Quotes about winter
page 2

“I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners. They’re pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter evenings.”

Raymond Chandler book The Big Sleep

Source: The Big Sleep

“Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Singing

“In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Mid-Winter http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/blrossettichristmas.htm, st. 1 (1872). <br class="br">Source: The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti

Water

“"Love is a myth", Grandfather Trout said. "Like summer."
"What?"
"In winter," Grandfather Trout said, "summer is a myth. A report, a rumor. Not to be believed in. Get it? Love is a myth. So is summer."”

John Crowley book Little, Big

Bk. 5, Ch. 4
Source: Little, Big: or, The Fairies' Parliament (1981)

Love, Summer

“My heart was a little bit broken, but I still had to go to school. I buttoned my dress shirt over it and my winter coat, too. I hoped it didn't show too much.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Source: Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

School, Hope, Heart

“Will looked as if he were being asked to believe in something impossible—snow in summertime, a London winter without rain.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; NY gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

God, Feeling

“Mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982)

Way, Thinking

“The Friday before winter break, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few deadly weapons and took me to a new boarding school.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

School, Moms

“You and me Haymitch. Very cozy. Picnics, birthdays, long winter nights sitting around the fire retelling old Hunger Games tale.
-Peeta Mellark”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Hunger, Game, Birthday, Night

“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

Preface
Source: Adonais (1821)

Love, Death, Thinking

“Life and summer are fleeting,’ sang the bird. ‘Snow and dark, and the winter comes. Nothing remains the same.”

Elyne Mitchell (1913–2002) Australian writer

Source: Silver Brumby's Daughter

Life, Bird, Summer

“You may have the worst timing since Napoleon decided the dead of winter was the right moment to invade Russia.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Time, Dead

“It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit because there is no winter there.”

John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher

Tree, Country

“It was a nice day, and I don't mean that it was sunny either. It was humid and not too cool, like winter was getting annoyed with itself and wanted it to be spring just as much as everyone else.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Spring

“She watched his lips forming the words, at the same time she heard them under her skin, under her winter coat, so near and full of warmth that she felt herself go hot.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book Interpreter of Maladies

Source: Interpreter of Maladies

Time

“The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

Source: The Call of the Wild

Life, Way, Spring, Silence

“Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with”

Francesca Lia Block Missing Angel Juan

Source: Missing Angel Juan

Sun

“I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape---the lonliness of it---the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it---the whole story dosen't show.”

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) Realist painter

Feeling, Waiting, Dead

“even after all these winters, I see you sitting there, perched at the edge of sunlight, feeling like the invitation of spring”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Feeling, Spring

“It reminded me of what Dad said after every snail’s crawl home from
Albany when snow hit.“It’s New York, people. It’s winter. We get snow. If you aren’t prepared
to deal with it, move to Miami.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Source: Dangerous

People, Home

“The leaves fall, the wind blows, and the farm country slowly changes from the summer cottons into its winter wools.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Change, Summer, Country

“She enjoys rain for its wetness, winter for its cold, summer for its heat. She loves rainbows as much for fading as for their brilliance. It is easy for her, she opens her heart and accepts everything.”

Morgan Llywelyn book Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish

Source: Bard: The Odyssey of the Irish

Love, Heart, Summer

“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.”

Italo Calvino (1923–1985) Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels

Source: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Travel, Reading, Night

“Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

Forgetting

“There are adventures of the spirit and one can travel in books and interest oneself in people and affairs. One need never be dull as long as one has friends to help, gardens to enjoy and books in the long winter evenings.”

D.E. Stevenson (1892–1973) British writer

Source: Listening Valley

People, Books, Travel, Help

“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it.”

Richard Adams book Watership Down

Source: Watership Down

Feeling

“If he was winter, I was summer. If I was sunshine, he was night. A dark and stormy one.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Summer, Night

“Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness; the perennial infusion of springtime into the winter of bleakness.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Divine Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

“But my memories are like a fire in winter—whenever I'm cold I can warm my hands at them.

