Quotes about willow

A collection of quotes on the topic of willow, tree, likeness, doing.

Quotes about willow

“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

“Depending on the circumstance, you should be: hard as a diamond, flexible as a willow, smooth-flowing like water, or as empty as space.”

Morihei Ueshiba (1883–1969) founder of aikido

The Art of Peace (1992)
Context: Techniques employ four qualities that reflect the nature of our world. Depending on the circumstance, you should be: hard as a diamond, flexible as a willow, smooth-flowing like water, or as empty as space.

Water, Dependency

“Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Love, Soul, Singing, Housing

“I sit, I read, I listen to music, I go or a walk, I ride to Prospect Park and sit under the Willow Tree, I remember, I forget, I look at pictures, I do, I do, I do… or I don't, but its peaceful… only me… no worries.”

Hubert Selby Jr. (1928–2004) American writer

Peace, Music, Tree, Reading

“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.”

Robert Jordan The Fires of Heaven

Source: The Fires of Heaven

“Instinctively we both looked for the inscriptions we cut, once upon a time, on trees and on stones, in foolish delight. We sought them like scattered treasure, on the strange cheeks of the old willows, near the tendrils of the fall, on the birches that stand like candles in front of the violet thicket, and on the old fir which so often sheltered us with its dark wings. Many inscriptions have disappeared. Some are worn away because things do; some are covered by a host of other inscriptions or they are distorted and ugly. Nearly all have passed on as if they had been passers-by.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIX - Ghosts

Tree, Time

“They more adeptly bend the willow's branches
who have experience of the willow's roots.”

Rainer Maria Rilke book Sonnets to Orpheus

Sonnet 6 (as translated by Edward Snow)
Sonnets to Orpheus (1922)

“What a pity every child couldn't learn to read under a willow tree…”

Elizabeth George Speare book The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Source: The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Tree, Learning, Reading

“No matter how far back you cut a willow tree, it will never really die.”

Ann Brashares book 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows

Source: 3 Willows: The Sisterhood Grows

Tree

“The willow submits to the wind and prospers until one day it is many willows - a wall against the wind.”

Frank Herbert book Dune

Source: Dune

“When you paint Spring, do not paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots, but just paint Spring. To paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots is to paint willows, plums, peaches, or apricots - it is not yet painting Spring.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Spring, Painting

“Maple. Maypole
Catch and carry.
Ash and Ember.
Elderberry.
Woolen. Woman.
Moon at night.
Willow. Window.
Candlelight.
Fallow farrow.
Ash and oak.
Bide and borrow.
Chimney smoke.
Barrel. Barley.
Stone and stave.
Wind and water.
Misbehave.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Water, Night

“He's like Super Librarian, y'know? Everyone forgets, Willow, that knowledge is the ultimate weapon.”

Joss Whedon (1964) American director, writer, and producer for television and film

Knowledge, Forgetting

“Autumn teaches us that fruition is also death; that ripeness is a form of decay. The willows, having stood for so long near water, begin to rust. Leaves are verbs that conjugate the seasons.”

Gretel Ehrlich (1946) American writer

Source: The Solace of Open Spaces

Death, Autumn, Water, Season

“April's air stirs in
Willow-leaves… a butterfly
Floats and balances”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Source: Japanese Haiku

“In a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

Source: The Rosemary Tree

World, Spring, Tree, Singing

“The winter oak… is very useful in buildings but when in a moist place it takes in water to its centre… and so it rots. The Turkey oak and the beech both… take in moisture to their centre and soon decay. White and black poplar, as well as willow, linden, and the agnus castus… are of great service from their stiffness. …they are a convenient material to use in carving.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter IX, Sec. 9

Water, Winter

“Slow yellow river flowing, willows that gesture in tepid August airs, and four children playing at greatness, as, doubtless, great men themselves must play.”

Sinclair Lewis book Ann Vickers

Ann Vickers (1933) First lines.

Men, Children

“O, to have the soul bathed all day long in this thought, " as the pebble in the willow brook " until the words come like the tears, because the heart is full, and we cannot help it; to feel, in the darkest hour, that there is an unseen Spectator whose eyes rest on us like morning on the flowers; and that in the severest sorrow, we can sink into a presence full of love and sympathy, deeper than ever breathed from earth or sky or loving hearts— a presence in which all fears and anxieties melt away as ice-crystals in the warm ocean. This is heaven.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 432.

Love, Fear, Feeling, Soul

“Near the lake where drooped the willow,
Long time ago!”

