Quotes about leaf (231 quotes, page 3) | Quotes of famous people

“My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm — the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year http://readytogoebooks.com/LP14.htm, st. 2 (1824).

Love , Flowers

“Awakening hope has named the name
Of love, or blown its spark to flame.
Restlessness, but as the winds range
From leaf to leaf, from flower to flower;
Changefulness, but as rainbows change,
From colour'd sky to sunlit hour.
Ay, well indeed may minstrel sing,—
What have the heart and year like spring?”

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

Canto II
The Troubadour (1825)

Love , Hope , Spring , Flowers

“If you gaze at a single leaf on a single tree, you do not see the other leaves. If you face the tree with no intention and do not fix your eyes on a single leaf, then you will see all the many leaves. If your mind is preoccupied with one leaf, you do not see the others, if you do not set your attention on one; you will see hundreds and thousands of leaves.”

Yagyū Munenori (1571–1646) samurai and daimyo of the early Edo period

A Hereditary Book on the Art of War (1632)

Tree

“Fourth Theory.—Man has free will; it is therefore intelligible that the Law contains commands and prohibitions, with announcements of reward and punishment. All acts of God are due to wisdom; no injustice is found in him, and he does not afflict the good. The Mu'tazila profess this theory, although they do not believe in man's absolute free will. They hold that God takes notice of the falling of the leaf and the destruction of the ant, and that his Providence extends over all beings.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.17

Wisdom , God , Law , Intelligence

“The wood is decked in light green leaf.
The swallow twitters in delight.
The lonely vine sheds joyous tears
Of interwoven dew and light. Spring weaves a gown of green to clad
The mountain height and wide-spread field.
O when wilt thou, my native land,
In all thy glory stand revealed?”

Ilia Chavchavadze (1837–1907) Georgian poet and politician; a saint of Georgian Orthodox Church

Spring, p. 61
Anthology of Georgian Poetry (1948)

Mountain , Spring , Tear , Light

“To the Führer. This is the truth which bound me to thee: I looked for thee and found my Fatherland. I was a leaf floating in limitless space. Now thou art my homeland and my tree. How far would I be carried by the wind, wert thou not the strength that flows up from the roots. I believe in thee, for thou art the nation. I believe in Germany. For thou art Germany's son.”

Baldur von Schirach (1907–1974) German Nazi leader convicted of crimes against humanity in the Nuremberg trial

A poem written by Schirach about Hitler. Quoted in "Dem Führer: Gedichte für Adolf Hitler" - Page 7 - by Karl Hans Bühner - German poetry - 1939

Truth , Art , Tree

“Your sense of volition, or the lack of it, is an illusion. Everything you’ve done needed doing and was set in motion long ago. Let go of your self-pity. Your feelings in these events matter no more than a leaf’s desire to steer the wind!”

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 18, “One-Sided Conversation” (p. 175)

Feeling , Sense

“Hey little leaf, lying on the ground—
now you're turning slightly brown!
Why don't you come back on the tree,
turn the color green the way you ought to be?”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

Same Old Man
Divers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divers_(Joanna_Newsom_album) (2015)

Color , Way , Lying , Tree

“The patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian dispensations, are evidently but the unfolding of one general plan. In the first we see the folded bud; in the second the expanded leaf; in the third the blossom and the fruit. And now, how sublime the idea of a religion thus commencing in the earliest dawn of time; holding on its way through all the revolutions of kingdoms and the vicissitudes of the race; receiving new forms, but always identicalin spirit; and, finally, expanding and embracing in one great brotherhood the whole family of man! Who can doubt that such a religion was from God?”

Mark Hopkins (educator) (1802–1887) American educationalist and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 132.

God , Family , Religion , Way

“But in that we started so many things in that moment, we brought to their ends many others that have been the subject matter of this account, and so here is where I draw a line across the leaf and call it the end.”

Neal Stephenson book Anathem

Final sentence of the novel, possibly addressing criticism of the author’s previous endings, Part 13, "Reconstitution"
Anathem (2008)

Drawing

“Turn over a new leaf.”

Thomas Middleton Anything for a Quiet Life

Anything for a Quiet Life (1621), Act iii. Sc. 3. Compare: "Turn over a new leaf", Thomas Dekker, The Honest Whore, part ii, Act i. sc. 2.

“I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique.”

John D. MacDonald (1916–1986) writer from the United States

Travis McGee series, A Deadly Shade of Gold (1965)
Context: I think there is some kind of divine order in the universe. Every leaf on every tree in the world is unique. As far as we can see, there are other galaxies, all slowly spinning, numerous as the leaves in the forest. In an infinite number of planets, there has to be an infinite number with life forms on them. Maybe this planet is one of the discarded mistakes. Maybe it's one of the victories. We'll never know.

