Holly quotes by topic: Christmas and holly, Jolly and holly, Trees and holly, Customs and holly, Holly features, Women and holly, Nature and holly, People and holly, Friendship and holly, Misletoe and holly, Gardening and holly, Holly berries, Birds and holly, Rocks and holly.
Christmas and holly
Hogsmeade looked like a Christmas card; the little thatched cottages and shops were all covered in a layer of crisp snow; there were holly wreaths on the doors and strings of enchanted candles hanging in the trees. (J.K. Rowling)
The holly green, the ivy green The prettiest picture you’ve ever seen Is Christmas in Killarney With all of the folks at home. (John Redmond)
Whose heart doth hold the Christmas glow Hath little need of Mistletoe; Who bears a smiling grace of mien Need waste no time on wreaths of green; Whose lips have words of comfort spread Needs not the holly-berries red – His very presence scatters wide The spirit of the Christmastide. (John Kendrick Bangs)
I think that the essence of a Christmas wreath – of all Christmas vegetative decoration – has to be green and, if possible, living. So the basis of a wreath is ideally holly, laurel, ivy, rosemary, larch, fir or whatever is to hand. (Monty Don)
If I could work my will, said Scrooge indignantly, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should! (Charles Dickens)
Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable? (George Gissing)
The whole concept of some stranger making his way down our chimney – not that we had one – suggested burglary more readily than generosity. Any Santa who tried it would have gotten a bullet in his holly, jolly keister. (Thomm Quackenbush)
Jolly and holly
Be merry all, be merry all, With holly dress the festive hall; Prepare the song, the feast, the ball, To welcome merry Christmas. (William Spencer)
It’s supposed to be jolly, with mistletoe and holly… and other things ending in olly. (Terry Pratchett)
And as, when all the summer trees are seen So bright and green, The Holly leaes a sober hue display Less bright than they, But when the bare and wintry woods we see, What then so cheerful as the Holly-tree? (Robert Southey)
The holly with its red berries, and the “fond ivy,” still stick about our houses to maintain the recollection of the seasonable festivities. Let us hope that we may congratulate each other on having, while we kept them, kept ourselves within compass. Merriment without discretion is an abuse for which nature is sure to punish us. (William Hone)
We send to you; but here a jolly
Verse crown’d with ivy and with holly;
That tells of winter’s tales and mirth
That milk-maids make about the hearth; (Robert Herrick)
Trees and holly
How many sorts of trees there are—oak, and birch and nuts, and mountain-ash, and holly and furze, and heather. (Charles Kingsley)
Closely clipped hollies and yews rose above the still water of the moat. (Warwick Deeping)
All green was anished sae of pine and yew, That still displayed their melancholy hue; Sae the green holly with its berries red, And the green moss that o’er the grael spread.(George Crabbe)
It may be thought that the holly should be ranked as a shrub rather than as a forest tree; but when well grown it is fairly entitled to the superior rank, for there are many fine specimens in these islands upwards of 50 feet high. (Herbert Maxwell)
The unendangered myrtle, decked with flowers,
Before the threshold stands to welcome us!
