Quotes about weed (212 quotes, page 2) | Quotes of famous people

“Throughout history new and correct ideas have often failed at the outset to win recognition from the majority of people and have to develop by twists and turns in struggle. Often correct and good things have first been regarded not as fragrant flowers but poisonous weeds.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

VII: On "Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Content" and "Long Term Coexistence and Mutual Supervision"
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People

People , History , Flowers , Idea

“Are you overwhelmed pulling weeds, when you really just need to replant the garden?”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

16 February 2012 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/170372170025934848
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" Binsey Poplars http://www.bartleby.com/122/19.html", lines 1-8
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

Sun

“I wiped away the weeds and foam,
And fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Each and All, st. 3
1840s, Poems (1847)
Variant: I wiped away the weeds and foam,
And fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

Beauty , Home , Sun , Sea

“The first time I ever met him, he was the same little obnoxious weed that he is now.”

Harbhajan Singh (1980) Indian cricketer

Matthew Hayden, quoted on CNN, "Hayden rebuked for Harbhajan insult" http://www.cnn.com/2008/SPORT/02/27/cricket.hayden/, February 27, 2008.
About

Time

“It is not the business of the botanist to eradicate the weeds. Enough for him if he can tell us just how fast they grow.”

C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993) British naval historian

The Economist (November 1955).

Business

“What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique ("a great task that occurs once in two thousand years"), which must therefore be difficult to bear. This was important, because the murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did. The troops of the Einsatzgruppen had been drafted from the Armed S. S., a military unit with hardly more crimes in its record than any ordinary unit of the German Army, and their commanders had been chosen by Heydrich from the S. S. élite with academic degrees. Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler — who apparently was rather strongly afflicted by these instinctive reactions himself — was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!”

Hannah Arendt book Eichmann in Jerusalem

Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VI.

Men , People , Pleasure , Nature

“The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 1060

Age , World , Faith , Smile

“Most everybody's got seed to sow
It ain't always easy for a weed to grow, oh no.
So he don't hoe the row for no one.
Oh for sure he's always missing.
And something is never quite right.
Ah, but who would want to listen to you
Kissing his existence good night.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Walking Man"
Song lyrics, Walking Man (1974)

Kiss , Night

“Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Second Speech on Conciliation with America (1775)

“In another moment I had scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood upon its crest, and the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space it was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds of material and strange shelter places. And scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.”

H. G. Wells book The War of the Worlds

Book II, Ch. 8 (Ch. 25 in editions without Book divisions): Dead London
The War of the Worlds (1898)

Wisdom , God , War , Disease

“The richest soil that was ever prepared would not grow a single blade of grass or the tiniest Weed if that soil were absolutely dry. …There must be water in the soil to dissolve out and transfer its elements in order that the rootlets of the plant shall be able to make the slightest use of these elements. …But …a plant may grow and thrive for a time quite without the presence of soil if its roots are placed in water. … some of the richest soils in the world are those that are absolutely barren and fully merit the designation of desert lands because water is lacking”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 5 Gardening

World , Grass , Water , Time

“What about the rumours David Cameron smoked drugs as a schoolboy? What worries me most is that he dressed up as a schoolboy to do it, the pervert. Though perhaps, let’s not condemn him regardless. Who among us didn’t smoke just a little bit of weed at school, just to take the edge off those irksome crack come-downs? Actually, as it turns out, it’s about as good an anti-drugs campaign as you’re going to get, don’t take drugs you might end up leader of the Tories with a face like a little painted egg.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Brit Awards (2007)

School , Painting

“Three-thirty in the morning…To Ray Garraty it seemed the longest minute of the longest night of his entire life. It was low tide, dead ebb, the time when the sea washes back, leaving slick mudflats covered with straggled weed, rusty beer cans, rotted prophylactics, broken bottles, smashed buoys, and green-mossed skeletons in tattered bathing trunks. It was dead ebb.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Life , Beer , Time , Sea

“And all that we built, and all that we breathed
And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds
Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably
And we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004)

Silence

“There should be always contemporaneous recorded history. It is my experience that little value attaches to any other evidence, and that confusion results from admitting hearsay testimony. My whole effort has been to weed out worthless authorities and to stamp out prejudices.”

Frances Fuller Victor (1826–1902) American writer

In a letter to Frederic George Young of the University of Oregon, as quoted in Women of the Gold Rush https://archive.org/stream/womenofgoldrusht00vict#page/n17/mode/2up

History , Effort

“It is not hard to change when your biggest problem is whether the weeds prosper in a vegetable patch.”

