Weeping Willow Quotes & Sayings

She had imagination - the muscle of the soul - and her imagination was of a particularly strong, almost masculine quality. She possessed, too, that real sense of beauty which has far less to do with art than with the constant readiness to discern the halo round a frying-pan or the likeness between a weeping-willow and a Skye terrier. And finally she was blest with a keen sense of humour. No wonder she fitted into his life so well. — Vladimir Nabokov

The gardener, an old sailor, made him a hammock and fixed it up for him in the branches of a weeping willow. And here for long hours he lay, hidden from anyone who might come to the vicarage, reading, reading passionately. — W. Somerset Maugham

Just as a dancer, turning and turning, may fill the dusty light with the soft swirl of her flying skirts, our weeping willow
now old and broken , creaking in the breeze
turns slowly, slowly in the winter sun, sweeping the rusty roof of the barn with the pale blue lacework of her shadow. — Ted Kooser

There is a willow grows aslant a brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; There with fantastic garlands did she come Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them: There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke; When down her weedy trophies and herself Fell in the weeping brook. — William Shakespeare

There is a willow grows aslant the brook that shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream; therewith fantastic garlands did she make of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples that the liberal shepherds give a grosser name, but our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds clamb'ring to hang, an envious sliver broke; when down her weedy trophies and herself fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide and, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up; which time she chanted snatches of old lauds, as one incapable of her own distress, or like a creature native and indued unto that element; but long it could not be till that her garments, heavy with their drink, pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay to muddy death. — William Shakespeare

How could the wind be so strong, so far inland, that cyclists
coming into the town in the late afternoon looked more like
sailors in peril? This was on the way into Cambridge, up Mill
Road past the cemetery and the workhouse. On the open
ground to the left the willow-trees had been blown, driven
and cracked until their branches gave way and lay about the
drenched grass, jerking convulsively and trailing cataracts of
twigs. The cows had gone mad, tossing up the silvery weeping
leaves which were suddenly, quite contrary to all their exper-
ience, everywhere within reach. Their horns were festooned
with willow boughs. Not being able to see properly, they
tripped and fell. Two or three of them were wallowing on
their backs, idiotically, exhibiting vast pale bellies intended by
nature to be always hidden. They were still munching. A scene
of disorder, tree-tops on the earth, legs in the air, in a university
city devoted to logic and reason. — Penelope Fitzgerald

If you're going to have guests," the ghost said with a sigh, "would it be so hard to give me a little advance warning?" Her eyes were dark with heavy lids. She had soft cheekbones and gentle features, framed neatly by twin locks of hair, which swept her cheeks on either side. The rest was tucked behind her ears and spilled down her back and shoulders in silvery waves, like a mercurial waterfall. She had a slim, spritely figure, and her movements were as smooth as smoke in a soft breeze. She placed the cup on the tray with a gentle clink, and drifted to a seat on the windowsill. Through her opaque figure, I could see the swaying branches of a weeping willow in the yard. "How — William Ritter

Merry a mind is

of a weeping willow

roots raising concrete

be in

fit out

all abstract. — Antonia Perdu

Willows and Poplars "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in the midst thereof we hanged our harps." Thus sang the Psalmist of the sorrows of the exiles in Babylon, and his song has fastened the name of the great and wicked city upon one of the most familiar willows, while also making it "weep"; for the common weeping willow is botanically named Salix Babylonica. — John Horace McFarland

The sun was barely above the trees and any moment it would disappear. There was a golden haze in the air and it was appreciably colder than even a few minutes before. A cloud of starlings wheeled above a distant stand of poplars, still bare, although in the next garden a willow trailed weeping branches like streamers of pale chiffon. The breeze was so slight it did not even stir them. — Anne Perry

Everyone has a family tree; the Dawsons have one, it's a weeping willow. — Les Dawson

Her brother is crying, he is wretched and broken. Though his sobs are barely audible, he is weeping with absolute and total abandon. Such a naked display of emotion is both alarming and frightening. — Julia Hoban

One of Mr. [Thomas] Hardy's ancestors must have married a weeping willow. There are pages and pages in his collected poems which are simply plain narratives in ballad form of how an unenjoyable time was had by all. — Rebecca West

I sit under the weeping willow to watch the hanged man divine his truth. — Truth Devour

a willow tree was weeping from the heavy rain, a coy pond nearly overflowing. — Marissa Meyer

But what Tyler longed for was to have The Feeling arrive; when every flicker of light that touched the dipping branches of a weeping willow, every breath of breeze that bent the grass towards the row of apple trees, every shower of yellow ginko leaves dropping to the ground with such direct and tender sweetness, would fill the minister with profound and irreducible knowledge that God was right there. — Elizabeth Strout

I've always thought of God as the only first-rate artist. There's so much that's miraculous about us - the way three tiny bones in our ears can process sound waves, for instance; and around us his perfect hand has painted the greatest masterpiece, the ecology of nature with its balance and precision, the way it can juxtapose competing forces into something harmonious. Stop and look sometime at the beauty of a weeping willow - I can go on and on — James Calvin Schaap

The oak tree is firm and elegant and upright. The weeping willow has allowed the burdens of life to bend it. — Panache Desai

All at once the hard, cold earth seemed to explode. The brown surface of the world dissolved and in its place was an impossible, an inconceivable, an unbelievable profusion of color: green grass and purple and red flowers; sprays of lily; white baby's breath that covered the hills; nodding fields of bright yellow daffodils; rich purple moss. The trees burst forth with new leaves. The weeping willow tree was a mass of tiny pale green leaves, thousands of them, which whispered and sighed together as the wind moved through its branches. There were fat heads of lettuce in the fields, and cucumbers lying like jewels among them, and enormous red tomatoes surrounded by thick, knotted vines.

And for the first time in 1,728 days, the clouds broke apart and there was dazzling blue sky, and light beyond what anyone could remember.

The sun had come out at last. — Lauren Oliver

The thing is that this life is so precious and mysterious, I don't know what to say about it most of the time. Words are like birds, passing through the trackless sky. The dog barking, the sound of the purling stream, the wind among the weeping willow trees: how are these not right off the tongue of the Buddha?
Lama Surya Das — Lama Surya Das

Labor is rest
from the sorrow that greet us;
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us,
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us,
Rest from the world-sirens that hire us to ill.
Work
and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow;
Work
thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow;
Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping willow!
Work with a stout heart and resolute will! — Frances Sargent Osgood

I spent my childhood outdoors on my grandparents' farm. I learned to ride a motorbike when I was about six, a little PeeWee 50. I'd climb trees - there was a big weeping willow. — Miranda Kerr

Silent sobbing. No one sees.
Weeping like the willow trees.
Feel my heart about to pop.
Need to make the aching stop.
See moon's shimmer softly pass.
On the shards of broken glass. — Madeleine Kuderick