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Hemlock Quotes

Browse 25 quotes about Hemlock.

Hemlock Quotes

“The sun had begun to wink behind the trees, but pockets of other light burst all around. Lanterns hung from tree branches; there was a firepit in the center of the lawn; and in the pond, the silky water shimmered with little full moons floating on the surface. No, not moons--- orbs. Such simple sources of light, but Rose was struck by how they looked like they'd dipped down from the sky, unwilling to miss the festivities. It was a lush, clandestine beauty, mixed with the unsupervised cacophony of the people disrupting it. The word "decadence" came to mind. Rose loved that in the middle of it all Hart seemed oblivious to it, stuck in tour-guide mode. "This is my favorite tree on the property," he said. Rose also loved that he had a favorite tree. Its curlicue branches plumed outward like long hair in water, and in certain spots, its leaves drooped and swept over the ground. "It's a one-hundred-year-old weeping hemlock," Hart said. "One of the oldest hemlocks this side of the Western Hemisphere, and the estate's namesake." They walked beneath the canopy, where string lights and pearly garlands hung like so many gaudy necklaces on a dowager duchess. Rose had never paid much attention to trees, but even she couldn't deny this one's majesty.”

“Anti-intellectualism ... has been present in some form and degree in most societies; in one it takes the form of the administering of hemlock, in another of town-and-gown riots, in another of censorship and regimentation, in still another of Congressional investigations.”

“There is nothing so inconvenient in this world as an absolutely truthful person, who can both speak and write, and has the courage of his convictions. One can always arrange matters with liars ... But with the man or woman who holds truth dearer than life, and honor more valuable than advancement, there is nothing to be done, now that governments cannot insist on the hemlock-cure, as in the case of Socrates.”

“Far away beyond the pine-woods,' he answered, in a low dreamy voice, 'there is a little garden. There the grass grows long and deep, there are the great white stars of the hemlock flower, there the nightingale sings all night long. All night long he sings, and the cold, crystal moon looks down, and the yew-tree spreads out its giant arms over the sleepers.”

“The world of life, of spontaneity, the world of dawn and sunset and starlight, the world of soil and sunshine, of meadow and woodland, of hickory and oak and maple and hemlock and pineland forests, of wildlife dwelling around us, of the river and its wellbeing--all of this [is] the integral community in which we live.”

“This hill crossed with broken pines and maples lumpy with the burial mounds of uprooted hemlocks (hurricane of '38) out of their rotting hearts generations rise trying once more to become the forest just beyond them tall enough to be called trees in their youth like aspen a bouquet of young beech is gathered they still wear last summer's leaves the lightest brown almost translucent how their stubbornness has decorated the winter woods.”

“What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statutes the next.”

“I have to seek God beauty. Because isn't my internal circuitry wired to seek out something worthy of worship? . True Beauty worship, worship of Creator Beauty Himself. God is present in all moments, but I do not deify the wind in the pines, the snow falling on the hemlocks, the moon over harvested wheat. Pantheism, seeing the natural world as divine, is a very different thing than seeing divine God present in all things . Nature is not God but God revealing the weight of Himself, all His glory, through the looking glass of nature.”

“The grey nurse resumed her knitting as Peter Walsh, on the hot seat beside her, began snoring. In her grey dress, moving her hands indefatigably yet quietly, she seemed like the champion of the rights of sleepers, like one of those spectral presences which rise in twilight in woods made of sky and branches. The solitary traveler, haunter of lanes, disturber of ferns, and devastator of hemlock plants, looking up, suddenly sees the giant figure at the end of the ride.”