„We are a nation of sheep, and
someone else owns the grass.“
— George Carlin American stand-up comedian 1937 - 2008
Quotes about grass
A collection of quotes on the topic of grass.
Related topicsTotal 471 quotes grass, filter:
„We are a nation of sheep, and
„There is not one little blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make men rejoice.“
— John Calvin French Protestant reformer 1509 - 1564
Sermon Number 10 on I Corinthians, 698. As quoted in John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait (1989) by William J. Bouwsma, pp. 134–135.
Epistles to the Corinthians
„I have just seen you go down the mountain.
I close the wicker gate in the setting sun.
The grass will be green again in coming spring,
But will the wanderer ever return?“
— Wang Wei a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman 699 - 759
"Departure" (trans. Robert Payne)
„Translation: For mum we're fly. What mum you don't know who am I? I am Józio. And this is my sister Rózia. Now we're fly in sky! There is better than mum. See how heads in ray. Clothes with lucifer light. And on my hand as butterfly airfoil in sky we have all what we want, every day other toy, where we go here is grass, where we touch here is a flower. But we have what we want, torture us boring and trepidation. Oh mum for Your children road to heaven has been closed! On Always!“
— Adam Mickiewicz, book Dziady
Do mamy lecim do mamy! Cóż to, mamo nie znasz Józia? Ja to Józio ja ten samy. A to moja siostra Rózia. My teraz w raju latamy, Tam nam lepiej niż u mamy. Patrz jakie główki w promieniu, Ubiór z jutrzenki światełka, A na oboim ramieniu Jak u motylków skrzydełka, w raju wszystkiego dostatek, Co dzień to inna zabawka, gdzie stąpim wypływa trawka, gdzie dotkniem rozkwita kwiatek. Lecz choć wszystkiego dostatek dręczy nad nuda i trwoga. Ach mamo dla twoich dziatek zamknięta do nieba droga!
Part two.
Dziady (Forefathers' Eve) http://www.ap.krakow.pl/nkja/literature/polpoet/mic_fore.htm
„I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man.“
— Nelson Mandela President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist 1918 - 2013
1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)
„Ah, yet would God this flesh of mine might be
Where air might wash and long leaves cover me;
Where tides of grass break into foam of flowers,
Or where the wind's feet shine along the sea.“
— Algernon Charles Swinburne English poet, playwright, novelist, and critic 1837 - 1909
Laus Veneris.
Undated
„For my part, I love to stand foot to foot with an honest foeman. To open warfare, bold and true hearts raise no objections but the ground of quarrel. It is rather covert enmity which we have most cause to fear and best reason to loathe. That crafty kindness which inveigles me to sacrifice principle is the serpent in the grass -- deadly to the incautious wayfarer.“
— Charles Spurgeon British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist 1834 - 1892
Baptismal Regeneration (1864) http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0573.htm
„I like it when a flower or a little tuft of grass grows through a crack in the concrete. It's so fuckin' heroic.“
— George Carlin American stand-up comedian 1937 - 2008
„Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough!
It isn't fit for humans now,
There isn't grass to graze a cow.
Swarm over, Death!“
"Slough" line 1, from Continual Dew (1937).
Poetry
„Nature is part our humanity, and without some awareness and experience of that divine mystery man ceases to be man. When the Pleiades and the wind in the grass are no longer a part of the human spirit, a part of very flesh and bone, man becomes, as it were, a kind of cosmic outlaw, having neither the completeness and integrity of the animal nor the birthright of a true humanity.“
— Henry Beston American writer 1888 - 1968
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
„Summer is the season of motion, winter is the season of form. In summer everything moves save the fixed and inert. Down the hill flows the west wind, making wavelets in the shorter grass and great billows in the standing hay; the tree in full leaf sways its heavy boughs below and tosses its leaves above; the weed by the gate bends and turns when the wind blows down the road. It is the shadow of moving things that we usually see, and the shadows are themselves in motion. The shadow of a branch, speckled through with light, wavers across the lawn, the sprawling shadow of the weed moves and sways across the dust.“
— Henry Beston American writer 1888 - 1968
Source: The Northern Farm: A Glorious Year on a Small Maine Farm
„O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?