David Gemmell book The King Beyond the Gate

Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 7

Problem , Change

“(When asked what shaped his musical preferences) That comes from many directions. My parents, relatives, and friends shaped a good part of that, and whatever I heard on the radio and mtv growing up (back when MTV was actually a music channel instead of a teenage reality show channel) and movies I loved, just wherever it came from that exposed me to it I would weed out quickly what I did and didn't care for. My music tastes have always been diverse, though I tried to kid myself at certain times that I only like this or that, no matter what everything I ever liked has still stuck with me so I learned to embrace that and not close myself off to things.”

Frank Klepacki (1974) American musician, video game music composer and sound director

Gameplay magazine

Love , Music , Reality , Parent

“For roses also blossom on the thorn,
And the fair lily springs from loathsome weed.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Che de le spine ancor nascon le rose,
E d'una fetida erba nasce il giglio.
Canto XXVII, stanza 121 (tr. W. S. Rose)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Spring

“There is in gardens a plant which one ought to leave dry, although most people water it. It is the weed called envy.”

Cosimo de' Medici (1389–1464) First ruler of the Medici political dynasty

Attributed to Cosimo de' Medici in: Jean Lucas-Dubreton (1961). Daily Life in Florence in the Time of the Medici. p. 58

People , Water , Envy

“But that was a realworld, and he didn't have to put it down on paper. He ripped the page out of the book, tore it into shreds, and threw them behind the tree, where they settled into the weeds.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Chapters 1-10, p. 15

Books , Tree

“Then silence is sawn in half by a dragonfly
as eels sign their names along the bottom-sand
when the sunrise brightens the river's memory and waves of huge ferns are nodding to the sea's sound.
Although the smoke forgets the earth from which is ascends
and the nettles guard the holes where the laurels were killed an iguana hears the axes, clouding each lens
over its lost name, when the hunched island was called
'Iounalao' 'Where it iguana is from' But, taking its own time, the iguana will scale
the rigging of vines in a year, its dewlap fanned,
its elbows akimbo, its deliberate tail moving with the island. The slit pods of its eyes
ripened in a pause that lasted for centuries,
that rose with the Aruacs' smoke till a new race unknown to the lizard stood measuring the trees.
These were their pillars that fell, leaving a blue space
for a single God where the old gods stood before, The first god was a gommier. The generator
began with a whine, and a shark, with sidewise jaw,
sent the chips flying like mackrel over water into trembling weeds”

Derek Walcott book Omeros

"A Far Cry from Africa" (1962), Omeros

God , Tree , Silence , Water

“No kid really wants a cool parent. "Cool" parents, when I was a kid, meant parents who let you smoke weed in the house – or allowed boyfriends to sleep over with their daughters. That would make Sarah Palin “cool.” But, as I remember, we thought those parents were kind of creepy. They were useful, sure, but what was wrong with them that they found us so entertaining? Didn’t they have their own friends?”

Anthony Bourdain (1956–2018) Chef and food writer

Medium Raw (2010)

Parent , Sleep , Housing , Daughters

“The weed crushed and pressed by the heavy rock may slowly and gently grow up anew helped by the fresh air, sunshine, and sympathetic rain. On the other hand, the rock is often broken through exposure to nature and weathering. Life is a strong power to grow in tenderness; this fact may be considered as having a close relation with human life. At the same time tenderness has sometimes stronger power against stiffness or hardening due to extreme strain.”

Kyuzo Mifune book The Canon of Judo

The Canon of Judo (1956, 1960)

Life , Nature , Strong , Time

“The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower growing amidst encroaching weeds. Thousands pass it, while others trample it under foot, and thus the chances are that it will perish before it is seen by the one discriminating spirit who will prize it above all else. The fact that no one has as yet arisen to make the most of it does not prove that nothing is there.”

Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) Czech composer

"Music in America", Harper's Monthly Magazine, February 1895.

Love , People , Music , Flowers

“And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade”

Jean Toomer (1894–1967) American poet and novelist

from "Reapers"
Poems from Cane (1923)

“Gossip grows like weeds
In a summer meadow.
My girl and I
Sleep arm in arm.”

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro (662–710) Japanese poet

XIX, p. 21
Kenneth Rexroth's translations, One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (1955)

Girl , Sleep , Summer

“Now hear it, O inhabitants of the earth, Jew and Gentile, Saint and sinner! When our father Adam came into the garden of Eden, he came into it with a celestial body, and brought Eve, one of his wives, with him. He helped to make and organize this world. He is MICHAEL, the Archangel, the ANCIENT OF DAYS! about whom holy men have written and spoken-He is our FATHER and our GOD, and the only God with whom WE have to do. Every man upon the earth, professing Christians or non-professing, must hear it, and will know it sooner or later. They came here, organized the raw material, and arranged in their order the herbs of the field, the trees, the apple, the peach, the plum, the pear, and every other fruit that is desirable and good for man; the seed was brought from another sphere, and planted in this earth. The thistle, the thorn, the brier, and the obnoxious weed did not appear until after the earth was cursed. When Adam and Eve had eaten of the forbidden fruit, their bodies became mortal from its effects, and therefore their offspring were mortal…It is true that the earth was organized by three distinct characters, namely, Eloheim, Yahovah, and Michael, these three forming a quorum, as in all heavenly bodies, and in organizing element, perfectly represented in the Deity, as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 1:50-51 (April 9, 1852)
This concept is commonly referred to as the "Adam–God theory."
1850s

Men , God , World , Tree

“Unless you remove the weeds, a good crop will be ruined.”

