Quotes about winter
page 4

George Bird Evans photo
Paul Auster photo
Sara Teasdale photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“Yogi Johnson stood looking out of the window of a big pump-factory in Michigan. Spring would soon be here. Could it be that what this writing fellow Hutchinson had said, 'If winter comes, can spring be far behind?' would be true again this year? Yogi Johnson wondered.”

Part 1, Ch. 1 (the opening lines of the novel)
The line Yogi Johnson quotes is actually from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. This is one of several misattributed quotes in the novel.
The Torrents of Spring (1926)

Dave Barry photo
James Thomson (poet) photo

“See, Winter comes to rule the varied year,
Sullen and sad.”

Source: The Seasons (1726-1730), Winter (1726), l. 1.

William Morris photo
David Lloyd George photo

“Do these things for the sake of your country during the war. Do them for the sake of your country after the war. When the smoke of this great conflict has been dissolved in the atmosphere we breathe there will reappear a new Britain. It will be the old country still, but it will be a new country. Its commerce will be new, its trade will be new, its industries will be new. There will be new conditions of life and of toil, for capital and for labour alike, and there will be new relations between both of them and for ever. (Cheers.) But there will be new ideas, there will be a new outlook, there will be a new character in the land. The men and women of this country will be burnt into fine building material for the new Britain in the fiery kilns of the war. It will not merely be the millions of men who, please God! will come back from the battlefield to enjoy the victory which they have won by their bravery—a finer foundation I would not want for the new country, but it will not be merely that—the Britain that is to be will depend also upon what will be done now by the many more millions who remain at home. There are rare epochs in the history of the world when in a few raging years the character, the destiny, of the whole race is determined for unknown ages. This is one. The winter wheat is being sown. It is better, it is surer, it is more bountiful in its harvest than when it is sown in the soft spring time. There are many storms to pass through, there are many frosts to endure, before the land brings forth its green promise. But let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Loud cheers.
Speech in his constituency of Carnavon Boroughs (3 February 1917), quoted in The Times (5 February 1917), p. 12
Prime Minister

Stephen Crane photo
Thomas Eakins photo
Sufjan Stevens photo
Fernando Alonso photo
Lope De Vega photo

“Lord, what am I, that, with unceasing care,
Thou didst seek after me, — that Thou didst wait,
Wet with unhealthy dews, before my gate,
And pass the gloomy nights of winter there?”

Lope De Vega (1562–1635) Spanish playwright and poet

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 89.

Carole King photo
Rollo May photo
Joshua Radin photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Noel Coward photo
H. Rider Haggard photo
David Mumford photo
Ralph Ellison photo
George Eliot photo

“Perhaps the wind
Wails so in winter for the summers dead,
And all sad sounds are nature's funeral cries
For what has been and is not.”

George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator

Book 1
The Spanish Gypsy (1868)

P.G. Wodehouse photo
Jeremy Corbyn photo

“In eight simple ways, my Bill seeks to provide a framework for giving pensioners a decent living standard. First, it would fix old-age pensions for couples at half average industrial earnings, and for single people it would be a third…Secondly, my Bill would require central Government to appoint a Minister responsible for the co-ordination of policy on pensioners. Thirdly, it would require local authorities to produce a comprehensive annual report about their policies on pensioners and on the conditions of pensioners in their communities. Fourthly, every health authority would also be asked to do that. Fifthly, the present anomalous system means that in some parts of the country where there are foresighted Labour local authorities there are concessionary transport schemes — free bus passes. They do not exist in some parts of Britain and the Bill would make them a national responsibility and they would be paid for nationally…My sixth point is one of the most important. It is about the introduction of a flat-rate winter heating allowance instead of the nonsensical system of waiting for the cold to run from Monday to Sunday, and then if it is sufficiently cold a rebate is paid in arrears. Last winter that resulted in many old people living in homes that were too cold because they could not afford to heat them. If they did get any aid, it was far too late. My seventh point concerns the abolition of standing charges on gas, electricity and telephones for elderly people. They are paying about £250 million a year towards the profits of the gas industry and those profits will be about £1.5 billion. Standing charges should be cancelled, unit prices maintained and the cost of the standing charge should be taken from the profits of the gas board or the electricity board — if it ends up being privatised. They could well afford to pay for that rather than forcing old people to live in cold and misery throughout the winter. Finally, the Bill would prohibit the cutting off of gas and electricity in any pensioner household.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/dec/01/elimination-of-poverty-in-old-age-etc in the House of Commons (1 December 1987).
1980s

John Harvey Kellogg photo

“It is the fashion to talk of our changing climate and bewail the hot summers and hard winters of tradition, but how seldom we pause to marvel at the remarkable constancy of the weather from year to year.”

