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Adrian Bell Quotes

Journalist

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Famous Adrian Bell Quotes

“A very old wisteria rose snaking over an arbour. Nearby were tiny roses on a wall, mere tufty buttons that smelled of one's childhood in a horse-pace village. Thin bricks were set on edge around a bed of irises, bricks which had been stamped on by Tudor horses, when they had formed the floor of the old stables. Traces of them could be seen also in the path in the churchyard, like the backs of small old books packed in a bookshelf.”

TimeEnduranceBricksRecycling
Book:A Countryman’s Summer Notebook
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“How long had his widow lived on here, beside the silent forge, with the grass growing up against the closed double doors, and six-feet-tall mallows drowning the hen-run, the potato-plot, the drying-ground? Piles of washing there must have been in the old days - husbands toiling with horses in smoke, children in and out of dikes and marshes. I imagined her coming through the tall grass of the orchard, with an apronful of windfalls, petals and pollen, and a wispy moth stuck to her skirt.”

TimeDecay
Book:A Countryman’s Summer Notebook
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“It was a day when, if a man travels, he cannot go slowly enough. At anything faster than a foot pace a man seems to lose life as he goes, on a day like this. So quick and prodigal is nature now. It would make of man a pilgrim. Not only daffodils and the wild arums sought notice, but the blue bird's eye tiny in the grass, the pink and intricate ground-ivy flower. In a cleared coppice perfect bright ovals of severance shone on the hazel butts, and told of expert work with a sharp tool.”

TimeAwarenessSpring
Book:A Countryman's Spring Notebook
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