WIST Quotations

Watterson, Bill -- Calvin and Hobbes (1987-11-24)

Dave — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 18:12:27 +0000

CALVIN: Isn’t it sad how some people’s grip on their lives is so precarious that they’ll embrace any preposterous delusion, rather than face an occasional bleak truth?

Bill Watterson (b. 1958) American cartoonist
Calvin and Hobbes (1987-11-24)

Ironically, the "preposterous delusion" is his father's assertion that the weather is getting colder, not (as Calvin surmises) because the Sun is going out, but because the Earth's orbit is heading toward aphelion, its furthest from the Sun. More ironically, that explanation is actually incorrect. Winter and summer are driven by Earth's axial tilt, and perihelion (Earth being closest to the Sun in its orbit) occurs in early January, which is winter in the Northern Hemisphere.

Peters, Ellis -- Cadfael Chronicles No. 21, Brother Cadfael’s Penance, ch. 1 (1994)

Dave — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 17:03:29 +0000

He had never before been quite so acutely aware of the particular quality and function of November, its ripeness and its hushed sadness. The year proceeds not in a straight line through the seasons, but in a circle that brings the world and man back to the dimness and mystery in which both began, and out of which a new seed-time and a new generation are about to begin. Old men, thought Cadfael, believe in that new beginning, but experience only the ending. It may be that God is reminding me that I am approaching my November. Well, why regret it? November has beauty, has seen the harvest into the barns, even laid by next year’s seed. No need to fret about not being allowed to stay and sow it, someone else will do that. So go contentedly into the earth with the moist, gentle, skeletal leaves, worn to cobweb fragility, like the skins of very old men, that bruise and stain at the mere brushing of the breeze, and flower into brown blotches as the leaves into rotting gold. The colours of late autumn are the colours of the sunset: the farewell of the year and the farewell of the day. And of the life of man? Well, if it ends in a flourish of gold, that is no bad ending.

Ellis Peters (1913–1995) English writer, translator [pseud. of Edith Mary Pargeter, who also wrote under the names John Redfern, Jolyon Carr, Peter Benedict]
Cadfael Chronicles No. 21, Brother Cadfael’s Penance, ch. 1 (1994)

Stevenson, Robert Louis -- Poem (1885), “Bed in Summer,” st. 1, A Child’s Garden of Verses

Dave — Fri, 17 Jan 2025 15:15:52 +0000

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet
Poem (1885), “Bed in Summer,” st. 1, A Child’s Garden of Verses

Bronte, Charlotte -- Letter to a young admirer at Cambridge (as Currer Bell) (23 May 1850)

Dave — Wed, 24 Apr 2019 02:10:08 +0000

Youth has its romance, and maturity its wisdom, as morning and spring have their freshness, noon and summer their power, night and winter their repose. Each attribute is good in its own season.

Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) British novelist [pseud. Currer Bell]
Letter to a young admirer at Cambridge (as Currer Bell) (23 May 1850)

Easterbrook, Gregg -- (Attributed)

Dave — Wed, 01 Oct 2014 12:47:49 +0000

Autumn truly is what summer pretends to be: the best of all seasons. It is as glorious as summer is tedious; as subtle as summer is obvious; as refreshing as summer is wearying. Autumn seems like paradise.

Gregg Easterbrook (b. 1953) American writer, editor
(Attributed)