The Life Of The Fields
Richard Jefferies
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time.”
“So trustful are the doves, the squirrels, the birds of the branches, and the creatures of the field. Under their tuition let us rid ourselves of mental terrors, and face death itself as calmly as they do the livid lightning; so trustful and so content with their fate, resting in themselves and unappalled. If but by reason and will I could reach the godlike calm and courage of what we so thoughtlessly call the timid turtle-dove, I should lead a nearly perfect life.”
“Oak follows oak, and elm ranks with elm, however many times reduplicated, their beauty only increases. So, too, the summer days; the sun rises on the same grasses and green hedges, there is the same blue sky, but did we ever have enough of them? No, not in a hundred years!”
“Never could I have enough; never stay long enough—whether here or whether lying on the shorter sward under the sweeping and graceful birches, or on the thyme-scented hills. Hour after hour, and still not enough. Or walking the footpath was never long enough, or my strength sufficient to endure till the mind was weary. The exceeding beauty of the earth, in her splendour of life, yields a new thought with every petal. The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time.”
“The white dust heated by sunshine, the green hedges, and the heavily masses trees, and the silence. Such solace and solitude cannot be painted; the trees cannot be placed far away enough in perspective. It is necessary to stand in it like the oaks to know it. And the silence is the silence of fields. If a breeze rustled the boughs, if a greenfinch called, if a mare in the meadow shook herself, these were not sounds, but the silence itself. So sensitive to it as I was, in its turn it held me firmly, like the fabled spells of old time. The mere touch of a leaf was a talisman to bring me under the enchantment, so that I seemd to feel and know all that was proceeding among the grass-blades and in the bushes.”
“The sound of summer is everywhere—in the passing breeze, in the hedge, in the broad branching trees, in the grass as it swings; all the myriad particles that together make the summer are in motion. The sap moves in the trees, the pollen is pushed out from grass and flower, and yet again these acres and acres of leaves and square miles of grass blades—for they would cover acres and square miles if reckoned edge to edge—are drawing their strength from the atmosphere. Exceedingly minute as these vibrations must be, their numbers perhaps may give them a volume almost reaching in the aggregate to the power of the ear”
“The fervour of the sunbeams descending in a tidal flood rings on the strung harp of earth. It is this exquisite undertone, heard and yet unheard, which brings the mind into sweet accordance with the wonderful instrument of nature.”
“The dust of the sunshine was borne along and breathed, steeped in flower and pollen to the music of bees and birds, the stream of the atmosphere became a living thing. It was life to breathe it, for the air itself was life. The strength of the earth went up through the leaves into the wind. Fed thus on the food of the Immortals, the heart opened to the width and depth of the summer—to the broad horizon afar, down to the minutest creature in the grass, up to the highest swallow.”
“Summer shows us Matter changing into life, sap rising from the earth through a million tubes, the alchemic power of light entering the solid oak; and see! it bursts forth in countless leaves.”
“Never yet have I been able to write what I feel about the sunlight only. Colour and form and light are as magic to me. It is a trance. It is ten years since I have reclined on that grass plot, and yet I have been writing of it as if yesterday, and every blade of grass is as visible and real to me now as then. That beautiful and wonderful light excited a sense of some likewise beautiful or wonderful truth, some unknown but grand thought hovering as a swallow above. There was something here that was not in the books of human knowledge. This is what it intends, this is the explanation of a dream. The very grass-blades confounded the wisest, the tender leaf put them to shame, the grasshopper derided them, the sparrow chirped his scorn.”
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Book Keywords:
nature, time
