Best 381 quotes in «woods quotes» category

I wish to learn silence from the dark woods, the unused middle rooms, from the girls in their white dresses,

Long before haunted houses existed, haunted woods circled the globe. Homer knew it. The Brothers Grimm knew it. In legend, all the great mythic quests of self-discovery begin with the hero entering a dark wood. Some journeys also end there.

Loss is the shocking catalyst of transformation.

Marini ubbidì e i messaggi sonori del bosco li raggiunsero come aliti di un organismo ospite. Non c’era silenzio come Teresa aveva immaginato, ma una sinfonia di voci armoniose legate le une alle altre da una simbiosi profonda: i richiami tra i rami verdeggianti, lo scroscio dell’acqua che cadeva tra le rocce, lo sciabordio dolce che emetteva quando scorreva più lenta, a monte. I crepitii repentini tra i rovi, i fruscii di esseri striscianti, nel sottobosco. Il vento era un fremito che percorreva le sommità degli alberi come un’onda che fletteva e risollevava. Anche la luce sembrava avere un suono in quello spazio fatto di vibrazioni: era un tono basso che si allungava sulla pelle di Teresa, sui petali dei fiori, sulle foglie e sulle cortecce e ne liberava il profumo. Saltava sull’acqua in giochi luminosi e scaldava la pietra luccicante.

Management" of anything as complicated as a woods requires more humility than comes easily to our species, at least in its American incarnation.

My breathe would catch at the sight of violets-so common in the woods at home, so surprising in the mountains. The violet's message was "Keep up your courage, stay true to what you believe in." p264

Most people feared the darkness. Some people feared, more wisely, the things within the darkness. Gabriel feared both, and with good reason. He walked anyway. That had always been his way. He had a complicated history with the woodlands of the world. He'd met his share of the Cyclops and the Circes that lurked within. And the world never seemed to run out of monsters.

Most everything influences my work. Working in a used bookstore. Going for walks in the woods and peering at mushrooms. Writing reviews. Coming from frumpy, grumpy, faded-at-the-knees Winnipeg.

Nothing can match the joy of a forest in the morning.

My time in the woods is time spent with a tutor on how to live.

Oh, but you must travel through those woods again and again... said a shadow at the window... and you must be lucky to avoid the wolf every time... But the wolf... the wolf only needs enough luck to find you once.

Och med en annan sak blir jag aldrig färdig: Att draga mig tillbaka och sitta i ensamheten i skogen och ha det gott och mörkt omkring mig. Det är den sista glädjen. Det är det höga, det religiösa i ensamheten och mörkret, som gör att man har behov av dem, det är däremot icke därför man söker sig bort från de andra, att det bara är sig själv man härdar ut med, nej, nej. Men det är det mystiska, att allt brusar fjärran och dock så nära en, man sitter i mitten av en allestädes närvarande. Det är väl Gud. Det är väl en själv som är en del av allt.

...she had the top down and I could smell everything in those woods, and you know what an old fine smell that is, like something which has been mostly left alone and is not much troubled. ("Mrs. Todd's Shortcut")

On a midsummer night, on a night that was eerie with stars, In a wood too deep for a single star to look through, You led down a path whose turnings you knew in the darkness, But the scent of the dew-dripping cedars was all that I knew. I drank of the darkness, I was fed with the honey of fragrance, I was glad of my life, the drawing of breath was sweet; I heard your voice, you said, 'Look down, see the glow-worm!' It was there before me, a small star white at my feet.

She hadn't meant to fall asleep, but she was a bit like a cat herself, forever wandering in the woods, chasing after squirrels and rabbits as fast as her skinny legs could take her when the fancy struck, climbing trees like a possum, able to doze in the sun at a moment's notice. And sometimes with no notice at all.

She hadn't meant to fall asleep, but she was a bit like a cat herself, forever wandering in the woods, chasing after squirrels and rabbits as fast as her skinny legs could take her when the fancy struck, climbing trees like a possum, able to doze in the sun at a moment's notice. And sometimes with no notice at all. (This text is originally from A Circle of Cats, which was revised and re-adapted by the author for The Cats of Tanglewood Forest)

... or in the forest; mingling various walks with the splash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops.

(Ren's) eyes were sad but resigned. “And where will you go?” I couldn’t keep the fear out of my reply. “I don’t know.” “Please don’t do this,” he whispered. “Come back with me. We’ll talk to Logan; there has to be an explanation. The Keepers need us; we’re the alphas. We’ll figure this out. They won’t hurt you. I won’t let them.

Some of the best advice you will ever hear will come from the forest.

