Quotes from How Green Was My Valley

“O, there is lovely to feel a book, a good book, firm in the hand, for its fatness holds rich promise, and you are hot inside to think of good hours to come.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“How green was my valley then, and the valley of them that have gone.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“I saw my father as a man, and not, as a man who was my father.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“But you have gone now, all of you that were so beautiful when you were quick with life. Yet not gone, for you are still a living truth inside my mind.

So how are you dead, my brothers and sisters, and all of you , when you live with me as surely as I live with myself.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Sing, then. Sing, indeed, with shoulders back, and head up so that song might go to the roof and beyond to the sky. Mass on mass of tone, with a hard edge, and rich with quality, every single note a carpet of colour woven from basso profundo, and basso, and baritone, and alto, and tenor, and soprano, and also mezzo, and contralto, singing and singing, until life and all things living are become a song.

O, Voice of Man, organ of most lovely might.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“I wonder is happiness only an essence of good living, that you shall taste only once or twice while you live, and then go on living with the taste in your mouth, and wishing you had the fullness of it solid between your teeth, like a good meal that you have tasted and cherished and look back in your mind to eat again.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Hard it is to suffer through stupid people. They make you feel sorry for them, and if your sorrow is as great as your hurt, you will allow them to go free of punishment, for their eyes are the eyes of dogs that have done wrong and know it, and are afraid.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Why is it, I wonder, that people suffer, when there is so little need, when an effort of will and some hard work would bring them from their misery into peace and contentment.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Men lose their birthrights for a mess of pottage only if they stop using the gifts given them by God for their betterment. By prayer. That is the first and greatest gift. Use the gift of prayer. Ask for strength of mind, and a clear vision. Then sense. Use your sense. … Think long and well. By prayer and good thought you will conquer all enemies.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“How can there be fury felt for things that are gone to dust.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Strange that only a little problem of your own will take your mind far from a tragedy belonging to others.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Never mind what you feel. Think. Watch. Think again. And then one step at a time to put things right. As a mason puts one block at a time. To build solid and good. So with thought. Think. Build one thought at a time. Think solid. Then act. Is it?”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Everywhere was singing, all over the house was singing, and outside the house was alive with singing, and the very air was song.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“It is very strange to think back like this, although come to think of it, there is no fence or hedge round Time that has gone. You can go back and have what you like if you remember it well enough.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Prayer is only another name for good, clean, direct thinking. When you pray, think well what you are saying, and make your thoughts into things that are solid. In that manner, your prayer will have strength, and that strength shall become part of you, mind, body, and spirit.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“There is beautiful you are."
"No," said Marged, between a sigh and a sob.
"Yes," said Owen.
"No," said Marged, not so certain.
"Behold," Owen said, from Solomon. "thou art fair. Thou hast dove's eyes."
"Dove's eyes are small." Marged said.
"Yours are so big they are my whole world," said Owen.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“What is there, in the mention of Time To Come, that is so quick to wrench at the heart, to inflict a pain in the senses that is like the run of a sword, I wonder. Perhaps we feel our youngness taken from us without the soothe of sliding years, and the pains of age that come to stand unseen beside us and grow more solid as the minutes pass, are with us solid on the instant, and we sense them, but when we try to assess them, they are back again in their places down in Time To Come, ready to meet us coming.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“You will only learn in a fight how much you've got to learn.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“... the nose. It can be a nuisance in winter and such a blessing before a meal.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Listen to me. Forget all you saw. Leave it. Take your mind from it. It has nothing to do with you. But use it for experience. Now you know what hurt it brings to women when men come into the world. Remember, and make it up to your Mama and to all women...And another thing let it do. There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is not room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw today, so come Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors. Let the memory direct your dealings with men and women. And be sure to take good care of Mama. Is it?”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Dear little house that I have lived in, there is happiness you have seen, even before I was born. In you is my life, and all the people I have loved are a part of you, so to go out of you, and leave you, is to leave myself.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“I saw behind me those who had gone, and before me, those who are to come. I looked back and saw my father, and his father, and all our fathers, and in front, to see my son, and his son, and the sons upon sons beyond.

And their eyes were my eyes.

As I felt, so they had felt, and were to feel, as then, so now, as tomorrow and forever. Then I was not afraid, for I was in a long line that had no beginning, and no end, and the hand of his father grasped my father's hand, and his hand was in mine, and my unborn son took my right hand, and all, up and down the line stretched from Time That Was, to Time That Is, and is not yet, raised their hands to show the link, and we found that we were one, born of Woman, Son of Man, had in the Image, fashioned in the Womb by the Will of God, the eternal Father.

