“And the shadows of tree-trunks and shadows of leaves
Interlace with low voices and footsteps and sunlight
To divide us forever.”
Chance Meetings (1917)
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Conrad Aiken70
American novelist and poet 1889–1973Related quotes
Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist
Source: What I Saw At Shiloh (1881), VII
“It was in their friendship they just wanted to run forever, shadow and shadow.”
Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes
Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
As quoted in "Lincoln's Imagination" by Noah Brooks, in Scribner's Monthly (August 1879), p. 586 http://books.google.com/books?id=jOoGAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA586 <br class="br">Posthumous attributions <br class="br">Variant: Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
“A tree cannot grow in its parents’ shadows.”
Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower
Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 7 (p. 82)
“Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.”
Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist
"Song for a Dark Girl" (l. 11-12), from Fine Clothes to the Jew (1927)
David Trimble (1944–2022) Northern Irish politician
David Trimble in: Peace 1996-2000 http://books.google.com/books?id=zCmliED4M_UC&pg=PA114, World Scientific, 2005, p. 114
“Your nightmares follow you like a shadow, forever.”
Aleksandar Hemon The Lazarus Project
Source: The Lazarus Project
“There are no shadows anywhere.
The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows.”
Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet
The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)
Context: Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry,
Of the torches wisping in the underground,
Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light.
There are no shadows in our sun,
Day is desire and night is sleep.
There are no shadows anywhere.
The earth, for us, is flat and bare.
There are no shadows.