Sarah P > Sarah's Quotes

“O, blackberry tart, with berries as big as your thumb, purple and black, and thick with juice, and a crust to endear them that will go to cream in your mouth, and both passing down with such a taste that will make you close your eyes and wish you might live for ever in the wideness of that rich moment.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“But I was born in the image of God, a man, a creator, with power of life and death, a father, blessed with the gift of the seed of Adam, a sower of seed, to bring forth generations of new life.

This I was, and envying a kettle.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“Let all things be done in order, with right and decency. Those things are worth a man's life or two. Life without would be a hell, indeed.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“What is ordinary to you may be a desert of woeful newness to another.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“There is strange, and yet not strange, is the kiss. It is strange because it mixes silliness with tragedy, and yet not strange because there is good reason for it. There is shaking by the hand. That should be enough. Yet a shaking of hands is not enough to give a vent to all kinds of feeling. The hand is too hard and too used to doing all things, with too little feeling and too far from the organs of taste and smell, and far from the brain, and the length of an arm from the heart. To rub a nose like the blacks, that we think is so silly, is better, but there is nothing good to the taste about the nose, only a piece of old bone pushing out of the face, and a nuisance in winter, but a friend before meals and in a garden, indeed. With the eyes we can do nothing, for if we come too near, they go crossed and everything comes twice to the sight without good from one or other.

There is nothing to be done with the ear, so back we come to the mouth, and we kiss with the mouth because it is part of the head and of the organs of taste and smell. It is temple of the voice, keeper of breath and its giving out, treasurer of tastes and succulences, and home of the noble tongue. And its portals are firm, yet soft, with a warmth, of a ripeness, unlike the rest of the face, rosy, and in women with a crinkling of red tenderness, to the taste not in compare with the wild strawberry, yet if the taste of kisses went , and strawberries came the year round, half of joy would be gone from the world. There is no wonder to me that we kiss, for when mouth comes to mouth, in all its stillness, breath joins breath, and taste joins taste, warmth is enwarmed, and tongues commune in a soundless language, and those things are said that cannot find a shape, have a name, or know a life in the pitiful faults of speech.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“O, the love of woman is a glorious thing, and strange in its ways of work.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“So I kissed her, and went out, and up on top of the mountain to have peace, for I had a grudge that was savage with heat against everybody, and only up on top there, where it was green, and high, and blue, and quiet, with only the winds to come at you, was a place of rest, where the unkindness of man for man could be forgotten, and I could wait for God to send calm and wisdom, and O, a blessed ease.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“How green was my Valley, then, and the Valley of them that have gone.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“Now you know what hurt it brings to women when men come into the world. Remember, and make it up to your Mama and to all women.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“Well," my mother said, and she was not exactly smiling, but as though she was wrapping a smile inside a thought.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“You must realize...that the men of the Valley have built their houses and brought up their families without help from others, without a word from the Government. Their lives have been ordered from birth by the Bible. From it they took their instructions. They had no other guidance, and no other law. If it has produced hypocrites and pharisees, the fault is in the human race. We are not all angels. Our fathers upheld good conduct and rightful dealing by strictness, but it is in Man Adam to be slippery, and many are as slimy as the adder. The wonder is to me that the men of the Valley are as they are, and not barbarians at all.I was sorry for Meillyn Lewis, too. But that session of the deacons was helpful as a preventative. It was cruel, but it is more cruel to allow misconduct to flourish without check.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“Happy we were then, for we had a good house, and good food, and good work.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“Man is a coward in space, for he is by himself.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“Yet Conscience is a nobleman, the best in us, and a friend.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“It is strange that the mind will forget so much, and yet hold a picture of flowers that have been dead for thirty years or more...”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“I also have a world, is it? And I will have whoever I say to share it. Ivor it was, first, because I said Ivor and nobody else. You, it would have been second, if I had said yes. But neither of you if I had said no.”

So Bronwen showed me more of the strength of woman, which is stronger than fists and muscles and male shoutings. For now, instead of thinking about her as guardian of a world denied to me, and foreign to me because it belonged to another, I was made to think of her in truth and verity as owner and possessor, with right of denial and sanction over all, as equal sharer, and with right to say who and when, according to her will and none other.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“He who knew how to live should know how to die.”
― Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero – Henryk Sienkiewicz's Historical Epic

“A beautiful woman is worth her weight always in gold; but if she loves in addition, she has simply no price.”
― Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero – Henryk Sienkiewicz's Historical Epic

“A good friend of mine is a cup of tea indeed.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“For socialism is not merely the labour question, it is before all things the atheistic question, the question of the form taken by atheism to-day, the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount to Heaven from Earth but to set up Heaven on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“For the secret of human existence lies not only in living, but in knowing what to live for.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“the greater the power, the more terrible its responsibility.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Believe that God loves you so as you cannot conceive of it; even with your sin and in your sin he loves you.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I believed, I believe, I want to believe, and I will believe”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“What a book the Bible is, what a miracle, what strength is given with it to man. It s like a mould cast of the world and man and human nature, everything is there, and a law for everything for all the ages. And what mysteries are solved and revealed”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“The silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens. The mystery of earth was one with the mystery of the stars ...”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Believe to the end, even if all men went astray and you were left the only one faithful; bring your offering even then and praise God in your loneliness. And if two of you are gathered together - then there is a whole world, a world of living love. Embrace each other tenderly and praise God, for if only in you two His truth has been fulfilled.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“I am not worried now and I never have nor will. You must learn to tell worry from thought and thought from prayer. Sometimes a light will go from your life and your life becomes a prayer til you are strong enough to stand under the weight of your own thought again.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley

“Pain is a good cleanser of the mind and therefore of the sight. Matters which seem to mean the world, in health, are found to be of no import when pain is hard upon you.”
― Richard Llewellyn, How Green Was My Valley