O fat white woman whom nobody loves,
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
When the grass is soft as the breast of doves
And shivering-sweet to the touch?
O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,
Missing so much and so much?“
— Frances Cornford English poet 1886 - 1960
"To a Fat Lady Seen from the Train", from Poems (Hampstead: Priory Press, 1910) p. 20.
„The wastelands belong to my youth [c. 1930's]. When I was young I played in the outskirts of the city - watching the cranes at the harbour. There was no law but garbage, grass and wildflowers like boys and girls, rough, hot and sexual and full of hidden pleasures. Life and death are overlapping in the wastelands like in my paintings.“
— Karel Appel Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet 1921 - 2006
pp. 75-77 'Quotes', K. Appel (1989)
Appel's quote is referring to his youth in Amsterdam, in the outskirts and the ports of the Dutch city
„Wars always bring about a conservative reaction. They overwhelm and destroy patient and careful efforts to improve the condition of man. Nothing can be heard in the cannon's roar but the voice of might. All the safeguards laboriously built to preserve individual freedom and foster man's welfare are blown to pieces with shot and shell. In the presence of the wholesale slaughter of men the value of life is cheapened to the zero point. What is one life compared with the almost daily records of tens of thousands or more mowed down like so many blades of grass in a field? Building up a conception of the importance of life is a matter of slow growth and education; and the work of generations is shattered and laid waste by machine guns and gases on a larger scale than ever before. Great wars have been followed by an unusually large number of killings between private citizens and individuals. These killers have become accustomed to thinking in terms of slaying and death toward all opposition, and these have been followed in turn by the most outrageous legal penalties and a large increase in the number of executions by the state. It is perfectly clear that hate begets hate, force is met with force, and cruelty can become so common that its contemplation brings pleasure, when it should produce pain.“
— Clarence Darrow American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union 1857 - 1938
Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 26 "The Aftermath Of The War"
„.. wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly. Courage consists of staying at home, close to nature, which could not care less about our disasters. Each grain of dust contains the soul of something marvellous.“
— Joan Miró Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist 1893 - 1983
Miró admonished art-critic w:Georges Duthuit
1915 - 1940
Source: 'Où allez-vous Miró?' (Where do you go, Miró), Georges Duthuit in Cahiers d'Art 11, nos. 8-10, 1936
„We can't depend on the Democrats … They got there and betrayed the grass roots that put them there“
— Cindy Sheehan American antiwar activist 1957
"Bush critic Sheehan blasts US Democrats," Agence France-Presse http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070406213651.amoh9jep&show_article=1
Sourced - August 6, 2005 to present
„Lovers lie around in it
Broken glass is found in it
Grass
I like that stuff“
— Adrian Mitchell British writer 1932 - 2008
"Stufferation", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991).
Other stanzas follow this pattern. Roger McGough wrote a version with the refrain "I like that stuff".
„Look at him, just like a god,
that man sitting across from you,
whoever he is,
listening to your
close, sweet voice,
your irresistible laughter
And O yes,
it sets my heart racing—
one glance at you
and I can't get any words out,
my voice cracks,
a thin flame runs under my skin,
my eyes go blind,
my ears ring,
a cold sweat pours down my body,
I tremble all over,
turn paler than grass.“
— Sappho ancient Greek lyric poet -630 - -570 BC
Stanley Lombardo translations, Frag. 20
„[S]he became the Mother of God, in which work so many and such great good things are bestowed on her as pass man's understanding. For on this there follows all honor, all blessedness, and her unique place in the whole of mankind, among which she has no equal, namely, that she had a child by the Father in heaven, and such a Child…. Hence men have crowded all her glory into a single word, calling her the Mother of God…. None can say of her nor announce to her greater things, even though he had as many tongues as the earth possesses flowers and blades of grass: the sky, stars; and the sea, grains of sand. It needs to be pondered in the heart what it means to be the Mother of God.“
— Martin Luther seminal figure in Protestant Reformation 1483 - 1546
Luther's Works, 21:326, cf. 21:346