The Last Leaf Quotes

When the last leaf falls,
what will die within us? ~ Sheniz Janmohamed

Only when the last leaf has fallen, the last tree has died, and the last fish been caught will we realize that we cannot eat money. ~ E.L. James

In a drawl so low, it seemed to suspend time, the old man said, "When the last leaf falls from the Widow's Tree this year, she'll be done for good. No coming back. No bothering anyone no more. Nobody will find her bones, and before next spring, nobody'll even remember her. She'll just be a wisp of a thing."
Peggy looked toward the tree, now hidden behind a low patch of morning cloud. She breathed out hard through her nose. "That's a terrible thing to do. Even for you, even to her."
"Set in motion a long time ago," he said blithely. "Just took this long to finish up. ~ Alex Bledsoe

The Last Leaf

I saw him once before,
As he passed by the door,
And again
The pavement stones resound,
As he totters o'er the ground
With his cane.

They say that in his prime,
Ere the pruning-knife of Time
Cut him down,
Not a better man was found
By the Crier on his round
Through the town.

But now he walks the streets,
And looks at all he meets
Sad and wan,
And he shakes his feeble head,
That it seems as if he said,
"They are gone."

The mossy marbles rest
On the lips that he has prest
In their bloom,
And the names he loved to hear
Have been carved for many a year
On the tomb.

My grandmamma has said
Poor old lady, she is dead
Long ago
That he had a Roman nose,
And his cheek was like a rose
In the snow;

But now his nose is thin,
And it rests upon his chin
Like a staff,
And a crook is in his back,
And a melancholy crack
In his laugh.

I know it is a sin
For me to sit and grin
At him here;
But the old three-cornered hat,
And the breeches, and all that,
Are so queer!

And if I should live to be
The last leaf upon the tree
In the spring,
Let them smile, as I do now,
At the old forsaken bough
Where I cling. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

Ah, the pretty whisperers! It was very well When the leaves were thick and green, awhile ago
Leaves are secret-keepers; but since the last leaf fell There is nothing hidden from the eyes below. ~ Sarah Chauncey Woolsey

All our moments are last moments. We abide in the forever leaving of our own coming? We can put our hands together, palm to palm, settling here on the last leaf of our brief flight, and bow to the wonder of it. ~ Jens Jensen

You feel even more naked and alone, he said silently, when you reveal yourself, a gratuitous act, for the strength and comfort you look for, any of those last illusions of consolations, can finally be only within you. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee

As it adds a chamber, it seals off the last chamber, because, having grown, it can never again fit back into the form of its old life. ~ Gloria Bullman

The Queen has been guillotined, accused of crimes beyond imagining. Last night she appeared to me in a dream, handing me her head. ~ Sandra Gulland

How's it going today, Riot?" I said. "I'm Gideon."

Nice. Two sentences and I'd already managed to embarrass myself. In front of Daryn and a horse. I hadn't even realized the last part was possible. I continued speaking as I stepped closer. "I'm sure we have a lot in common. You're clearly a stallion in top physical condition. Extremely dangerous. Badass. Impressive looking."

"Wow," Daryn said behind me.

That made me smile, which I needed. I was nervous as all get-out. The muscles in Riot's legs were twitching. His breath lifted in puffs of steam. He had gold eyes - and they hadn't unlocked from mine. He looked like he wanted to eat my head.

"Keep going," Daryn said. "And maybe try to be positive and nice? I think he can sense what you're saying."

Positive, check. Nice, check. Wait - nice?

Shit. Okay. ~ Veronica Rossi

Who knows when our chapters will end? None of us know how long our stories will last. All we can do is make sure the pages are filled with life."
"And you think we can write a happy ending?"
"I don't know, but I'd rather try than not. ~ Lia Riley

The Scottish vernacular is rich in colourful euphemisms for inebriation: 'stocious', 'stotting', 'guttered', 'steaming', 'steamboats', 'wellied' and 'hoolit' are just a few. Another is 'mortal', as in 'I was fair mortal last night' (meaning 'I was very drunk indeed'). So 'Mortal Causes' evoked, in my mind, the demon drink, just as surely as it did any darker and more violent imagery. ~ Ian Rankin

My boss - one of my three new bosses, if I was going to be technical - stared at me blankly from where he stood across the counter, either thinking I was full of shit or trying to figure out how to turn what I'd been doing around on me so he could have an excuse to bitch.