Flora Thompson (1876–1947) English author and poet

November Chapter The Peverel Papers - A yearbook of the countryside ed Julian Shuckburgh Century Hutchinson 1986
The Peverel Papers

Michael Crichton photo
Carlo Carrà photo

“The idea for this picture came to me one winter's night as I was leaving La Scala. In the foreground there is a snow sweeper with a few couples, men in top hats and elegant ladies. I think that this canvas, which is totally unknown in Italy, is one of the paintings where I best represented the concept that I had the time about my art.”

Carlo Carrà (1881–1966) Italian painter

Source: 1940's, La mia Vita (1945), Carlo Carrà; as quoted in Futurism, ed. Didier Ottinger (2008), p. 154 - Carrà is refering in this quote to his painting 'Uscita dal teatro' ('Leaving the theater'), he made in 1909

Pentti Linkola photo

“Finnish forests: Let us remind the satellite pictures of the 1970’s winter in which the old forest appeared black and young forest and cut downs white. Already then the Finnish borders were like drawn on the map: White Finland between black Karelian and black Sweden. Finnish Forest Research Institute hicced up some time and then decided that the pictures are fake...”

Pentti Linkola (1932) Finnish ecologist

Can Life Prevail? (2004) Pentti Linkola Voisiko elämä voittaa - ja millä ehdoilla Tammi 2004 page 65 (Muistettakoon vaikka 1970-luvun talviset satelliittikuvat , joissa vrttunut metsä näkyi mustana ja ukot ja taimikot valkeina. Jo silloin Suomen rajat erottuivat ikään kuin ne olisivat karttaan piirretty.: valkea Suomi mustan karjalan ja mustan Ruotsin välissä. Metsäntutkimuslaitos nikotteli aikansa, kunnes se teki päätöksen, että kuvat ovat väärennettyjä. . . )

Ludwig Tieck photo

“True love fears no winter.
No, no!
Its spring is and ever remains.”

Die Liebe wintert nicht;
Nein! nein!
Ist und bleibt Fruhlingesschein.
"Herbstlied", line 22, from Friedrich Schiller (ed.), Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1799 (1798); translation from W. B. T., Every Morning (London: William Tegg, 1874), p. 71.

Paul Simon photo
Henry Adams photo
James Salter photo
Patrick Modiano photo
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo

“I spent the winter [1859-1860, when he was painting 'Orfée et Euridice'] in the Elysian fields, where I was very happy; you must admit that if painting is a folly, it’s a sweet folly that men should not only forgive but seek out.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Corot told Dumensnil in 1875; as quoted in Corot, Gary Tinterow, Michael Pantazzi, Vincent Pomarède - Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France), National Gallery of Canada, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), 1996, p. 290 – note 18
1870s

Paul Simon photo

“A winter's day
In a deep and dark
December;
I am alone,
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow.
I am a rock,
I am an island.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

I Am a Rock
Song lyrics, Sounds of Silence (1966)

Hywel ab Owain Gwynedd photo

“O England's hate is my love unsleeping, Gwynedd my land,
Golden on every hand to the myriad reaping.
For her bounty of mead I love her, winter content,
Where turbulent wastes of the sea but touch and are spent;
I love her people, quiet peace, rich store of her treasure
Changed at her prince's pleasure to splendid war.”

Caraf trachas Lloegyr, lleudir goglet hediw,
ac yn amgant y Lliw lliwas callet.
Caraf am rotes rybuched met,
myn y dyhaet my meith gwyrysset.
Carafy theilu ae thew anhet yndi
ac wrth uot y ri rwyfaw dyhet.
"Gorhoffedd" (The Boast), line 3; translation from Robert Gurney Bardic Heritage (London: Chatto & Windus, 1969) p. 39.

