Holly Brown > Holly's Quotes

“What is beautiful is good, and who is good will soon be beautiful.”
― Sappho

“Indeed if fish had fish-lore and Wise-fish, it is probable that the business of anglers would be very little hindered.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, Morgoth's Ring

“I thought: Suppose, suppose just once, once, all these centuries, the slippery gods keep their word and Achilles is granted eternal glory in return for his early death under the walls of Troy...? What will they make of us, the people of those unimaginably distant times? One thing I do know: they won't want the brutal reality of conquest and slavery. They won't want to be told about the massacres of men and boys, the enslavement of women and girls. They won't want to know we were living in a rape camp. No, they'll go for something altogether softer. A love story, perhaps? I just hope they manage to work out who the lovers were.”
― Pat Barker, The Silence of the Girls

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
― Rachel Carson

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

“One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges. A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“It is a tiny minority who can do something really well, and the number of men who can do two things well is negligible. If a man has any genuine talent he should be ready to make almost any sacrifice in order to cultivate it to the full”
― G.H. Hardy, A Mathematician's Apology

“Friar Hugo, old friend, brace yourself. I am the bearer of tragic news!"

Alarm spread across Hugo's pudgy features. "Tell me, Jess. What dreadful thing has happened?"

Jess spoke haltingly in a broken voice. "I fear that Cluny has tore up one of your oldest and most venerable dishrags. Alas, Redwall will never see it wipe another plate.”
― Brian Jacques, Redwall

“Eulaliiiaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
― Brian Jacques

“Just before noon on February 28, 1882, the thin outline of a glowing orb pierced the southern skyline and hung there, like a wafer pasted in the air. Though faint, the sight was glorious: It was the first time they had seen the sun in 137 days.”
― Buddy Levy, Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition

“Ultimately, with ice pressing in on them from all sides, Greely had made the decision to commit the boats and men to the mercies of the floes, with the forlorn hope that tides and winds would propel them south to Cape Sabine. If that failed, they would abandon everything not essential and attempt to cross ice bridges from floe to floe until they reached land. Some of Greely’s men disagreed with him, muttering that his decisions were madness and amounted to suicide. One of the men said he feared “another Franklin disaster.” The expedition doctor scribbled furiously in his journal: “It is terrible to float in this manner, in the snow, fog, and dark. This seems to me like a nightmare in one of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories.” And in many ways, it was.”
― Buddy Levy, Labyrinth of Ice: The Triumphant and Tragic Greely Polar Expedition