—Ditta”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: The Joys of Love

Memory

“Ambassador Winters, allow me to introduce my aunt Abby and her…. boyfriend.' Townsed tensed. Abby glared. And Rebecca Baxter looked like she was going to choke on her chewing gum.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

“What was that you gave me to eat?" Winter panicked.
A Filler Crisp," Clover said, his eyes seventy percent concerned and thirty percent mischievous.”

Obert Skye book Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Source: Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

“I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours”

Jack Kerouac book Tristessa

Source: Tristessa

Life, People, Sadness, Memory

“In case you're wondering, the underside of a sheep doesn't smell that great. Imagine a winter sweater that's been dragged through the mud and left in the laundry hamper for a week. Something like that.”

Rick Riordan book The Sea of Monsters

Source: The Sea of Monsters

Imagination

“Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Spring, Heart, Beauty

“She understood his eyes, colder than winter's heart. A man who knew he was dead and couldn't make himself care; you are spared that. Mashiara. His lost love.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Love, Heart, Dead

“Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.”

Hilary Mantel book Wolf Hall

Source: Wolf Hall

Past

“What am I doing here in this endless winter?”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Source: The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

“No animal, according to the rules of animal etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 4, "Mr. Badger"

Animals, Season

“You have food?" Winter scolded. "I thought you said you were hungry."
I'm hungry for other things besides what I have," [Clover] argued.”

Obert Skye book Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Source: Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo

Food

“No one wears buckles anymore, and I decided to get him some real boots next winter solstice.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

“Music brings a warm glow to my vision, thawing mind and muscle from their endless wintering.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Music

“Like some winter animal the moon licks the salt of your hand,
Yet still your hair foams violet as a lilac tree
From which a small wood-owl calls.”

Johannes Bobrowski (1917–1965) German author

Tree, Animals

“I think there are two different oceans - the one that plays with you in the summer, and the one that gets so mad in the winter.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Thinking, Summer, Madness

“You are the only warmth in my heart. The only sunshine my winter has ever known. (Talon)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

Heart

“O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley book Ode to the West Wind

St. V
Source: Ode to the West Wind (1819)
Context: Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth
Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind!
Be through my lips to unawakened earth
The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Spring, Beauty

“He wanted to believe that his own lack of movement had stopped all movement in the world, the way a hibernating frog abolishes winter.”

Kóbó Abe book The Woman in the Dunes

Part 1, Ch. 8
Source: The Woman in the Dunes (1962)

World, Way

“here in the summer desert, winter found my blood”

Dean Koontz Odd Thomas

Source: Odd Thomas

Summer

“I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Reading, Night

“Like when you sit in front of a fire in winter — you are just there in front of the fire. You don't have to be smart or anything. The fire warms you.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

“They seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a butterfly in the winter woods.”

Edith Wharton book Ethan Frome

Source: Ethan Frome

Happiness

“In the midst of winter, I find within me the invisible summer…”

Leo Tolstoy The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Source: The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Summer

“She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbor:
"Winter is dead.”

A.A. Milne book When We Were Very Young

Source: When We Were Very Young

Dead

“When Love And Jealousy
Collide On The Slopes,
Winter Break Turns Deadly”

Richelle Mead book Frostbite

Source: Frostbite

Love, Jealousy

“It's the fate of the lion in winter: all his billions, all his television channels cannot rescue him from the mockery that rains down on the aged lecher, his powers visibly waning.”

Silvio Berlusconi (1936) Italian politician

On aging, as quoted in "Did I say This? in The Observer (20 April 2008)
2008

Fate, Age

“It costs three to five times as much to remove a BTU of heat from a house in the summer as it does to add one BTU of heat in the winter.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Time, Summer, Housing

“It’s a family joke that when I was a tiny child I turned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, "Momma, do we believe in winter?"”

Philip Roth book Portnoy's Complaint

Portnoy's Complaint (1969)
Variant: It’s a family joke that when I was a tiny child I turned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, "Momma, do we believe in winter?

