years Quotes

“The days are long, but the years are short.”

“‘You’re young, you don’t know. Things change. What happened, happened forty years ago. It’s history.‘”

“She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the year; the disastrous night of her life at Trantridge with its dark background of The Chase; also the dates of the baby’s birth and death; also her own birthday; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share.”

“Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another.”

“This is why I’m here on this planet, at this time, Francesca. Not to travel or make pictures, but to love you. I know that now. I have been falling from the rim of a great, high place, somewhere back in time, for many more years than I have lived in this life. And through all of those years, I have been falling toward you.”

“I swear that when our lips touch, I can taste the next 60 years of my life.”

“We start out a million years ago in a small community on some grassy plain; we hunt animals, have children, and develop a rich social, sexual, and intellectual life, but we know almost nothing about our surroundings.”

“I done me best when I was let. Thinking always if I go all goes. A hundred cares, a tithe of troubles and is there one who understands me? One in a thousand of years of the nights? All me life I have been lived among them but now they are becoming lothed to me.”

“You mustn’t think of the Universe as a wilderness. It hasn’t been that for billions of years,” he said. “Think of it more as... ..cultivated.”

“Always, he wonders why and how he has let four months—months increasingly distant from him—so affect him, so alter his life. But then, he might as well ask—as he often does—why he has let the first fifteen years of his life so dictate the past twenty-eight. He has been lucky beyond measure; he has an adulthood that people dream about: Why, then, does he insist on revisiting and replaying events that happened so long ago? Why can he not simply take pleasure in his present? Why must he so honor his past? Why does it become more vivid, not less, the further he moves from it?”

“She went every day to her ballet lessons and worked very hard for many years...until at last she became the famous ballerina Mademoiselle Angelina, and people came from far and wide to enjoy her lovely dancing.”

The story centers on a mother and her three children, a set of twins and their older sister, who have just moved into the old dilapidated house that has been in the family for years. Very soon after moving in, strange occurrences begin to happen and the children dedicate themselves to solving the mystery.

″ I wanted to spend more time with this new Homer, this interesting and clever boy whom I’d known but not known for so many years.”

“The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal.”

“And every year, folk come from all over Cornwall at Christmas time, to see Mousehole lit up with a thousand lights, shining their message of hope and a safe haven to all those who pass in peril of the sea.”

“So my final school year began. I had promised myself that I would be a saint for this year alone. I would make the greatest impression on my teachers and become the model student. I knew it would all fail. But just not on the first day. Sister Gregory walked toward me, and when she was so close that I could see her mustache, she held out her hand. ‘Show me what you’re reading.’ ”

“Aren’t we lucky the seasons are four? Think of a year with one less…or one more?”

“Why do I not have an immortal soul! […] I would give all my three hundred years of life for only one day as a human being if, afterward, I should be allowed to live in the heavenly world

“It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some that bloom once in a thousand, in ten thousand years? Perhaps we never know about them simply because this “once in a thousand years” has come today.”

“Oh! anger is an evil thing And spoils the fairest face; It cometh like a rainy cloud Upon a sunny place. One angry moment often does What we repent for years: It works the wrong we ne’re make right By sorrow or tears.”

“But in Australia a model child is - I say it not without thankfulness- an unknown quantity. It may be that the miasmas of naughtiness develop best in the sunny brilliancy, of our atmosphere. It may be that the land and the people are young-hearted together, and the children’s spirits not crushed and saddened by the shadow of long years’ sorrowful history.”

“The sound of the living room clock striking midnight could not reach them; they never had permission to speak at all, and they lay in silence until another year had passed and they stood once more beneath the tree.”

″ ‘People grow up that,’ said Nell. ‘In spurts. All of a sudden they are years older.’ ”

“For nine years he would not leave by Day or Night without permission.”

“Lord Lundy from his earliest years Was far to freely moved to Tears. For instance if his Mother said, ‘Lundy! It’s time to go to Bed!’ He bellowed like a Little Turk. Or if his father Lord Dunquerque Said ‘Hi!’ in a Commanding Tone, ‘Hi, Lundy! Leave the Cat alone!’ ”

“To Baby Oh, what shall my blue eyes go see? Shall it be pretty Quack-Quack to-day? Or the Peacock upon the Yew Tree? Or the dear little white Lambs at play? Say Baby. For Baby is such a young Petsy, And Baby is such a sweet Dear. And Baby is growing quite old now- She’s just getting on for a year.”