Quotes about goose (66 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Rock and roll is a music, and why should a music contribute to … juvenile delinquency? If people are going to be juvenile delinquents, they're going to be delinquents if they hear … Mother Goose rhymes.”

Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor

Pop Chronicles, Show 7 - The All American Boy: Enter Elvis and the rock-a-billies. Part 1 http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc19754/m1/, interview recorded 1956 http://web.archive.org/web/20110615153027/http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/john-gilliland/o-s.

People , Music

“Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life , World , Hell

“What's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Grundrisse (1857-1858)
Source: Introduction, p. 37.

“Any time you know you’re within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don’t die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Cleveland, Ohio (April 3, 1964)
Context: I don’t mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I’m nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you’ve made me go insane, and I’m not responsible for what I do. And that’s the way every Negro should get. Any time you know you’re within the law, within your legal rights, within your moral rights, in accord with justice, then die for what you believe in. But don’t die alone. Let your dying be reciprocal. This is what is meant by equality. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Justice , Law , Time

“I walk around the room eating goose liver and puffy bread until there's a knock on the door. Effie's calling me to dinner.

Good. I'm starving.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“Is education possibly a process of trading awareness for things of lesser worth? The goose who trades his is soon a pile of feathers.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“March: The Geese Return”, p. 18.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "January Thaw", "February: Good Oak" & "March: The Geese Return"
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

Education

“Yes, we'll yell, 'Help, help us, goose girl, and bring the terrifying legion of warrior geese'.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Girl , Help

“For a woman who can handle herself so well in a fight, I can’t believe you got taken out by a defenseless doorjamb. (Ravyn)
Given the size of my goose egg, I would argue the defenseless part. That doorjamb has a mean left hook.(Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Fight , Parting

“I, Geric-Sinath of Gerhard, declare that you're beautiful and you're perfect and I'll slay any man who tries to take you from my side. Goose girl, may I kiss you?”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Beauty , Girl , Kiss , Perfection

“…'Goose girl, may I kiss you?' She answered by… kissing him first.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Girl , Kiss

“If you feel the urge, don't be afraid to go on a wild goose chase. What do you think wild geese are for anyway?”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Feeling , Thinking

“You beat the liver out of a goose to get a pâté; you pound the muscles of a man's cardia to get a philosopher.”

Djuna Barnes book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood

“To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

Health

“Why may not a goose say thus: "All the parts of the universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?"”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Star , Nature , Light , Universe

“Walter Kasper, a German cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, said: "A democratic state has the duty to respect the will of the people; and it seems clear that, if the majority of the people wants such homosexual unions, the state has a duty to recognize such rights." So if the people of Germany voted tomorrow to renew the Holocaust, would the cardinal say the German state is duty-bound to re-open the death camps? That kind of spurious legalism helped goose-step Germany into Hell in the last century. Do German cardinals now propose to do the same to the Roman Catholic Church in this one?
I must assume that Cardinal Kasper would join me in saying, "Forbid it, Almighty God!"”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

He will probably bridle, however, at the temerity of comparing homosexuality to the Holocaust.
[2015-06-04, Cardinals Surrender to Iniquitous Spirit of the Time, WorldNetDaily, http://www.wnd.com/2015/06/cardinals-surrender-to-iniquitous-spirit-of-the-time/, 2014-06-08]
2009

Death , God , People , Hell

“There was a little white statue there. Now I'm not artistic. I saw it was of a fellow with no clothes on - I always wonder why it's Art to take your clothes off: they never put in the goose pimples - and this fellow was wrapped in chains. He didn't look as if he was enjoying himself, and small wonder.”

Diana Wynne Jones book The Homeward Bounders

Source: The Homeward Bounders (1981), p. 13.

Art , Clothes

“The internet is not necessarily a golden goose yet, but we must fight to keep it safe, keep it level, keep it democratic, keep it open, keep it diverse so that when it becomes the golden goose, we independent artists can share and maybe at least get a wing or a thigh, even if we don’t get the breast meat.”