The earth is grounding while the mountains, curvaceous and sweeping, offer a blanket of refuge. Their woods are abounding in camouflage as their leaves sway about in continuous, florid dance. There is an air of invulnerability that is exclusive to the woods, which is why she’s most happy among them. She doesn’t mind beasts as they are preferable to humans and much less threatening; beasts, you see, although dangerous, are incapable of the enmity that permeates beyond the shade of the woods.

sometimes falling rain carries memories of betrayal there in the woods where she was not meant to be too young she believes in her right to be free in her body free from harm believing nature a wilderness she can enter be solaced believing the power that there be sacred place that there can be atonement now she returns with no fear facing the past ready to risk knowing these woods now hold beauty and danger

Spiders evidently as surprised by the weather as the rest of us: their webs were still everywhere - little silken laundry lines with perfect snowflakes hung out in rows to dry.

The canopy of the woods was spread out beneath me and it looked as if autumn had taken a great torch to the trees, burnishing them gold, red, and bronze.

The children walk away from me, flick flickety off at a tangent between thin blotched beech trunks, then turn like yo-yos at the end of their strings and come back to me" from the poem "In a BishopsWood Clearing

the fallen leaves in the forest seemed to make even the ground glow and burn with light

So you're lost, uh? Happens a lot out here. You walk around for days, seeing things, losing your bearings, crying out for God, But He can't hear you. You can scream and scream but nobody'll ever hear you.

Still, Luce held firm to the belief that quiet and solitude were good for you, offering peace, or at least hope for peace.

Suddenly the zephyr kicked up the leaves as well, and Sylvia saw something like a great, green angel arise in the spot where the mask had lain. Sylvia stood frozen to the spot watching as a face of living wood took shape from the mask-like object and rose over six feet with the leaves flowing over limbs.

That night, after we'd had our tea, Kevin and I went bird-watching. Not the usual sort, plodding round the fields with great binoculars round your neck (though I did take my work binoculars). No, we go up in the big trees in the wood, where the birds live. Right to the tops we go, where the branches sway and swing like a comfy bed, and you can look along the green billows of the tree-tops. In spring, we take the eggs out of the nests, handling them gentle, like, and putting them back afterwards of course. An' getting away quickly, so the hen-bird can come back and sit on them again. That's a wonder of life to me; to hold a speckled egg in the palm of your hand, and think what a marvellous thing it's going to become, a bird that flies and feeds and takes its chance with the cats, and breeds its own young and dies back into the dust in the end. Why does anyone need those crazy Christian dreams of Heaven, wi' angels playin' their harps on fleecy clouds, when they can have a wood at sunset, when you can look down from a low branch and see young rabbits playing, or even young foxes tumbling over and over and squeaking when they nip each other with their sharp little teeth?

The early dew-falls that did a pristine coating, over the woods with its finest transparency, glazed as like its wet white-glassy earrings that hung on the ears of wild flowers—unlatched my fancy.

The icicles wreathing On trees in festoon Swing, swayed to our breathing: They’re made of the moon.

There are those who talk of the evil spirit of the woods. But for me there is only one evil spirit of woods: the keeper. I suppose that, somewhere, there must be keepers who are pleasant, considerate, friendly men who love their wives and smile and exhibit other signs of common humanity. But it has never been my luck to meet one.

The night Junior stayed, my right to myself was taken from me in a way that had felt more final than ever before. Then the school had denied my rape—my word. The subsequent silencing and exile—misplaced shame—were the catalysts for me to finally break free of my mother's grasp and my voicelessness and do what I truly wanted, alone. I wished to prove myself as independent and valid and strong—to my mother, and to the world. I'd believed I had needed something huge and external that no one could deny was impressive, so I could show my family I was able—so they could finally know that I was strong. Instead I had shown myself. And it felt wonderful.

These three children own the summer. They know the wood as surely as they know the micro landscapes of their own grazed knees; put them down blindfolded in any dell or clearing and they could find their way out without putting a foot wrong. This is their territory, and they rule it wild and lordly as young animals; they scramble through its trees and hide-and-seek in its hollows all the endless day long, and all night in their dreams.

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, . . ." ~Lord Byron So walk with me a little while in the pathless woods and reflect upon the unknown.... ...I find myself enchanted by Byron's "pathless woods," and it isn't hard to visualize them: tall, crowding trees, between which you make your way; the scent of earth and foliage and of evergreens. And, looking up, a patch of bright blue sky.... And, unless a leaf fell or a bird sang, there would be silence in the woods except for one's own footsteps which would, I dare say, be hushed also. In the woods there must be a sense that time has ceased and that for a moment we pause on the edge of some extraordinary discovery, that for the space of a heartbeat we are close to knowledge, on the verge of the solution to all problems, on the threshold of an answer. Pathless woods, steeped in peace and towering between heaven and earth would, I think, have that answer waiting for us if we were receptive enough to hear it. ...Here in the woods, perhaps we can listen with the heart and with the spirit, and hear the trees speak of growth, and the earth of seeds and silence, and looking up to the sky, hear sunlight singing.

There's something about these obscure vignettes of former lives that's very powerful. Our woods are full of old cellar holes, tumbled-down chimneys, ancient scraggly lilacs absurdly tall still stretching toward the light.

These woods are where silence has come to lick its wounds.

There was no one to complain to in the woods, so I did not complain,' Knight said.

