Quotes about winter
page 3

Stevie Wonder photo

“When the summer came you were not around,
Now the summer's gone and love cannot be found,
Where were you when I needed you last winter, my love?”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You)
Song lyrics, Music of My Mind (1972)

William Ernest Henley photo

“From the winter’s gray despair,
From the summer’s golden languor,
Death, the lover of Life,
Frees us for ever.”

William Ernest Henley (1849–1903) English poet, critic and editor

Source: In Hospital (1908), p. 20

Horace Greeley photo

“III. We think you are unduly influenced by the counsels, the representations, the menaces, of certain fossil politicians hailing from the Border Slave States. Knowing well that the heartily, unconditionally loyal portion of the White citizens of those States do not expect nor desire chat Slavery shall be upheld to the prejudice of the Union--(for the truth of which we appeal not only to every Republican residing in those States, but to such eminent loyalists as H. Winter Davis, Parson Brownlow, the Union Central Committee of Baltimore, and to The Nashville Union)--we ask you to consider that Slavery is everywhere the inciting cause and sustaining base of treason: the most slaveholding sections of Maryland and Delaware being this day, though under the Union flag, in full sympathy with the Rebellion, while the Free-Labor portions of Tennessee and of Texas, though writhing under the bloody heel of Treason, are unconquerably loyal to the Union. So emphatically is this the case, that a most intelligent Union banker of Baltimore recently avowed his confident belief that a majority of the present Legislature of Maryland, though elected as and still professing to be Unionists, are at heart desirous of the triumph of the Jeff. Davis conspiracy; and when asked how they could be won back to loyalty, replied "only by the complete Abolition of Slavery." It seems to us the most obvious truth, that whatever strengthens or fortifies Slavery in the Border States strengthens also Treason, and drives home the wedge intended to divide the Union. Had you from the first refused to recognize in those States, as here, any other than unconditional loyalty--that which stands for the Union, whatever may become of Slavery, those States would have been, and would be, far more helpful and less troublesome to the defenders of the Union than they have been, or now are.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

“Spring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Jane Roberts photo

“The winter of the spirit must be journeyed through, and it must not only be conquered but the benefits used. Yet without it maturity cannot arrive.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 137
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 3

Ray Bradbury photo
Andreas Schelfhout photo

“.. and since we are now living in the Summer-time, I don't have a trick to imagine me Winter so strongly that I would be able to paint one [a winter-landscape].... and you must have patience until next winter.”

Andreas Schelfhout (1787–1870) Dutch painter, etcher and lithographer

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch, citaat van Schelfhout, uit zijn brief:) ..en daar wij nu in het Zomer leeven zijn heb ik geen truk [truc] van mij de Winter zoo danig voor den geest te halen dat ik in staat zoude zijn er een te kunnen schilderen.. ..en gij zou den gedult moeten nemen tot aanstaande winter.
Quote of Schelfhout in a letter to his client nl:Johannes Immerzeel, June 1832; as cited in 'Andreas Schelfhout Onsterfelijk schoon', Simonis & Buunk 2005 https://www.simonis-buunk.nl/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/catalogus_schelfhout.pdf, p. 17

Theodor Mommsen photo
Robert Southwell photo
Confucius photo

“Only after Winter comes do we know that the pine and the cypress are the last to fade.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Other chapters

Charles Boarman photo

“My dear Father, Charley wrote you in his letter to his Aunt Laura thanking you for your kindness in sending us a nice Christmas present. You must not think because I have not written you myself before this that I appreciated your kindness less. I have been so troubled with pains and weakness in my arm and hand as to be almost useless at times. I think it was nursing so much when the children were sick. I was so relieved when Anna's note to Charly arrived yesterday telling Frankie was better. It would have been dreadful for Mother to have gone out west at this miserable season of the year. I was wretchedly uneasy. I do hope poor Franky will get along nicely now. It will make him much more careful about exposing himself having had this severe attack. Charley received the enclosed letters Anna sent from Sister Eliza and Toad[? ]. I was very glad to get them. It is quite refreshing to read Sister Eliza's letters. They are so cheerful and happy. I had a letter from her on Friday. This Custom House investigating committee is attracting a great deal of attention and time here. It holds its sessions at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Mr. Broome was up on Tuesday evening until ten o'clock but was not called upon. It is very slow. He has been for three weeks passed preparing the statement for those summoned from the Public Stores. Mr. Broome sends Laura a paper to look at—The Fisk tragedy. What is Nora doing with herself this winter. She might write to me sometimes. Give much love to Mother. Ask her for her receipt for getting fat. I would like to gain some myself. It is so much nicer to grow fleshy as you advance in life than to shrivel and dry up. The children are all well and growing very fast. Lloyd has to study very hard this year. His studies are quite difficult. I suppose Charley Harris is working hard too. Mr. Broome sent you a paper with the Navy Register in this week. I received your papers and often Richard calls and gets them. I must close. Mr. Broome and children join me in love to you, Mother, Laura, Anna, Nora, Charly & all.
With much love,
Your devoted child, Mary Jane
I enclose Nancy letter which was written some time ago.”