Sadao Araki (1877–1966) Japanese general

Quoted in "The Quarterly review" - Page 20 - by William Gifford, John Taylor Coleridge - 1935

“Weeds don't know they're weeds.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

“Call us not weeds, we are flowers of the Sea,
For lovely and bright and gay tinted are we,
And quite independent of sun's fire or showers-
Then call us not weeds! We are ocean's bright flowers,
Not nursed like the plants of a summer parterre,
Where gales are but sighs of an evening air,
Our exquisite, fragile and delicate forms
Are nursed by the Ocean and rocked by the Storms.”

Petar Beron

Historia naturalis bulgarica 4: 10 - 15.

Love , Flowers , Sun , Summer

“This caravan loaded with synthetic merchandise has, however, continued to move forward. Eight years later (1982), it was reported that “History and Language textbooks for schools all over India will soon be revised radically. In collaboration with various state governments the Ministry of Education has begun a phased programme to weed out undesirable textbooks and remove matter which is prejudicial to national integration and unity and which does not promote social cohesion. The Ministry of Education’s decision to re-evaluate textbooks was taken in the light of the recommendations of the National Integration Council of which the Prime Minister [Indira Gandhi] is Chairman. The Ministry’s view was that history had often been used to serve narrow, sectarian and chauvinistic ends.””

Sita Ram Goel book The Calcutta Quran Petition

The Calcutta Quran Petition (1986)

Education , School , History , Decision

“But me they'll lash me in hammock, drop me deep.
Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I'll dream fast asleep.
I feel it stealing now. Sentry, are you there?
Just ease this darbies at the wrist, and roll me over fair,
I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.”

Herman Melville book Billy Budd, Sailor

Source: Billy Budd, the Sailor (1891), Ch. 30, Billy in the Darbies

Dreams , Feeling

“condemning religions as a whole would be like wanting to destroy a garden because weeds have disfigured it.”

Varadaraja V. Raman (1932) American physicist

page 54
Truth and Tension in Science and Religion

Religion

“Kick is seeing things from a special angle. Kick is momentary freedom from the claims of the aging, cautious, nagging, frightened flesh. Maybe I will find in yage what I was looking for in junk and weed and coke.”

William S. Burroughs book Junkie

Junkie (1953)

Age , Freedom

“Dweller in yon dungeon dark,
Hangman of creation, mark!
Who in widow weeds appears,
Laden with unhonoured years,
Noosing with care a bursting purse,
Baited with many a deadly curse?”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Ode on Mrs. Oswald.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Appearance

“There was excitement for us all in the fact that I had a job in the mechanical field, so that my education would count…. Well, I am bound to admit the first sight of my opportunity was disappointing… Not far from a city dump on a weed-grown, marshy plain was an old weather-worn building, like an overgrown barn. In its indefinite yard there was a small mound of coal and a great mound of reddish-gray cinders and ashes; also a disorderly accumulation of discarded machinery… Once the factory had been painted brown. Only one word describes it: "dirty." Smoke from the dump carried an acric odor. Eventually across the wall nearest the railroad track there was lettered in black this legend: HYATT ROLLER BEARING COMPANY”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Adventures of a White-Collar Man. 1941, p. 5 ; About his first job at the , where a year later Sloan would take control.

Education , Disappointment , Painting , Weather

“Lord, the day is at hand. We are in the last days. You are a Jehovah God. We know that the times are in your hands. And we give them to you…The day is at hand, Lord, when your return will come nigh. Nothing is more important than bringing sheep into the fold. Than bringing new life into the kingdom…You have weeded that garden. The harvest is at hand.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Praying for You Can Run But You Can't Hide ministry in 2006
Bachmann Predicted The World Would End In 2006: ‘We Are In The Last Days’
Marie
Diamond
2011-07-18
Think Progress
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/07/18/264811/bachmann-predicted-world-end-2006/
2011-07-18
2010s

Life , God , Time

“Rhymer, brawler, and musician,
Famed for his lunar expedition,
And the unnumbered duels he fought, —
And lover also, — by interposition! —
Here lies Hercule Savinien
De Cyrano de Bergerac,
Who was everything, yet was naught.
I cry you pardon, but I may not stay;
See, the moon-ray that comes to call me hence!
I would not bid you mourn less faithfully
That good, brave Christian: I would only ask
That when my body shall be cold in clay
You wear those sable mourning weeds for two,
And mourn awhile for me, in mourning him.”