Family

“The winter oak… is very useful in buildings but when in a moist place it takes in water to its centre… and so it rots. The Turkey oak and the beech both… take in moisture to their centre and soon decay. White and black poplar, as well as willow, linden, and the agnus castus… are of great service from their stiffness. …they are a convenient material to use in carving.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 9

Water

“Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits. There cannot be much said for the taste of Queen Anne's time downwards — bagged, wigged, and hooped; there was not a picture of which the African's question might not have been asked, "Pray tell me, white woman, if this is all you?””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Life, Family, Home, History

“People are often reproached because their desires are directed mainly to money and they are fonder of it than of anything else. Yet it is natural and even inevitable for them to love that which, as an untiring Proteus, is ready at any moment to convert itself into the particular object of our fickle desires and manifold needs. Thus every other blessing can satisfy only one desire and one need; for instance, food is good only to the hungry, wine only for the healthy, medicine for the sick, a fur coat for winter, women for youth, and so on. Consequently, all these are only … relatively good. Money alone is the absolutely good thing because it meets not merely one need in concreto, but needs generally in abstracto.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 347
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life

Love, Women, Money, People

“The heavenly bodies move with such regularity, orderliness, and symmetry that it is truly a marvel; and they continue always to act in this manner ceaselessly, following the established system, without increasing or reducing speed and continuing without respite, as the Scripture says: Summer and winter, night and day they never rest.”

Nicole Oresme (1323–1382) French philosopher

Book II, Ch. 2, p. 283.
Le livre du ciel et du monde (1377)

Summer, Speed, Night

“Basilicas should be constructed on a site adjoining the forum and in the warmest possible quarter, so that in winter business men may gather in them without being troubled by the weather.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book V, Chapter I, Sec. 4

Men, Business, Weather

“Late February days; and now, at last,
Might you have thought that Winter's woe was past;
So fair the sky was and so soft the air.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

"February".
The Earthly Paradise (1868-70)

Past

“Winter draws what summer paints.”

Elizabeth Bibesco (1897–1945) writer, actress; Romanian princess

Haven (1951)

Summer, Drawing, Painting

“One of the reasons I was asked to do the portrait [of president J. F. Kennedy, winter of 1962–63, destined for the Truman Library, Independence, Mo] is that, with luck, I can start and finish a life-size portrait in one sitting (after a couple of preliminary sessions of sketches to determine the pose and familiarize myself with my impression of the sitter). After years of working on my portraits (mostly of friends) for months at a time, I found myself getting bogged down in overly conscientious effort and discovered that by working swiftly I could enter into an almost passive relationship to the canvas and get closer to the essential gesture of the sitter. However, working at top speed this way, I require the absolute immobility of the sitter. This was impossible with President Kennedy because of his extreme restlessness: he read papers, talked on the phone, jotted down notes, crossed and uncrossed his legs, shifted from one arm of the chair to another, always in action at rest. So I had to find a new approach.”

Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) American painter

n.p.
1950 - 1971, Painting a Portrait of the President', Elaine de Kooning (1964)

Life, Way, Effort, Time

“Tell mother that however dogs and samovars might behave themselves, winter comes after summer, old age after youth, and misfortune follows happiness (or the other way around). A person can not be healthy and cheerful throughout life. Losses lie waiting and man can not safeguard against death, even if he be Alexander of Macedonia. One must be prepared for anything and consider everything to be inevitably essential, as sad as that may be.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to his sister Maria Pavlovna Chekhov (November 13, 1898)
Letters

Life, Death, Happiness, Lie

“The war was still on in January 1945. In their dismay at my being shipped off in the dead of winter to who knows where in Russia, everyone wanted to give me something that might be of use, even if it couldn't be help. Because nothing in the world could possible help.”

Herta Müller book The Hunger Angel

Source: The Hunger Angel (2012), p. 1

War, World, Help, Dead

“The winter moon becomes a companion, the heart of the priest, sunk in meditation upon religion and philosophy, there in the mountain hall, is engaged in a delicate interplay and exchange with the moon; and it is this of which the poet sings.”

