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Marshes Quotes

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Marshes Quotes

“I have an immoderate passion for water; for the sea, though so vast, so restless, so beyond one's comprehension; for rivers, beautiful, yet fugitive and elusive; but especially for marshes, teeming with all that mysterious life of the creatures that haunt them. A marsh is a whole world within a world, a different world, with a life of its own, with its own permanent denizens, its passing visitors, its voices, its sounds, its own strange mystery.”

LoveWaterSeaRiverAmourMarshesMarsh
Book:The House of Madame Tellier and Other Stories
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“In late summer, when sprays of purple loosestrife, goldenrod, and ripening cranberries burst into color along the old road cutting through the Great Marsh of West Barnstable on Cape Cod, the air vibrated with the drumbeat of cicadas, the caws of seagulls and geese.”

GeeseMarshesCape CodCicadasCranberriesLooseLate SummerGolden RodLoosestrifeSea Gulls
Book:The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation
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“There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change There was a strange stillness The few birds seen anywhere were moribund; they trembled violently and could not fly. It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of scores of bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.”

HeartAmericaSoundVoiceSilenceMorningFieldsStrangeSpringBirdAreasTownsHarmonyLaysWoodsDawnScoreStillnessSurroundingsChorusEcoMarshesBlight
Author:Rachel Carson
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“It was a spring without voices. On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of robins, catbirds, doves, jays, wrens, and scores of other bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh... Even the streams were now lifeless... No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.”

PeopleWorldDoneActionSoundVoiceSilenceEnemyMorningFieldsSpringBirdLaysWoodsDawnStreamsScoreNew LifeRebirthWitchcraftDoveChorusRobinsLifelessMarshesWrens
Book:Silent Spring
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“Thus I began my systematic though half-bewildered tour of Innsmouth's narrow, shadow-blighted ways. Crossing the bridge and turning toward the roar of the lower falls, I passed close to the Marsh refinery, which seemed to be oddly free from the noise of industry. The building stood on the steep river bluff near a bridge and an open confluence of streets which I took to be the earliest civic center, displaced after the Revolution by the present Town Square.”

WayFallHalfStreetsBuildingRevolutionIndustryShadowRiversTownsNoiseBridgesSquaresCrossingsCivicsSystematicSteepBewilderedMarshesBluffsConfluenceRefinery
Book:The Shadow of Innsmouth
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“Decade after decade, artists came to paint the light of Provincetown, and comparisons were made to the lagoons of Venice and the marshes of Holland, but then the summer ended and most of the painters left, and the long dingy undergarment of the gray New England winter, gray as the spirit of my mood, came down to visit.”

LongMadeLightSpiritArtistLeftSummerEnglandPaintWinterDecadesMoodPainterComparisonGrayVeniceNew EnglandHollandMarshesEnd Of SummerLagoonsUndergarmentsProvincetown
Book:Tough Guys Don't Dance: A Novel
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“To-morrow is that lamp upon the marsh, which a traveller never reacheth; To-morrow, the rainbow's cup, coveted prize of ignorance; To-morrow, the shifting anchorage, dangerous trust of manners; To-morrow, the wrecker's beacon, wily snare of the destroyer. Reconcile conviction with delay, and To-morrow is a fatal lie; Frighten resolutions into action, To-morrow is a wholesome truth.”

ActionLyingDangerousIgnoranceTomorrowConvictionCupsMannersPrizeResolutionRainbowDelayLampsShiftingTravellerReconcileMorrowDestroyersSnaresBeaconsMarshes
Author:Martin Farquhar Tupper
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“To wade in marshes and sea margins is the destiny of certain bird, and they are so accurately made for this that they are imprisoned in those places. Each animal out of its habitat would starve. To the physician, each man, each woman, is an amplification of one organ. A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and a dancer could not exchange functions. And thus we are victims of adaptation.”

