The Shepherds Hut Quotes

High up on Monte Salvatore the window of some shepherd's hut opened a golden eye. The roses hung their heads and dreamed under the still September clouds, and the water plashed and murmured softly among the pebbles of the shore.

There’s a sad feeling in a place people have just walked out of and left behind.

But I spose the women and the children was the closest. There’s something about the men just stops them being able.

Anything with blood in it can probably go bad. Like meat. And it’s the blood that makes me worry. It carries things you don’t even know you got.

They slept with each other for the first time while waiting out a storm in an abandoned shepherd hut. The hours the storm granted them, surrounded by raw wool and rusty shears, felt like a month, a year, all the years they’d been waiting for this, full of fear of their kisses, of their too-familiar skins. So far from all their memories, it felt as if they were meeting each other for the first time all over again. The horse scraping around in the discarded fleece, the storm, the sound of rain, Jacob gathered it all, like jewelry he would put around Fox’s neck whenever they would remember this first time.

And I wish I could say I stayed up late thinking about him but the truth is I was only awake a little while. I was so tired the swag felt like a sponge that soaked me up. I went to sleep like someone disappearing from the earth, like rain sopped into dust.

Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the starry sky. They were the notes of Oak´s flute. It came from the direction of a small dark object under the hedge - a shephard´s hut - now presenting an outline to which an unintiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use. ... Being a man not without a frequent consciousness that there was some charm in this life he led, he stood still after looking at the sky as a useful instrument, and regarded it in an appreciative spirit, as a work of art superlatively beautiful. For a moment he seemed impressed with the speaking loneliness of the scene, or rather with the complete abstraction from all its compass of the sights and sounds of man. ... Oak´s motions, though they had a quiet energy, were slow, and their deliberateness accorded well with his occupation. Fitness being the basis of beauty, nobody could have denied tha his steady swings and turns in and about the flock had elements of grace. His special power, morally, physically, and mentally, was static. ... Oak was an intensely human man: indee, his humanity tore in pieces any politic intentions of his which bordered on strategy, and carried him on as by gravitation. A shadow in his life had always been that his flock should end in mutton - that a day could find a shepherd an arrant traitor to his gentle sheep.

Shanksing across that country you stick out like a rat on a birthday cake.

To live you gotta be hard, I know that. But nobody wants to be a deadset cunt. That’s just not fucking decent.

...mountains breed learned men and shepherds' huts house philosophers.

It’s a dangerous feeling getting noticed, being wanted. Getting seen deep and proper, it’s shit hot but terrible too. It’s like being took over. And your whole skin hurts like you suddenly grew two sizes in a minute.

Huddled in folds they listened with wide eyes while the shepherds told of ravening wolves. With great gladness they exchanged their fleeces for security. Shorn and shivering, they had the happiness of seeing their protectors comfortable and warm. Through all the years, those who plowed divided with those who prayed. Wicked industry supported pious idleness, the hut gave to the cathedral, and frightened poverty gave even its rags to buy a robe for hypocrisy.

For the first time in my life I know what I want and I have what it takes to get me there. If you never experienced that I feel sorry for you. But it wasn’t always like this. I have been through fire to get here. I seen things and done things and had shit done to me you couldn’t barely credit. So be happy for me. And for fucksake don’t get in my way.

out there houses are rare as rocking horse turds.

Don’t you see it Jaxie Clackton, you are an instrument of God.’ ‘Oh, I said, you mad fucker. You been out under the moon too long.

His wild proclamations of love in the shepherds’ hut could not be taken seriously, could they?

past is still in them. The force of events long gone, it lingers. These heavenly bodies and earthly forms, what are they but expressions of matters unfinished? Perhaps it’s not childish nonsense to see stones as men walking, to behold the moon and feel a tinge of dread. A stone is a fact, a consequence. And the moon, it marks a man’s days, does it not? Another month gone, a reminder every cycle that your moment is waning. No wonder it catches in a little fella’s chest when he sees it. Mebbe lunatics are men who’ve remembered they’re just men, not angels.

