Hal Borland > Quotes

“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.”
― Hal Borland

“Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.”
― Hal Borland

“Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable...the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street...by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.”
― Hal Borland

“Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.”
― Hal Borland

“Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.”
― Hal Borland

“Here and there one sees the blush of wild rose haws or the warmth of orange fruit on the bittersweet, and back in the woods is the occasional twinkle of partridgeberries. But they are the gem stones, the rare decorations which make the grays, the browns and the greens seem even more quiet, more completely at rest.

”
― Hal Borland, Seasons

“A snowdrift is a beautiful thing-if it doesn't lie across the path you have to shovel or block the road that leads to your destination.”
― Hal Borland

“You cn't be suspicious of a tree, accuse a bird or squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet”
― Hal Borland

“July is a blind date with summer.”
― Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

“A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.
”
― Hal Borland

“In a painful time of my life I went often to a wooded hillside where May apples grew by the hundreds, and I thought the sourness of their fruit had a symbolism for me. Instead, I was to find both love and happiness soon thereafter. So to me [the May apple] is the mandrake, the love symbol, of the old dealers in plant restoratives.”
― Hal Borland

“I grew up in those years when the Old West was passing and the New West was emerging. It was a time when we still heard echoes and already saw shadows, on moonlit nights when the coyotes yapped on the hilltops, and on hot summer afternoons when mirages shimmered, dust devils spun across the flats, and towering cumulus clouds sailed like galleons across the vast blueness of the sky. Echoes of remembrance of what men once did there, and visions of what they would do together.”
― Hal Borland

“The Earth's distances invite the eye. And as the eye reaches, so must the mind stretch to meet these new horizons. I challenge anyone to stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see a new expanse not only around him, but in him, too.”
― Hal Borland

“Without birds, where would we have learned that there can be song in the heart?”
― Hal Borland

“The longest day of sunlight...comes at the beginning of Summer rather than in its midst. In consequence, all Summer long we are inclining towards Summer's end instead of building to a climax and then tapering off.”
― Hal Borland, Sundial of the Seasons

“When legends die the dreams end. When the dreams end there is no more greatness.”
― Hal Borland

“face it, fighting his way, but he couldn’t make it. He”
― Hal Borland, The Dog Who Came to Stay: A Memoir

“April is a promise that May is bound to keep”
― Hal Borland

“find one either, and Poochy was a real coon dog. I heard Pat’s tail thumping, satisfied. Then he settled down in the straw. Barbara came downstairs to have a before-bed snack with me.”
― Hal Borland, The Dog Who Came to Stay: A Memoir

“bitch”
― Hal Borland, The Dog Who Came to Stay: A Memoir

“So”
― Hal Borland, The Dog Who Came to Stay: A Memoir

“a slap and a night’s disgrace. But when he sneaked into the kitchen and stole a hamburger patty from the table he got a trouncing. He”
― Hal Borland, The Dog Who Came to Stay: A Memoir