George Pope Morris (1802–1864) American publisher

Near the Lake, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Time

“He was a fool,” said Willow calmly to Klein. “There are many who refuse their responsibilities. Fooling themselves they search for a ‘higher ideal’. He was a fool.”
“What are responsibilities?” said Klein laconically. “He knows. Responsibility, my dear, is another word for self-interest. For survival.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

She looked at Klein uncomprehendingly.
Source: The Sundered Worlds (1965), Chapter 4 (p. 206)

Fools, Search

“Willow: Don't worry, we're sure to spot Faith first. She's like this cleavagey slutbomb walking around going, "Ooh, check me out, I'm wicked cool, I'm five by five."
Tara: "Five by five?" Five what by five what?
Willow: See, that's the thing. No one knows.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Checkpoint [5.12]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Faith

“Awake, ye West Winds, through the lonely dale,
And Fancy, to thy fairy bower betake;
Even now, with balmy freshness breathes the gale,
Dimpling with downy wing the stilly lake;
Through the pale willows faltering whispers wake,
And Evening comes with locks bodropp'd with dew;
On Desmond's mouldering turrets slowly shake
The trembling rye-grass and the harehell blue,
And ever and anon fair Mulla's plaints renew.”

William Julius Mickle Sir Martyn

Sir Martyn (1777), Canto I, stanza 1

Grass

“I would advise sitting from morning till night under some willow bush on the river bank where there is a wide view. This will be "doing the valley" far more effectively than riding along trails in constant motion from point to point. The entire valley is made up of "points of interest."”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

"The Summer Flood of Tourists", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 1 of the 11 part series "Summering in the Sierra") dated 14 June 1875, published 22 June 1875; reprinted in John Muir: Summering in the Sierra, edited by Robert Engberg (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) page 71
Advice for visitors to Yosemite given by John Muir at age 37 years. Compare advice given by the 74-year-old Muir below.
1870s

Night

“The dream on the pillow,
That flits with the day,
The leaf of the willow
A breath wears away;
The dust on the blossom,
The spray on the sea;
Ay,—ask thine own bosom—
Are emblems of thee.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(29th March 1823) Song - The dream on the pillow.
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

Dreams, Sea

“The whole landscape lies behind the transparent gauze of the fog that now rises, drawn upwards by the sun, and as it rises, reveals the silver-spangled river, the fields, the cottages, the further scene. At last one can discern all that one could only guess at before... The sun is up! There is a peasant at the end of the field, with his wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen... Everything is bursting into life, sparkling in the full light – light, which as yet is still soft and golden. The background, simple in line and harmonious in colour, melts into the infinite expanse of sky, through the bluish, misty atmosphere. The flowers raise their heads the birds flutter hither and thither... The little rounded willows on the bank of the stream look like birds spreading their tails. It's adorable! And one paints! And paints!”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Corot's description of a morning in Switzerland, Château de Gruyères, 1857, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963
1850s

Life, Flowers, Bird, Light

“On a lone barren isle, where the wild roaring billows
Assail the stern rock, and the loud tempests rave,
The hero lies still, while the dew-drooping willows,
Like fond weeping mourners, lean over his grave.
The lightnings may flash and the loud thunders rattle;
He heeds not, he hears not, he's free from all pain;
He sleeps his last sleep, he has fought his last battle;
No sound can awake him to glory again!”

Lyman Heath (1804–1870) American musician

The Grave of Bonaparte, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) (incorrectly attributed as "Leonard" Heath).

Pain, Sleep

“Worpswede, I cannot get you out of my mind. There was such atmosphere there – right down to the tips of your toes. Your magnificent pine trees! I call them my men – thick, gnarled, powerful, and tall – and yet with the most delicate nerves and fibers in them. That is my image of the ideal artist. And your birch trees – delicate, slender young virgins who delight the eyes. With that relaxed and dreamy face, as if life had not really begun for them… But then there are some already masculine and bold, with strong and straight trunks. Those are my 'Modern women'. And you willows, with your knotty trunks… You are my old men with silver beards. I have company enough, indeed I do, and it's my own private company. We understand each other well and nod friendly answers back and forth. Life, life, life!”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

a quote of her Journal, Worpswede 1897; as cited in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 192
1897

Life, Women, Men, Understanding

“Worpswede, Worpswede, Worpswede! [small rural village in North-Germany were a colony of German artists was working then, including Paula] My sunken Bell mood! Birches, birches, pine trees and old willows. Beautiful brown moors – exquisite brown! The canals with their black reflections, black as asphalt..”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