Please God, whatever I was I am no longer….All is forgotten, if not forgiven—it could have come to that. But I don’t trust the thought. I don’t know if it’s because it would be too easy or too terrible to imagine no one cares anymore.

You should know, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that love shows no restraint, and does not keep within the bounds of reason as it proceeds, and has the same character as death: it attacks the noble palaces of kings as well as the poor huts of shepherds, and when it takes full possession of a heart, the first thing it does is to take away fear and shame…

The breeze of morning lifted in the bush and the smell of leaves and wet black earth mingled with the sharp smell of the sea. Myriads of birds were singing. A goldfinch flew over the shepherd's head and, perching on the tiptop of a spray, it turned to the sun, ruffling its small breast feathers. And now they had passed the fisherman's hut, passed the charred-looking lit

There is one in this tribe too often miserable - a child bereaved of both parents. None cares for this child: she is fed sometimes, but oftener forgotten: a hut rarely receives her: the hollow tree and chill cavern are her home. Forsaken, lost, and wandering, she lives more with the wild beast and bird than with her own kind. Hunger and cold are her comrades: sadness hovers over, and solitude besets her round. Unheeded and unvalued, she should die: but she both lives and grows: the green wilderness nurses her, and becomes to her a mother: feeds her on juicy berry, on saccharine root and nut. There is something in the air of this clime which fosters life kindly: there must be something, too, in its dews, which heals with sovereign balm. Its gentle seasons exaggerate no passion, no sense; its temperature tends to harmony; its breezes, you would say, bring down from heaven the germ of pure thought, and purer feeling. Not grotesquely fantastic are the forms of cliff and foliage; not violently vivid the colouring of flower and bird: in all the grandeur of these forests there is repose; in all their freshness there is tenderness. The gentle charm vouchsafed to flower and tree, - bestowed on deer and dove, - has not been denied to the human nursling. All solitary, she has sprung up straight and graceful. Nature cast her features in a fine mould; they have matured in their pure, accurate first lines, unaltered by the shocks of disease. No fierce dry blast has dealt rudely with the surface of her frame; no burning sun has crisped or withered her tresses: her form gleams ivory-white through the trees; her hair flows plenteous, long, and glossy; her eyes, not dazzled by vertical fires, beam in the shade large and open, and full and dewy: above those eyes, when the breeze bares her forehead, shines an expanse fair and ample, - a clear, candid page, whereon knowledge, should knowledge ever come, might write a golden record. You see in the desolate young savage nothing vicious or vacant; she haunts the wood harmless and thoughtful: though of what one so untaught can think, it is not easy to divine. On the evening of one summer day, before the Flood, being utterly alone - for she had lost all trace of her tribe, who had wandered leagues away, she knew not where, - she went up from the vale, to watch Day take leave and Night arrive. A crag, overspread by a tree, was her station: the oak-roots, turfed and mossed, gave a seat: the oak-boughs, thick-leaved, wove a canopy. Slow and grand the Day withdrew, passing in purple fire, and parting to the farewell of a wild, low chorus from the woodlands. Then Night entered, quiet as death: the wind fell, the birds ceased singing. Now every nest held happy mates, and hart and hind slumbered blissfully safe in their lair. The girl sat, her body still, her soul astir; occupied, however, rather in feeling than in thinking, - in wishing, than hoping, - in imagining, than projecting. She felt the world, the sky, the night, boundlessly mighty. Of all things, herself seemed to herself the centre, - a small, forgotten atom of life, a spark of soul, emitted inadvertent from the great creative source, and now burning unmarked to waste in the heart of a black hollow. She asked, was she thus to burn out and perish, her living light doing no good, never seen, never needed, - a star in an else starless firmament, - which nor shepherd, nor wanderer, nor sage, nor priest, tracked as a guide, or read as a prophecy? Could this be, she demanded, when the flame of her intelligence burned so vivid; when her life beat so true, and real, and potent; when something within her stirred disquieted, and restlessly asserted a God-given strength, for which it insisted she should find exercise?

