Quotes About Tranquility

I had known contentment before, brief snatches of time in which I pursued solitary pleasure: skipping stones or dicing or dreaming. But in truth, it had been less a presence than an absence, a laying aside of dread:

O goddess, if this is a dream, let me still sleep.

It was as if we had found the still heart of the universe. Nothing moved except for us.

For once her new placidity was impaired.

The rain had washed the sunset time to a lambent beauty.

And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.

when I pull into the driveway at the end of the day. I don't have to leap from the car; I can take a moment. I turn the engine off, sometimes lay my head down on the steering wheel, and just breathe. I try to let go of the day.

Like my evening walk.

there are times when silence is a poem.

There are people in my life who sometimes worry about me when I go off into the fields and streams, not realizing that the country is a calm, gracious, forgiving place and that the real dangers are found in the civilization you have to pass through to get there. When

The moment of twilight is simply beautiful.

her mind was wonderfully uncluttered with the nagging irritations of everyday life.

Speedy was kicked back in his favorite chair, cap pulled down over his eyes, mouth open, dead to the world.

There's no peace in dying, but there's peace when it's done.

Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams The summer time away.

Softly the breezes from the forest came, Softly they blew aside the taper's flame; Clear was the song from Philomel's far bower; Grateful the incense from the lime-tree flower; Mysterious, wild, the far-heard trumpet's tone; Lovely the moon in ether, all alone: Sweet too, the converse of these happy mortals, As that of busy spirits when the portals Are closing in the west; or that soft humming We hear around when Hesperus is coming. Sweet be their sleep.

Oh ye! Who have your eye-balls vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the sea

I can feel the daisies growing over me.

I should like the window to open onto the Lake of Geneva--and there I'd sit and read all day like the picture of somebody reading.

Upon the honey'd middle of the night

O soft embalmer of the still midnight

Tenure was originally invented to protect radical professors, those who challenged the accepted order. But we don't have such people anymore at the universities, and the reason is tenure. When the time comes to grant it nowadays, the radicals get screened out. That's its principal function. It's a very good system, really - keeps academic life at a decent level of tranquility.

I didn't know why he had chosen me, why it was only to me that he could show the most humbling sides of his handicap. I didn't care. For the war was no longer eroding the peaceful summertime stillness I had prized so much at Devon, and although the playing fields were crusted under a foot of congealed snow and the river was now a hard gray-white lane of ice between gaunt trees, peace had come back to Devon for me.

Please don't spoil my day; I'm miles away and, after all, I'm only sleeping.