Erik Naggum photo
John Crowe Ransom photo
Frederick Buechner photo
Rudyard Kipling photo

“Never again will I spend another winter in this accursed bucketshop of a refrigerator called England.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Letter to Sidney Colvin (1928).
Other works

Roberto Clemente photo
James Beattie photo
Rab Butler photo

“What struck me at the League was the prestige in which our Government and our Prime Minister are held. What has struck hon. Members who have listened to this Debate is the fact that public opinion in the dictator countries has conceived a profound admiration for our Prime Minister and our country. Our country, therefore, is the country which is in a priceless position for securing the future of peace…It seems to me that we have two choices either to settle our differences with Germany by consultation, or to face the inevitability of a clash between the two systems of democracy and dictatorship. In considering this, I must emphatically give my opinion as one of the younger generation. War settles nothing, and I see no alternative to the policy upon which the Prime Minister has so courageously set himself—the construction of peace, with the aid which I have described. There is no other country which can achieve this, and I ask hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite sincerely to believe that in our efforts to understand, to consult with and, if possible, to get friendship with Germany, we do not abandon by one jot or tittle the democratic beliefs which are the very core of our whole being and system. In conclusion, I must gratify the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Wakefield by quoting Shakespeare. The right hon. Gentleman will remember the little poem "Under the Greenwood Tree"—"Here shall he see" "No enemy," "But winter and rough weather."”

Rab Butler (1902–1982) British politician

We have the winter before us, and we have a great deal of political rough weather, but in that rough weather, do not let us forget the joint idea of peace which animates us all.
Speech on the Munich Agreement http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government (5 October 1938).

Jones Very photo
Wang Wei photo

“Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.”

John Logan (1748–1788) Scottish minister and historian

To the Cuckoo, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Maybe because I had been out very late the night before and was not able to put up my usual resistance, but it seemed to me, sitting there with the sound of his voice dying in my ears, that I could fall in love with him.
And then, as unexpected as a hidden step, I felt myself actually stumble and fall. And there it was, I was in love with him! As simple as that.
He was the first real person I’d ever been in love with. I couldn’t get over it. What I was trying to figure out was why I had never been in love with him before. I mean I’d had plenty of chance to. I’d seen him almost daily that summer in Maine two years ago when we were both in a Summer Stock company. … He was always rather nice to me in his insolent way, but there was also, I now remembered with a passing pang, an utterly ravishing girl, a model, the absolute epitome of glamour, called Lila. She used to come up at week ends to see him.
Then I heard from someone that he’d quit college the next winter and gone abroad to become a genius. I’d met him again when I first landed in Paris. He’d been very nice, bought me a drink, taken down my telephone number and never called me.
You’re a dead duck now, I told myself, as I relaxed back into my coma. You’re gone. I looked at him, smiling idly. I tried to imagine what was going on in his mind.”

Elaine Dundy (1921–2008) American journalist, actress

Part One, One
The Dud Avocado (1958)

İsmail Enver photo

“How can we furnish bread to the Armenians when we can't get enough for our own people? I know that they are suffering and that it is quite likely that they cannot get bread at all this coming winter. But we have the utmost difficulty in getting flour and clothing right here in Constantinople.”

İsmail Enver (1881–1922) Turkish military officer and a leader of the Young Turk revolution

Quoted in "The Armenians, from Genocide to Resistance: From Genocide to Resistance" - Page 82 - by Gérard Chaliand, Yves Ternon - Social Science – 1983.

John Greenleaf Whittier photo

“The Night is Mother of the Day,
The Winter of the Spring,
And ever upon old Decay
The greenest mosses cling.”

A Dream of Summer, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Cormac McCarthy photo
Basil of Caesarea photo
Anton Chekhov photo

“Country acquaintances are charming only in the country and only in the summer. In the city in winter they lose half of their appeal.”

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

The Story of Mme. NN or Lady N—'s Story or A Lady's Story (1887)

“Winter lies before me
now you're so far away.
In the darkness of my dreaming
the light of you will stay”

Enya (1961) Irish singer, songwriter, and musician

Song lyrics, Amarantine (2005)

Aldo Leopold photo

“[After describing a hopper for feeding winter game:] If you think you're too old to enjoy building such contraptions — that only Boy Scouts get a kick out of such nonsense — just try it. You may end up by building several.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

radio talk http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&id=AldoLeopold.ALYale&entity=AldoLeopold.ALYale.p0535&isize=XL "Feed Early to Keep Game at Home", 2 November 1933.
1930s

Richard Henry Dana Jr. photo
Bill Mollison photo
Woody Allen photo

“In addition to our summer and winter estate, he owned a valuable piece of land. True, it was a small piece, but he carried it with him wherever he went.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Love and Death (1975)

Jones Very photo
Guy Lafleur photo
Robert F. Kennedy photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“The winters are to fashionable women what a campaign once was to the soldiers of the Empire.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Les hivers sont pour les femmes à la mode ce que fut jadis une campagne pour les militaires de l’empire.
La Fausse Maîtresse http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/La_Fausse_Ma%C3%AEtresse (1842), translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley, ch. II.