World , Thinking , Tree , Universe

“I use the words gods and goddesses principally, I think, to mean beautiful bodies — bodies that are absolute instruments. And I believe in discipline, I believe in a very definite technique. You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels — a leaf feels, a storm feels — what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it's a cultivated speech.”

Martha Graham (1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer

New York Times interview (1985)

God , Beauty , Feeling , Thinking

“I'm amazed by how compliant people are in this country. They go into service stations - 'cathedrals of despair', as I call them - where baseball-capped ghouls of the night lord it over their congealed bean kingdoms, their fried-bread twilights, their neon demi-mondes, tempting you to enter to become them, undead. "Ooh, beans on toast, £18.95, very reasonable. Oh no, I'm not going to complain. They probably pump them up from London in special tubes." God, £18.95? If that was the price, for my money, each bean would have to be carried over in a heron's beak and laid on an orchid and then placed on a very rare train set and carried all the way to my table on the train set and then pinged off by a tiny little rare vole and it rolls onto a beautiful silk leaf and I eat it with a Fabergé egg. Then you'd get your money's worth.
Ch. 16, 26:40”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

Money , God , People , Beauty

“No more spider,
No more leaf,
No more me,
No more belief.”

Aaron Weiss

Brownish Spider.
Brother Sun, Sister Moon (2006)

“All that happens in the world of Nature or Man, — every war; every peace; every hour of prosperity; every hour of adversity; every election; every death; every life; every success and every failure, — all change, — all permanence, — the perished leaf; the unutterable glory of stars, — all things speak truth to the thoughtful spirit.”

Rufus Choate (1799–1859) American politician

"The Power of a State Developed by Mental Culture", an address to the Mercantile Library Association (18 November 1844), published in The Works of Rufus Choate : Memoir, Lectures and Addresses (1862), edited by Samuel Gilman Brown.

Life , Death , War , Truth

“My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Your Thought and Mine
Context: My thought is a tender leaf that sways in every direction and finds pleasure in its swaying. Your thought is an ancient dogma that cannot change you nor can you change it. My thought is new, and it tests me and I test it morn and eve.
You have your thought and I have mine.

Pleasure

“If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather”

Algernon Charles Swinburne book Poems and Ballads

"A Match", line 1.
Poems and Ballads (1866-89)
Context: If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather,
Blown fields or flowerful closes,
Green pasture or gray grief;
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf.

Love , Sadness , Singing , Weather

“Time carries him as the river carries
A leaf in the downstream water.
No matter. The enchanted one insists
And shapes God with delicate geometry.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

"Baruch Spinoza", as translated in Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Marrano of Reason (1989) by Yirmiyahu Yovel
Context: Time carries him as the river carries
A leaf in the downstream water.
No matter. The enchanted one insists
And shapes God with delicate geometry.
Since his illness, since his birth,
He goes on constructing God with the word.
The mightiest love was granted him
Love that does not expect to be loved.

God , Water , Time

“At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her.”

Chelsea Handler (1975) American comedian, actress, author and talk show host

That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall ALL the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer.
My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands (2005)

Time

“Turn over a new leaf.”

Thomas Dekker The Honest Whore

The Honest Whore (1604), Part ii, Act ii. Sc. 1. Compare: "Turn over a new leaf", Thomas Middleton, Anything for a Quiet Life (1621), Act iii. Sc. 3.

“What brings understanding is love. When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

"Ninth Talk in Bombay, (14 March 1948) http://www.jkrishnamurti.com/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=270&chid=4600&w=%22What+brings+understanding+is+love%22, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. BO48Q1, published in The Collected Works, Vol. IV, p. 200
1940s
Context: What brings understanding is love. When your heart is full, then you will listen to the teacher, to the beggar, to the laughter of children, to the rainbow, and to the sorrow of man. Under every stone and leaf, that which is eternal exists. But we do not know how to look for it. Our minds and hearts are filled with other things than understanding of "what is". Love and mercy, kindliness and generosity do not cause enmity. When you love, you are very near truth. For, love makes for sensitivity, for vulnerability. That which is sensitive is capable of renewal. Then truth will come into being. It cannot come if your mind and heart are burdened, heavy with ignorance and animosity.

Love , Children , Understanding , Laughter

“Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth, with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the eternal witnesses of its truth.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Heretics and Heresies (1874)
Context: By this time the whole world should know that the real Bible has not yet been written, but is being written, and that it will never be finished until the race begins its downward march, or ceases to exist.
The real Bible is not the work of inspired men, nor prophets, nor apostles, nor evangelists, nor of Christs. Every man who finds a fact, adds, as it were, a word to this great book. It is not attested by prophecy, by miracles or signs. It makes no appeal to faith, to ignorance, to credulity or fear. It has no punishment for unbelief, and no reward for hypocrisy. It appeals to man in the name of demonstration. It has nothing to conceal. It has no fear of being read, of being contradicted, of being investigated and understood. It does not pretend to be holy, or sacred; it simply claims to be true. It challenges the scrutiny of all, and implores every reader to verify every line for himself. It is incapable of being blasphemed. This book appeals to all the surroundings of man. Each thing that exists testifies of its perfection. The earth, with its heart of fire and crowns of snow; with its forests and plains, its rocks and seas; with its every wave and cloud; with its every leaf and bud and flower, confirms its every word, and the solemn stars, shining in the infinite abysses, are the eternal witnesses of its truth.