Quote from her Journal, Worpswede 1897; as cited in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 192
1897

Beauty, Mood, Tree

“On a tree by a river a little tomtit
Sang "Willow, titwillow, titwillow"
And I said to him, "Dicky-bird, why do you sit
Singing ‘Willow, titwillow, titwillow?'.
"Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?" I cried,
"Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?"
With a shake of his poor little head he replied,
"Oh, Willow, titwillow, titwillow!"”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Suicide's Grave (from The Mikado).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Bird, Tree, Singing

“Willow: What did I have for breakfast this morning? Do you remember?
Tara: Huh?
Willow: I-I wanna say bagel, but I think that was yesterday. You had two eggs sunny side up. I remember because they were wiggling at me like little boobs.
Tara: Sassy eggs.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Triangle [5.11]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Thinking

“A small clear fountain, with green willow trees;
Girdling it round, there is one single spot
Where you may sit and rest, its only bank;”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Tree

“The yellow sand rises as high as white cloud;
The lonely town is lost amid the mountains proud.
Why should the Mongol flute complain no willows grow?
Beyond the Jade Gate vernal wind will never blow!”

Wang Zhihuan (688–742) Chinese poet

"Out Of The Great Wall" (《出塞》), trans. Yuanchong Xu

Mountain

“Hall: Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is a wonderful country - I've been there umpteen times and it is being brought to extinction by Mugabe. The average life expectancy is 33, so if you are not dying from Aids, malnutrition, starvation, deprivation or stagnation, don your flannels, black up, play leather on willow. Mugabe as captain and witch doctor, imagine him out at Lord's casting a tincture of bats' tongues and gorillas' gonads.”

Stuart Hall (1929–2014) sociologist and cultural theorist

BBC Fighting Talk (2005)

Life, Imagination, Time, Country

“But the sound of water escaping from mill-dams, &c., willows, old rotten planks, slimy posts, and brickwork, I love such things. Shakespeare could make everything poetical; he tells us of poor Tom's haunts among "sheep cotes and mills." As long as I do paint, I shall never cease to paint such places. They have always been my delight.”

John Constable (1776–1837) English Romantic painter

Quote from John Constable's letter to Rev. John Fisher (23 October 1821), from John Constable's Correspondence, part 6, pp. 76-78
1820s

Love, Water, Painting

“We loved in infinite spaces, forgetting here
The breasts that were lit with life and the lips so near;
Till the wizard willows waved in the wind and drew
Me away from the fulness of love and down to you.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Love, Life, Forgetting

“These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet;—

Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment-day;—
Under the laurel the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray.”

Francis Miles Finch (1827–1907) American judge

The Blue and the Gray, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Waiting

“Glorious are the woods in their latest gold and crimson,
Yet our full-leaved willows are in the freshest green.
Such a kindly autumn, so mercifully dealing
With the growths of summer, I never yet have seen.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

The Third of November, 1861. Thirty Poems. Appleton, New York. pp. 112-115. (1864)

Autumn, Summer

“That [watercolor] with the Cows has been partially washed out [reducing colors] and that ugly hedge of willow trees has been taken out, and is already doing better, but the paper is not a good quality. I don't know I'll finish it or make a new one.”

Willem Roelofs (1822–1897) Dutch painter and entomologist (1822-1897)

translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Willem Roelofs, in het Nederlands:) Die [aquarel] met de Koeijen is gedeeltelijk uitgewassen [kleuren vermindert] en die leelijke heg van wilgeboomen er uit [gehaald] en doet reeds beter, maar het papier is niet heel goed. Ik weet niet of ik die af zal maken of een nieuwe [maken].
In a letter to Pieter verLoren van Themaat, 30 March 1867; in Haagsch Gemeentearchief / Municipal Archive of The Hague
1860's

Color, Tree

“Orioles fly over tall grasses in second-month weather;
Willows sweep the riverbank, intoxicated with mist.
Children return home in haste after school,
Eager to fly kites when there is yet wind.”