Edmond Rostand (1868–1918) French writer

Cyrano, Act 5, Sc. 6
Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)

Lovers , Cry

“5466. Weeds want no sowing.”

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

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

“In a field of ripening corn I came to a place which had been trampled down by some ruthless foot; and as I glanced amongst the countless stalks, every one of them alike, standing there so erect and bearing the full weight of the ear, I saw a multitude of different flowers, red and blue and violet. How pretty they looked as they grew there so naturally with their little foliage! But, thought I, they are quite useless; they bear no fruit; they are mere weeds, suffered to remain only because there is no getting rid of them. And yet, but for these flowers, there would be nothing to charm the eye in that wilderness of stalks. They are emblematic of poetry and art, which, in civic life—so severe, but still useful and not without its fruit—play the same part as flowers in the corn.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

“Similes, Parables and Fables” Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2, § 380A
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)

Life , Art , Flowers , Nature

“5465. Weeds are apt to grow faster than good Herbs.”

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

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

“When I was at school, on certain afternoons we all had to do what was called Labour — weeding, sweeping, sawing logs for the boiler-room, that sort of thing; but if you had a chit from Matron you were let off to spend the afternoon messing about in the Art Room. Labour or Art. And you've got a chit for life? Where did you get it? What is an artist? For every thousand people there's nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky bastard who's the artist.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Carr, Act I
Travesties (1974)

Life , People , School , Art

“As I walk through my beloved Krakowski Park and pass by a group of young people from which I can smell beer, I give them a wide berth. But when I feel the weed, I go boldly through their group and sometimes chat. Yes, the abuse of marijuana causes trouble with memory, concentration, but it is a short-lived condition. I'm not talking about extreme cases, but there are few of them. Less than after alcohol. Oneself should sometimes detach from reality to deal with it somehow.”

Jerzy Vetulani (1936–2017) Polish scientist

(7 April 2017): „Mama powiedziała mi: Obyś był dobry i szczęśliwy”. Co prof. Jerzy Vetulani mówił o swoim życiu, pasjach i nauce? http://wyborcza.pl/magazyn/7,124059,21608877,mama-powiedziala-mi-obys-byl-dobry-i-szczesliwy-co-prof.html. Wyborcza.pl (in Polish).

People , Alcohol , Feeling , Beer

“Beware of flattery! 'tis a flowery weed,
Which oft offends the very idol-vice,
Whose shrine it would perfume.”

Elijah Fenton (1683–1730) British poet

Act IV, Scene V, p. 46
Mariamne: A Tragedy (1723)

“I do not approve of you, Thomas, and I do not approve of your woman, but nor can I approve of a Church that uses pain to bring the love of God to a sinful world. Evil begets evil, it spreads like a weed, but good works are tender shoots that need husbandry.”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

Abbott Planchard, p. 212
The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

Love , God , Pain , World

“Since the Gothic, European sculpture had become overgrown with moss, weeds – all sorts of surface excrescences which completely concealed shape. It has been Brancusi's special mission to get rid of this overgrowth, and make us once more shape-conscious. To do this he has had to concentrate on very simple direct shapes, to keep his sculpture, as it were, one-cylindered, to refine and polish a single shape to a degree almost too precious.... it may now be no longer necessary to close down and restrict sculpture to the single form unit. We can now begin to open out. To relate and combine together several forms of varied sizes, sections, and directions into one organic whole.”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Source: 1925 - 1940, The sculptor speaks' (1937), p. 250

“I am Ra. Consider, if you will, a simple example of intentions which are bad/good. This example is Adolf. This is your vibratory sound complex. The intention is to presumably unify by choosing the distortion complex called elite from a social memory complex and then enslaving, by various effects, those who are seen as the distortion of not-elite. There is then the concept of taking the social memory complex thus weeded and adding it to a distortion thought of by the so-called Orion group as an empire. The problem facing them is that they face a great deal of random energy released by the concept of separation. This causes them to be vulnerable as the distortions amongst their own members are not harmonized.”

Carla Rueckert

Session 7 http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=7#14
Quotations as Ra

Problem , Memory

“Seat way back listening to Anita Baker, Riding by myself smoking weed by the acre.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Upgrade
Official Mix tapes, Da Drought 3 (2007)

Way

“So we listen. We add up associations of people with people. When a push against Scientology starts somewhere, we go over the people involved and weed them out. Push vanishes.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Manual Of Justice (1959).