Lloyd Kaufman (1945) American film director

CraveOnline http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/507781-exclusive-cannes-interview-lloyd-kaufman-on-nuke-em-high May 28, 2013
2013

Fight

“I never shot a deer. I've never shot anything in my life. I never hunted. I'm just not that type of guy. But there's no doubt in my mind that I would have killed to win. That really scares me sometimes. Right now I think about it, and I get little goose bumps. I would have done anything - absolutely anything - to win. In a war, maybe that's what happens. It was our society against their society.”

Phil Esposito (1942) Canadian ice hockey player

Reported in Neil Milbert, "Classic Soviet series: When Canada's stars shone brightest", The Chicago Tribune (January 18, 1991), p. C-15.

Life , War , Guy , Thinking

“A fox should not be of the jury at a goose's trial.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Proverbs (1732), p. 116.

“And they noticed what few others had done – that all over the world, charismatic animals that were once numerous were beginning to disappear. The Arabian oryx, which once had been widespread all over the peninsula had now been reduced to a few hundred. In Spain, there were less than a hundred imperial eagles. The Californian condor was down to about sixty. In Hawaii, a goose that had lived in flocks on the lava fields around the great volcanoes were reduced to fifty. The strange little rhinoceros that lived in the dwindling forests of Java – to about forty. Wherever you looked there were examples of animals whose populations were falling rapidly. This planet was in danger of losing a significant number of its inhabitants – both animals and plants.”

David Attenborough (1926) British broadcaster and naturalist

How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth? (BBC Horizon, 2009)

World , Animals

“I started violently, as if some unseen hand had goosed me.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Jeeves in the Offing

Jeeves in the Offing (1960)

“Autumn, cloud blades on the horizon.
The west wind blows from ten thousand miles.
Dawn, in the clear morning air,
Farmers busy after long rain.
The desert trees shed their few green leaves.
The mountain pears are tiny but ripe.
A Tartar flute plays by the city gate.
A single wild goose climbs into the void.”

Du Fu (712–770) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Clear After Rain" (雨晴), as translated by Kenneth Rexroth in One Hundred Poems from the Chinese (1971), p. 16

Mountain , Business , Autumn , Tree

“In short, the root-head turns the crab into a Darwinian cipher, a feeding machine working entirely in the parasite's service. The castrated crab can make no contribution to its own evolutionary history; its "Darwinian fitness" has become flat zero. …But ever so carefully, for the parasite must maintain the crab in constant and perfect servitude - not draining the host enough to kill this golden goose, but not letting the crab do anything for its own Darwinian benefit.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

Triumph of the Root-Heads, p. 369
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

History , Perfection

“She again rubbed a match on the wall, and the light shone round her; in the brightness stood her old grandmother, clear and shining, yet mild and loving in her appearance. "Grandmother," cried the little one, "O take me with you; I know you will go away when the match burns out; you will vanish like the warm stove, the roast goose, and the large, glorious Christmas-tree." And she made haste to light the whole bundle of matches, for she wished to keep her grandmother there. And the matches glowed with a light that was brighter than the noon-day, and her grandmother had never appeared so large or so beautiful. She took the little girl in her arms, and they both flew upwards in brightness and joy far above the earth, where there was neither cold nor hunger nor pain, for they were with God.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Match Girl

The Little Match Girl
Fairy Tales (1835)

Love , Hunger , God , Pain

“As a child I was helpless and filled with trust, but now I am fortunately sick with fear and filled with distrust. Now I am sharp-sighted, but then I was stupid and blind goose, and I had to experience it over and over again.”

Timo K. Mukka (1944–1973) Finnish writer

p. 166

Stupidity , Fear

“Why do you lead me a wild-goose chase?”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part I, Book III, Ch. 6.

“The path which the great Dominions were treading…was a path leading not to independence but to interdependence. One of the greatest mistakes made by our enemies—and they made it in the last war, too—was to under-estimate the strength of those invisible bonds uniting the free peoples of the British Commonwealth of Nations. The German was never happy unless he was in a mass. He was happiest of all when they were all performing the goose-step at the same time, whereas the British people, conscious of their unity though the seas might separate them, could march to their goal without rigidly keeping step.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Devonshire Club, London (14 May 1943), quoted in The Times (15 May 1943), p. 2.
War Cabinet

War , People , Time , Sea

“No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.”

