Celia Thaxter Quotes

United States, Writer
June 29, 1835 – August, 25, 1894.

Celia Laighton Thaxter was an American writer of poetry and stories. For most of her life, she resided with her father on the Isles of Shoals at his Appledore Hotel. How she grew up to become a writer is detailed in her early autobiography (published by St. Nicholas), and her book entitled Among the Isles of Shoals.Thaxter became one of America's favorite authors in the late 19th century. Among her best-known poems are "The Burgomaster Gull", "Landlocked", "Milking", "The Great White Owl", "The Kingfisher", and "The Sandpiper".

It seems to me the worst of all the plagues is the slug, the snail without a shell. He is beyond description repulsive, a mass of sooty, shapeless slime, and he devours everything.

Celia Thaxter
- Worst
- Description
- Mass
As I work among my flowers, I find myself talking to them, reasoning and remonstrating with them, and adoring them as if they were human beings. Much laughter I provoke among my friends by so doing, but that is of no consequence. We are on such good terms, my flowers and I.

Celia Thaxter

Like the musician, the painter, the poet and the rest, the true lover of flowers is born, not made.

Celia Thaxter
- Flower
- Musician
- Poet
When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before any one is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness.

Celia Thaxter
- Time
- Perfect
- Morning
I am fully and intensely aware that plants are conscious of love and respond to it as they do to nothing else.

Celia Thaxter
- Love
- Desire
- Plant
I wonder what spendthrift chose to spill Such a bright gold under my windowsill! Is it fair gold? Does it glitter still? Bless me! It's a daffodil!

Celia Thaxter
- Wonder
- Gold
- Glitter
Peacefully The quiet stars came out, one after one; The holy twilight fell upon the sea, The summer day was done.

Celia Thaxter
- Done
- Summer
- Twilight
As I hold the flower in my hand and think of trying to describe it, I realize how poor a creature I am, how impotent are words in the presence of such perfection.

Celia Thaxter
- Trying
- Beauty
- Flower

There shall be an eternal summer in the grateful heart.

Celia Thaxter
- Heart
- Summer
- Grateful
Last week, when I went early into my garden, a rose-breasted grosbeak was sitting on the fence. Oh, he was beautiful as a flower. I hardly dared to breathe, I did not stir, and we gazed at each other fully five minutes before he concluded to move.

Celia Thaxter
- Beautiful
- Moving
- Garden
The toad has indeed no superior as a destroyer of noxious insects, and he possesses no bad habits and is entirely inoffensive himself, every owner of a garden should treat him with utmost hospitality.

Celia Thaxter
- Animal
- Habit
- Garden
This very act of planting a seed in the earth has in it to me something beautiful. I always do it with a joy that is largely mixed with awe.

Celia Thaxter
- Beautiful
- Earth
- Joy
If death were the exception and not the rule, and we were not so swiftly to follow, these separations would be intolerably sad. We know no more of our next change of life than we knew of this before we were born into it; but that which we call death is merely change, who can doubt?

Celia Thaxter
- Born
- Next
- Separation
The summer day was spoiled with fitful storm; At night the wind died and the soft rain dropped; With lulling murmur, and the air was warm, And all the tumult and the trouble stopped.

Celia Thaxter
- Night
- Summer
- Trouble

One golden day redeems a weary year

Celia Thaxter
- Happiness
- Golden
- Weary