While, in the flowering myrtle’s neighborhood,
Not overlooked, but courting no regard,
Those native plants, the holly and the yew. (William Wordsworth)
Customs and holly
As they walked in the storm, with the flashes of lightning, on the road transformed into a torrent, they saw in a flash a house where a branch of holly hung, a sign of hospitality. (Anatole France)
It is worth recording that in many parishes of Worcestershire and Herefordshire the holly and ivy that have adorned churches at Christmas-time are much esteemed and cherished. If a small branch of holly, with the berries upon it, is taken home and hung up in the house, it is considered sure to bring a lucky year. (James Grant)
The old and pleasant custom of decking our houses and churches at Christmas with evergreens is derived from ancient heathen practices. Councils of the church forbad christians to deck their houses with bay leaves and green boughs at the same time with the pagans; but this was after the church had permitted such doings in order to accommodate its ceremonies to those of the old mythology. (William Hone)
And when I arrive, I will place on your grave, – A bouquet of green holly and heather in flower. (Victor Hugo)
Holly features
Above all the natural Greens which inrich our home-born store, there is non certainly to be compared to the Holly, insomuch as I have often wonder’d at our curiosity after foreign Plants and expensive difficulties, to the neglect of the culture of this vulgar but incomparable tree. (Evelyn)
Holly is blooming along the roads! (Marina Tsvetaeva)
You, too, brave hollies, twitch Sidelong from thorn. (Thomas Hardy)
The grey twisted trunks of the hollies gleamed among the dark foliage, giving an eerie and almost uncanny atmosphere to the place. (Leslie Moore)
Women and holly
Green, slender, leaf-clad holly boughs Were twisted gracefu’ round her brows, I took her for some Scottish Muse. (Robert Burns)
She had counted on repeating their yesterday’s walk among the hollies and brambles, among the foxgloves and through the bracken. (Remy de Gourmont)
When the holly’s in the red
And the pine is in the green,
When the mornings all are frosty,
In a brilliant silver sheen
Then I love to go a’ walking
Rambling here and there, quite slow,
Plucking greenery and berries;
Wishing for a Christmas snow. (Rachel Heffington)
Nature and holly
It has such an old walled garden, such a beautiful lime avenue, such delicious old hollies and oaks, such woods behind it and about it! (Janet Penrose Trevelyan)
Never had Severndale been more beautiful than upon that November afternoon. October’s rich coloring had given place to the dull reds, burnt-umbers, and rich wood browns of late autumn, though the grass was still green underfoot, and the holly and fir trees greener by contrast. (Gabrielle E. Jackson)
Farewell to every white cascade from the Harbour to Belleek
And every pool where fins may rest, and ivy-shaded creek;
The sloping fields, the lofty rocks, where ash and holly grow,
The one split yew-tree gazing on the curving flood below; (William Allingham)
People and holly
A man must become attached to a spot where he himself planted the hollies and yews, and his children have marked their growth year by year. (Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd)
Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of an ardent underneath the holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet. Welcome, old projects, and old loves, however fleeting, to your nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. (Charles Dickens)
Of the holly with the varnished leaf
And of the shining boxwood I am tired,
And of the infinite countryside.
And with everything, strength with you, alas! (Paul Verlaine)
Friendship and holly
Heigh ho! sing, heigh ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly: Then heigh ho, the holly This life is most jolly. (William Shakespeare)
Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly? (Emily Bronte)
A friend. The holly of life, whose qualities are overshadowed in the summer of prosperity, but blossom forth in the winter of adversity. (George L. Herr)
Misletoe and holly
The mistletoe hung in the castle hall, The holly branch shone on the old oak wall. (Thomas Haynes Bayly)
The mistletoe is not so easy to find as the holly. (Arthur Ransome)
Marriage: first under the mistletoe, then on the holly. (Paul Morand)
Gardening and holly
Having been cultivated for centuries as a hedge and shrubbery plant, the holly has sported into a great variety of forms and colours, none of them, to my taste, the match of the wild type for beauty, and some of them mere ugly caricatures thereof. (Herbert Maxwell)
The proper season for planting hollies is May, after growth has started. If the operation is delayed till autumn, they make no new roots, and suffer so much from frost and cold winds that many of them never get established. (Herbert Maxwell)
Holly berries
The bare branches were silvered with frost. The berries of the holly tree looked white with rime. Old Marie said that all holly berries had once been white, but that the crown of thorns had been made of holly, and the berries had turned red when touched with Jesus’s blood. (Kate Forsyth)
The holly of Europe, which has brightened the English Christmas for centuries, has a far more deeply cleft and spiny leaf than ours. Beside it, our holly leaves and berries are dull, and dark-coloured. The whole tree lacks the brightness of the European species. (Julia Ellen Rogers)
Birds and holly
Here, too the darting linnet hath her nest
In the blue-lustred holly, never shorn… (William Allingham)
Hedges of this lustrous-leaved holly shut in many an English garden, and their bright berries glow cheerfully through the grey, sunless, winter days. No wonder the gardeners frown upon the little thrushes that feed upon these berries, thus robbing the garden of one of its chief winter charms. (Julia Ellen Rogers)
Rocks and holly
Dark hollies clinging to detached rocks present varied and life-like forms. (Edward N. Hoare)
But ’twas the foliage of the rocks – the birch,
The yew, the holly, and the bright green thorn,
With hanging islands of resplendent furze… (William Wordsworth)
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