Charles Boarman (1795–1879) US Navy Rear Admiral

Mary Jane Boarman in a Sunday letter to her father (January 21, 1872)
The people mentioned in Mary Jane's letter were her children Lloyd, Charley, and Nancy; her husband, William Henry Broome; her sisters Eliza, Anna, Laura, and Nora; her brother Frankie; and her nephew frontier physician Dr. Charles "Charley" Harris, son of her sister Susan.
John Broome and Rebecca Lloyd: Their Descendants and Related Families, 18th to 21st Centuries (2009)

Willem de Kooning photo
Anton Chekhov photo

“If you wish women to love you, be original; I know a man who used to wear felt boots summer and winter, and women fell in love with him.”

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

Note-Book of Anton Chekhov (1921)

Anthony Burgess photo
Charlotte Brontë photo
Barbara W. Tuchman photo

“Sydneian showers
Of sweet discourse, whose powers
Can crown old Winter’s head with flowers.”

Richard Crashaw (1612–1649) British writer

Wishes for the Supposed Mistress

Nathanael Greene photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Neil Munro (Hugh Foulis) photo
Ben Jonson photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“Putin hasn’t come out of the blue, you know? It’s not just Putin. That’s why again in my book Winter is Coming, I emphasize why Vladimir Putin and enemies of the free world must be stopped. Because Putin, you may call him bosses of bosses, Capo dei Capi, he’s like a spider in the center of this web. Because Putin helps other bad guys, other thugs, dictators, and terrorists to sort of feel free to attack the free world. Because they all know that unless they attack the free world, unless they attack the United States as the leader of the free world, they will have no credibility with their own people because neither Putin nor Iranian mullahs, nor Al Qaeda, Islamic State or other dictators around the globe, they have nothing to offer but confrontation. They have to present themselves of the protectors of their own people against the world evil. And of course, they have to attack the free world that produces everything that, by the way, they use quite effectively against us. They cannot compete in innovations, they cannot compete in ideas, in productivity. But they can compete in something quite different because for us, each human life is unique. *For them, killing a thousand people, hundreds of thousands of people, a million is a demonstration of strengths. So we should realize that they have no allergy for blood. And they will keep pressing their advantage, and it’s not that we have grown – that our enemies have grown stronger. It’s our resolve that has grown weaker.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, Interview with Bill Kristol (2016)

Tommy Douglas photo
Vitruvius photo
John P. Gaines photo
Mary Parker Follett photo

“One of the most interesting things about business to me is that I find so many business men who are willing to try experiments. I should like to tell you about two evenings I spent last winter and the contrast between them. I went one evening to a drawing-room meeting where economists and M. Ps. talked of current affairs, of our present difficulties. It all seemed a little vague to me, did not seem really to come to grips with our problem. The next evening it happened that I went to a dinner of twenty business men who were discussing the question of centralization and decentralization. Each one had something to add from his own experience of the relation of branch firms to the central office, and the other problems included in the subject. There I found L hope for the future. There men were not theorizing or dogmatizing; they were thinking of what they had actually done and they were willing to try new ways the next morning, so to speak. Business, because it gives us the opportunity of trying new roads, of blazing new trails, because, in short, it is pioneer work, pioneer work in the organized relations of human beings, seems to me to offer as thrilling an experience as going into a new country and building railroads over new mountains. For whatever problems we solve in business management may help towards the solution of world problems, since the principles of organization and administration which are discovered as best for business can be applied to government or international relations. Indeed, the solution of world problems must eventually be built up from all the little bits of experience wherever people are consciously trying to solve problems of relation. And this attempt is being made more consciously and deliberately in industry than anywhere else.”

Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) American academic

Source: Dynamic administration, 1942, p. xxi-xxii

Harald V of Norway photo
Statius photo

“As a mariner caught in a winter sea, to whom neither lazy Wain nor Moon with friendly radiance shows directions, stands clueless in mid commotion of land and sea, expecting every moment rocks sunk in treacherous shallows, or foaming cliffs with spiky tops to run upon the rearing prow.”
Ac velut hiberno deprensus navita ponto, cui neque Temo piger neque amico sidere monstrat Luna vias, medio caeli pelagique tumultu stat rationis inops, jam jamque aut saxa malignis expectat summersa vadis aut vertice acuto spumantes scopulos erectae incurrere prorae.