Gao Ding

"Living in a Village" (《村居》), in Four-line poems of the Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties (Translated in English), p. 311 (ISBN 978-7560025827)
Variant translation:
Grass is stretching, birds are dancing in the spring days.
The willow trees wholeheartedly absorb the sun's rays.
My after-school schedule today is unusually tight.
The first business is, of course, in east wind to kite.
"Country Life", as translated by Xian Mao in Children's Version of 60 Classical Chinese Poems, p. 60 (ISBN 978-1468559040)

Children, School, Home, Grass

“Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry,
And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky.
And the tears that I cried for that woman are gonna flood you Big River.
Then I'm gonna sit right here until I die.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Big River
Song lyrics, Johnny Cash Sings the Songs That Made Him Famous (1958)

Tear, Cry

“The cold north wind which bows to earth
The lightness of the willow's birth
Bends not the mountain cedar trees;
Folding their branches from the breeze,
They stand as if they could defy
The utmost rage of storm and sky.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Canto I
The Troubadour (1825)

Mountain, Birth, Tree, Light

“No orioles yet on willows—you set out
and promised you'd come back when cuckoos sang.
Cuckoos have followed orioles grown old—
before the house some swallows chirp and peep.”

Đặng Trần Côn (1710–1745) writer

Source: Chinh phụ ngâm, Lines 125–128

Housing

“On either side of them, as they glided onwards, the rich meadow-grass seemed that morning of a freshness and a greenness unsurpassable. Never had they noticed the roses so vivid, the willow-herb so riotous, the meadow-sweet so odorous and pervading. Then the murmur of the approaching weir began to hold the air, and they felt a consciousness that they were nearing the end, whatever it might be, that surely awaited their expedition.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908), Ch. 7

Grass

“So I ask each weepin' willow
And each brook along the way,
And each lad that comes a-whistlin' Tooralay
How are things in Glocca Morra
This fine day?”

Yip Harburg (1896–1981) American song lyricist

"How Are Things in Glocca Morra?"

Way

“A morning rain has settled the dust in Weicheng;
Willows are green again in the tavern dooryard…
Wait till we empty one more cup –
West of Yang Gate there'll be no old friends.”

Wang Wei (699–759) a Tang dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter, and statesman

"A Song at Weicheng" (送元二使安西), as translated by Witter Bynner in Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty
Variant translations:
Wei City morning rain dampens the light dust.
By this inn, green, newly green willows.
I urge you to drink another cup of wine;
West of Yang Pass, are no old friends.
Mike O'Connor, "Wei City Song" in Where the World Does Not Follow (2002), p. 119
No dust is raised on pathways wet with morning rain,
The willows by the tavern look so fresh and green.
I invite you to drink a cup of wine again:
West of the Southern Pass no more friends will be seen.
Xu Yuan-zhong, "A Farewell Song" in 150 Tang Poems (1984), p. 29
Light rain is on the light dust.
The willows of the inn-yard
Will be going greener and greener,
But you, Sir, had better take wine ere your departure,
For you will have no friends about you
When you come to the gates of Go.
Ezra Pound, epigraph to "Four Poems of Departure", in Cathay (1915), p. 28

Waiting

“Willow: Tell me a story.
Tara: Okay. Once upon a time, there was, um… a kitty. She was very little, and she was all alone, and nobody wanted her.
Willow: This is a very upsetting story.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

This Year's Girl [4.15]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Time

“So we beat the Croations at football and I was there yelling "Ah, you Crotes!" and this guy says "It's cro-at; learn to speak English." So I was about to retort when he said "Hang on, you're Omid Djalili! You're good! I said "Aww thanks." He says "What are you going to do next?" I said "I'm in a pantomime of Wind in the Willows. I play the TO-AD, OF TO-AD HALL! I get in my BO-AT! And it sinks because it can't FLO-AT! And when I get out of the river, I'm wet and cold so I put on my CO-AT! And I can't get in my house because it's full of ferrets and STO-ATS!"”

Omid Djalili (1965) Iranian-British stand-up comedian

Amusing wordplay but ultimately leads nowhere. The Telegraph.
No Agenda (2007)

Guy, Learning, Football, Housing

“Willow, if the gods thought half as much of you as you think of yourself, you’d be king of the world.”

Glen Cook book Shadow Games

Source: Shadow Games (1989), Chapter 7, “Smoke and the Woman” (p. 39)

God, World, Thinking

“Come, take my hand
And wander in the willow river
Glistening the blue bells
Come, take my flesh
And wander in the sunny corn
That shimmer stills at snowfalls
'Cause I love you lover
I love you, like I love
The Four high Seasons.”

