“A few old men began to say there had been a winter like this when they were warriors, and that it was a year of catastrophe and disappointment. But old men will ever spin this wheel. The summers were always hotter and the winters colder in the days of their strength, and the air thick with epic drama and portent.”

Book One, Part II “The Warrior”, Chapter 1 (p. 41)
Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1978)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A few old men began to say there had been a winter like this when they were warriors, and that it was a year of catastr…" by Tanith Lee?
Tanith Lee photo
Tanith Lee 124
British writer 1947–2015

Related quotes

Karen Blixen photo

“Taciturn old people received the gift of tongues; ears that for years had been almost deaf were opened to it. Time itself had merged into eternity. Long after midnight the windows of the house shone like gold, and golden song flowed out into the winter air.”

"Babette's Feast"
Anecdotes of Destiny (1953)
Context: Of what happened later in the evening nothing definite can here be stated. None of the guests later on had any clear remembrance of it. They only knew that the rooms had been filled with a heavenly light, as if a number of small halos had blended into one glorious radiance. Taciturn old people received the gift of tongues; ears that for years had been almost deaf were opened to it. Time itself had merged into eternity. Long after midnight the windows of the house shone like gold, and golden song flowed out into the winter air.

T.S. Eliot photo

“There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.”

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

Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: In spite of all the dishonour,
the broken standards, the broken lives,
The broken faith in one place or another,
There was something left that was more than the tales
Of old men on winter evenings.

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)

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)

Elia Kazan photo

“The Group was the best thing professionally that ever happened to me. I met two wonderful men. Lee Strasberg and Harold Clurman, both of whom were around thirty years old. They were magnetic, fearless leaders. During the summer I was an apprentice, they were entertaining in a Jewish summer camp… At the end of the summer they said to me: "You may have talent for something, but it's certainly not acting.”

Elia Kazan (1909–2003) Greek-American film and theatre director, film and theatrical producer, screenwriter, novelist

Interview by Michel Ciment in Kazan on Kazan (Viking, 1974), pp. 15 ff. Originally published 1973 by Secker and Warburg, London.
Quote about the Group Theatre

Mark Twain photo

“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Often attributed to Twain, but of unknown origin. http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/scrapbook/04_trouble/ http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=009Ckt http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/08/19/MNGOBEA9JI1.DTL This entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/30/coldest-winter/ discusses some possible early sources.
Twain did write, in Roughing It http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3177/3177.txt:
The climate of San Francisco is mild and singularly equable. The thermometer stands at about seventy degrees the year round. It hardly changes at all. You sleep under one or two light blankets Summer and Winter, and never use a mosquito bar. Nobody ever wears Summer clothing. You wear black broadcloth--if you have it--in August and January, just the same. It is no colder, and no warmer, in the one month than the other. You do not use overcoats and you do not use fans. It is as pleasant a climate as could well be contrived, take it all around, and is doubtless the most unvarying in the whole world. The wind blows there a good deal in the summer months, but then you can go over to Oakland, if you choose--three or four miles away--it does not blow there.
Misattributed

Dinah Craik photo
Rick Riordan photo
Alexandra Kollontai photo
Heraclitus photo

“God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.”

Heraclitus (-535) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Fragment 67
Numbered fragments

Related topics