“562. When the tree is fallen all goe with their hatchet.”
Jacula Prudentum (1651)
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George Herbert 216
Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest 1593–1633Related quotes
“He had fallen out of the ugly tree, and hit every branch.”
Source: The Affair
“No man, the proverb says, will hesitate
To gather firewood from a fallen tree.”
Canto XXXVII, stanza 106 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)
“A little careful pushing, and they’ll bury the hatchet all right—in each other.”
Source: Brain Wave (1954), Chapter 9 (p. 76)
“A man who cannot climb a tree will boast of never having fallen out of one.”
Source: Rhythmen und Runen (1944), p. 466
“I’m sure we can communicate. I speak fluent hatchet.”
Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Chapter 10 “Teeth Lessons” section 2 (p. 457)
“I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet.”
The earliest source of this quote was a famous anecdote in The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes Laudable to Himself and Exemplary to his Countrymen (1806) by Parson Weems, which is not considered a credible source, and many incidents recounted in the work are now considered to have sprung entirely from Weems’ imagination. This derives from an anecdote of Washington, as a young boy, confessing to his father Augustine Washington that it was he who had cut a cherished cherry tree.
Variant:Father, I cannot tell a lie, I cut the tree.
Misattributed, Spurious attributions
“I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet.”
Portrayed as the words of the young George Washington, confessing to have damaged a cherry tree in Life of Washington (1800)