Henry Bellamann > Quotes

“I love old gardens best- tired old garden that rest in the sun.”
― Henry Bellamann

“The preacher who has too much hard work to do becomes perhaps too zealous, he believes too much in himself, he thinks of himself as an emissary of God—and naturally he thinks who is there to question God?—and he too becomes impatient. He merely wishes you to listen while he tells you.”
― Henry Bellamann, King's Row

“You’re mistaken about that. She knows people aren’t born bad—that conditioned responses have been learned. They aren’t biological.” “Do you mean that when I do something wrong it’s because somebody taught me to do it?”
― Henry Bellamann, Parris Mitchell of Kings Row

“But time was so different—much slower, and not broken up into such little bits as now, each one hurrying after the other like pieces of ice on the creek in a March freshet. There had been only seasons then. Great wide seasons—long arcs of time that stood over one like high heaven itself. Now it was different. There were too many events—Fourth of July celebrations, political rallies, county fairs, college commencements, and the like. Left a body downright breathless keeping up with them. Broke up time into too many pieces—small, hurrying pieces, rushing to catch something that was always ahead. Spoiled any kind of thinking. Spoiled people, too. People used to be big—like the place and the time. They didn’t move too fast. There had been a kind of peace that went with those great stretches of blue time arching over the seasons. Yes, people were big then, like Pa, like Thurston St. George, like Mason Thill, dead now, poor soul, and—yes, like herself, too. She felt crowded. People talked so much and about too many things. They didn’t finish one subject by half before they were already talking about something else. They nicked up time—that’s what they did—nicked it up into little pieces. One little piece for this and another little piece for that. Made themselves little, too, to fit into the pieces. That’s what made the days seem so short, and—so little. Now the world was just like a crazy quilt. Nobody could say a crazy quilt was restful, either.”
― Henry Bellamann, Kings Row

“This universe was not conceived in beauty. It was conceived in tragedy and travail. It evolved, and continues to be, only in the throes of desperate struggle. Pain, and ugliness, and brute force rule it. “In the midst of that continuous hurricane of destruction and death there are born from time to time men who resolve this disorder. They create another vision from the fire and dust of disaster. They are poets, and musicians, and artists. That is their answer to the ugliness of the world. They do not ask to be understood. They do not even ask to be liked. But without them we should find the universe an intolerable habitation. They lessen its terrors, and ameliorate the eternal torture of its unanswered and unanswerable questions. They are a gallant company. They go singing down the highways of the world, and the echoes of their words comfort us when they have passed. To that small company—that company of God’s own elect—Robert Callicott belonged.”
― Henry Bellamann, Kings Row