Far from birds, from flocks and village girls, What did I drink, on my knees in the heather Surrounded by a sweet wood of hazel trees, In the warm and green mist of the afternoon? What could I drink from that young Oise, − Voiceless elms, flowerless grass, an overcast sky! − Drinking from these yellow gourds, far from the hut I loved? Some golden spirit that made me sweat. I would have made a dubious sign for an inn. − A storm came to chase the sky away. In the evening Water from the woods sank into the virgin sand, And God’s wind threw ice across the ponds. Weeping, I saw gold − but could not drink. − ——— At four in the morning, in the summer, The sleep of love still continues. Beneath the trees the wind disperses The smells of the evening feast. Over there, in their vast wood yard, Under the sun of the Hesperidins, Already hard at work − in shirtsleeves − Are the Carpenters. In their Deserts of moss, quietly, They raise precious panelling Where the city Will paint fake skies. O for these Workers, charming Subjects of a Babylonian king, Venus! Leave for a moment the Lovers Whose souls are crowned with wreaths. O Queen of Shepherds, Carry the water of life to these labourers, So their strength may be appeased As they wait to bathe in the noon-day sea.

Where was I? Who was I? What was I? … And for a long time Fintan took it just like that. Giving them nothing. And it was horrible and incredible and it all piled up on me, squashing me in, forcing me down, until something cracked and all in one moment it was like everything landed. All the birds landed. The sunlight landed. The song landed. All the decent things in him landed. On me. On my head. And I knew where I was, and who I was, and what I was. Yes, what I am. And it was just like he said. What I laughed at him for. It was like the sun and moon going through me. I was charged …

The spent shell come out the .243 shining like a bright idea.

Master Clement, how far dost thou make it to Higham-on-the-Way?" "A matter of forty miles," said the Chapman; "because, as thou wottest, if ye ride south from hence, ye shall presently bring your nose up against the big downs, and must needs climb them at once; and when ye are at the top of Bear Hill, and look south away ye shall see nought but downs on downs with never a road to call a road, and never a castle, or church, or homestead: nought but some shepherd's hut; or at the most the little house of a holy man with a little chapel thereby in some swelly of the chalk, where the water hath trickled into a pool; for otherwise the place is waterless." Therewith he took a long pull at the tankard by his side, and went on:

It became a pattern over the course of the following weeks. Every few days, two, three, or sometimes four travelers would ring the bell at Casa Alpina. Pino would lead them out in the wee hours of the morning, climbing by what light the moon offered, and using the carbide miner’s lamp only during cloud cover and the dark of the moon. On these trips, after handing over his charges to Bergstrom, he went to the shepherd’s hut

It’s just an old fella. Mostly bald. Walking dainty like his feet’s tender. And still singing. With some things in his hand. He puts them down on a drum. Sits on a milk crate in the shade. Pulls on a pair of gumboots. Then he snatches up the things from beside him and shuffles out in the sun and leans against the verandah post and I see him clear enough. Singlet. Baggy arse shorts. Thick specs. He’s short and thick this fella. Red in the face. And that stuff in his hand, it’s a knife and steel. He looks around, kind of slow and lazy. Stops singing then and just hums a minute while he hones the knife. And he knows how to freshen up a blade, that I can see straight up.

We was just kids, we did kid stuff. And we didn’t have things to do like people in the city. We couldn’t catch the bus to the beach or the movies or hang out in big shopping malls. We had to ride everywhere or shanks it. Go for a milkshake at the roadhouse, check out the tip. Because there was no KFC or Subway. We’d walk along the highway looking for eagle feathers.

