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Heirlooms Quotes

Browse 36 quotes about Heirlooms.

Heirlooms Quotes

“The garden itself was enjoying the painted-on brightness of the day. The flowers were in full bloom--- the dramatic pink of the Duchess of Sutherland roses and the flesh-colored Madame Audots met Harriet's eye as she stepped out of the house. Flanking those stood the La Reines with their silvery undertones and the cabbage roses to the right. The cabbage roses, though they did not have a grand name, were Harriet's favorite. More layers inside one flower than she could even count. She inhaled the sweet smell of the Duchesses and watched as every last bloom turned to face her as she padded barefoot from the door onto the stone walkway, bordered by lush green moss. Satisfied that Harriet was content, the flowers resumed their nourishing tilt toward the sky. The stones were cool beneath her feet.”

“She loved old things. The brown-brick place was a survivor of the 1907 earthquake and fire, and proudly bore a plaque from the historical society. The building had a haunted history- it was the site of a crime of passion- but Tess didn't mind. She'd never been superstitious. The apartment was filled with items she'd collected through the years, simply because she liked them or was intrigued by them. There was a balance between heirloom and kitsch. The common thread seemed to be that each object had a story, like a pottery jug with a bas-relief love story told in pictures, in which she'd found a note reading, "Long may we run. -Gilbert." Or the antique clock on the living room wall, each of its carved figures modeled after one of the clockmaker's twelve children. She favored the unusual, so long as it appeared to have been treasured by someone, once upon a time. Her mail spilled from an antique box containing a pigeon-racing counter with a brass plate engraved from a father to a son. She hung her huge handbag on a wrought iron finial from a town library that had burned and been rebuilt in a matter of weeks by an entire community. Other people's treasures captivated her. They always had, steeped in hidden history, bearing the nicks and gouges and fingerprints of previous owners. She'd probably developed the affinity from spending so much of her childhood in her grandmother's antique shop.”

“My charge, then, in putting down my pen, and giving over this work to posterity, is this: Take the time. Take the time to preserve the stories, the photographs, the small mementos that mean so much. This is your legacy to future generations. Give it the attention it deserves. Your children and your grandchildren will thank you for it.”

“Cleaning and painting finished, the next target was the big ware press in the parlour. Out came delicate china which had been in the family for years. My mother's respect for the Stations weighed against her fear of breakage, but the Stations won every time. Once when a precious jug was broken she mourned it for days, telling us all how long it had been in the family. Finally, Dan, our part-time travelling farm worker, said, "Missus, if it was here that long it was time to break it." And that was the end of that.”

“What the house kept us, we kept. The buttonhooks, the cotton gin advertisement, the letters, the filthy lady's glove, gnarled and frozen in a claw, all of it were framed under glass, in shadow boxes, displayed in the parlor by the guest book. We even managed to save the silvery gilt of wallpaper and the peacock frieze we found like a gift under the brown and orange daisy paper in the hallway. Lost objects in a house are like memories tucked in the gray folds of our brains. They will resurface. Eventually, they will come back.”

“Exciting, isn't it? The season? They're rare or unique breeds of plants and animals. Once all our tomatoes were like that. Before preservatives and supermarkets and this commercial food production hell we're living in. Breeds evolved in places based on one evolutionary principle: they tasted better. The point is not longevity or flawlessness. All of our vegetables were biologically diverse, pungent with the nuance of their breed. They reflected their specific time and space---their terroir.”

“Above all, think of life as a prototype. We can conduct experiments, make discoveries, and change our perspectives. We can look for opportunities to turn processes into projects that have tangible outcomes. We can learn how to take joy in the things we create whether they take the form of a fleeting experience or an heirloom that will last for generations.”

“Freedom is not just something with which we are born; it is something we achieve. America did not receive a perpetual endowment of freedom; it has had to struggle and fight to preserve it. Freedom is not an heirloom or an antique; it is a life that must fight against the corrosive powers of death and nourish itself on the daily bread of goodness and virtue.”

“We are mortgaging ourselves to foreigners on a scale that would make George Washington cry. Every day - every single day - we borrow a billion dollars from foreigners to buy petroleum from abroad, often from countries that hate us. We are the beggars of the world, financing our lavish lifestyle by selling our family heirlooms and by enslaving our progeny with the need to service the debt.”

“I don't know the first thing about holding together a family, especially one that resembles an heirloom vase, shattered but glued back together for its beauty, and no one mentions that you can see the cracks as plain as day.”

“Once again Erak bellowed with laughter. "Your master here went nearly the same shade of green as his cloak," he told Will. Halt raised an eyebrow. "At least I found a use for that damned helmet," he said, and the smile disappeared from Erak's face. "Yes. I'm not sure what I'm going to tell Gordoff about that," he said. "He made me promise I'd look after that helmet. It's his favorite-a real family heirloom." "Well it certainly has a lived in feel to it now," Halt told him, and Will noticed there was a hint of malicious pleasure in his eye.”

“He was a parade all by himself, a burst of dazzle and jingle, Santa Claus drinking his whiskey straight and groaning with a bellyache... Babe Ruth made the music that his joyous years danced to in a continuous party... What Babe Ruth is comes down, one generation handing it down to the next, as a nation heirloom.”

“When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendors of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.”