Quotes about snow

A collection of quotes on the topic of snow, likeness, white, fall.

Quotes about snow

George Raymond Richard Martin photo
Robert Burns photo
Eazy-E photo

“A solution to stop gang banging: SNOW!!”

Eazy-E (1963–1995) American rapper and producer

MTV interview

Langston Hughes photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Dylan Thomas photo
Ned Kelly photo
Osamu Tezuka photo
Mark Gatiss photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Rick Riordan photo
John Ruskin photo
Frank Zappa photo

“Don't eat the yellow snow.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
Margaret Atwood photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Heinrich Heine photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Robert Walser photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Bede photo

“The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail abroad; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. If, therefore, this new doctrine contains something more certain, it seems justly to deserve to be followed.”
Talis...mihi uidetur, rex, vita hominum praesens in terris, ad conparationem eius, quod nobis incertum est, temporis, quale cum te residente ad caenam cum ducibus ac ministris tuis tempore brumali, accenso quidem foco in medio, et calido effecto caenaculo, furentibus autem foris per omnia turbinibus hiemalium pluviarum vel nivium, adveniens unus passeium domum citissime pervolaverit; qui cum per unum ostium ingrediens, mox per aliud exierit. Ipso quidem tempore, quo intus est, hiemis tempestate non tangitur, sed tamen parvissimo spatio serenitatis ad momentum excurso, mox de hieme in hiemem regrediens, tuis oculis elabitur. Ita haec vita hominum ad modicum apparet; quid autem sequatur, quidue praecesserit, prorsus ignoramus. Unde si haec nova doctrina certius aliquid attulit, merito esse sequenda videtur.

Book II, chapter 13
This, Bede tells us, was the advice given to Edwin, King of Northumbria by one of his chief men, at a meeting where the king proposed that he and his followers should convert to Christianity. It followed a speech by the chief priest Coifi, who also spoke in favor of conversion.
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People)

Mark Twain photo
Mark Twain photo
Napoleon I of France photo

“A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon, a magnificent tomb, and I gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Robert G. Ingersoll, The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child
About

Robert Browning photo

“Round and round, like a dance of snow
In a dazzling drift, as its guardians, go
Floating the women faded for ages,
Sculptured in stone on the poet's pages.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Women and Roses.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Alexander Suvorov photo
Jordan Peterson photo
Frank Zappa photo

“Watch out where the huskies go,
and don't you eat that yellow snow.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

"Don't Eat The Yellow Snow".
Apostrophe (') (1974)

Claude Monet photo

“I have at last found a suitable spot and settled her. I have already spend a few days working and started eight canvases, which I hope, if the weather favours me, will give an idea of Norway and the environs of Christiania... This morning I was painting under constant falling snow. You would have burst out laughing seeing me white all over, my beard overgrown with icicles.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in his letter from Sandviken to Gustave Geffroy, late January 1895; (Geoffrey, 1922, vol 2 pp. 87-88); as cited in: Nathalia Brodskaya, Claude Monet, 2011, p. 106
Similar translation:
One should live here for a year in order to accomplish something of value, and that is only after having seen and gotten to know the country. I painted today, a part of the day, in the snow, which falls endlessly. You would have laughed if you could have seen me completely white, with icicles hanging from my beard like stalactites.
1890 - 1900
Source: Claude Monet, ‎Charles F. Stuckey (1985) Monet: a retrospective, p. 169

Adelaide Crapsey photo

“These be
Three silent things:
The falling snow…the hour
Before the dawn…the mouth of one
Just dead.”

Adelaide Crapsey (1878–1914) American writer

Triad.
Verses (1915)

Francois Villon photo

“But where are the snows of bygone years?”

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?
Alternative translation: But where are the snows of yesteryear?
Source: Le Grand Testament (The Great Testament) (1461), Line 336; "Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis (Ballade of the Ladies of Bygone Times)".

Robert Browning photo
Claude Monet photo

“I have not been able to see a bit of sea or any water at all; everything is frozen and covered with snow.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in a letter from Sandviken to Gustave Geffroy, 26 February 1895 (L. 1274); as cited in: Steven Z. Levine, ‎Claude Monet (1994), Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self. p. 93
1890 - 1900

Mae West photo

“I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.”

Mae West (1893–1980) American actress and sex symbol

Interview http://books.google.com/books?id=jU8EAAAAMBAJ&q=%22I+used+to+be+Snow+White+but+I+drifted%22&pg=PA64-IA1#v=onepage in Life magazine (18 April 1969)

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo

“Resting on your laurels is as dangerous as resting when you are walking in the snow. You doze off and die in your sleep.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 35e

Francois Villon photo

“But where is last year's snow? This was the greatest care that Villon, the Parisian poet, took.”