John L. Lewis (1880–1969) American labor leader

Labor and the Nation speech (September 3, 1937)

Life , Nature , Parting

“Heckler: At least Mrs Thatcher has got guts.
Neil Kinnock: It's a pity that other people had to leave theirs on the ground at Goose Green to prove it.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Daily Telegraph 7 June, 1983.
On TVS television's programme "The South decides" during the 1983 general election campaign. Kinnock was forced to write letters to the families of the war dead to apologise.

People

“5222. To run the Wild-Goose Chace.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“We are the fed up grass roots movement of goose flesh, hell bent on living this one life by the way we feel our spines, saying what we mean, refusing to allow the few to preach to the many when it is the many who need to be hearing eachother.”

Buddy Wakefield (1974) American poet

Introduction (Some They Can't Contain)
On Spoken Word

Life , Way , Feeling , Hell

“Emilio and I like projects to breathe and grow. We started with a concept -- write songs, make demos, then let the guest stars listen to them and then afffect the writing process. For Jose Feliciano, I had written a chorus and a bit of a melody. He started playing the chorus and ad-libbing. I went, "This is the [stuff]! Forget my melody!" Carlos Santana worked just the other way. He wanted me to record a plished take singing first, so his playing could recreate my emotion. I got goose bumps [writing "90 Millas"]. Like in "Esperando," which is addressed to Cubans on the island. Those of us in America, we're like the bogeyman, but I wanted Cubans at home to know: Whatever happened doesn't matter. The future is for us to heal. Adn also: because we're here, we latched onto any part of our culture. Yes and no [this is a political record]. Politics is life, so yes. but it's not specific. Saying that 90 miles haven't divided us sends a message about freedom for Cuba -- and for everyone.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.huffingtonpost.com (September 7, 2007)
2007, 2008

Life , Way , Home , Star

“Does not even the most sexually democratic of us, among which number I unquestionably count myself, not choke back the tiniest sob at the sight of poor old Denis stumbling along behind, struggling pitifully to hold his trilby on, as the PM strides across Goose Green with the wind managing only to make her hair look more Medusan, and the very mines praying she will not crush them under-heel?”

Alan Coren (1938–2007) humorist and writer from the United Kingdom

"Subordinate Claus", Bumf (1984).

“4070. Sauce for a Goose, is Sauce for a Gander.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“Henpecked though he was by the Murdoch Media's golden goose — Megyn Kelly — Trump demonstrated that he is what his constituency craves: A man in the old mold.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Trump Could Send the System's Sycophants Scattering," http://www.wnd.com/2015/08/trump-could-send-the-systems-sycophants-scattering/ WorldNetDaily.com, August 14, 2015.
2010s, 2015

“I don’t care if you call it AO for Adults Only, or Chopped Liver or Father Goose. Your movie will still have the stigma of being in a category that’s going to be inhabited by the very worst of pictures.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

On changing the un-trademarked "X" rating to an "A" for Adults; it was eventually changed to the trademarked "NC-17". The New York Times (5 March 1987)

“"Use yer heads! A barnyard goose tastes better 'an a wild one cause it don't use its muscles. The same oughta hold true for a giant's brains!"—Bruenor Battlehammer, explaining his new recipe in response to Drizzt's and Wulfgar's expressions of horror and disgust.”

R. A. Salvatore book The Crystal Shard

The Crystal Shard

“When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

Song II, st. 1.
Water Babies http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext97/wtrbs10h.htm (1863)

World , Dogs , Tree , Horse

“A traveller at Sparta, standing long upon one leg, said to a Lacedæmonian, "I do not believe you can do as much." "True," said he, "but every goose can."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Remarkable Speeches
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Travel

“But when you get to the other side of the Sierra Nevada, you don't see the green of the Sacramento Valley, you see the desolation of the Pit River Valley. You see rocks and stunted growth, and mountain deserts. It's just, it's just a pain, it's a shock, it's a hit in the head, it hurts your heart to see what still lies ahead. And you haven't gone a short cut. What you've done is you've gone north, and you're at what's called Goose Lake. So instead of going west, you've gone north-northwest. Now you've got to go south.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

About the route to California
The West (1996)

Pain , Mountain , Heart , Hurt

“Laissez Faire was very good sauce for the goose, labor, but was very poor sauce for the gander, capital.”

