quotations about winter
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
Taken Care Of: An Autobiography
March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine.
LUCY MAUD MONTGOMERY
Anne of the Island
When old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
And build me stately palaces by candlelight.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
Les Fleurs du Mal
I really love winter. It's my favourite time of the year. Perhaps it's because I've always lived in London where winter is essentially 9 out of 12 months so it's grown on me. Or perhaps it's a hang-up from secondary school, where the slightest hint of snow signalled the end of the school day; someone had decided we couldn't possibly learn if so much as one snowflake settled on the ground. It was a 14 year old's dream being sent home at 10:34 am on a Tuesday.
KRISSY TURNER
"A few reasons why dressing for winter is so satisfying", The Telegraph, January 25, 2016
Dread Winter spreads his latest glooms,
And reigns, tremendous, o'er the conquer'd Year.
How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!
How dumb the tuneful! Horror wide extends
His desolate domain.
JAMES THOMSON
"Winter", The Seasons
Lastly came Winter cloathed all in frize,
Chattering his teeth for cold that did him chill;
Whilst on his hoary beard his breath did freese,
And the dull drops, that from his purpled bill
As from a limebeck did adown distill:
In his right hand a tipped staffe he held,
With which his feeble steps he stayed still;
For he was faint with cold, and weak with eld;
That scarce his loosed limbes he hable was to weld.
EDMUND SPENSER
The Faerie Queene
There was a silver lining tucked into last weekend's blizzard, and I'm not just talking about the joys of sledding. Now that the most beastly part of winter is undeniably here, we're blanketed in fashion liberation along with snow. Can you hear that freedom ringing? We've been delivered from trying to look chic, slim, angular, and cool. Welcome to the season of DGAF dressing! It makes perfect sense, after all. You're preparing to face whipping winds and slush puddles the size of a small car, so you bring out the big guns -- the big, shapeless, puffy, sleeping-bag-esque guns. You engulf your entire self, from thigh to chin, in the most waist-obscuring parka you can find, and actually use the enormous fur-trimmed hood that's been dangling back there all along. You haul out the plodding, bulbous-toed boots trimmed with snow-caked fur, so you can tromp Yeti-like footprints in the snow. Unroll the wool socks, yank them up to your knees, and top it all off with Elmer Fudd's trapper hat -- which you actually buckle under the chin for maximum function. It's about finally prioritizing function over form.
LIZ KRIEGER
"The Best Part of Winter Is DGAF Dressing", New York Magazine, January 29, 2016
Many people think of winter as bereft of birds after autumn migrations, but in fact this can be a bountiful season for bird-watchers. No, you won't see the numbers and diversity of birds that surround us in the warm months. But what winter offers is the chance to observe behavior -- birds act differently in the cold, their activities much more focused. And they're easier to spot and watch, without tree leaves to hide their comings and goings.
VAL CUNNINGHAM
"Winter is a great time to spy on birds", Star Tribune, February 16, 2016
Winter is nature's way of saying, "Up yours."
ROBERT BYRNE
The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
The winter is like a withered heart, whose life has been spent in the bright sunshine of summer, but is now left unprotected; no music gladdens the grove, nor verdure clothes the plain; the trees are divested of their leaves, and the bowels of nature seem bound up or dead.
A. PICKET
attributed, Day's Collacon
O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors:
The north is thine; there hast thou built thy dark,
Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs,
Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car.
WILLIAM BLAKE
"To Winter"
Frankly, the trouble with winter is, it is all backbone. It is fleshless, insensate, with neither a breast to be leaned on nor a heart to love and ache and, if need be, break, nor any kindly hand to fondle and caress like a sea-wave on a sunny shore half asleep.
WILLIAM A. QUAYLE
"Headed Into Spring", The Sanctuary, March 17, 1921
Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.
HENRY DAVID THOREAU
Walden
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Ode to the West Wind"
And see where surely Winter passes off,
Far to the north, and calls his ruffian blasts:
His blasts obey, and quit the howling hill,
The shatter'd forest, and the ravag'd vale;
While softer gales succeed, at whose kind touch,
Dissolving snows in livid torrents lost,
The mountains lift their green heads to the sky.
JAMES THOMSON
"Winter", The Seasons
Winter is nature's sleep.
H. S. JACOBS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Before anyone starts in on how we have not had a winter, let me just say, "No one asked you." It has been plenty cold for me. And it seems to have gone back and forth and back and forth so much that I can't really remember what kind of winter we have had. If it just got cold and stayed that way, maybe I would get used to it. Maybe I would finally dig out a proper coat and gloves and whatnot. But this constant pinging back and forth has me so perplexed that I never know what to wear.
JERRIE WHITELEY
"Can't we all just decide that winter is over?", Herald Democrat, February 5, 2016
A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.
CARL REINER
attributed, The 2,548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
If you think my winter is too cold,
You don't deserve my spring.
ERIN HANSON
"My World Within"
Summer bodies are made in the winter.
KRISSY TURNER
"A few reasons why dressing for winter is so satisfying", The Telegraph, January 25, 2016