Yasunari Kawabata (1899–1972) Japanese author, Nobel Prize winner

Japan, the Beautiful and Myself (1969)

Religion, Mountain, Singing, Heart

“Pray for wet Summers, Winters wanting Rain.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Georgicks

Summer

“At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.
He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Not Ideas About The Thing But The Thing Itself"
Collected Poems (1954)

Bird, Cry

“I can remember a game, we were down with about 5 to 10 points, I go off about 25 points, we come back and win the game, we're walking off the floor. Tex (Winter) looks at me and says "There's no "I" in team!" I looked at Tex and say, "There's not, but there's an 'I' in win!"”

Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman

Hall of Fame induction address, 2009 http://archives.chicagotribune.com/2009/sep/12/nation/chi-12-michael-jordan-bulls-sep12

Game

“Our tasks are definite. The first to see that no man, woman, or child shall go hungry or unsheltered through the approaching winter.
The second is to see that our great benevolent agencies for character building, for hospitalization, for care of children and all their vast number of agencies of voluntary solicitude for the less fortunate are maintained in full strength.
The third is to maintain the bedrock principle of our liberties by the full mobilization of individual and local resources and responsibilities.
The fourth is that we may maintain the spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving and generous service—in the spirit that each is his brother’s keeper.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The Hoover Policies (1937)

Children, People

“Why do predictions of the Death of the West not belong on the same shelf as the predictions of 'nuclear winter' and 'global warming'? Answer: the Death of the West is not a prediction of what is going to happen, it is a depiction of what is happening now.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, The Death of the West (2002)

Death

“What matters it, that, all around,
Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom's bound
We hold a bright, untroubled sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days?”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

To Imagination (1846)

Lie, Sun

“Trellises for leafy vines, which will lose their foilage in the fall, should be set up over southern windows so that sunlight will penetrate into the house through the winter months.”

Ken Kern American writer

The Owner Built Home: A How-to-do-it Book (1972)

Housing

“When you’re a kid, a rural, agriculturally-based colony town is a lot of fun to grow up in. It’s life on a farm, with goats and chickens and fields of wheat and sorghum, harvest celebrations and winter festivals. There’s not an eight- or nine-year-old kid who’s been invented who doesn’t find all of that unspeakably fun. But then you become a teenager and you start thinking about everything you might possibly want to do with your life, and you look at the options available to you. And then all farms, goats and chickens—and all the same people you’ve known all your life and will know all your life—begin to look a little less than optimal for a total life experience. It’s all the same, of course. That’s the point. It’s you who’s changed.”

John Scalzi book Zoe's Tale

Source: Zoe's Tale (2008), Chapter 1 (pp. 27-28)

Life, People, Optimism, Thinking

“Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows, are as sacred in the eye of Almighty God as are your own. Remember that He who has united you together as human beings in the same flesh and blood, has bound you by the law of mutual love, that that mutual love is not limited by the shores of this island, is not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilisation, that it passes over the whole surface of the earth, and embraces the meanest along with the greatest in its wide scope.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech, Foresters' Hall, Dalkeith, Scotland (26 November 1879) as part of the Midlothian campaign; published in "Mr Gladstone's visit to Mid-Lothian: Meeting at the Foresters' Hall" (27 November 1879), The Scotsman, p. 6; also quoted in Life of Gladstone (1903) by John Morley, II, (p. 595)
1870s

Love, Life, God, Happiness

“People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 41
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

People, Lie

“… even scarier is why people have stopped thinking global warming is real. One major reason, pollsters say, is, "we had a very cold, snowy winter". Which is like saying the sun might not be real because last night it got dark.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

Episode 187, "New Rules" segment http://www.hbo.com/real-time-with-bill-maher/index.html#/real-time-with-bill-maher/episodes/0/187-episode/article/new-rules.html, June 4, 2010 <br class="br">Real Time with Bill Maher

People, Thinking, Sun, Night