MenMadeCertainAnimalDestinySeaBirdFunctionVictimSoldierDancerOrgansPhysiciansAdaptationMarginsClerksHabitatWadeMarshesAmplification
Book:The works of Ralph Waldo Emerson in one volume: including the poems, philosophic and inspirational essays, and biographical studies
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“By cultivating an interest in a few good books which contain the result of the toil or the quintessence of the genius of some of the most gifted thinkers of the world, we need not live on the marsh and in the mists. The slopes and ridges invite us.”

WorldNeedsBookInterestResultsGeniusThinkerInvitesGiftedToilGood BookMistCultivatingSlopesRidgesMarshesQuintessence
Book:Christianity and Humanity ...: Ed., with a Memoir
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“Yellow is my favorite, but what is yellow? Handmaiden to white, it is a slight tarnish of pure light. Take away a bit of whites absolute luminosity, and what remains is yellow -- sunlike, golden as a crown, buttercups in a field, marsh marigolds, a finch's wing, a plastic flute.”

LightBitsWhiteFieldsPureAbsolutesRemainsWingsMy FavoriteGoldenYellowPlasticCrownsFlutesMarshesButtercupFinchesMarigolds
Book:The Bardo of Waking Life
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“The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire.”

FacesBlackNatureDarkWhiteBehindsSunFireBloodChangedRedRiversFilledWinterForestsShipsRuinsSubstanceYardsEasternMistMarshesMastsWinter Days
Book:Our Mutual Friend
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“I learned to make my mind large, as the universe is large, so that there is room for paradoxes. Petals are bone marrow; pearls come from oysters. The dragon lives in the sky, ocean, marshes, and mountains; and the mountains are also its cranium. Its voice thunders and jingles like copper pans. It breathes fire and water; and sometimes the dragon is one, sometimes many.”

MindSometimesUniverseVoiceWaterRoomsFantasyFireSkyMountainOceanBonesBreatheDragonsParadoxPearlsThunderPetalsOystersMarrowCopperMarshesJinglesBone Marrow
Author:Maxine Hong Kingston
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“Marshes that are stagnant and have no outlets either by rivers or ditches, like the Pomptine marshes, merely putrefy as they stand, emitting heavy, unhealthy vapors. A case of a town built in such a spot was Old Salpia in Apulia ... Year after year there was sickness, until finally the suffering inhabitants came with a public petition to Marcus Hostilius and got him to agree to seek and find them a proper place to which to remove their city.”

YearsSufferingCitiesCasesBuiltRiversTownsAgreeHeavySpotsSicknessRemoveOutletsUnhealthyStagnantPetitionsVaporMarshes
Author:Marcus Vitruvius Pollio
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“On the way I stood a moment looking out across the marshes with tall cattails, a patch of water, more marsh, then the woods with a few birch trees shining white at the edge on beyond. In the darkness it all looked just like I felt. Wet and swampy and gloomy, very gloomy. In the morning I painted it. My memory of it is that it was probably my best painting that summer.”

WayMomentsFeltWaterMemoriesWhiteMorningDarknessTreePaintingSummerShiningEdgesWoodsTallWetPatchesGloomyMarshesBirch Trees
Author:Georgia O'Keeffe
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“Everyone loves his own country, customs, language, wife, children, not because they are the best in the world, but because they are his established property, and he loves in them himself, and the labor he has bestowed on them. The working of revolutions, therefore, misleads me no more; it is as necessary to our race as its waves to the stream, that it may not be a stagnant marsh. Ever renewed in its forms, the genius of humanity blossoms.”

WorldMayChildrenCountryFormHumanityLanguageRaceWifeRevolutionGeniusLaborPropertyWaveStreamsCustomsOne LoveMisleadStagnantMarshes
Author:Johann Gottfried Herder
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“One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.”

MenYearsMeanWholeActionWaterHoursExistenceRiskHonorFilledNobleStealingObservationGloriousParticipationCrowdedOne HourObservanceMarshesSluggishDecorumWhole Year
Book:the bride of Lammermoor
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“I had found a new friend. The surprising thing is where I’d found him – not up a tree or sulking in the shade, or splashing around in one of the hill streams, but in a book. No one had told us kids to look there for a friend. Or that you could slip inside the skin of another. Or travel to another place with marshes, and where, to our ears, the bad people spoke like pirates.”