People

“To win, beloved Caroline from thee,
One thought, in years when we shall sever'd be--
--Sever'd, perchance, by those deep waves, which pour
Their billowy murmurs round our native shore,--
For this, I wander'd round the Bow'rs of Song,
A weary, and rejected suppliant long,
And of the Muses crav'd in humblest tone
From their rich wreaths, one simple bud alone:
They did but fling their wildest weeds at me,
And thus I twin'd them into verse for thee!”

Eliza Acton (1799–1859) Poet, cook

To Caroline (1826)

“The sea returns upon the men,
The fields entrap the children, brick
Is a weed and all the flies are caught,
Wingless and withered, but living alive.
The discord merely magnified.
Deeper within the belly's dark
Of time, time grows upon the rock.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

Men , Children , Time , Sea

“Women-in-jeopardy movies are, in essence, the updated versions of men dying to save the princess from the dragon to earn her love. They are modern-day training films for teaching women to select the best protectors while weeding out the rest.”

Warren Farrell book The Myth of Male Power

Source: The Myth of Male Power (1993), Part II: The Glass Cellars of the disposable sex, p. 225.

Love , Women , Men , Princess

“My dear Sir, [Mr. Trimmer] - I lament that all hope of the pleasure of seeing you, or getting to Heston, must for the present probably vanish. My father told me.... that you and Mrs. Trimmer would leave Heston for Suffolk as tomorrow, Wednesday.... In looking forward to a Continental excursion, and poor Daddy seems as much plagued with weeds as I am with disappointment - that if Miss … would but waive bashfulness, or, in other words, make an offer instead of expecting one, the same might change occupiers; but not to trouble you further, allow me, with most sincere respect to Mrs. Trimmer and family, to consider myself - Yours most truly obliged, 'J. M. W. Turner.”

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

Quote from Turner's letter to Mr. Trimmer; as cited in The Life of J. M. W. Turner R.A., George Walter Thornbury - A new Edition, Revised https://ia601807.us.archive.org/24/items/gri_33125004491185/gri_33125004491185.pdf; London Chatto & Windus, 1897, pp. 225-26
Turner asked assistance about a woman he liked, but not dared to approach; which he met at Trimmer's place at Heston
1795 - 1820

Pleasure , Family , Hope , Disappointment

“An author that's in now might be out in ten years. And vice-versa. Who knows when the final sifting is done, in the year 2050, say, who will be read of my generation? You'd like to think you will be one. But there has to be a constant weeding that goes on. The Victorians read all kinds of writers who we don't have time for now. Who reads Thackeray? An educated person reads Dickens, or reads some Dickens. But Thackeray?”

John Updike (1932–2009) American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic

Salon interview (2000)

Education , Thinking , Time , Reading

“The human heart is a garden, wherein grow weeds of memory and blooms of hope, and the snow falls at last and covers all.”

Frank Crane (1861–1928) American Presbyterian minister

Four Minute Essays Vol. 5 (1919), The Human Heart

Hope , Memory , Heart

“My thoughts hold mortal strife;
I do detest my life,
And with lamenting cries
Peace to my soul to bring
Oft call that prince which here doth monarchise:
— But he, grim-grinning King,
Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise,
Late having deck'd with beauty's rose his tomb,
Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come.”

William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649) British writer

Inexorable http://www.bartleby.com/101/230.html

Life , Peace , Beauty , Soul

“Evolutionary game theory is one of the most active and rapidly growing areas of research in economics. Unlike traditional game theory models, which assume that all players are fully rational and have complete knowledge of details of the game, evolutionary models assume that people choose their strategies through a trial-and-error learning process in which they gradually discover that some strategies work better than others. In games that are repeated many times, low-payoff strategies tend to be weeded out, and an equilibrium may emerge.”

Larry Samuelson (1953) American economist

Larry Samuelson. Evolutionary Games and Equilibrium Selection. 1997. Overview.

People , Error , Game , Knowledge

“Weeds and nettles, briars and thorns, have thriven under your shadow, dissettlement and division, discontentment and dissatisfaction, together with real dangers to the whole.”

Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) English military and political leader

Speech dissolving the First Protectorate Parliament (22 January 1655)

“So lonely am I
My body is a floating weed
Severed at the roots.
Were there water to entice me,
I would follow it, I think.”

Ono no Komachi (825–900) Japanese poet

Source: Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature (1955), p. 79

Thinking , Water

“If plants, and live stock as well, require space and air, sunlight and love, children need them even more. The only real wealth of our country lies in the men and women of the next generation. A farmer would rather produce a thousand thoroughbreds than a million runts. How are we to breed a race of human thoroughbreds unless we follow the same plan? We must make this country into a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds. In a home where there are too many children in proportion to the living space, the air and sunlight, the children are usually overcrowded and underfed. They are a constant burden on their mother's overtaxed strength and the father's earning capacity. Such homes cannot be gardens in any sense of the word.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Radio WFAB Syracuse, , transcripted in "The Meaning of Radio Birth Control", April 1924, p. 111
Birth Control Review, 1918-32

Love , Women , Men , Children

“Hemp and marijuana should be regulated like onions. No difference. If you can grow onion in your backyard, you can grow hemp or weed in your backyard. If you can grow onions in your farm, your family farm, you can grow help or marijuana in your family farm.”