The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.

The trees were dappling again. They loved to dapple, it seemed to be their favorite pastime.

The thorns thinned out and the trees grew taller and straighter, their branches not beginning until a few feet over our heads. The white, peeled bark of the birches looked buttery in the long, slanting afternoon light, and their leaves were a delicate gold.

The woods were definitely changing. Aurora and Phillip could no longer see the sky at all because of the ancient tall trees that stretched far overhead. Pines and other shaggy-barked species shot a hundred feet straight up on massive trunks, some of which were as thick around as a small house. The canopies that spread out at their tops blocked out most of the sun; only a rare dappled shaft made it through. But it didn't feel claustrophobic. The absence of light kept the underbrush low: moss on ancient fallen logs, puddles of shade flowers, mushrooms and tiny lilies. It was airy and endless like the largest cathedral ever imagined.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep," Jess intoned as they took the path down from the parking lot. She had imagined finding a spot to read and meditate, leaving Emily to walk alone for half an hour, but the trees were so tall, and the light filtering down so green that she forgot her stratagem, and her troubles as well. The saplings here were three hundred years old, their bark still purple, their branches supple, foliage feathery in the gloaming. They rose up together with their ancestors, millennia-old redwoods outlasting storms, regenerating after lightning, sending forth new spires from blasted crowns. What did Hegel matter when it came to old-growth? Who cared about world-historical individuals? Not the salamanders or the moss. Not the redwoods, which were prehistoric. Potentially post-historic too.

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify(by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Taip būna miškuose, jie visada atrodo pažįstami, kadai prarasti, išblukę lyg seniai mirusio giminaičio veidas, tartum sena svajonė, tarsi nuotrupa pamirštos dainos, plaukiančios virš vandens, o labiau už viską - tarsi auksinės praėjusios vaikystės amžinybės ar preėjusios brandos, ir visa, kas gyva, visa, kas mirę, visa širdgėla, ištikusi prieš milijoną metų, ir debesys, plaukiantys tau virš galvos, liudija savo vienišu artimumu šį jausmą.

The woods that I loved as a child are entirely gone. The woods that I loved as a young adult are gone. The woods that most recently I walked in are not gone, but they’re full of bicycle trails. And this is happening to the world, and I think it is very very dangerous for our future generations, those of us who believe that the world is not only necessary to us in its pristine state, but it is in itself an act of some kind of spiritual thing. I said once, and I think this is true, the world did not have to be beautiful to work. But it is. What does that mean? [from 'A Thousand Mornings' With Poet Mary Oliver for NPR Books]

Thy'll always need men like us. Those who are willing to do, what others cannot.

This fusion of wood and water is an entrancing thing. Without the wood the stream would be nothing: a mere thin watercourse winding through its flat meadows. Without the water the wood, on its slope and with its air of quietness and mystery and of being a world within itself, could not help being a constantly delightful thing. But water and wood, together, shading and watering and bounding each other, each give to the other something which the other does not possess, the wood giving to the stream something solid and shadowy and immemorial, the stream giving to the wood all the incomparable movement and twinkling transcience of moving water, the tree shadows standing deep in the stream, the reflection of sunlight flickering a kind of waterlight up into the shadowy branches of pine and alder. The wood and the water are here, in fact, one, for each other and with each other. It is a fusion that is almost perfect.

They sent the shrink round yesterday. He's put me on Prozac. Prozac! He thinks I'm depressed.' 'Aren't you depressed?' 'I wasn't depressed.' 'You did try to kill yourself,' I pointed out. 'Yes. That's what he said too. Apparently that's a classic symptom. It's not thought a sane plan of action for someone in my situation.

Though it's fearful, Though it's deep, though it's dark And though you may lose the path, Though you may encounter wolves, You can't just act, You have to listen. you can't just act, You have to think. Though it's dark, There are always wolves, There are always spells, There are always beans, Or a giant dwells there. So into the woods you go again, You have to every now and then. Into the woods, no telling when, Be ready for the journey. Into the woods, but not too fast or what you wish, you lose at last. Into the woods, but mind the past. Into the woods, but mind the future. Into the woods, but not to stray, Or tempt the wolf, or steal from the giant-- The way is dark, The light is dim, But now there's you, me, her, and him. The chances look small, The choices look grim, But everything you learn there Will help when you return there. The light is getting dimmer.. I think I see a glimmer-- Into the woods--you have to grope, But that's the way you learn to cope. Into the woods to find there's hope Of getting through the journey. Into the woods, each time you go, There's more to learn of what you know. Into the woods, but not too slow-- Into the woods, it's nearing midnight-- Into the woods to mind the wolf, To heed the witch, to honor the giant, To mind, to heed, to find, to think, to teach, to join, to go to the Festival! Into the woods, Into the woods, Into the woods, Then out of the woods-- And happy ever after!

Three scents accompany my memories of this place: cut wood, poppy-seed bread, and the soft, crisp smell of snow.