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Brooding Quotes

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Brooding Quotes

“When you are brooding, people say you’re too brooding and when you are lively, people say you’re too lively. You can never win. Together the two of us made an excellent pairing. I accepted her for being so vivacious, and she accepted me in my depths and together there was a balance. Really, inside of every gloomy man resides a part of him that wants to be vibrant, and I saw the opposite in Sarah. She always wanted to be more deep, deliberate, and introspective.”

MenLoveWomenBalanceDepressionIntrospectionGloomyBrooding
Book:There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
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“What dreams lie dormant hidden in the womb of your soul, quietly waiting, incubating seeking opportunity to come forth? Like the female cycle that comes every 28 days, over and over again, dreams come to rest in the soil of your mind. They compel you. They disturb you. They haunt you with visions of possibility. They prompt you to walk restlessly through life knowing that you may someday stop, listen and decide to nourish them with faith and action. Yield to the silent urging. Listen. Hear. Receive. Let the dream speak. For it will burst forth from the womb of your spirit. It frees into existence something that lives, brooding in the corner your mind. Hold the seed. Grow the seed. Birth the seed. And life will begin anew.”

DreamPurposeDestinyBirthSeedsSoilHarvestRestListenBroodingStillHarborHatchIncubate
Author:Stella Payton
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“It was his power, his gift, suddenly to shed all superfluities, to shrink and diminish so that he looked barer and felt sparer, even physically, yet lost none of his intensity of mind, and so to stand on his little ledge facing the dark of human ignorance, how we know nothing and the sea eats away the ground we stand on - that was his fate, his gift. But having thrown away, when he dismounted, all gestures and fripperies, all trophies of nuts and roses, and shrunk so that not only fame but even his own name was forgotten by him, he kept even in that desolation a vigilance which spared no phantom and luxuriated in no vision, and it was in this guise that he inspired in William Bankes (intermittently) and in Charles Tansley (obsequiously) and in his wife now, when she looked up and saw him standing at the edge of the lawn, profoundly, reverence, and pity, and gratitude too, as a stake driven into the bed of a channel upon which the gulls perch and the waves beat inspires in merry boat-loads a feeling of gratitude for the duty it is taking upon itself of marking the channel out there in the floods alone.”

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Book:To the Lighthouse
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“We can learn a lot from young children and infants who are able to shift from agitation to amusement in a moment simply by having their needs met. Once crying newborns get fed, held, or changed, they don’t brood for another hour about how mad they are that it took so long for their caregivers to respond; they shift instantly. Unfortunately, we lose this ability and develop instead a habit of thinking and rationalizing our way through problems.”

ChildrenKidsAgitationBroodingShift
Author:Rob Ryan Sullivan
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“Mother's intentions were always sound, never muddy; I don't imagine that she troubled herself to feel very guilty. But the Rev. Mr. Merrill was a man who took to wallowing in guilt; his remorse, after all, was all he had to cling to-especially after his scant courage left him, and he was forced to acknowledge that he would never be brave enough to abandon his miserable wife and children for my mother. He would continue to torture himself, of course, with the insistent and self-destructive notion that he loved my mother. I suppose that his "love" of my mother was as intellectually detached from feeling and action as his "belief" was also subject to his immense capacity for remote and unrealistic interpretation. My mother was a healthier animal; when he said he wouldn't leave his family for her, she simply put him out of her mind and went on singing. But as incapable as he was of a heartfelt response to a real situation, the Rev. Mr. Merrill was tirelessly capable of thinking; he pondered and brooded and surmised and second-guessed my mother to death.”

ThinkingGuiltRemorseBrooding
Book:A Prayer For Owen Meany
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“I hate it when storm clouds roll in, heralded by dazzling claps of thunder and lightning that boast an ocean of tears. This majestic performance of bad temper manages to overshadow my pathetic attempts at pouting. No one broods like Mother Nature, hence she steals all the attention I was sulking after.”

RainRichelle GoodrichRichelleLightningThunderMother NatureStormsBroodingSulkingPouting
Book:Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
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“How often are the beauties of nature unheeded by man, who, musing on past ills, brooding over the possible calamities of the future, building castles in the air, or wrapped up in his own self-love and self-importance, forgets to look abroad, or looks with a vacant stare.”

MenLooksSelfPastForgetAirBuildingSelf LoveImportanceEnvironmentalStaringCastlesCalamityNature BeautyBroodingVacantMusingsSelf-importanceCastles In The AirBuilding Castles In The Air
Author:Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps
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“So when the great word "Mother!" rang once more, I saw at last its meaning and its place; Not the blind passion of the brooding past, But Mother -- the World's Mother -- come at last, To love as she had never loved before -- To feed and guard and teach the human race.”

WorldInspirationalHumansLastsPastMotherPassionRaceTeachSawsBlindHuman RaceBlindnessBrooding
Book:Delphi Complete Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Illustrated)
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“Whatever is placed beyond the reach of sense and knowledge, whatever is imperfectly discerned, the fancy pieces out at its leisure; and all but the present moment, but the present spot, passion claims for its own, and brooding over it with wings outspread, stamps it with an image of itself. Passion is lord of infinite space, and distant objects please because they border on its confines and are moulded by its touch.”