Larry Sharpe (1968) American politician

Speech at the Annual 2018 NYC Cannabis Parade ( May 5, 2018 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T5P2bTXuss)

Family , Help , Marijuana

“Tea heads are not like junkies. A junky hands you the money, takes his junk and cuts. But tea heads don't do things that way. They expect the peddler to light them up and sit around talking for half an hour to sell two dollars' worth of weed. If you come right to the point, they say you are a "bring down."”

William S. Burroughs book Junkie

In fact, a peddler should not come right out and say he is a peddler.
Junkie (1953)

Money , Way , Light , Tea

“Less than the weed that grows beside thy door”

Laurence Hope India's Love Lyrics

Less Than the Dust
Indian Love Lyrics (aka Garden of Kama) (1901)

“But taking note of these things, at the last
The mariner beneath the gateway passed.
And there a lovely cloistered court he found,
A fountain in the mist o'erthrown and dry,
And in the cloister briers twining round
The slender shafts; the wondrous imagery
Outworn by more than many years gone by;
Because the country people, in their fear
Of wizardry, had wrought destruction here,
And piteously these fair things had been maimed;
There stood great Jove, lacking his head of might;
Here was the archer, swift Apollo, lamed;
The shapely limbs of Venus hid from sight
By weeds and shards; Diana's ankles light
Bound with the cable of some coasting ship;
And rusty nails through Helen's maddening lip.”

William Morris (1834–1896) author, designer, and craftsman

The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), The Lady of the Land

Love , People , Fear , Light

“Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
Unfriendly to society's chief joys,
Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
The sex whose presence civilizes ours.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Source: Conversation (1782), Line 251.

Sex , Joy

“the Indians, were like the weeds. That roses you had to water and give fertilizer or they’d die. But weeds, indigenous plants, you gave them nada-nothing; hell, you even poisoned them and put concrete over them, and those weeds would still break the concrete, reaching for the sunlight of God. “That’s the power of our people,” my father would tell me, “we’re the weeds, LAS YERBAS DE TODO EL MUNDO!””

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

God , People , Hell , Water

“The first time I ever met him, he was the same little obnoxious weed that he is now.”

Matthew Hayden (1971) Australian cricketer

On cricketer Harbhajan Singh, quoted on CNN, "Hayden rebuked for Harbhajan insult" http://www.cnn.com/2008/SPORT/02/27/cricket.hayden/, February 27, 2008.

Time

“She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Harp Song of the Dane Women http://www.kipling.org.uk/poems_harp.htm, Stanza 3 (1906).
Puck of Pook's Hill 1906

Strong , Time

“I attribute the quarrelsome nature of the Middle Ages young men entirely to the want of the soothing weed.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

"On Being Idle".
Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Men , Age , Nature

“You should rather be grateful for the weeds you have in your mind, because eventually they will enrich your practice.”

Shunryu Suzuki book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Pt. 1 : Right Practice "Mind Weeds", p. 26
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (1973)

“The American people, through the 35 states that have liberalized laws banning either medical marijuana, marijuana in general, or cannabinoid oils, have made it clear that federal enforcers should stay out of their personal lives. It’s time for restraint of the federal government’s over-aggressive weed warriors.”

Dana Rohrabacher (1947) American politician

"O.C. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher trying again with bill protecting state marijuana laws", The Orange County Register http://www.ocregister.com/articles/rohrabacher-659189-laws-state.html (April 23, 2015)

People , Law , Time , Personality

“Revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Revenge
Essays (1625)

Justice , Law , Revenge , Nature

“Like all real treasures of the mind, perception can be split into infinitely small fractions without losing its quality. The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the redwoods; the farmer may see in his cow-pasture what may not be vouchsafed to the scientist adventuring in the South Seas.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

Source: A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Conservation Esthetic", p. 174.

Sea

“Religion acts as a moral gardener, to weed out, or suppress, evil tendencies, which, like weeds: grow.”

Henry Morton Stanley (1841–1904) Welsh journalist and explorer

Quotes:, Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1909)

Religion , Evil

“What more felicitie can fall to creature
Than to enjoy delight with libertie,
And to be lord of all the workes of Nature,
To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie,
To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature.”