Because that was what he did - really well, unfortunately.

So well that most of my coworkers had quit over the last month since the gym had been officially taken over by its newest owners. Asshole 1, Asshole 2, and The Decent Guy Who Was Unfortunately Never Around Who Might Also Be An Asshole If He Ever Spent More Than Five Minutes At Maio House. That was how we referred to them - at least those of us who were left.

Okay, maybe it was just me and Deepa who did, but I highly doubted it. ~ Mariana Zapata

The music comes first, like, 99 percent of the time. I come up with the basic chord structure and the melody first and then I get really obsessed with arranging, adding, and subtracting parts. The last step of the process, for me, is finding words that fit into that structure and figuring out exactly what I want to talk about. ~ Mikal Cronin

The hearing was adjourned. For a few brief moments, as I left the Law Courts on my way to the van, I recognised the familiar smells and colours of a summer evening. In the darkness of my mobile prison I rediscovered one by one, as if rising from the depths of my fatigue, all the familiar sounds of a town that I loved and of a certain time of day when I sometimes used to feel happy. The cries of the newspaper sellers in the languid evening air, the last few birds in the square, the shouts of the sandwich sellers, the moaning of the trams high in the winding streets of the town and the murmuring of the sky before darkness spills over onto the port, all these sounds marked out an invisible route which I knew so well before going into prison. Yes, this was the time of day when, long ago, I used to feel happy. What always awaited me then was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, for with the prospect of the coming day, it was to my cell that I returned. As if a familiar journey under a summer sky could as easily end in prison as in innocent sleep. ~ Albert Camus

A person truly humbled permits not anything to put him in a rage. As it is pride which dies the last in the soul, so it is passion which is last destroyed in the outward conduct. A soul thoroughly dead to itself, finds nothing of rage left. ~ Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon

And then writing, it was like I just found it, you know? Like you just found your favorite flavor of ice cream, all of a sudden there it is. 'This is what I should have been doing for the last thirty years. What was I thinking?' So I was, then I was in and then I had to just keep going with it. ~ Stephenie Meyer

During an interview with Katie Couric Tuesday, Sarah Palin says she is not opposed to gay people, adding 'One of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years happens to be gay and I love her dearly and she doesn't exist.' ~ Amy Poehler

His wife (although he didn't like to use that word, wife, because it made him think that he was now over thirty, which he was, but still, he didn't need to be reminded, and anyway, he still had his boyish good looks; in fact, the cashier at the grocery store had flirted with him just last night, and even though it could have been the fact that he was overawingly overdressed for a cheese-cracker run, he thought it was probably his aquamarine eyes because she had been virtually swimming in them) was taking the move to Henrietta better than he had expected. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

One of my mother's friends said to me, 'Your ex-boyfriends didn't stand a chance with you and your mother.' And I think I probably was unfair to them because she was the first person and the last person I called about every single thing. Sorry, ex-boyfriends. ~ Lily Rabe

My grandfather believed . . . He believed that we were magic."
Stephanie stared at him. "What?"
"He said it'd been passed down, this magic, generation to generation. He said we were descendants of a great sorcerer called the Last of the Ancients. ~ Derek Landy

There seemed something rather devotional about her pose, the still­ness, so that I thought at last, She is praying!, and made to draw my eyes away in sudden shame. But then she stirred. Her hands opened, she raised them to her cheek, and I caught a flash of colour against the pink of her work-roughened palms. She had a flower there, between her fingers - a violet, with a drooping stem. As I watched, she put the flower to her lips, and breathed upon it, and the purple of the petals gave a quiver and seemed to glow . . . ~ Sarah Waters

