Quotes from Colony

Anne Rivers Siddons ·  640 pages

Rating: (9.7K votes)


“That sinuous southern life, that oblique and slow and complicated old beauty, that warm thick air and blood warm sea, that place of mists and languor and fragrant richness...”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“I thought. I thought of the slow yellow autumn in the swamp and the high honey sun of spring and the eternal silence of the marshes, and the shivering light on them, and the whisper of the spartina and sweet grass in the wind and the little liquid splashes of who-knew-what secret creatures entering that strange old place of blood-warm half earth, half water. I thought of the song of all the birds that I knew, and the soft singsong of the coffee-skinned women who sold their coiled sweet-grass baskets in the market and on Meeting Street. I thought of the glittering sun on the morning harbor and the spicy, somehow oriental smells from the dark old shops, and the rioting flowers everywhere, heavy tropical and exotic. I thought of the clop of horses' feet on cobblestones and the soft, sulking, wallowing surf of Sullivan's Island in August, and the countless small vistas of grace and charm wherever the eye fell; a garden door, a peeling old wall, an entire symmetrical world caught in a windowpane. Charlestone simply could not manage to offend the eye. I thought of the candy colors of the old houses in the sunset, and the dark secret churchyards with their tumbled stones, and the puresweet bells of Saint Michael's in the Sunday morning stillness. I thought of my tottering piles of books in the study at Belleau and the nights before the fire when my father told me of stars and butterflies and voyages, and the silver music of mathematics. I thought of hot, milky sweet coffee in the mornings, and the old kitchen around me, and Aurelia's gold smile and quick hands and eyes rich with love for me.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“It was lovely wine, soft and full of flowers.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“...bathed in the thick honey gold of the sun through encircling trees only just beginning to turn the muted metal colors of fall.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“At four that morning my son, Peter Williams Chambliss, slid into the world tiny and red and roaring with life and the awful love that caught and whirled me away when they laid him on my stomach was as strong and old as the earth and would, I knew dimly, abide as long.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony



“The sunset over the bay that evening was a conflagration of blood-red and orange and deep, gold-edged purple. I remember: unforgettable.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“Fireflies winked, and the darkening bay breathed and sighed like a great dolphin and the thin pure curve of a young moon hung in the green sky...”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“I fell in love with Peter at that precise instant. I don't suppose many other women know the exact moment the rest of their lives began.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“Peter and I danced in bare feet in the cold wet undergrowth while the moon poured its wild old silver down on us and the water ran black and ancient and the moss shone.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“Sometimes I could scarcely breathe with the knowledge that for the rest of my life, whenever we wanted, Peter and I could lie down and do whatever we wished.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony



“Her light brown eyes were the color of sherry, fringed with long, thick, gold-tipped lashes.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“On a night of icy silver radiance, when the very sea and stars seemed on fire with light.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“All places where the French settled have corruption at their heart, a kind of soft, rotten glow, like the phosphorescence of decaying wood, that is oddly attractive.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“...heavy satin that fell like spilled syrup...”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“The air was cool and fresh and smelled of the kelp and salt that streamed in off the bay at the full of the tide. The sun was high in the tender vault of the sky, and the thunderheads that would sweep in late in the day were still only white marble puffs at the margins of the sky, solid and silver-lined. There was a blue clarity about the horizon and the distant hills that spoke of a weather change but not for another day or two. Along the meadows' edges, as we drove past, I saw pink clover and purple lupine, hawkweed and wild daylilies. Brilliant pink wild azaleas, called lambkill here, flickered like wildfire in the birch groves. Daisies, buttercups, wild columbine, and the purple flags of wild iris starred the roadside. Behind them all was the eternal dark of the pines and firs and spruce thickets and, between those, the glittering indigo of the bay.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony



“But there sometimes comes a moment, a small, silent white explosion of awareness.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“(the villa) It's beautiful too, all hot pinks and reds, and rocks and sand and blinding blue and white.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


“...against the grape-flushed sky perfect amethyst night.”
― Anne Rivers Siddons, quote from Colony


About the author

Anne Rivers Siddons
Born place: in Atlanta, Georgia, The United States
Born date January 9, 1936
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Christ did not die to forgive sinners who go on treasuring anything above seeing and savoring God. And people who would be happy in heaven if Christ were not there, will not be there. The gospel is not a way to get people to heaven; it is a way to get people to God. It's a way of overcoming every obstacle to everlasting joy in God. If we don't want God above all things, we have not been converted by the gospel.”
― John Piper, quote from God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself


“It’s one thing building a cloister to reflect the 768 of the numerological Bismillah, it’s another planning a giant alphabet out of an entire city before you’ve even built your first mosque.’
‘It is, but remember, Sinan was chief architect and city planner at the time of the conquest of Cairo. He practised on that city; demolishing and building where he liked. I have no doubt that he was already forming the idea of a sacred geometry. His first building as Architect of the Abode of Felicity was the Haseki Hürrem Mosque for the Kadin Roxelana. Not his greatest work by any means, and he was working from existing designs, but it was identifiable as his first mature work. There’s a story in his autobiography Tezkiretül Bünyan that while he was surveying the site he noticed that children were pulling live fish from a grating in the street. When he went to investigate he discovered an entire Roman cistern down there. Perhaps it was this that inspired him to realize his vision. Hidden water. The never-ceasing stream of Hurufism.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from The Dervish House


“Slowly Tegan looked up and I saw wonderment on her face. It was of the variety only ever found in those young enough to yet have minds as open as the oceans and hearts longing to have proof of magic.”
― Paula Brackston, quote from The Witch's Daughter


“And meditation is nothing but enjoying your beautiful aloneness. Celebrating yourself; that’s what meditation is all about.”
― Osho, quote from Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships


“Si tuviera que vender mis mañanas y mis tardes a la sociedad, como hace la mayoría, estoy seguro de que no me quedaría nada por lo que vivir... No hay mayor equivocación que consumir la mayor parte de la vida en ganarse el sustento”
― Henry David Thoreau, quote from Life Without Principle


Interesting books

Sad Cypress
(16.9K)
Sad Cypress
by Agatha Christie
Wicked as They Come
(4K)
Wicked as They Come
by Delilah S. Dawson
Up to Me
(32.5K)
Up to Me
by Michelle Leighton
Reasons I Fell for the Funny Fat Friend
(7K)
Reasons I Fell for t...
by Cassie Mae
Mastery
(16.7K)
Mastery
by Robert Greene
Don't Let Me Go
(12.5K)
Don't Let Me Go
by Catherine Ryan Hyde

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.