I was one of them, they were of me, and in me, and I in all of them.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Hard it is to suffer through stupid people. They make you feel sorry for them, and if your sorrow is as great as your hurt, you will allow them to go free of punishment, for their eyes are the eyes of dogs that have done wrong and know it, and are afraid.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“There is a fool you feel when somebody is saying they are sorry for doing something to you. It is worse than if you had done something yourself. So you are having the worst of it twice, start and finish.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Pain is a good cleanser of the mind and therefore of the sight. Matters which seem to mean the world, in health, are found to be of no import when pain is hard upon you.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“In that quietness they were speaking their own language, with their eyes, with the way they stood, with what they put into the air about them, each knowing what the other was saying, and having strength one from the other, for they had been learning through forty years of being together, and their minds were one.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“Then all the winds of Heaven ran to join hands and bend a shoulder, to bring down to me the sound of a noble hymn that was heavy with the perfume of Time That Has Gone.

The glittering multitudes were singing most mightily, and my heart was in blood to hear a Voice that I knew.

The Men of the Valley were marching again.

My Fathers were singing up there.

Loud, triumphant, the anthem rose, and I knew, in some deep place within, that in the royal music was a prayer to lift up my spirit, to be of good cheer, to keep the faith, that Death was only an end to the things that are made of clay, and to fight, without heed of wounds, all that brings death to the Spirit, with Glory to the Eternal Father, forever, Amen.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“There is a wholeness about a woman, of shape, and sound, and colour, and taste, and smell, a quietness that is her, that you will want to hold tightly to you, all, every little bit, without words, in peace, for jealousy for the things that escape the clumsiness of your arms. So you feel when you love.

...For her womaness is a blessing about her, and you are tender to put your hands upon her and kiss, not with lust, but with the joy of one returning to a lost one.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

“What is ordinary to you may be a desert of woeful newness to another.”
― Richard Llewellyn, quote from How Green Was My Valley

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“You can never stay angry too long in the bush though. At least, that's what I think. It's not that it's soothing or restful, because it's not. What it does for me is get inside my body, inside my blood, and take me over. I don't know that I can describe it any better than that. It takes me over and I become part of it and it becomes part of me and I'm not very important, or at least no more important than a tree or a rock or a spider abseiling down a long thread of cobweb. As I wandered around, on that hot afternoon, I didn't notice anything too amazing or beautiful or mindbogglingly spectacular. I can't actually remember noticing anything out of the ordinary: just the grey-green rocks and the olive-green leaves and the reddish soil with its teeming ants. The tattered ribbons of paperbark, the crackly dry cicada shell, the smooth furrow left in the dust by a passing snake. That's all there ever is really, most of the time. No rainforest with tropical butterflies, no palm trees or Californian redwoods, no leopards or iguanas or panda bears.

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“Tread lightly, little one." He warned. "You don't want to push me. Not tonight." Her eyes darkened with anger, narrowing as she met his gaze. "Really? And why is that Raj?"..."I am tired of you thinking you have the right to control me. You are not my boyfriend, and you sure as hell are not my keeper, so from where I stand, you've got no claim on me what so ever. Like the song says, you don't want me for yourself so let me find someone else. It's shit or get off the pot time, Raj. It's now or never, Time to-" She gave a shriek as Raj swung an arm around her waist and lifted her off her feet. He threaded the fingers of one hand through her hair and pulled it aside, freeing the long line of her neck. "Then I choose now," he growled and sank his fangs into the velvet skin of her neck puncturing the fragile walls of her jugular.”
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“faster but the picture remained entirely static. The stillness of a deserted office descended and held steady as time rushed by. “When do the cleaners come in?” Reacher asked. “Just before midnight,” Froelich said. “That late?” “They’re night workers. This is a round-the-clock operation.” “And there’s nothing else visible before then?” “Nothing at all.” “So spool ahead. We get the picture.” Froelich operated the buttons and shuttled between fast-forward with snow on the screen and regular-speed playback with a picture to check the timecode. At eleven-fifty P.M. she let the tape run. The counter clicked ahead, a second at a time. At eleven fifty-two there was motion at the far end of the corridor. A team of three people emerged from the gloom. There were two women and a man, all of them wearing dark overalls. They looked Hispanic. They were all short and compact, dark-haired, stoic. The man was pushing a cart. It had a black garbage bag locked into a hoop at the front, and trays stacked with cloths and spray bottles on shelves at the rear. One of the women was carrying a vacuum cleaner. It rode on”
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