Not long ago Aveline got a call from the county sheriff for Index, Washington. Local fishermen found a drifter by the name of Moss Ballot dead on the banks of the Skykomish River. There were no signs of struggle, only whiskey in his blood and traces of river in his lungs, likely from having fallen face-first and taken his last breaths underwater. He'd set up camp in the trees under a tarp. It seemed he'd been there for a while, living off fish and canned beans. There wasn't much worth keeping, according to the sheriff. He did say that inside the wax duffel bag there was a diary, the one I'd given to him, it turns out. Inside it were written the words *For my children Wes and Annaclaire in care of Aveline Blue, Burden Falls, Montana*. There was one sentence, the start of a story never written but told nonetheless: *I lose everything*. The rest of the pages were blank. ~ Susan Bernhard

My queen," he said formally, "before Glitch sends out the knights and the hounds to drag us back to Mag Tuiredh, will you do me the honor of a last dance? ~ Julie Kagawa

..:Even when the night is so dark and cold, you'll always find that the stars shine the brightest. So, don't get discourage if night seems long, for night doesn't last forever:.. ~ Rafael Garcia

Though old the thought and oft exprest, Tis his at last who says it best. ~ James Russell Lowell

When I am alone with God I see that God is really all I have. All that matters. All that will last. At these times I realize that the magnitude of what I have is incomprehensible. Usually I cry for the sheer joy of it. Not tears of defeat, but rather tears of gratitude. ~ Pola Muzyka

Pray, what's the nature of his trouble?" Prudence asked solicitously.
"Oh, cursed bad news, my boy. That old aunt of his from whom he has expectations has rallied, and they say she'll last another ten years. Poor old Devereux, y'know! Must try and raise his spirits. ~ Georgette Heyer

There's an unwritten law of the universe which assures that the thing you seek will always be found in the last place you look. It applies to everything in life from lost socks to misplaced poisons ... ~ Alan Bradley

The last time I talked to Axl was in 1996. That was the last time we exchanged any sort of words. There was a rumor that I talked to him a while back [and asked to rejoin the band]. I did go to his house one night, and I talked to his assistant about something that had to do with this lawsuit that we were involved in. But it got turned into something else. He went out and made a press release that said I actually spoke to him, which was all bullshit. I was really shocked. ~ Slash

Y'know, dear old boy- not my business- but she don't mean an ounce of harm! Only saying to George last night; dear little soul! Not up to snuff at all!'
'No, my God!' agreed the Viscount feelingly.
'Tell you what, Sherry: if I had a wife, which I'm deuced glad I haven't, I'd rather have one like your Kitten than all the Incomparables put together.'
'You would?' said Sherry, staring at him.
'I would,' said Mr. Ringwood firmly. ~ Georgette Heyer

The Death House back then was a self-contained unit, with its own hospital, kitchen, exercise yard and visiting room. The cells were inadequate, dark, and did not have proper sanitary facilities or ventilation. One window and skylight furnished the ventilation and light of the entire unit. Twelve cells were on the lower tier, six on each side, facing each other, with a narrow corridor between them. Five cells were located in an upper tier. There was an area the prisoners called the Dance Hall that housed a prisoner to be executed on his last day. The narrow corridor connected the Dance Hall to the execution room, where the Electric Chair resided. The prisoners named this corridor the Last Mile or the Green Mile, because this was the last walk a prisoner would take all the way to the small green riveted door at the end of the corridor, on his way to the execution room. ~ Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty. ~ Markus Zusak