Benjamin Ricketson Tucker (1854–1939) American journalist and anarchist

¶ 19
State Socialism and Anarchism: How Far They Agree, and Wherin They Differ (1888)

“Even at the risk of losing all the golden eggs of the future, I had to find out what made the goose lay those eggs”

Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) American violinist and conductor

When he realized that his shortcoming was knowing the basics to teach in a class.
Violinist Yehudi Menuhin

Future

“You should stay away from your potential. I mean, that is something you should leave absolutely alone! You’ll mess it up! It’s potential, leave it! And anyway, it’s like your bank balance, you know: you always have much less than you think. […] Leave it as the locked door within yourself and then at least, in your mind, the interior will always be palatial. Wonderful gleaming marble floors, brocaded drapes. Mullioned windows, covered in mullions, whatever they are. Flamingos serving drinks. Pianos shooting out canapés into the mouths of elegant men and women who are exchanging witticisms… "Oh yes, this reminds me of the time I was in BudaPESHT with Binky… We were trying to steal a goose from the casino, muahahaha…" But it wont be like that[…] You don't want to find out that the most you could possibly achieve, if you gave it your all, if you harvested every screed of energy within you, and devoted yourself to improving yourself, that all you would get to, would be maybe eating less cheesy snacks.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Monster (2004)

Women , Men , Drink , Thinking

“There was something about the cocksure confidence of that statement that gave Auger goose pimples. It was like an invitation to fate.”

Alastair Reynolds book Century Rain

Source: Century Rain (2004), Chapter 40 (p. 599)

Fate , Confidence

“A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.”

Lin Yutang book The Importance of Living

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 4

“Telecom was the golden goose which laid the golden egg. The Supreme Court ensured that the golden goose will never lay golden egg again for a little while.”

Kapil Sibal (1948) Indian lawyer and politician

On the Supreme Court's decision to cancel 2G spectrum licences, as quoted in Telecom sector not to lay 'golden egg' for a while, thanks to Supreme Court: Kapil Sibal http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-04-03/news/38248797_1_telecom-sector-golden-egg-apex-court, The Economic Times (3 April 2013)

“I used to be a folk singer, but I was… dreadful. I had a voice like a goose farting in the fog.”

Billy Connolly (1942) British comedian

An Audience With Billy - 1985

“Trains, planes, cars, rockets, telescopes, tires, telephones, radios, television, electricity, atomic energy, computers, and fax machines. All miracles made possible by the minds and spirits of men with names like Ampere, Bell, Caselli, Edison, Ohm, Faraday, Einstein, Cohen, Teller, Shockley, Hertz, Marconi, Morse, Popov, Ford, Volta, Michelin, Dunlop, Watt, Diesel, Galileo, and other "dead white males." … The great majority of advancements past and present have been brought about by the genius and inventiveness of that most "despicable" of colors and genders, the dreaded white male, or, to be exact, by specific, individual white males. This is not to discredit the many contributions coming from nonwhites, but fact is fact. Our most important and consequential inventions have come almost exclusively from white males. … If you eliminate, suppress, or debase the while male, you kill the goose that laid the golden egg. If you ace him out with "affirmative" action, exile him from the family, teach him that he's a blight on mankind, then bon voyage to our society. We will devolve into a Third World cesspool. Where has there ever before in history been a group of human beings who have brought about the likes of the Magna Carta, the U. S. Constitution, and the countless life-saving and life-improving inventions that we now enjoy? … Does this mean we should sit back and let ourselves be governed by someone just because he's a white male? Of course, it doesn't. It means simply that we shouldn't suppress anyone, including white males. Let our God-given gifts run free in a free and just society, free from the oppression and tyranny of social engineers. If anyone has gifts beyond our own—be he a white male or other—be grateful. Maybe we have gifts that in some small way can contribute something of value as well. One way or another, we're all in the same boat. Few of us have truly outstanding gifts. And most of us have to humbly accept that there are others around who are more gifted than we are. In a Democratic society, it's not for Big Brother to decide who shall thrive and who shall struggle in the hive.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Source: The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture (2003), pp. 136–138; "White Male Inventions" http://www.dadi.org/ms_dwm.htm (December 15, 1999)