When I hit the bitumen and get that smooth grey rumble going under me everything’s hell different. Like I’m in a fresh new world all slick and flat and easy. Even with the engine working up a howl and the wind flogging in the window the sounds are real soft and pillowy. Civilized I mean. Like you’re still on the earth but you don’t hardly notice it anymore. And that’s hectic. You’d think I never got in a car before. But when you’ve hoofed it like a dirty goat all these weeks and months, when you’ve had the stony slow prickle-up hard country right in your face that long it’s bloody sudden. Some crazy shit, I tell you. Brings on this angel feeling. Like you’re just one arrow of light.

And the moon is only the moon. But they’re not empty things you know. The past is still in them. The force of events long gone, it lingers. These heavenly bodies and earthly forms, what are they but expressions of matters unfinished? …Mebbe lunatics are men who’ve remembered they’re just men, not angels.

elbows-out walk like a scorpion all burred up for a fight

In the end he wore me down. Always asking. And the answer I give him is still the only one I have. What do I want? Peace. And it actually shut him up. He didn’t niggle me about it. It was like he got it straight off. I don’t just want quiet, neither. I want peace.

Whatever it was went through me like a rifle rag. Come dawn, me date was so hot you could have lit a sparkplug off of it.

sort of worked, our arrangement. Before I couldna seen the sense in it. But two of us getting meat and wood, two of us keeping a look out, it was more efficient that one bloke faffing about on his own. And it wasn’t we had anything in common exactly but we was another human to talk to.

Liam Rector’s “Song Years”: “Change is hard and hope is violent”.

the ute was casting a shadow that no light was ever gonna make. A shadow doesn’t search for a drain like that. Shadows don’t have blowflies drowning in them.

God is what you do, not what you believe in.

...discretion will generally keep a fella safe.

I spose it’s wrong to pray that someone dies… But I’ve thought about all the prayers. If that’s what I was doing them years…Asking something, someone, anything, for a big black anvil to fall from the sky like in the cartoons. Kerang! On Wankbag’s head. Because nothing else was gunna save [me]…

Say I hit your number, called you up, you’d wonder what the fuck, every one of youse, and your mouth’d go dry. Maybe you’re just some stranger I pocket-dialled. Or one of them shitheads from school I could look for. Any of youse heard my voice now you’d think it was weather. Or a bird screaming. You’d be sweating sand. Like I’m the end of the world.

So we had some blues, me and Fintan. He said we were merely conducting civilised conversation. But sometimes it was like he didn’t know how close he was to getting his head stove in. Or maybe he didn’t care. Even so, everything was peaceful more or less. Until the wind came round from the north.

Jesus, I told meself, harden the fuck up. She heard me say that once, Mum. To me little cousin out by the laundry where he was bawling, his knee bleeding a tiny bit. She had that disgusted look on her face. What? I said. I didn’t do nothin. You’re no better than your father, she said. Listen to you, Jaxie, you sound just like him. I didn’t talk to her for three days.

Drug dealing worse than kiddy fiddling, is it? Stop that, now! There’s no need and you’ve no right. You think the Catholics care how they make their money? They bloody love gangsters, it’s their bread and butter. Good God, child, you wouldn’t know the half of it. You wouldn’t have the faintest notion.

Peace, that’s all I’m after.

I suspect that God is what you do, not what or who you believe in. But people do shit things all the time, I said. There’s something wrong with us. Perhaps. And maybe not. But when you do right, Jaxie, when you make good — well, then you are an instrument of God. Then you are joined to the divine, to the life-force, to life itself. That’s what I believe. That’s what I hope for. And it’s what I have missed. That’s all jumblyfuck to me, I said as decent as I could. Well, think of it this way, he said, pushing his specs back up his nose. When somebody does me a kindness, it enlarges me, adds to my life, you see? And not only mine — it adds to all life. Which is why I wanted to thank you. For coming here. Me? Fintan gave a sad little laugh. And I caught him looking at me goony as an emu. What? I said. Don’t you understand me, boy? Can’t you see it? Jaxie Clackton, you are an instrument of God.