Source: Thebaid, Book I, Line 370

Thomas R. Marshall photo
Francisco De Goya photo
Stephen King photo
Vitruvius photo
Harry Turtledove photo
Patrick Modiano photo
Henry Edward Manning photo
Lewis Morris (poet) photo
Anna Akhmatova photo

“Thinking of the sun makes
my heart beat faster — too fast!
What darkness!
From this night winter begins.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Variant translations:
Memory of sun fades in my heart
What is this? Darkness? Maybe! —
During the night comes
winter.
"Memory of the Sun" (alternate translation by Paula Goodman)
Thinking Of The Sun (1911)

William Saroyan photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Han-shan photo
Henry Moore photo
Halldór Laxness photo

“Slowly, slowly winter day opens his arctic eye.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part II: Free of Debt

“A wet summer and a fine winter should be the farmer's prayer.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Georgics, Book I, p. 39
Translations, The Poems of Virgil Translated Into English Prose (1872)

Roberto Clemente photo

“I was so anxious for this season to start when I was at home last winter. I was thinking in terms of a big year for myself—moneywise. I had batted.357 last year and I thought that if I had another big year I might get paid more money than anybody ever did in baseball. Then I fell and then I wonder if I will be able to play at all.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Top Salary Vision of Clemente Dims; Subpar Season Hurts" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3q4nAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Y2wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4117,4986463 by Charley Feeney, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Friday, September 27, 1968), p. 23
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1968</big>

Thomas Hardy photo

“I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

" The Darkling Thrush http://www.poetry-online.org/hardy_the_darkling_thrush.htm" (1900), lines 1-8, from Poems of the Past and Present (1901)

“Science Fiction Gods; Do they take much of an interest in us? I doubt it. How much entertainment does an ant's nest provide you with?
'Adepticus Sir, that bunch of Ornithoids on Artoc 4 that you asked me to observe, well they've just trashed their planet.'
'Oh that is a pity Initiatus Jones. What was it this time, ecological screw up or nuclear winter?'
'Worse than that sir, i looks lke they were mucking around with vacuum energy without having first invented the Mobius sphere.'
'Ah yes, the old classic mistake, we loose a few like that.'
'Could we not have tipped them off about it Sir?'
'I'm afraid not Jones, stupidity must remain its own reward, it's regrettable but there you are. Did you salvage anything?'
'They composed some fairly good poetry a couple of centuries ago, and some rather fine cloud sculptures fairly recently, I've logged some records in the archives.'
'Splendid Jones, I'll peruse them this evening. What about those Apes on Sol 3, how are they getting on?'
'Quit a bit of warfare as usual Sir, mostly based on chemical explosives these days, but with the occasional use of plutonium. Many of them have developed a belief in a big bang theory, and they reckon that they have the maths to prove it.'
'Really? Smith in anthropology will probably find that hilarious, I'm sure she would appreciate the data. It was one of her old Stomping grounds you know?'
'No I didnt know that Sir'
'It was a long time ago Jones, and a bit of a fiasco actually, she gave them a piece of her mind about some of their barbaric behavior which then abruptly became worse. Ever since then they have been obsessed with the number plate on her craft, it read 'JHVH'. The department gave her a desk job after that.”

Peter J. Carroll (1953) British occultist

Source: The Apophenion (2008), p. 107-108

Gwendolyn Brooks photo
Joe Biden photo
James Salter photo
Jehst photo

“I hibernate through the winter and wait for the summer madness
Stout on my breath and a bad case of desert mouth.”

Jehst (1979) British rapper

1979
The Return of the Drifter EP (2002)

Tobias Smollett photo
Apsley Cherry-Garrard photo
Bruno Schulz photo
Ted Kennedy photo

“I get up very early in the morning. I enjoy the quietness, the stillness, the rawness in the winter and fall. It's a special time.”

Ted Kennedy (1932–2009) United States Senator

Esquire: The Meaning of Life (2009), p. 81

Mary Parker Follett photo

“Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

Chicago Daily News (February 20, 1958)

Poul Anderson photo

“Most houses grossly violate the basic principles of natural summer cooling and sound winter heating.”

Ken Kern American writer

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

Moby photo

“I got a phone call from Ricky Martin's management asking me if I'd like to do something with him in Florida around the winter music conference. My answer is as follows: 'I would consider doing something with Ricky Martin if and only if he publicly apologizes for performing at George W's inauguration and if he confirms that when he danced next to George W. Bush at the inauguration he could smell brimstone and that George W. Bush is in fact the spawn of Satan. So if Ricky Martin goes on national television to confirm that George W. is the spawn of Satan then I will perform with him. Otherwise no deal. And only if we can do a cover of 'In a Gadda-da-vida', but The Simpsons version, 'In the garden of Eden' (to which reverend Lovejoy responds ""that sounds like rock and or roll""). And, by the way, I'm a pretty easygoing young-ish person, so if you ever see me walking down the street just stop me and say hello. We're all in the same boat, right? of course you'll have to make it past my phalanx of security guards who are all ex-NFL linebackers, and the cadre of dobermans, and the perma-moat that I wear that's filled with electric eels and vicious sea monkeys. So if you see me just come and say hi. I'm normal.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"predictions" http://www.moby.com/journal/2001-02-15/predictions.html, journal entry (15 February 2001) at Moby's website, moby.com http://www.moby.com/