MomentsPassionSpaceLordPiecesObjectsPleaseClaimsInfiniteWingsSpotsBordersFancyOver ItPresent MomentLeisureStampsBroodingInfinite Space
Book:Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)
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“God pity us indeed, for we are human, And do not always see, The vision when it comes, the shining change, Or, if we see it, do not follow it, Because it is too hard, too strange, too new, Too unbelievable, too difficult, Warring too much with common, easy ways, And now I know this, standing in this light, Who have been half alive these many years, Brooding on my own sorrow, my own pain, Saying "I am a barren bough. Expect, Nor fruit nor blossom from a barren bough."”

IfsKnowsWayYearsHumansHas BeensHardLightPainEasyDifficultMy OwnCommonHalfVisionToo MuchAliveStrangeSorrowStandingShiningFruitPityUnbelievableBarrenEasy WayBrooding
Author:Stephen Vincent Benet
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“The summer Night comes brooding down on Earth, As Love comes brooding down on human hearts, With bliss that hath no utterance save rich tears. She floats in fragrance down the smiling dark, Foldeth a kiss upon the lips of Life-- Curtaineth into rest the weary world-- And shuts us in with all our hid delights.”

WorldHumansHeartEarthNightDarkRichTearsKissingSummerLipsDelightBlissWearyHuman HeartFloatsFragranceUtteranceBroodingSummer Nights
Author:Frank Herbert
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“The just man is not the product of a day, but of a long brooding and a painful birth. To become a power for peace, a man must first pass through experiences which lead him to see things in their different aspects: it is necessary that he have a wide horizon, and breathe various atmospheres--in a word, from crossing, one after another, paths and points of view the most diverse, and sometimes the most contradictory, he must acquire the faculty of putting himself in the place of others and appreciating them.”

MenFirstsLongDifferentSometimesJusticeViewsPathProductsBirthAspectAppreciatePainfulVariousWideBreathePoint Of ViewAtmosphereAcquireFacultyHorizonDiverseContradictoryCrossingsBrooding
Book:Justice
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“Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer Before all Temples th' upright heart and pure, Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread Dove-like satst brooding on the vast Abyss And mad'st it pregnant: What is in me dark Illumine, what is low raise and support; That to the heighth of this great Argument I may assert Eternal Providence, And justify the ways of God to men.”

KnowsMenWayFirstsHeartMayGodSpiritDarkSupportPureEternalLowsArgumentRaisesMadWingsTemplesJustifyPregnantProvidenceAbyssDoveBroodingParadise Lost Book 9
Book:Paradise Lost Simplified!: Includes Modern Translation, Study Guide, Historical Context, Biography, and Character Index
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“What happiness it is to listen to rain at night; joyful relief, ease; a lapping-round and hushing and brooding tenderness, all are mingled together in the sound of the fast-falling rain. God, looking down upon the rainy earth, sees how faint are these lights shining in little windows, - how easily put out.”

LittlesLightEarthTogetherNightFallSoundRainWindowShiningRoundsEaseReliefJoyfulTendernessRainyBroodingLooking DownRain At Night
Author:Katherine Mansfield
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“The nobility of Teresa Leo's poems is that they are not disposed to hide from the dark-rather, they display a mind that tends toward obsession and brooding, that works against fatality like fingers at a knot. The firm, attentive mind on display and the lucid unfolding of the poems are the life instinct seeking and finding its way through again and again. Love and beauty are the argument, but they don't win easily. Bloom in Reverse works through elegy toward survival with moving persistence, both driven and compelling.”

WayMindMovingWinningDarkFindingsSurvivalArgumentInstinctFingersSeekingDrivenObsessionPersistenceFirmDisplayCompellingAgain And AgainReverseNobilityUnfoldingKnotsBroodingTeresaFatalityElegy
Author:Tony Hoagland
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“It was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less in making, for form's sake, a parade of it. Better and healthier to forget it, and look to tomorrow.The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain commons sense”

MenLooksWarHandsPastFormDiesFeltForgetEmotionTalkingTomorrowSorrowDiedSakeLipsBritishUselessResolveEmbarrassingForget ItArt Of WarNo PointParadesBroodingStiff Upper Lip
Author:George MacDonald
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“There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands. Withered leaves crackled and snapped beneath his feet, as he crept softly on towards the house. The desolation of a winter night sat brooding on the earth, and in the sky. But, the red light came cheerily towards him from the windows; figures passed and repassed there; and the hum and murmur of voices greeted his ear sweetly.”

LightEarthNightHouseVoiceNatureTreeFeetSkyFiguresMoonRedWindowEarsWinterSatBranchesHungDesolationBroodingWitheredGarlandsCloudedRed LightsWinter NightWithered Leaves
Book:Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].
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“The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is queen, infinite fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice.”

HumansArtSoulLife IsPassionJusticeRaceIndustryIntellectualUniversalInfiniteMethodWorkersIntuitionQueensHuman RaceOrganizedFeminineDedicatedHumankindBeesPassiveInsectsMasculineSexuallyFertileBroodingIntellectual Life
Book:Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana
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“The empire of Saturnus is gone by; Lord of the secret birth of things is he; Within the lap of earth, and in the depths Of the imagination dominates; And his are all things that eschew the light. The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance, For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now, And the dark work, complete of preparation, He draws by force into the realm of light. Now must we hasten on to action, ere The scheme, and most auspicious positure Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight, For the heavens journey still, and adjourn not.”

StillsLightActionEarthForceHeavenImaginationDarkSecretLordGoneJourneyBirthDrawsAll ThingsDepthFlightPreparationRealmsEmpiresSchemesLapBroodingJupiter
Author:Friedrich Schiller
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