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) English poet

Muiopotmos: or, The Fate of the Butterflie, line 209; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Nature

“Too often, the pastoralist blames the weeds and seeks a chemical rather than a management solution; too seldom do we find an approach combining the sensible utilisation of grasshoppers and grubs as a valuable dried-protein supplement for fish or food pellets, and a combination of soil conditioning, slashing, and de-stocking or re-seeding to restore species balance.”

Bill Mollison (1928–2016) Australian permaculturist

Source: Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (1988), chapter 8.15

Food , Fish

“Religion can never reform mankind because religion is slavery. It is far better to be free, to leave the forts and barricades of fear, to stand erect and face the future with a smile. It is far better to give yourself sometimes to negligence, to drift with wave and tide, with the blind force of the world, to think and dream, to forget the chains and limitations of the breathing life, to forget purpose and object, to lounge in the picture gallery of the brain, to feel once more the clasps and kisses of the past, to bring life's morning back, to see again the forms and faces of the dead, to paint fair pictures for the coming years, to forget all Gods, their promises and threats, to feel within your veins life's joyous stream and hear the martial music, the rhythmic beating of your fearless heart. And then to rouse yourself to do all useful things, to reach with thought and deed the ideal in your brain, to give your fancies wing, that they, like chemist bees, may find art's nectar in the weeds of common things, to look with trained and steady eyes for facts, to find the subtle threads that join the distant with the now, to increase knowledge, to take burdens from the weak, to develop the brain, to defend the right, to make a palace for the soul. This is real religion. This is real worship.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

What Is Religion? (1899) is Ingersoll's last public address, delivered before the American Free Religious association, Boston, June 2, 1899. Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Dresden Memorial Edition Volume IV, pages 477-508, edited by Cliff Walker. http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/ingwhatrel.htm

Life , God , World , Fear

“We might well call this short Mock-play of ours
A Posie made of Weeds instead of Flowers;
Yet such have been presented to your noses,
And there are such, I fear, who thought 'em Roses.”

George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham (1628–1687) English statesman and poet

Prologue
The Rehearsal (1671)

Fear , Flowers

“To win the secret of a weed’s plain heart.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Sonnet XXV
Sonnets (1844)

Secret , Heart

“Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, The Warrior's Apprentice (1986)

Disease

“We're just a weed in the universe”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 5 Episode 4
On the Earth

Universe

“though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose, roses(you feel
certain) will only smile”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

72
95 poems (1958)

Smile , Feeling

“How can we set up a system which encourages individuals to strive and excel, and yet which shows some compassion to the weak, and weeds out madmen and tyrants?”

David Brin book The Postman

Source: The Postman (1985), Section 3, “Cincinnatus”, Chapter 14 (p. 266)

“With equal sweetness the commissioned hours
Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers.”

Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) American feminist, poet, author, and activist

Life Without and Life Within (1859), The Thankful and the Thankless
Context: With equal sweetness the commissioned hours
Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers.
The weeds unthankful raise their vile heads high,
Flaunting back insult to the gracious sky;
While the dear flowers, wht fond humility,
Uplift the eyelids of a starry eye
In speechless homage, and, from grateful hearts,
Perfume that homage all around imparts.

Flowers , Light

“The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 16: The Stoic
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Context: If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.

Pleasure

“Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.”

William Beveridge (1879–1963) Economist and social reformer

Full Employment in a Free Society (1944) Pt. 7

Democracy , Evil

“Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
I lose what I long for, save what I can,
My love, my love, and no love for me!”

Algernon Charles Swinburne book Poems and Ballads

Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,
Born with a man's breath, mortal as he;
Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
I lose what I long for, save what I can,
My love, my love, and no love for me!

Love , Birth

“The domain of organization theory is coming to resemble more of a weed patch than a well-tended garden.”

Jeffrey Pfeffer (1946) American academic

Organizations and organization theory, 1982
Context: The domain of organization theory is coming to resemble more of a weed patch than a well-tended garden. Theories of the middle range (Merton, 1968; Pinder and Moore, 1979) proliferate, along with measures, terms, concepts, and research paradigms. It is often difficult to discern in what direction knowledge of organizations is progressing — or if, it is progressing at all. Researchers, students of organization theory, and those who look to such theory for some guidance about issues of management and administration confront an almost bewildering array of variables, perspectives, and inferred prescriptions.

“That there were 'weeds' in the Bible requiring to be kept out of sight was to me… a new revelation.”

John Tyndall (1820–1893) British scientist

I take little pleasure in dwelling upon the errors and blemishes of a book rendered venerable to me by intrinsic wisdom and imperishable associations. But...when its passages are invoked to justify the imposition of a yoke, irksome because unnatural, we are driven in self-defence to be critical.
New Fragments (1892)

“An ill weed grows apace.”

George Chapman An Humorous Day's Mirth

An Humorous Day's Mirth; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“But nothing rests, save carcases and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.”