PeopleLooksBookKidsFoundTreeSkinsEarsHillsStreamsSpokesShadeSlipsSurprisingPirateBad PeopleNew FriendsMarshesSulkingSurprising ThingsSplashing
Book:Mister Pip
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“Such a thing as the child left alone to die in the hallway was unknown on the marsh. But here, in the dawn, was mortality itself. In the city were places to fall from which one could never emerge -- dark dreams and slow death, the death of children, suffering without grace or redemption, ultimate and eternal loss. The memory of the child stayed with him. But that was not to be the end of it, for reality went around in a twisting ring. Even the irredeemable would be redeemed, and there was a balance for everything. There had to be.”

ChildrenEndsDreamRealityWould BeSufferingDiesFallLeftMemoriesDarkLossCitiesGraceBalanceEternalUltimateRingsRedemptionDawnMortalityLeft AloneRedeemedHallwaysMarshesDark Dreams
Author:Mark Helprin
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“The Three Wiseman: The weather has been awful, The countryside is dreary, Marsh, jungle, rock; and echoes mock, Calling our hope unlawful; But a silly song can help along Yours ever and sincerely: At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners, that this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners, and miss our wives, our books, our dogs, but have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are. To discover how to be human now Is the reason we follow this star.”

KnowsWantHumansLongHas BeensBookIdeasReasonHelpingCertainSongThreeStarsWifeJourneyRocksDogMissingCallingDinnerSillyWeatherAwfulSinnerEchoesJungleSincerelyCountrysideMockDrearyMarshesUnlawful
Author:W. H. Auden
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“The evenings grew longer; kitchen windows stayed open after dinner and peepers could be heard in the marsh. Isabelle, stepping out to sweep her porch steps, felt absolutely certain that some wonderful change was arriving in her life. The strength of this belief was puzzling; what she was feeling, she decided, was really the presence of God.”

FeelingsCertainBeliefFeltStepsWonderfulHeardGrewWindowDecidedDinnerEveningKitchenArrivingPresence Of GodPorchPuzzlingMarshes
Book:Amy & Isabelle
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“Charleston has a landscape that encourages intimacy and partisanship. I have heard it said that an inoculation to the sights and smells of the Carolina lowcountry is an almost irreversible antidote to the charms of other landscapes, other alien geographies. You can be moved profoundly by other vistas, by other oceans, by soaring mountain ranges, but you can never be seduced. You can even forsake the lowcountry, renounce it for other climates, but you can never completely escape the sensuous, semitropical pull of Charleston and her marshes.”

SaidHeardMountainOceanSightMovedClimateSmellAliensIntimacyLandscapeRangeCharmSoarGeographyAntidoteCarolinaRenounceForsakePartisanshipSensuousVistasIrreversibleMarshesCharlestonMountain Ranges
Book:The Lords of Discipline: A Novel
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“We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can only go as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.”

MenWayWantHumansSoulEnoughLightUsedNightLeftWalksBehindsCasesWanderFasterLeft BehindHuman SoulHere And ThereMarshes
Author:Margaret Atwood
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“There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain had never admitted the possibility of other people. She wept then. Tears for the deaths of the littlest things: the castaway shoes of children; broken stems of marsh grass battered and drowned by the sea; prom photographs of dead women she never knew; wedding rings in pawnshop windows; the tiny bodies of Cornish hens in a nest of rice.”

PeopleChildrenBodyFoundSilenceSeaLonelinessPossibilityTearsBrokenSolitudeWindowEternityProfoundPhotographShoesAbsenceTinyRingsGrassDesperateStemRiceNestsPromTerrainHensBatteredMarshesWedding RingCastaway
Book:Sula
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“You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since-on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with.”

MindFirstsHeartHas BeensLightLinesPoorCommonExistenceBoysDarknessSeaStreetsWindExpectationsRiversCloudsWoodsShipsFancyRoughSailWoundedEmbodimentGreat ExpectationsDarkness To LightMarshes
Author:Charles Dickens
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