Quotation Saturday

Snow in October?

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If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
~ Anne Bradstreet (1612-1672) 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' 1655

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The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood.
~John Burroughs (1837 - 1921), The Snow-Walkers

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O Winter! ruler of the inverted year, . . . I crown thee king of intimate delights, Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness, And all the comforts that the lowly roof Of undisturb'd Retirement, and the hours Of long uninterrupted evening, know.
~William Cowper (1731 - 1800), Task (bk. IV, l. 120)
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If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before.
~Mitchell Burgess Northern Exposure, Thanksgiving, 1992

Nature...

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I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
~E. B. White (1899 - 1985)

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Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul. They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance, of the briefness of our span upon this earth. They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal.
~Elizabeth Aston,The Exploits & Adventures of Miss Alethea Darcy, 2005
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Ever the optimist...
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The act of writing is an act of optimism. You would not take the trouble to do it if you felt it didn't matter. ~Edward Albee
Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one's own sunshine.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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Those who tell you it's tough at the top have never been at the bottom.

~Joe Harvey

Final thought...
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In good writing, words become one with things.

~Ralph Waldo Emerson