George Gordon Byron book Manfred

Act II, scene i.
Manfred (1817)
Context: Think'st thou existence doth depend on time?
It doth; but actions are our epochs: mine
Have made my days and nights imperishable
Endless, and all alike, as sands on the shore
Innumerable atoms; and one desert
Barren and cold, on which the wild waves break,
But nothing rests, save carcases and wrecks,
Rocks, and the salt-surf weeds of bitterness.

“Much of what is written on the craft is biased in one way or another, so weed out what is useful to you and ignore the rest. I see the next few years as being crucial in the transformation of our culture away from the patriarchal death cults and toward the love of life, of nature, of the female principle.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

As quoted in Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (1979) by Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow
Context: Much of what is written on the craft is biased in one way or another, so weed out what is useful to you and ignore the rest. I see the next few years as being crucial in the transformation of our culture away from the patriarchal death cults and toward the love of life, of nature, of the female principle. The craft is only one path among the many opening up for women, and many of us will blaze new trails as we explore the uncharted country of our own interiors. The heritage, the culture, the knowledge of the ancient priestesses, healers, poets, singers, and seers were nearly lost, but a seed survived the flames that will blossom in a new age into thousands of flowers. The long sleep of Mother Goddess is ended. May She awaken in each of our hearts — Merry meet, merry part, and blessed be.

Love , Life , Death , Way

“Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" Spring http://www.bartleby.com/122/9.html", stanza 1
Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)
Context: Nothing is so beautiful as Spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing.

Love , Beauty , Spring

“Amidst wild weeds to rest I now descend.
When once I pass beyond the city gate
I shall return to darkness without end.”

Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet

Second of three poems ("Three Dirges") written by Tao Yuanming in 427, the same year he died at the age of 63, and often read as poems written for his own funeral.
John Minford and Joseph S. M. Lau (eds.), Classical Chinese Literature: An Anthology of Translations (2000), p. 513
Context: In former days I wanted wine to drink;
The wine this morning fills the cup in vain.
I see the spring mead with its floating foam,
And wonder when to taste of it again.
The feast before me lavishly is spread,
My relatives and friends beside me cry.
I wish to speak but lips can shape no voice,
I wish to see but light has left my eye.
I slept of old within the lofty hall,
Amidst wild weeds to rest I now descend.
When once I pass beyond the city gate
I shall return to darkness without end.

“I've lost any belief I ever had in scientific policy. I don't think you can have scientific policy. I think science is something like weeds, it just grows of its own accord”

Mark Oliphant (1901–2000) Governor of South Australia (1971-76)

Source: Portraits in Science interviews (1994), p. 34
Context: I've lost any belief I ever had in scientific policy. I don't think you can have scientific policy. I think science is something like weeds, it just grows of its own accord … and if you've got the right atmosphere, the right situation within universities or within places like CSIRO, then it grows and develops of its own accord. And I believe that science is best left to scientists, that you cannot have managers or directors of science, it's got to be carried out and done by people with ideas, people with concepts, people who feel in their bones that they want to go ahead and develop this, that, or the other concept which occurs to them.

Thinking , Science

“Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

"A Sort of a Song"
The Wedge (1944)
Context: Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
— through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.

Waiting

“To have a good crop we must weed the field, otherwise the rice will grow badly in spite of careful ploughing and abundant manuring. To be successful in increasing production and practicing thrift, we must also weed the field, that is root out embezzlement, waste and bureaucracy. Otherwise they will harm our work.”

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) Vietnamese communist leader and first president of Vietnam

"To Practice Thrift and Oppose Embezzlement (1952)
1950's

Success

“In the ideological field, the question of who will win in the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie has not been really settled yet. We still have to wage a protracted struggle against bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology. It is wrong not to understand this and to give up ideological struggle. All erroneous ideas, all poisonous weeds, all ghosts and monsters, must be subjected to criticism; in no circumstance should they be allowed to spread unchecked. However, the criticism should be fully reasoned, analytical and convincing, and not rough, bureaucratic, metaphysical or dogmatic.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Speech at the Chinese Communist Party’s National Conference on Propaganda Work (March 12, 1957), 1st pocket edition, pp. 26-27
Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (The Little Red Book)

Idea , Understanding , Question

“I had gotten caught with a shopping bag full of Marijuana, a shopping bag full of love - I was in love with the weed and I did not for one minute think that anything was wrong with getting high. I had been getting high for four or five years and was convinced, with the zeal of a crusader, that marijuana was superior to lush - yet the rulers of the land seemed all to be lushes. I could not see how they were more justified in drinking than I was in blowing the gage. I was a grasshopper, and it was natural that I felt myself to be unjustly prosecuted.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

"On Becoming"
1960s, Soul on Ice (1968)

Drink , Nature , Marijuana , Thinking

Quotes about weed page 2

Quotes about weed
page 2