A collection of quotes and sayings by Hal Borland on patience, persistence, nature, fall, autumn, full-moon, summer, winter, tide, flowers, plants and painful.
Hal Borlan was an American naturalist, author and journalist who wrote a number of books about the outdoors, both fiction and non-fiction. Borland had studied engineering but before long he realised that he wanted to be an author and after pursuing a degree in literature from Columbia University, he started working as a journalist. He worked at the ‘Denver Post’, before going on to work at ‘Flagler News’, ‘United Press’, ‘Brooklyn Times’, ‘Philadelphia Morning Sun’ and finally at the ‘New York Times’. In 1987, he became the editorial director of ‘The New York Sunday Times’ and during this span he started writing books on the outdoors. Some of the noted books written by Borland include ‘Country Editor’s Boy’, ‘Seasons’, ‘Twelve Moons of the Year’, ‘Homeland: A Report from the Country’, ‘Hill Country Harvest’ and ‘The King of Squaw Mountain’. As an author, he wrote and expressed his thoughts on a subject that was rather niche but he left behind an excellent body of work that is still read by those interested in the subject. In his capacity as a journalist, he spoke openly on a range of subjects. Here is a collection of some notable quotes and thoughts by Hal Borland which have been raked from his articles, books, writings, journals and life.
No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.
- Hal Borland
Of all the everyday plants of the earth, grass is the least pretentious and the most important to mankind. It clothes the earth is an unmistakable way. Directly or indirectly it provides the bulk of man's food, his meat, his bread, every scrap of his cereal diet. Without grass we would all starve, we and all our animals. And what a dismal place this world would be!
- Hal Borland
If you ever wondered why fishing is probably the most popular sport in this country, watch that boy beside on the water and you will learn. If you are really perceptive you will. For he already knows that fishing is only one part fish.
- Hal Borland
There it is, fog, atmospheric moisture still uncertain in destination, not quite weather and not altogether mood, yet partaking of both.
- Hal Borland
All our yesterdays are summarized in our now, and all the tomorrows are ours to shape.
- Hal Borland
The longer I live and the more I read, the more certain I become that the real poems about spring aren't written on paper. They are written in the back pasture and the near meadow, and they are issued in a new revised edition every April.
- Hal Borland
If you would know strength and patience, welcome the company of trees.
- Hal Borland
March is a tomboy with tousled hair, a mischievous smile, mud on her shoes and a laugh in her voice.
- Hal Borland
April is a promise that May is bound to keep.
- Hal Borland
The ultimate wisdom which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed. There it lies, the simplest fact of the universe and at the same time the one which calls faith rather than reason.
All man has to do is cooperate with the big forces, the sun, the rain, the growing urge. Seeds sprout, stems grow, leaves spread in the sunlight. Man plants, weeds, cultivates and harvests. It sounds simple, and it is simple, with the simplicity of great truths.
- Hal Borland
To see a hillside white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular ecstasy of beauty, but to walk the gray Winter woods and find the buds which will resurrect that beauty in another May is to partake of continuity.
- Hal Borland
You can't be suspicious of a tree, or accuse a bird or a squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet.
- Hal Borland
The earth's distances invite the eye. And as the eye reaches, so must the mind stretch to meet these new horizons. I challenge anyone to stand with autumn on a hilltop and fail to see a new expanse not only around him, but in him, too.
- Hal Borland
A root, a stem, a leaf, some means of capturing sunlight and air and making food - in sum, a plant. The green substance of this earth, the chlorophyll, is all summed up in the plants. Without them we perish, all of us who are flesh and blood.
- Hal Borland
Catch a vista of maples in that long light and you see Autumn glowing through the leaves.... The promise of gold and crimson is there among the branches, though as yet it is achieved on only a stray branch, an impatient limb or an occasional small tree which has not yet learned to time its changes.
Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
- Hal Borland
Nothing in nature is as simple as it sometimes seems when reduced to words.
- Hal Borland
The earth turns, and the seasons, and for all his pride and power man cannot temper the winds or change their course. They are the unseen tides that shape our days and our years.
- Hal Borland
Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable...the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street...by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.
- Hal Borland
Summer ends, and Autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night.
- Hal Borland
Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.
You cn't be suspicious of a tree, accuse a bird or squirrel of subversion or challenge the ideology of a violet
- Hal Borland
A snowdrift is a beautiful thing-if it doesn't lie across the path you have to shovel or block the road that leads to your destination.
- Hal Borland
Man is wise and constantly in quest of more wisdom; but the ultimate wisdom, which deals with beginnings, remains locked in a seed.
- Hal Borland
October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.
- Hal Borland
All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole.