William Ernest Henley photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Vitruvius photo
José Martí photo
Alexandra Kollontai photo
George Herbert photo

“942. Every mile is two in winter.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

Anthony Burgess photo
Samuel Beckett photo
Clarence Thomas photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Ogden Nash photo

“Any hound a porcupine nudges
Can't be blamed for harboring grudges.
I know one hound that laughed all winter
At a porcupine that sat on a splinter.”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

"The Porcupine" http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-porcupine/

Tanith Lee photo
Denise Levertov photo
Helen Keller photo
Andy Goldsworthy photo
Robert Southwell photo

“Behold a silly tender babe,
In freezing winter night,
In homely manger trembling lies;
Alas! a piteous sight.”

Robert Southwell (1561–1595) English Jesuit

"New Prince, New Pomp", line 1; p. 96.

Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset photo
William Cowper photo

“O Winter, ruler of the inverted year!”

Source: The Task (1785), Book IV, The Winter Evening, Line 120.

A. C. Gibbs photo

“Allow me to congratulate you, and, through you, the people of Oregon, that peace and prosperity surround us. The prospects for Oregon were never more promising, save the shadows from the fires of secession which are blazing around our childhood homes. Though we have had a winter of unprecedented severity and devastating floods, no traitorous hand has been raised to tear down our national flag and subvert our beloved institutions.”

A. C. Gibbs (1825–1886) American politician

A. C. Gibbs (September 1862) " Governor A. C. Gibbs Inaugural Address, 1862 http://records.sos.state.or.us/ORSOSWebDrawer/Recordpdf/6777833", Oregon State Archives, Oregon Secretary of State, Source: Journals. Local Laws Oregon., 1862, Appendix, Special Message, Page 58.

Anton Mauve photo

“Hereby I send you back the 'Winter' [a painting]. I hope you will be better satisfied now. After alternately smashing away and adding on the cart some new figures, finally this one climbed up, which I hope will do better than its predecessors..”

Anton Mauve (1838–1888) Dutch painter (1838–1888)

translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(version in original Dutch / origineel citaat van Anton Mauve, in het Nederlands:) Hierbij zend ik je den winter [een schilderij] terug. Ik hoop dat je nu beter tevreden zult zijn. Na er eenige figuurtjes beurtelings op en van de wagen zijn gesmeten is er eindelijk deze opgeklommen die hoop ik beter zijn werk zal doen dan zijn voorganger..
Quote in a letter to Goupil in The Hague; as cited by R. Tervaert & C. Stolwijk, in ‘’De fabriek: Anton Mauve en zijn handelaren’’, 2009, p. 139
art-seller Goupil in The Hague wanted to buy this painting but demanded some additions first, to make it more marketable, it was too 'empty'
undated quotes

Gerd von Rundstedt photo
Théodore Rousseau photo

“If my painting depicts faithfully and without over-refinement the simple and true character of the place you have frequented, if I succeed.... in giving its own life to that world of vegetation, then you will hear the trees moaning under the winter wind, the birds that call their young and cry after their dispersion; you will feel the old chateau tremble; it will tell you that, as the wife you loved, it too will.... disappear and be reborn in multiple forms.. One does not copy with mathematical precision what one sees, but one feels and interprets a real world, all of whose fatalities hold you fast bound.”

Théodore Rousseau (1812–1867) French painter (1812-1867)

Quote in a letter to M. Guizot, c. 1839-41; as cited by Charles Sprague Smith, in Barbizon days, Millet-Corot-Rousseau-Barye publisher, A. Wessels Company, New York, July 1902, pp. 172-173
The Duke de Broglie had ordered of Rousseau a painting of the 'Chateau de Broglie', for his friend M. Guizot. Madame Guizot had died there, and The Duke de Broglie urged Rousseau to make the painting grave and sad.. The quote presents Rousseau’s responding
1830 - 1850

René Char photo

“Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again.”

René Char (1907–1988) 20th-century French poet

A statement written soon after the end of World War II, as quoted in René Char : This Smoke That Carried Us : Selected Poems (2004) edited by Susanne Dubroff

Charlie Brooker photo
John Muir photo
Verghese Kurien photo
Edwin Arnold photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Giorgio de Chirico photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Roberto Clemente photo
Albert Speer photo
Tom Petty photo
John Green photo
Koichi Tohei photo
Viktor Schauberger photo