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Hardy Quotes

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Hardy Quotes

“As he bit into the oily green flesh, Fairchild couldn't have known he was holding in his hands the future crop of the American Southwest. But he had a hunch. It was a black-skinned fruit, a variety of alligator pear, or as the Aztecs called it, "avocado," a derivative of their word for testicle. It grew in pairs, and had an oblong, bulbous shape. The fruit had the consistency of butter and was a little stringy. But unlike the other avocados he had tasted farther north, in Jamaica and Venezuela, this one had remarkable consistency. Every fruit on the tree was the same size and ripened at the same pace, rare qualities for anything that grew in the consistent warmth of the subtropics. In Santiago, where a boat had deposited Fairchild and Lathrop, the avocado had an even greater quality. Fairchild listened intently as someone explained that the fruit could withstand a mild frost as low as twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit. Such a climatic range suggested a perfect crop for America. From central Mexico, the worldwide home of the first avocados, centuries of settlers had carried the fruit south to Chile. David Fairchild mused about taking it the other way, back north. "A valuable find for California," he wrote. "This is a black-fruited, hardy variety." Lathrop tagged along on the daytime expedition when Fairchild tasted that avocado. He agreed that a fruit so hardy, so versatile, would perfectly answer farmers' pleas for novel but undemanding crops, ones that almost grew themselves, provided the right conditions. Fairchild didn't know the chemical properties of the avocado's fatty flesh, or that a hundred years in the future it would, like quinoa, find esteem, owing to its combination of fat and vitamins. But he could tell that such a curious fruit, unlike any other, must have an equally curious evolutionary history. No earthly mammal could digest a seed as big as the avocado's, and certainly not anything that roamed wild through South America.”

“I feel the curve of his smile against my skin. But as he lifts his head and looks into my eyes, his grin fades. "Haven . . . I don't know if I'm going to be a good father. What if I don't do it right?" I am touched by Hardy's concern, his constant desire to be the man he thinks I deserve. Even when we disagree, I have no doubt that I am cherished. And respected. And I know that neither of us takes the other one for granted. I have come to realize you can never be truly happy unless you've known some sorrow. All the terrible things Hardy and I have gone through in our lives have created the spaces inside where happiness can live. Not to mention love. So much love that there doesn't seem to be room for bitterness in either of us. "I think the fact that you're worrying about it at all," I say, "means you'll probably be great at it.”

“Hardy! Hardy —” He had come for me. I nearly lost it then. In the wild torrent of relief and gratitude, there were at least a dozen things I wanted to tell him at once. But the first thing that came out was a fervent, “I'm so sorry I didn't have sex with you.” I heard his low laugh. “I am too. But honey, there are a couple of maintenance guys with me who can hear every word we're saying.” “I don't care,” I said desperately. “Get me out of here and I swear I'll sleep with you.”

“Is there any sign of spring quite so welcome as the glint of the first bluebird unless it is his softly whistled song? No wonder the bird has become the symbol for happiness. Before the farmer begins to plough the wet earth, often while snow is still on the ground, this hardy little minstrel is making himself very much at home in our orchards and gardens while waiting for a mate to arrive from the South.”

“There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm. There is a delight in the hardy life of the open... Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset in the wide waste spaces of the earth, unworn of man, and changed only by the slow change of the ages through time everlasting.”

“As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.”

“Brambles, in particular, protect and nourish young fruit trees, and on farms bramble clumps (blackberry or one of its related cultivars) can be used to exclude deer and cattle from newly set trees. As the trees (apple, quince, plum, citrus, fig) age, and the brambles are shaded out, hoofed animals come to eat fallen fruit, and the mature trees (7 plus years old) are sufficiently hardy to withstand browsing. Our forest ancestors may well have followed some such sequences for orchard evolution, assisted by indigenous birds and mammals.”

“Young men, you who have any piety at all, what sort is it? Is it a hot-house plant, which must be framed and glassed, lest March, that bold young fellow, should shake the life out.of it in his rough play among the flowers? or is it a hardy shrub, which rejoices when the wild winds course along the heather or howl above the crest of Lebanon ' We need, believe me, the bravery of godliness to bear true witness for our Master now.”

“There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees. It argues, I think, a sweet and generous nature to have his strong relish for the beauties of vegetation, and this friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest. He who plants a tree looks forward to future ages, and plants for posterity. Nothing could be less selfish than this.”

“It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered, before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide, and, apparently, an impervious boundary of forests, severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict.”

“Darren Hardy has written a new bible for the self-improvement space. If you are looking for the real deal-a real program, with real tools that can change your life and make your dreams a reality-The Compound Effect is it! I plan to use this book to go back and look at what I need to again work on in my own life! Buy ten copies, one for yourself and nine more for those you love, and pass them out now-those who get it will thank you!”

“When provoked, the itsy-bitsy invertebrates known as tardigrades can suspend their metabolism. In that state, they can survive temperatures of... 73 K for days on end, making them hardy enough to endure being stranded on Neptune. So the next time you need space travelers with the right stuff, you might want to choose yeast and tardigrades, and leave your astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts at home.”

“Here's a simple experiment that you might want to try if there is absolutely nothing else going on in your life. All you need is a cork, a bar magnet, and a pail of water. Simply attach your magnet to your cork, then drop it into the water, and voilà (literally, "you have a compass")-you have a compass. How does it work? Simple. Notice that, no matter which way you turn the bucket, the cork always floats on top of the water (unless the magnet is too heavy). Using this scientific principle, early hardy mariners were able to tell at a glance whether they were sinking!”

“Discussing the attempts of Augustus' generals to add to the extent of the Roman Empire early in his reign: The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the expense and labour of conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune.”

“I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane.”

“Parents are used to being made to feel guilty about...their contribution to the population problem, the school tax burden, and declining test scores. They expect to be blamed by teachers and psychologists, if not by police. And they will be blamed by the children themselves. It is hardy a wonder, then, that they withdraw into what used to be called "permissiveness" but is really neglect.”