The collection / 12 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

12 results · Page 1 of 1Play this collection ▷

01Undated

She drew gallantry from men as the sun drew water. Her pertness enchanted them. Young men went away from her with a feeling of bravado. Old men were enslaved by her silver curls. Something about her was forever female and made all men virile.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

02Undated

We were bred of earth before we were bred of our mothers. Once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend, or any human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

03Undated

It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. ... We are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

04Undated

He edged closer to his father’s bones and sinews. Penny slipped an arm around him and he lay close against the lank thigh. His father was the core of safety. His father swam the swift creek to fetch back his wounded dog. The clearing was safe, and his father fought for it, and for his own. A sense of snugness came over him and he dropped asleep.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

05Undated

Ma Baxter rocked complacently. They were all pleased whenever she made a joke. Her good nature made the same difference in the house as the hearth-fire had made in the chill of the evening.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

06Undated

I'm eating' it quick... but I'll remember it a long time.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

07Undated

Hit don’t make no difference what a man perfesses. I been in a heap o’ churches. There’s the Nazarene Church and the Pentecost and the Holy Rollers and the Baptists and I don’t know what-all. I cain’t see much difference to nary one of ‘em. There’s a good to all of ‘em and there’s a bad.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

08Undated

In the beginning of his sleep, he cried out, "Flag!"It was not his own voice that called. It was a boy's voice. Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

09Undated

He could understand that the creatures, the fish and the owls, should feed and frolic at moon-rise, at moon-down and at south-moon-over, for these were all plain marks to go by, direct and visible. He marvelled, padding on bare feet past the slat-fence of the clearing, that the moon was so strong that when it lay the other side of the earth, the creatures felt it and stirred by the hour it struck. The moon was far away, unseen, and it had power to move them.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

10Undated

Grandma Hutto’s flower garden was a bright patchwork quilt thrown down inside the pickets.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

11Undated

A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗

12Undated

A woman has to love a bad man once or twice in her life to be thankful for a good one.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings / quote

↗