't do any of the work yourself. I can't tell if you're just a spoiled little shit, or if you're too worried about getting your pretty princess hands dirty, but it sucks. You are fucking awful, and you sure as hell don't have me fooled ... You talk about us all being equals, like we're one big rainbow of peace and all that bullshit, but you never once believed that yourself, did you? You won't let anyone contact their parents, and you don't care about the kids that are still trapped in camps your father set up. You wouldn't even listen when the Watch kids brought it up. So what I want to know is, why can't we leave? ... What's the point of this place, other than for you to get off on how great you are and toy with people and their feelings? ~ Alexandra Bracken

People will drive by their high school ten years down the road, just so they can pretend that thinking "not much has changed" is actually true. When really, everything has changed. The air smells the same, but the roads have cracked more. The roads have cracked so much they now look like the skin on a crocodile's back. And all the fields, green in the summers, golden in the autumns, have all been paved over with new reasons to never come back. ~ Dave Matthes