Roberto Clemente photo

“I won't play ball in the winter. I gonna rest. If the pain is still there, I won't come back to spring training. I don't want to play the way I play now. I can't do nothing. That's like I steal money from the club.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

Speaking with George Kiseda of The Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph in late July or early August 1957, reproduced in "Frustration in the Fifties" https://books.google.com/books?id=03XsO25A3I8C&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=%22I+won't+come+back+to+spring+training%22&source=bl&ots=xfn30GlAmb&sig=9pGIiE3gGIwAp6QroqRbNPygCjM&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjo37rStb7NAhWGdT4KHSxjDCcQ6AEIFDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false, from Roberto Clemente: The Great One (1997) by Bruce Markusen, p. 63
Baseball-related, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1957</big>

Dinah Craik photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Jimmy Buffett photo
Paul Weller (singer) photo
Ryan Adams photo

“Do you remember stormy winter?
Well button up your coat, one's comin' soon”

Ryan Adams (1974) American alt-country/rock singer-songwriter

The Last Dance
29 (2005)

John Dyer photo
Chris Rea photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Mel Brooks photo

“Lead Tenor Stormtrooper: Springtime, for Hitler, and Germany
Winter, for Poland and France!”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

The Producers

Simon Hoggart photo

“Mr Arbuthnot did not respond, but sat with a thin, weak smile, like winter sunshine upon a coffin lid.”

Simon Hoggart (1946–2014) English journalist and broadcaster

Quoted by Rod Liddell, Guardian, 18 Sep 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,793988,00.html

Anthony Wayne photo
Nas photo

“When I was nine, coldest winter i remember
we're slipping in december, two feet of snow
Yeah thats the east coast, that black ice - symbolize the rap life”

Nas (1973) American rapper, record producer and entrepreneur

Hope
On Albums, Hip Hop Is Dead (2006)

Nancy Peters photo
Isaac Rosenberg photo
James Hamilton photo

“The truth is the Tree of Life knows no seasons. High up among its branches spring warbles all the year; and they are only the poor pensioners underneath who count the months, and tell an autumn and a winter.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 526.

Tom Robbins photo
Roy Campbell (poet) photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Joe Rogan photo

“What is the purpose of houses? It is to protect us from the wind and cold of winter, the heat and rain of summer, and to keep out robbers and thieves. Once these ends have been secured, that is all. Whatever does not contribute to these ends should be eliminated.”

Mozi (-470–-391 BC) Chinese political philosopher and religious reformer of the Warring States period

6
Ch 20, as quoted in Van Norden, Bryan W. (2011). Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-60384-468-0.
Mozi

Peter Gabriel photo
Norman Mailer photo
Henri Matisse photo
Harry Chapin photo
Philip Plait photo

“What I have discovered in 20 years of studying the universe, from here to there to everywhere, is that the universe is complicated, and when things happen, it is almost never like ‘A happened and therefore B’. No, A happened and therefore B, C, D and E, but then there is this thing F, and that had a 10% effect, and that prompted G to go back and tip over A, and it is always like this – everything is interconnected. And so a lot of these far-right fundamentalist religion people, and a lot of these people who are anti-global warming, anti-evolution, anti-science, what they do is they take advantage of the fact that things are complicated, and their lives are based on things being simple – if we do this, then this will happen – if we invade Iraq, we will be treated as liberators, if we pray, then good things will happen, and this stuff is wrong. But we have a culture where people are brought up to believe in simplicity, and if A then B. And so when you point out that scientists say the earth is warming, but we had a really devastating winter this year, then these people will say “oh, obviously global warming is wrong.””

Philip Plait (1964) astronomer, skeptic

No, global warming can cause worse winters locally. It’s complicated. But people don’t want to hear “it’s complicated”, and boy, the conspiracy theorists and anti-scientists take full advantage of that.
Skepticality http://www.skepticality.com/index.php ep. 52 http://www.skepticality.com/notes/sn_Ep52.php (15 May 2007) 23:11 - 24:46
Interviews

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Jonathan Swift photo
Omar Khayyám photo
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