I was just a simple, young girl whose love for a boy would last until the end of time. ~ Ilsa Madden-Mills

editor in New York and my mom and dad on the phone. My body is weak and bloated. I'm slowly poisoning myself to death. And it's not like I haven't seen what this shit does to people. The most fucked-up detoxes I've ever seen are the people coming off alcohol. It's worse than heroin, worse than benzos, worse than anything. Alcohol can pickle your brain - leaving you helpless, like a child - infantilized - shitting in your pants - ranting madness - disoriented - angry - terrified. But that's not gonna be me, I mean, it can't be. I may hate myself. I may fantasize about suicide. But I'm way too vain to let myself die an alcoholic death. There's nothing glamorous about alcoholism. You don't go out like Nic Cage in Leaving Las Vegas, with a gorgeous woman riding you till your heart stops. Alcoholism takes you down slow, robbing you of every last bit of dignity on your way ~ Nic Sheff

Let's take the nine states that have no income tax and compare them with the nine states with the highest income tax rates in the nation. If you look at the economic metrics over the last decade for both groups, the zero-income-tax-rate states outperform the highest-income-tax-rate states by a fairly sizable amount. ~ Arthur Laffer

But for the first time, we haven't made a huge leap forward in sound from our last album. Fans who own Kid A should be able to get their heads around it. ~ Ed O'Brien

Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust. ~ Charles Baudelaire

Overhead lights flickered on and off.
"It is closing soon," Markus explained.
"Now is what I call tiger time. The great beasts pad about, eyeing one another, trying to make up their minds at last. ~ Caleb Crain

Riley pulled on his jeans and she almost moaned. Focus, Mercy.

"I'll check," he said, zipping up those damn jeans as she slid on her own. "But we might get lucky with an insomniac."

When he turned, she saw the marks on his back were almost healed. Fast, even for a changeling. Which meant Riley was more powerful than she'd guessed, more than he let on.

There was nothing flashy about him. Just
- "What the - " His hands were on her waist and his mouth on hers before she could do more than gasp. Lightning. Bright. Sizzling. Perfect. This time she did moan, wrapping her arms around him and luxuriating in his strength, in the sheer speed with which he'd come at her. With both of them only wearing jeans, her breasts were pressed against the exquisite roughness of the hairs on his chest. She rubbed against him, giving in to the leopard's innate sensuality.

He tore away his lips but they remained less than a millimeter apart. "This is your fault."

"Hell, no." She sucked on his neck, biting him a little too hard for emphasis. "You jumped my bones." Tugging back her head with a hand fisted in her hair, he glared down at her.

"You were all but licking me the way you were looking."

"Looking's not the same as touching." Her mouth watered at the idea of licking him. They'd been in too much of a rush last night. Even the second and third time. As if they'd both been hungry so long, they'd needed to gorg ~ Nalini Singh

Let's spend less on trying to fix the unfixable in the last five years of life and spend more supporting people so that they can stay the least disabled as they possibly can, the most independent as they possibly can, and keep them at home. ~ Katy Butler

I'm not good at making promises. But I would like you to know I've never been serious about a girl until I met your daughter, and now that I know I'm the first man she's brought home, I'm aiming to be the last. ~ Katy Evans

All the birds who were never born, all the songs that were never sung and so can only exist in the imagination.
And this one is Teddy's. ~ Kate Atkinson

Practically every movie that shows the pope or even a bishop as a character, and in much of western literature of the last 300 or 400 years, these are portrayed as awful figures. ~ Michael Novak

You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind ~ Timothy Leary

The second message was from Andrea.
"Hey. It's me. Raphael says that Curran's been a real bastard since about mid-November. He's in a bad mood. He's snarling at everything and everyone, and he stopped hearing petitions. The big items that have to be done get done, but no new projects have been approved. Raphael's been trying to get financing from the Pack to buy out a competing business. He says the last time he brought it up, Curran almost bit his head off. He apparently stalks the Keep halls at night, looking for someone to chew out. ~ Ilona Andrews

There have been times when the church seemed afraid, but she is no longer. Analyze, dissect, use your microscope or your spectrum till the last atom of matter is reached; reflect and refine till the last element of thought is made clear; the church now knows with the certainty of science what she once knew only by the certainty of faith, that you will find enthroned behind all thought and matter only one central idea
that idea which the church has never ceased to embody
I AM! ~ Henry Adams