Elizabeth Enright Quotes & Sayings

I thought of many an autumn I had known: Seemly autumns approaching deliberately, with amplitude. I thought of wild asters, Michaelmas daisies, mushrooms, leaves idling down the air, two or three at a time, warblers twittering and glittering in every bush ('Confusing fall warblers,' Peterson calls them, and how right he is): the lingering yellow jackets feeding on broken apples; crickets; amber-dappled light; great geese barking down from the north; the seesaw noise that blue jays seem to make more often in the fall. Hoarfrost in the morning, cold stars at night. But slow; the whole thing coming slowly. The way it should be. — Elizabeth Enright

Grownups! Everyone remembers them. How strange and even sad it is that we never became what they were: beings noble, infallible, and free. We never became them. One of the things we discover as we live is that we never become anything different from what we are. We are no less ourselves at forty than we were at four, and because of this we know grownups as Grownups only once in life: during our own childhood. We never meet them in our lives again, and we will miss them always. — Elizabeth Enright

Like ghosts the children walked across the lawn on their bare feet. The moon was full. Above the damp grass hung a veil of mist, luminous with moonlight and spangled with fireflies. There was no wind, and the sound of the brook was very distinct, tinkling, splashing, running softly. It made Mona think of an ancient fountain, shaped like a shell, covered with moss, and set in a secluded garden. Something she half remembered, or imagined. — Elizabeth Enright

I loved the flash of jewels and the luster of satin. In those days women dressed. — Elizabeth Enright

Mrs. Schultz believed in beer the way his grandmother believed in the Republican party. — Elizabeth Enright

A certain red cardinal sounded like a little bottle being filled up, up, up with some clear liquid. — Elizabeth Enright

All over the city lights were coming on in the purple-blue dusk. The street lights looked delicate and frail, as though they might suddenly float away from their lampposts like balloons. Long twirling ribbons of light, red, green, violet, were festooned about the doorways of drugstores and restaurants
and the famous electric signs of Broadway had come to life with glittering fish, dancing figures, and leaping fountains, all flashing like fire. Everything was beautiful. Up in the deepening sky above the city the first stars appeared white and rare as diamonds. — Elizabeth Enright

Now isn't that nice!' said the old lady. 'If cousins are the right kind, they're best of all: kinder than sisters and brothers, and closer than friends. — Elizabeth Enright

Maybe we benefit from the providence of others more often than we know. — Elizabeth Enright

Did you know that a bee dies after he stings you? And that there's a star called Aldebaran? And that around the tenth of August, any year, you can look up in the sky ant night and see dozens and dozens of shooting stars? — Elizabeth Enright

Already he knew that to overdo a thing is to destroy it. — Elizabeth Enright

Mr. Payton was at work on his pipe again, lighting and coaxing it. "They need constant attention, pipes, like babies and guinea hens," he said, and sucked in the smoke. — Elizabeth Enright

And for heaven's sake don't play Bach," ordered Randy. "It's so jumpy for today." Rush — Elizabeth Enright

Never plan a picnic' Father said. 'Plan a dinner, yes, or a house, or a budget, or an appointment with the dentist, but never, never plan a picnic. — Elizabeth Enright

In the deep sky where there had been a sun, we saw a ring of white silver; a smoking ring, and all the smokes were silver, too; gauzy, fuming, curling, unbelievable. And who had ever seen the sky this color! Not in the earliest morning or at twilight, never before had we seen or dreamed this strange immortal blue in which a few large stars now sparkled as though for the first time in creation. — Elizabeth Enright

By lunchtime the valley was lightly coated, like a cake with confectioner's sugar ... there was white fur on the antlers of the iron deer and on the melancholy boughs of the Norway spruce. — Elizabeth Enright

Summer was over in twenty minutes that day. Finished. At four o'clock in the afternoon the roses were quiet on their stems, full-blown, fulfilled; the water in the pool was warm; the leaves on the trees quiet, too, and green. The cat lay with his belly to the sun, steeped in heat. — Elizabeth Enright

Someday she planned to paint he ceiling: Blue, with gold stars on it, whole constellations, and a section of the Milky Way. — Elizabeth Enright

Good things must have comparers, I suppose,' said Portia, 'Or how would we knowhow good they are? — Elizabeth Enright

Each golden day was cherished to the full, for one had the feeling that each must be the last. Tomorrow it would be winter. — Elizabeth Enright

No matter how old a person gets, he's never old in spring! — Elizabeth Enright

He couldn't stop smelling the air in great, deep, loud sniffs. It was so delicious. It smelled of water, and mud, and maple trees, and autumn. — Elizabeth Enright

Self-pity is the hens' besetting sin," remarked Mr. Payton. "Foolish fowl. How they came to achieve anything as perfect as the egg I do not know! I cannot fathom. — Elizabeth Enright

Churning, baking, spinning and soap-making. In summer, — Elizabeth Enright

October sunshine bathed the park with such a melting light that it had the dimmed impressive look of a landscape by an old master. — Elizabeth Enright

In Nina Kimbereley's garden the scabiosa flowers were dark as garnet brooches; the nicotiana a veil of tossing crimson stars. Nothing was usual, or a dull color. All was exceptional, designed to be exceptional since it had been planned as the background for a beauty by the beauty. — Elizabeth Enright

Each day the sun shone, the birds lingered, though the trees were turning, purely out of habit, and their rose and yellow and rust looked strange and beautiful above the brilliant green grass. — Elizabeth Enright

The summer,' Randy explained. 'I'm going to appreciate it. I'm going to walk in the woods noticing everything, and ride my bike on all the roads I never explored. I'm going to fill a pillow with ladies' tobacco so I can smell it in January and remember about August. I'm going to dry a big bunch of pennyroyal so I can break pieces off all winter and think of summer. I'm going to look at everything, and smell everything, and listen to everything so I'll never forget
— Elizabeth Enright

The mullein had finished blooming, and stood up out of the pastures like dusty candelabra. The flowers of Queen Anne's lace had curled up into birds' nests, and the bee balm was covered with little crown-shaped pods. In another month
no, two, maybe
would come the season of the skeletons, when all that was left of the weeds was their brittle architecture. But the time was not yet. The air was warm and bright, the grass was green, and the leaves, and the lazy monarch butterflies were everywhere. — Elizabeth Enright