Top Ten Tuesday: Quotations

Published on by Margaret

The topic this week is Favourite Book Quotes. At first I didn’t think I would tackle this topic, with so many to choose. But in the end I came up with the following quotations from just three authors.

First from Roger Deakin, Wildwood: A Journey through Trees, a book about Deakin’s journeys through a wide variety of trees and woods in various parts of the world. 

“To enter a wood is to pass into a different world in which we ourselves are transformed. It is no accident that in the comedies of Shakespeare, people go into the greenwood to grow, learn and change. It is where you travel to find yourself, often, paradoxically , by getting lost. Merlin sends the future King Arthur as a boy into the greenwood to fend for himself in The Sword in the Stone. There, he falls asleep and dreams himself, like a chameleon, into the lives of the animals and the trees.”

And later in the book he writes about pencils:

“The pencil whispers across the page and is never dogmatic.‘ And this, ‘Rub your finger long enough on a soft-pencilled phrase and it will evaporate into a pale-grey cloud. In this way, pencil is close to watercolour painting.’ 

Thinking about trees led me on to The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy, one of my favourites of Hardy’s books, full of beautiful descriptions of the landscape and woods. In this passage he is describing Giles Winterbourne:

“He looked and smelt like Autumn’s very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him that atmospheres of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards.”

Next from Agatha Christie’s Autobiography:

“I am today the same person as that solemn little girl with pale flaxen sausage-curls. The house in which the spirit dwells, grows, develops instincts and tastes and emotions and intellectual capacities, but I myself, the true Agatha, am the same. I do not know the whole Agatha. The whole Agatha, so I believe, is known only to God.

So there we are, all of us, little Agatha Miller, and big Agatha Miller, and Agatha Christie and Agatha Mallowan proceeding on our way – where? That one doesn’t know – which of course makes life exciting. I have always thought life exciting and I still do.”

“Always when I woke up, I had the feeling which I am sure must be natural to all of us, a joy in being alive. I don’t say you feel it consciously – you don’t – but there you are, you are alive, and you open your eyes, and here is another day; another step as it were, on your journey to an unknown place. That very exciting journey which is your life. Not that it is necessarily going to be exciting as a life, but it will be exciting to you because it is your life. That is one of the great secrets of existence, enjoying the gift of life that has been given to you.”

“Naturally happy people can be unhappy and melancholic people enjoy themselves. But if I were taking a gift to a child at a christening that is what I would choose: a naturally happy frame of mind.”

“If I could write like Elizabeth Bowen, Muriel Spark or Graham Greene, I should jump to high heaven with delight, but I know that I can’t, and it would never occur to me to attempt to copy them. I have learnt that I am me, that I can do the things, that as one might put it, me can do, but I cannot do the things that me would like to do.”

And this is probably my favourite of all:

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

24 thoughts on “Top Ten Tuesday: Quotations”

  1. What a gorgeous treasure of a post! I’ll be heading off to my shelves to get my copies of the Deakin and Hardy for another browse. And AC’s autobiography sounds great – will give that a look too. Thanks Margaret – wishing you a very happy Tuesday! 😀

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  3. “Always when I woke up, I had the feeling which I am sure must be natural to all of us, a joy in being alive. I don’t say you feel it consciously – you don’t – but there you are, you are alive, and you open your eyes, and here is another day; another step as it were, on your journey to an unknown place. That very exciting journey which is your life. Not that it is necessarily going to be exciting as a life, but it will be exciting to you because it is your life. That is one of the great secrets of existence, enjoying the gift of life that has been given to you.”

    Love this!

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  4. Oh, I love that last quote, too, Margaret! And they’re all just lovely. That’s a great meme, and it’s got me thinking about quotes I like and return to when I need them. Hmm….. as you say, there are a lot of wonderful ones out there.

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  6. I’m a huge Agatha Christie fan, but haven’t read her autobiography yet. My aunt, who inspired me to read her books, read it more than once. I have a copy of it on my kindle and a bought a second hand copy at a book sale last year.

    After reading your post, I so want to start reading it now!

    This was lovely, thanks so much for sharing with us.

    Here’s my 10 Favorite quotes from books

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