Life , Men , God , World

“Theism is nothing more than a bunch of fables made up by superstitious primitives. Having a doctorate in theology is consequently not significantly different than having a PhD in Mother Goose.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Patheos, Philosophistry http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2017/04/12/philosophistry/ (April 12, 2017)

“In April 1946, when I came to Hughes Aircraft to institute high-technology research and development, it was far from the place it was to become. Howard Hughes, I was informed, rarely came around. When he did show up, it was to take up one or another trivial issue. He would toss off detailed directions, for instance, on what to do next about a few old airplanes decaying out in the yard or what kind of seat covers to buy for the company-owned Chevrolets, or he would say he wanted some pictures of clouds taken from an airplane. An accountant from Hughes Tool Co. ((started by Howard's father)) had the title of general manager but was there only to sign checks. A few of Howard's flying buddies were on the payroll, using assorted fanciful titles like some in Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado, but apparently did next to nothing. A lawyer was on hand to process contracts, but there were practically none. In addition to the Spruce Goose flying freighter, a mammoth eight-engine plywood seaplane that barely managed to fly even once, there was an experimental Navy reconnaissance plane under development (which, with Hughes at the controls, later crashed, almost killing him). The contracts for both planes had been canceled. Perhaps, I said to myself, this is one of those unforeseeable lucky opportunities. Why not use Hughes Aircraft as a base to create a new and needed defense electronics supplier?”

Simon Ramo (1913–2016) Father of the ICBM

MEMOIRS OF AN ICBM PIONEER Simon Ramo broke with Howard Hughes, then built TRW, the company that developed the U.S. missile. He says what went right then would go wrong today. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1988/04/25/70453/index.htm in FORTUNE Magazine, April 25, 1988

Flying

“The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to procure the largest quantity of feathers with the least possible amount of hissing.”

Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619–1683) French politician

Quoted in: William Sharp McKechnie (1896). The State & the Individual: An Introduction to Political Science, with Special Reference to Socialistic and Individualistic Theories https://archive.org/details/stateindividuali00mckeuoft. p. 77

Art

“Some of our German passengers on the ship would be crying. The Brits were the same way. They were crying, because they realized a new war was about to break out across Europe, with Hitler at the head of the goose-stepping parade.”

Frank Buckles (1901–2011) United States Army soldier and centenarian

Problems prior to WWII.
Knoxville News.

War , Way , Cry

“Today's American bemoans the extermination of the passenger pigeon and the threatened extinction of the whooping crane and the ivory billed woodpecker; he contributes to conservation organizations that seek to preserve the Hawaiian goose, the sea otter of the Aleutian Islands, the lizard of the Galapágos Islands… But who ever shed a tear over the loss of the native American cultures?”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

1st edition
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Tear , Loss , Sea

“I don't believe in God because I don't believe in Mother Goose.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

Speech in Toronto (1930); as quoted in "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996) by James A. Haught
As quoted in Jesus: Myth Or Reality? (2006) by Ian Curtis
Religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don't believe in either.
As quoted in The New York Times (19 April 1936)
Variant: I believe that religion is the belief in future life and in God. I don’t believe in either. I don’t believe in God as I don’t believe in Mother Goose.

God

“Dear Hawkesworth, Mother Goose came to a rehearsal before Christmas day, having arrived on Saturday for the knife... Many thanks for the brace of pheasants and hares—by the same train—indeed, I think it fortunate, for with all the strife and strike of pokers and stokers for the railroads - their commons every day growing worse - in shareholders and directors squabbling about the winding up the last Bill, to come to some end for those lines known or supposed to be in difficulty... I am sorry to say my health is much on the wain. I cannot bear the same fatigue, or have the same bearing against it, I formerly had - but time and tide stop not - but I must stop writing for today..”