Francois Villon (1431–1463) Mediæval French poet

François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel, Chapter xiv.
Criticism

Leonardo Da Vinci photo

“The ball of snow when, as it rolls, it descends from the snowy mountains, increases in size as it falls.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XX Humorous Writings

H.P. Lovecraft photo

“I am essentially a recluse who will have very little to do with people wherever he may be. I think that most people only make me nervous—that only by accident, and in extremely small quantities, would I ever be likely to come across people who wouldn't. It makes no difference how well they mean or how cordial they are—they simply get on my nerves unless they chance to represent a peculiarly similar combination of tastes, experiences, and heritages; as, for instance, Belknap chances to do... Therefore it may be taken as axiomatic that the people of a place matter absolutely nothing to me except as components of the general landscape and scenery. Let me have normal American faces in the streets to give the aspect of home and a white man's country, and I ask no more of featherless bipeds. My life lies not among people but among scenes—my local affections are not personal, but topographical and architectural. No one in Providence—family aside—has any especial bond of interest with me, but for that matter no one in Cambridge or anywhere else has, either. The question is that of which roofs and chimneys and doorways and trees and street vistas I love the best; which hills and woods, which roads and meadows, which farmhouses and views of distant white steeples in green valleys. I am always an outsider—to all scenes and all people—but outsiders have their sentimental preferences in visual environment. I will be dogmatic only to the extent of saying that it is New England I must have—in some form or other. Providence is part of me—I am Providence—but as I review the new impressions which have impinged upon me since birth, I think the greatest single emotion—and the most permanent one as concerns consequences to my inner life and imagination—I have ever experienced was my first sight of Marblehead in the golden glamour of late afternoon under the snow on December 17, 1922. That thrill has lasted as nothing else has—a visible climax and symbol of the lifelong mysterious tie which binds my soul to ancient things and ancient places.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Lillian D. Clark (29 March 1926), quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 186
Non-Fiction, Letters

Charles Spurgeon photo
Seba Smith photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo
Edwin Arnold photo
Abraham Lincoln photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Ba Jin photo

“I felt a joy in my heart, which seemed filled with love, love for the sun, the snow, the wind and the hills, love for everything around me.”

Ba Jin (1904–2005) Chinese novelist

"When the Snow Melted" http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article.php?lab=BaJin [Hua-Hsueh Ti Jih-Tzu] (1962), as translated by Tang Sheng at Words Without Borders
Context: I felt a joy in my heart, which seemed filled with love, love for the sun, the snow, the wind and the hills, love for everything around me. It was in this mood that I walked down the snow-covered path dotted with black footprints. Further down the footprints mingled and made dirty little puddles. I picked my way over the thickest snow because I loved the crunching of snow underfoot. With the sunlight pouring down and a breeze in my face I felt that balmy spring was coming to meet me.

Herodotus photo

“It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed.”

Book 8, Ch. 98
variant: Not snow, no, nor rain, nor heat, nor night keeps them from accomplishing their appointed courses with all speed. (Book 8, Ch. 98)
Paraphrase: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" ”
Appears carved over entrance to Central Post Office building in New York City.
The Histories

Kurt Vonnegut photo

“Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon.”

Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 9 (p. 93)
Context: "Strange business," said Lasher. "This crusading spirit of the managers and engineers, the idea of designing and manufacturing and distributing being sort of a holy war: all that folklore was cooked up by public relations and advertising men hired by managers and engineers to make big business popular in the old days, which it certainly wasn't in the beginning. Now, the engineers and managers believe with all their hearts the glorious things their forebears hired people to say about them. Yesterday's snow job becomes today's sermon."

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Ellen Kushner photo
Stephen Chbosky photo
William Faulkner photo
Libba Bray photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Maureen Johnson photo
Diane Duane photo
Charlaine Harris photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Kim Harrison photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo
E.E. Cummings photo
Ray Bradbury photo
Janet Fitch photo

“If snow melts down to water, does it still remember being snow?”

Jennifer McMahon (1968) American writer

Source: The Winter People

E.E. Cummings photo
Bashō Matsuo photo

“All Heaven and Earth
Flowered white obliterate…
Snow… unceasing snow”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Source: Japanese Haiku

Shannon Hale photo
Jim Butcher photo
Diana Vreeland photo
Warren Buffett photo
Robert Frost photo

“The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock treeHas given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Dust of Snow http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=173526" (1923)
General sources

Brian Selznick photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Charlaine Harris photo
Khaled Hosseini photo
James Joyce photo

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

Dubliners (1914)
Variant: His soul swooned softly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.
Source: "The Dead"
Context: Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

Rick Riordan photo
Margaret Atwood photo

“The Eskimo has fifty-two names for snow because it is important to them; there ought to be as many for love.”

Surfacing (1972) p. 107
The premise for this quote is now known to be a linguistic myth stemming from the early 20th century work of Franz Boas. This quote by Atwood has been cited as an example of the perpetuation of this myth https://books.google.ca/books/about/White_Lies_about_the_Inuit.html?id=i-osjdNH3g8C.
Variant: The Eskimos had 52 names for snow because it was important to them; there ought to be as many for love.

Christina Rossetti photo

“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).
Source: The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti

Hunter S. Thompson photo

“At the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Source: Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

John Muir photo

“Raindrops blossom brilliantly in the rainbow, and change to flowers in the sod, but snow comes in full flower direct from the dark, frozen sky.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

Source: The Mountains of California

Pablo Neruda photo
Markus Zusak photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Amy Lowell photo
Anne Sexton photo

“The snow has quietness in it; no songs,
no smells, no shouts or traffic.
When I speak
my own voice shocks me.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: All My Pretty Ones

Markus Zusak photo
Elizabeth Wurtzel photo