Mary Webb Quotes & Sayings

Nature's music is never over; her silences are pauses, not conclusions. — Mary Webb

I thought she had a good heart, though not much respectability- or maybe it was because of that. — Mary Webb

For the world is founded and built up on death, and the reality of death is neither to be questioned nor feared. Death is a dark dream, but it is not a nightmare. It is mankind's lack of pity, mankind's fatal propensity for torture, that is the nightmare. — Mary Webb

Beguildy looked at me over the rim of a great measure of mead. 'Saddle your dreams afore you ride 'em, my wench,' he said. — Mary Webb

The well of Providence is deep. It's the buckets we bring to it that are small. — Mary Webb

No accident of environment or circumstance need cut us off from nature ... It does not matter how shut in we are. Opportunity for wide experience is of small acccount in this as in other things; it is depth that brings understanding and life. — Mary Webb

Autumn is full of leave-taking. In September the swallows are chattering of destination and departure like a crowd of tourists. — Mary Webb

I only wanted to know, Prue. I be getting ancient and old, and the time draws nigh when life'll be a burden. I'd lief know as there was good in store for the best girl ever. — Mary Webb

For the more a soul conforms to the sanity of others, the more does it become insane. — Mary Webb

Autumn is full of leave-taking. — Mary Webb

We are tomorrow's past. Even now we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks - a ship, a cottage, sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted sun has set, and we, that were the new thing, gather magic as we go. The whirr of the spinning wheels has ceased in our parlours, and we hear no more the treadles of the loom, the swift, silken noise of the flung shuttle, the intermittent thud of the batten. But the imagination hears them, and theirs is the melody of romance." ~ from Mary Webb's introduction to her novel Precious Bane. — Mary Webb

The more anybody wants a thing, the more they do think others want it. — Mary Webb

The love of nature is a passion for those in whom it once lodges. It can never be quenched. It cannot change. It is a furious, burning, physical greed, as well as a state of mystical exaltation. It will have its own. — Mary Webb

Tomorrow is a word of hope,I do believe ! — Mary Webb

She had for so many years been trying to be like other people, that she was now like nothing in heaven or earth. — Mary Webb

Every time I meet a tree, if I am truly awake, I stand in awe before it. I listen to its voice, a silent sermon moving me to the depths, touching my heart, and stirring up within my soul a yearning to give my all. — Mary Webb

I love you already, and if these things be done in the dry tree, what shall be done in the green? — Mary Webb

To many women marriage is only this. It is merely a physical change impinging on their ordinary nature, leaving their mentality untouched, their self-possession intact. They are not burnt by even the red fire of physical passion - far less by the white fire of love. — Mary Webb

The past is only the present become invisible and mute; and because it is invisible and mute, its memorized glances and its murmurs are infinitely precious. We are tomorrow's past. — Mary Webb

Who can say which is the greater sign of creative power, the sun with its planet system swinging with governed impetus to some incalculable end, or the gold sallow catkin with its flashing system of little flies? — Mary Webb

Green is the fresh emblem of well founded hopes. In blue the spirit can wander, but in green it can rest. — Mary Webb

I've thought since that when folk grumble about this and that and be not happy, it is not the fault of creation, that is like a vast mere full of good, but it is the fault of their bucket's smallness. — Mary Webb

I do believe all shall be well with you, Prue. It's come to my heart as soft as dew, and as sweet as a red rose, that you'll get love as well as give it. After my time, though, after my time. But no matter for that, so I do know it's to come. — Mary Webb

Saddle your dreams before you ride em. — Mary Webb

Give me good digestion, Lord, And also something to digest; but where and how that something comes I leave to Thee, who knoweth best. — Mary Webb

If you know much about your work - why you work, how you work, your aims - you are probably not a poet. — Mary Webb

There is surely no more unselfish person than the anthologist. For while all we others are striving to ensure our own immortality with eagerness, beguilements, buffooneries, loud voices, 'the sound of battle and garments rolled in blood,' the anthologist is quietly ensuring the immortality of somebody else. — Mary Webb

Fragrance is the voice of inanimate things. — Mary Webb

Love unspoken is the most tremendous force in the world. One is amazed at the way in which people waste their time making speeches, agitating, praying, even. They might save their breath. The great lovers of the world, in silence, rule the world. — Mary Webb

She had so deep a kinship with the trees, so intuitive a sympathy with leaf and flower, that it seemed as if the blood in her veins was not slow-moving human blood, but volatile sap. — Mary Webb

But when you dwell in a house you mislike, you will look out of a window a deal more than those that are content with their dwelling. — Mary Webb

It is the way of lovers to think that none can bless or succour their love but their own selves. And there is a touch of truth in it, maybe more than a touch. — Mary Webb

Labor brings a thing nearer the hearts core. — Mary Webb

If you stop to be kind, you must swerve often from your path. — Mary Webb

We are tomorrow's past. — Mary Webb

He was ever a strong man, which is almost the same, times, as to say a man with little time for kindness. For if you stop to be kind, you must swerve often from your pat. So when folk tell me of this great man and that great man, I think to myself, Who was stinted of joy for his glory? How many old folk and children did his coach wheels go over? What bridal lacked his song, and what mourner his tars, that he found time to climb so high? — Mary Webb

You wasn't made like watch-dogs and house-cats and cows. You was made a fox, and you be a fox, and its queer-like to me, Foxy, as folk canna see that. They expect you to be what you wanna made to be. You'm made to be a fox; and when you'm busy being a fox they say you'm a sinner! — Mary Webb

[...]we are all as full of echoes as a rocky wood--echoes of the past, reflex echoes of the future, and echoes of the soil (these last reverberating through our filmiest dreams, like the sound of thunder in a blossoming orchard). — Mary Webb

I'd laboured over it a long while, and labour brings a thing near the heart's core. — Mary Webb