J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) British Romantic landscape painter, water-colourist, and printmaker

Quote from Turner's letter to Mr. Hawkesworth, 24 December, 1849; as quoted in The life of J.M.W. Turner, Volume II, George Walter Thornbury; Hurst and Blackett Publishers, London, 1862, pp. 90-91
1821 - 1851

Health , Thinking , Time , Christmas

“Useless as a third leg on a goose.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 16 (p. 345)

“Goose, goose, goose,
You bend your neck towards the sky and sing.
Your white feathers float on the emerald water,
Your red feet push the clear waves.”

Luo Binwang

"Ode to the Goose" http://www.chinese-poems.com/lbw1.html (《咏鹅》)
Variant translation:
Geese, geese, geese,
Curl necks and sing.
White feathers floating on the green,
They swim with red webbed feet.
"On Geese", as translated by YeShell in How To Write Classical Chinese Poems (Lulu Press, 2015)

Water , Singing

“He was in LOGIC a great critic,
Profoundly skill'd in analytic;
He could distinguish, and divide
A hair 'twixt south, and south-west side:
On either which he would dispute,
Confute, change hands, and still confute,
He'd undertake to prove, by force
Of argument, a man's no horse;
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl,
A calf an alderman, a goose a justice,
And rooks Committee-men and Trustees.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto I, line 65
Source: Hudibras, Part I (1663–1664)

Men , Justice , Change , Horse

“The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 232.

Game

“Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

1851
Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)
Context: Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

Happy , World , Happiness

“I don't think we're ever going to have a cheap fascism of Brownshirts and goose stepping or anything of that sort.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

TIME interview (1991)
Context: I don't think we're ever going to have a cheap fascism of Brownshirts and goose stepping or anything of that sort. We're too American for that. We would find that ridiculous.
But there are always traces of repression. And you can find it in a Democratic government too. People who are "right-minded," you know, are always with us. But I think so long as we can move along with the economy, we're all right. It's just if there's a smash, a crash — that's when I'm not at all optimistic about what's going to happen.

Thinking

“When you take into public ownership a profitable industry, the profits soon disappear. The goose that laid the golden eggs goes broody. State geese are not great layers.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Finchley Conservatives (31 January 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/102947
Leader of the Opposition
Context: The Socialists tell us that there are massive profits in a particular industry and they should not go to the shareholders—but that the public should reap the benefits. Benefits? What benefits? When you take into public ownership a profitable industry, the profits soon disappear. The goose that laid the golden eggs goes broody. State geese are not great layers. The steel industry was nationalised some years ago in the public interest—yet the only interest now left to the public is in witnessing the depressing spectacle of their money going down the drain at a rate of a million pounds a day.

“Thinking to get at once all the gold the goose could give, he killed it and opened it only to find nothing.”

Aesop (-620–-564 BC) ancient Greek storyteller

The Goose with the Golden Eggs.

Thinking

“The mouse, even, has not been transmuted into the cat, nor the hen into the turkey, nor the duck into the goose, nor the hawk into the eagle, and still less the monkey into the man.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

The facts and fancies of Mr. Darwin (1862)
Context: Though the large runt pigeon, with its massive beak and its huge feet, differs from its blue and barred progenitor the rock, it is a pigeon still. Though the slender Italian greyhound has a strange contrast with the short-legged bull-dog, they are both dogs in their teeth and in their skull. The mouse, even, has not been transmuted into the cat, nor the hen into the turkey, nor the duck into the goose, nor the hawk into the eagle, and still less the monkey into the man.

Cats

“To allow commerce to proceed until the source of civilization is weakened and overturned is like killing the goose to get the golden egg. Is the immediate creation of material wealth to be our only object?”

William Stanley Jevons book The Coal Question

The Coal Question (1865)
Context: Commerce is but a means to an end, the diffusion of civilization and wealth. To allow commerce to proceed until the source of civilization is weakened and overturned is like killing the goose to get the golden egg. Is the immediate creation of material wealth to be our only object?

Wealth

“A man has only one death. That death may be as weighty as Mount Tai, or it may be as light as a goose feather. It all depends upon the way he uses it.”

Sima Qian (-145–-86 BC) Chinese historian and writer

Dependency , Light , Way , Death