L'ambition prend aux petites âmes plus facilement qu'aux grandes, comme le feu prend plus aisément à la paille, aux chaumières qu'aux palais.
Maximes et Pensées, #68
Reflections
“According to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert it was the custom in England to shear wheat and rye and to leave the straw standing after the third method described by Varro, the purpose being to preserve the straw to be cut later for thatching, as threshing It would necessarily destroy its value for thatching. It was the custom in England, however, to mow barley and oats.”
A Virginia farmer (translator) (1913) in Varro's Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres https://archive.org/stream/cu31924062805209#page/n181/mode/2up/search/husbandry, p. 161-2.
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Anthony Fitzherbert 5
English judge, scholar and legal author 1470–1538Related quotes
Nielsen v. Wait (1885), L. R. 16 Q. B. 71.
Blue Labour, An Ancient Polity For A New Economy? http://www.bluelabour.org/2012/06/19/an-ancient-polity-for-a-new-economy/
“He was hanging on, looking for a life preserver. He was a desperate man clutching at straws.”
U.S. Senator Paul Laxalt, after his telephone conversation with Marcos, March 1986
About
4 Burr. Part IV., 2368.
Dissenting in Millar v Taylor (1769)
"Donkeys," said Nasrudin.
N. Hanif (ed.), Biographical Encyclopaedia of Sufis: Central Asia and Middle East (2002), ISBN 8176252662, p. 335
“OATS — A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.”
A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)
“I would be — for no knowledge is worth a straw —
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.”
The Dawn http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1612/
The Wild Swans at Coole (1919)
Context: I would be ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;
I would be — for no knowledge is worth a straw —
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.