The life of Moses presents a series of striking antitheses. He was the child of a slave, and the son of a queen. He was born in a hut, and lived in a palace. He inherited poverty, and enjoyed unlimited wealth. He was the leader of armies, and the keeper of flocks. He was the mightiest of warriors, and the meekest of men. He was educated in the court, and dwelt in the desert. He had the wisdom of Egypt, and the faith of a child. He was fitted for the city, and wandered in the wilderness. He was tempted with the pleasures of sin, and endured the hardships of virtue. He was backward in speech, and talked with God. He had the rod of a shepherd, and the power of the Infinite. He was a fugitive from Pharaoh, and an ambassador from heaven. He was the giver of the Law, and the forerunner of grace. He died alone on Mount Moab, and appeared with Christ in Judea. No man assisted at his funeral, yet God buried him" (Dr.

feeling that something wasn't right. A second later, he knew what had woken him. He felt Missy's wet nose on his cheek as she poked him with her muzzle, then ran to the door hectically. Jeff sighed. "Is it that urgent, old girl?" The big, shaggy shepherd dog usually slept through the night, but Jeff understood that she needed to go outside. Missy now whimpered and started scratching at the rusty door of his hut. The old bed creaked when Jeff got up, his neck hurt badly, as it did every morning. The scar, where the augmentation implants had been removed, would never really heal, and he knew that. They had fucked it up during the removing procedure. But he would still rather endure the pain for the rest of his life than have that thing remaining inside him.

He was scarcely sixteen years of age when he left his father’s home, And through Australia’s sunny clime a bushranger did roam. He robbed those wealthy squatters, their stock he did destroy, And a terror to Australia was the wild Colonial boy.

But I’m not such a good judge of monsters; I don’t know if the idea of a good death repels me now because it’s in itself repellent, or because I no longer have the courage to seek such a thing.

I certainly believe that,” said the priest, “for I already know from experience that mountains breed learned men and shepherds’ huts house philosophers.

Then Shamhat gave Enkidu one of her robes and he put it on. Taking his hand, she led him like a child to some shepherds’ huts. Marveling, the shepherds crowded around him. “What an enormous man!” they whispered. “How much like Gilgamesh he is—tall and strong, with muscles like rock.” They led him to their table, they put bread and beer in front of him. Enkidu sat and stared. He had never seen human food, he didn’t know what to do. Then Shamhat said, “Go ahead, Enkidu. This is food, we humans eat and drink this.” Warily he tasted the bread. Then he ate a piece, he ate a whole loaf, then ate another, he ate until he was full, drank seven pitchers of the beer, his heart grew light, his face glowed, and he sang out with joy. He had his hair cut, he washed, he rubbed sweet oil into his skin, and became fully human. Shining, he looked handsome as a bridegroom. When the shepherds lay down, Enkidu went out with sword and spear. He chased off lions and wolves, all night he guarded the flocks, he stayed awake and guarded them while the shepherds slept. One day, while he was making love, he looked up and saw a young man pass by. “Shamhat,” he said, “bring that man here. I want to talk to him. Where is he going?” She called out, then went to the man and said, “Where are you going in such a rush?” The man said to Enkidu, “I am on my way to a wedding banquet. I have piled the table with exquisite food for the ceremony. The priest will bless the young couple, the guests will rejoice, the bridegroom will step aside, and the virgin will wait in the marriage bed for Gilgamesh, king of great-walled Uruk. It is he who mates first with the lawful wife. After he is done, the bridegroom follows. This is the order that the gods have decreed. From the moment the king’s birth-cord was cut, every girl’s hymen has belonged to him.” As he listened, Enkidu’s face went pale with anger. “I will go to Uruk now, to the palace of Gilgamesh the mighty king. I will challenge him. I will shout to his face: ‘I am the mightiest! I am the man who can make the world tremble! I am supreme!