Truth , Star , Flowers , Heart

“Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author

Book VI, chapter 3: "Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima; Of Prayer, of Love, and of Contact with other Worlds" (translated by Constance Garnett)
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)
Context: Brothers, have no fear of men's sin. Love a man even in his sin, for that is the semblance of Divine Love and is the highest love on earth. Love all God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day, and you will come at last to love the world with an all-embracing love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of thought and untroubled joy. So do not trouble it, do not harass them, do not deprive them of their joy, do not go against God's intent. Man, do not exhale yourself above the animals: they are without sin, while you in your majesty defile the earth by your appearance on it, and you leave the traces of your defilement behind you — alas, this is true of almost every one of us! Love children especially, for like the angels they too are sinless, and they live to soften and purify our hearts, and, as it were, to guide us. Woe to him who offends a child.
My young brother asked even the birds to forgive him. It may sound absurd, but it is right none the less, for everything, like the ocean, flows and enters into contact with everything else: touch one place, and you set up a movement at the other end of the world. It may be senseless to beg forgiveness of the birds, but, then, it would be easier for the birds, and for the child, and for every animal if you were yourself more pleasant than you are now. Everything is like an ocean, I tell you. Then you would pray to the birds, too, consumed by a universal love, as though in ecstasy, and ask that they, too, should forgive your sin. Treasure this ecstasy, however absurd people may think it.

Love , God , World , Light

“1916
Let us lift the fallen!
Because who else – who else than we
would summon them like autumn leafs
when time will shake the bells of our dreams
a “Foggy dew”

And once the time runs out
for everything and nothing at all
with a triumphant song on our lips
we shall wage war on the entire world!”

Marcin Malek (1975) Polish writer

Among the things (2012), Page 38, verse V, VI.

War , World , Dreams , Autumn

“It took his breath away. The elegance and functionality of the structure lay out before him, as beautiful and simple and effective as a leaf or a root cluster. To have something so much like the fruits of evolution, but designed by human minds, was awe-inspiring. It was the pinnacle of what creativity meant, the impossible made real.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Caliban's War (2012), Chapter 31 (p. 344)

Beauty

“In their phenomena of life the inhabitants of the earth display endless variety. They swim in the waters, soar in the skies, squeeze among the rocks, clamber among the trees, scamper over the plains, and glide among the grounds and grasses. Some are born for a summer, some for a century, and some flutter their little lives out in a day. They are black, white, blue, golden, all the colours of the spectrum. Some are wise and some are simple; some are large and some are microscopic; some live in castles and some in bluebells; some roam over continents and seas, and some doze their little day-dream away on a single dancing leaf. But they are all the children of a commion mother and the co-tenants of a common world. Why they are here in this world rather than some place else; why the world in which they find themselves is so full of the undesirable; and whether it would not have been better if the ball on which they ride and riot had been in the beginning sterilised, are problems too deep and baffling for the most of them. But since they are here, and since they are too proud or too superstitious to die, and are surrounded by such cold and wolfish immensities, what would seem more proper than for them to be kind to each other, and helpful, and dwell together as loving and forbearing members of One Great Family?”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Conclusion", pp. 324–325
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship

Family , Tree , Sea , Making love

“Get up and bring fur clothes as Autumn is here
A cold wind is blowing from the Khawrazm yonder
Look at that vine leaf hanging on the vine bough
It looks like the shirt of dyers
The farmer is biting his finger with wonder
As in the lawn or garden is left no more rose or lavender”

Manuchehri (1000–1040) Persian poet

Clothes , Autumn

“No one, least of all those who have worn the maple leaf, should be without the care they need.”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

Remarks announcing the launch of the Chronic Pain Centre of Excellence for Canadian Veterans https://healthsci.mcmaster.ca/news-events/news/news-article/2020/05/14/justin-trudeau-announces-research-centre-for-chronic-pain-among-veterans-at-mcmaster at the McMaster University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMaster_University Faculty of Health Sciences, May 14, 2020

“Nothing in this world is useless in the eyes of God. Not a leaf from a tree falls, not a hair from your head, not even an insect dies because it was of no use. Everything has a reason to exist.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Uselessness

God , Tree , World

“Goodnight! Now dwindle wan and low
The embers of the afterglow,
And slowly over leaf and lawn
Is twilight's dewy curtain drawn.”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: "Goodnight!", in Lamia's Winter-Quarters (London: Macmillan and Co., 1898), p. 163.

Quotes about leaf page 3

Quotes about leaf
page 3