a page devoted to winter--quotes, quotations and nice thoughts

spring - summer - autumn

Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed
slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.

Bill Morgan Jr.

Welcome to our page devoted to the most misunderstood season of all, winter.
A beautiful season of intimacy and reflection, winter gives us the opportunity
to stay inside and look inside, as we're not called outdoors to enjoy the warmth
and sunshine (this page is obviously for those who live where winter is characterized
by cold and snow!). Snuggle up, put a throw over you, make a cup of hot cocoa,
and enjoy the observations on this precious season. . . .

Then winter arrives, and for many this marks the beginning of a long wait until the first robin appears or the quietest crocus peeks out of the softening ground. Yet winter is not without its beauty. On a sunless day, the grays merge to form a somber and peaceful landscape. Think of the silhouette of a leafless tree. Its leafy abundance may be missing, but its beauty is still intact. For me, winter often serves up a wellspring of precious childhood memories packed with hours of sledding and big mugs of marshmallow- and whipped-cream-topped hot chocolate. What can you remember? How about a few magnificent snow days spent playing outdoors? Leslie Levine

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it—the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show. Andrew Wyeth

There is nothing in the world more beautiful than the forest clothed to its very hollows in snow. It is the still ecstasy of nature, wherein every spray, every blade of grass, every spire of reed, every intricacy of twig, is clad with radiance. William Sharp

Winter, a lingering season, is a time to gather golden moments,
embark upon a sentimental journey, and enjoy every idle hour.

John Boswell

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Snowflakes are one of nature's most fragile things,
but just look what they can do when they stick together.

Vesta M. Kelly

Of winter's lifeless world each tree
Now seems a perfect part;
Yet each one holds summer's secret
Deep down within its heart.

Charles G. Stater

No one can look at a pine tree in winter without
knowing that spring will come again in due time.

Frank Bolles

When the snow is still blowing against the window-pane in
January and February and the wild winds are howling without,
what pleasure it is to plan for summer that is to be.

Celia Thaxter

During the winter I am content--or try to think I am--to make my head-quarters in town
and to get fresh air and a broader outlook at intervals that are frequent, but still at intervals.
Perhaps the walk or drive out to the frozen lake among the hills for an afternoon's skating is
the more keenly relished because of a busy week elsewhere. For all practical purposes nature is
at a standstill. . . . there is a wonderful joy in leaving behind the noisy city streets and starting out
along the white road that leads across the hills. With each breath of the sharp, reviving air
one seems to inhale new life. A peace as evident as the sunshine on the fields takes possession
of one's inner being. The trivial cares which fretted like a swarm of mosquitoes are driven away
by the first sweep of wind that comes straight from the mountains. . . . The intense silence
that broods over the snow-bound land is a conscious blessing. The deep blue of the sky and
the purple shadows cast by the trees and plants are a feast to the eye. The crunch of the snow-rind
beneath our feet and the varied hum of the telegraph wires overhead are music to our ears.

Frances Theodora Parsons

spring - summer - autumn

Everything is equal in the snow: all trees, all lawns, all streets, all rooftops, all cars. Everything is white, white, white, as far as you can see. Covered by snow, the well-kept and neglected lawns look the same. The snow hides the shiny newness of a just-bought car as effectively as it does the rust and dents of a ten-year-old one. Everything looks clean and fresh and unmarred by time or use. Snow, like the silent death it counterfeits, is a great leveler.

Adrienne Ivey

Winter is the time for comfort, for
good food and warmth, for the touch
of a friendly hand and for a talk beside
the fire: it is the time for home.

Edith Sitwell

Winter Poem

once a snowflake fell
on my brow and I loved
it so much and I kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
I reached to love them all
and I squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and I stood perfectly
still and was a flower

Nikki Giovanni

Winter is a very special time. We can settle in and pull into ourselves--
and the weather around us supports this. Winter is a time when the
whole family can belong to themselves and each other. Winter is a time
when breaks for warm, spiced cider, hot chocolate, or popcorn seem like
necessities. Nature invites us to pull "into," whether it is into ourselves
or into each other. The schedule may seem the same, and yet there is
an open invitation to allow "longer quiet stretches."
We feel so much better when we allow ourselves to respond
to the invitation of winter.

Anne Wilson Schaef
Meditations for Living in Balance

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you. . . In spring,
summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other;
only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches
when you can savor belonging to yourself.

Ruth Stout

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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

It is nearly impossible to visualize the summer when we are in this
strongly defined black and white and blue world of the winter, to
visualize how the distant hills disappear behind the trees, how it
all finally becomes an enclosing jungle of leaves. All this white
against all that green! In some ways I love the winter best--the
relief of not having to garden! The austerity and brilliance of it,
such as one experiences also on a bright day at the seashore.
And for the same reasons it is, at times, tiring.

May Sarton
Journal of a Solitude

Winter Morning Poem
Ogden Nash

Winter is the king of showmen
Turning tree stumps into snow men
And houses into birthday cakes
And spreading sugar over lakes
Smooth and clean and frosty white
The world looks good enough to bite
That's the season to be young
Catching snowflakes on your tongue
Snow is snowy when it's snowing
I'm sorry it's slushy when it's going

Every gardener knows that under the cloak of winter lies a miracle. . .
a seed waiting to sprout, a bulb opening to the light, a bud straining
to unfurl. And the anticipation nurtures our dream.

Barbara Winkler

In a way Winter is the real Spring--the time when
the inner things happen, the resurgence of nature.

Edna O'Brien

To see a hillside white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular
ecstasy of beauty, but to walk the gray Winter woods and find the
buds which will resurrect that beauty in another May
is to partake of continuity.

Hal Borland

Spring, summer, and fall fill us with hope; winter alone reminds us of the human condition.

Mignon McLaughlin

Chill air and wintry winds!
My ear has grown familiar with your song;
I hear it in the opening year,
I listen, and it cheers me long.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love winter when the plant says nothing.

Thomas Merton

Winter is a time of gray, velvet weather drifting towards us. It arrives
on "little cat feet" and curls itself around us like the fog in Sandburg's poem.
The weather is a friend if you make it one. I look forward to the gray,
quiet time for solitude, contemplation, reading, long conversations with
friends. Colors are softer, sounds have more depth, the pace is gentler.
Instead of resentment at the lack of sun, snuggle into the gray velvet
quilt and make yourself a cup of tea.

Jennifer Jones
Success Is the Quality of Your Journey

One winter morning I awoke to see magnificent lines of frost stretching across my window panes. They seemed to rise with the sunshine and the bitter cold outside. They looked like little miracles that had been formed in the dark of the night. I watched them in sheer amazement and marveled that such beautiful forms could be born during such a winter-cold night.

Yet, as I pondered them I thought of how life is so like that. We live our long, worn days in the shadows, in what often feels like barren, cold winter, so unaware of the miracles that are being created in our spirits. It takes the sudden daylight, some unexpected surprise of life, to cause our gaze to look upon a simple, stunning growth that has happened quietly inside us. Like frost designs on a winter window, they bring us beyond life's fragmentation and remind us that we are not nearly as lost as we thought we were, that all the time we thought we were dead inside, beautiful things were being born in us.

Joyce Rupp

Winter
Max Ehrmann

Cold lies the lifeless earth,
the birds are gone, and through
the naked trees the shrill wind
whistles. Though the world
outside be chill and dead, may the
world within us resound
with gleeful songs, and our hearts
be warm with hope and love.
And may many an evening's
merriment, beside the
hearthstone's cheerful glow, make
sweet the passing time.