Mike Oldfield (1953) English musician, multi-instrumentalist

Song lyrics, Children of the Sun (1969)

Love, Lovers, Season

“One can do such lovely things with so little. Subjects that are too beautiful end by appearing theatrical – take Switzerland, for example. Think of all the beautiful little things Corot did at Gisors; two willows, a little water, a bridge, like the picture in the Universal Exhibition. What a masterpiece!... Everything is beautiful, all that matters is to be able to interpret.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

In a letter to his son Lucien, 26 July 1892, as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock - , Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 146
Quote of Pissarro, referring to a willow-painting of his former art-teacher Camille Corot
1890's

Love, Beauty, Thinking, Universe

“Willow: Hey, clothes.
Tara: Better not get used to 'em.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Older and Far Away [6.14]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Clothes

“willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky, course of a journey among the densities
of the days of the future and the fateful
brilliance of misery shining like a bird
that petrifies the forest with its singing
and the annunciations of happiness
among the branches which go disappearing,
hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand, an actual presence like a burst of singing,
like the song of the wind in a burning building,
a long look holding the whole world suspended,
the world with all its seas and all its mountains,
body of light as it is filtered through agate,
the thighs of light, the belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock and the cloud-colored body,
color of day that goes racing and leaping,
the hour glitters and assumes its body,
now the world stands, visible through your body,
and is transparent through your transparency”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Sun Stone (1957)

Fate, World, Color, Mountain

“Our love was so vast that it filled the heavens up:
But the soft white form I held was an empty cup,
When the willows called me back to earth with their sigh,
And we moved as shades through the deep that was you and I.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Love

“Who said "Peacock Pie"?
The old king to the sparrow:
Who said "Crops are ripe"?
Rust to the harrow.

Who said, "Ay, mum's the word"?
Sexton to willow.
Who said, "Green dusk for dream?"
Moss for a pillow.

Who said, "All Time’s delight
Hath she for narrow bed;
Life’s troubled bubble broken"?—
That’s what I said.”

Walter de la Mare (1873–1956) English poet and fiction writer

The Song of the Mad Prince

Life, Dreams, Time

“Willow: Questions. Great.
Tara: W-we can answer questions.
Nigel: Good. I need to know a little bit more about the Slayer, and about the both of you. Your relationship, whatever you can tell me.
Tara: O-o-our relationship?
Willow: We're friends.
Tara: Good friends.
Willow: Girlfriends, actually.
Tara: Yes, we're girlfriends.
Willow: We're in love. W-we're lovers. We're lesbian, gay-type lovers.
Nigel: I meant your relationship with the Slayer.”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

All the Way [6.6]
Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Love, Lovers, Question

“I heard one of the teaching pastors at Willow Creek speak on the rich young ruler text that Rich (Mullins) had talked about in Wheaton's chapel. The teaching pastor had said, "now this doesn't mean you have to go sell your rollerblades and golf clubs," and he went on to "contextualize" the teaching to show that we just need to be careful not to make idols of our things. I wasn't so sure about that. Jesus doesn't tell the man to be a better steward, or to treat his workers fairly, or not to make money an idol. He tells this highly educated and devoutly religious young man that he lacks one thing: giving up everything he owns to give the poor.”

Shane Claiborne The Irresistible Revolution

Source: The Irresistible Revolution (2006), p. 103

Money, Education

“All a green willow, willow,
All a green willow is my garland.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

The Green Willow; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“Something stirs that once had life. It drops
Into the stream, a last act of faith.
Seedballs of sycamore, incautious leaves of willow,
These have outstayed their autumn, teasing death
Only so far, not yet beyond all patience.
Now they let go.”

Donald Davidson (1893–1968) American poet, essayist, critic and author

Aunt Maria and the Gourds

Life, Autumn

“Now dig my grave
Beneath the bay willows' boughs
And with blackness cover it over again,
There for evermore
Go from my domain:
I wish to slumber in peace.”

Aleksis Kivi (1834–1872) Finnish writer

Weariness.

Peace

“Ring them bells Sweet Martha
For the poor man's son
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one
Oh the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled with lost sheep.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Oh Mercy (1989), Ring Them Bells

God, World, Mountain

“Willow: We can come by between classes. Usually I use that time to copy over my class notes with a system of different colored pens. But it's been pointed out to me that that's, you know, insane.
Tara: I said "quirky."”

Amber Benson (1977) actress from the United States

Willow & Tara (2000-2002)

Color, Time

“My heart is like the willow
That bends, but never breaks.
It sighs when summer jilts her,
It sings when April wakes.”

Yip Harburg (1896–1981) American song lyricist

"Irreverent Heart"
Rhymes for the Irreverent (1965)
Context: My heart is like the willow
That bends, but never breaks.
It sighs when summer jilts her,
It sings when April wakes. So you, who come a-smiling
With summer in your eyes,
Think not that your beguiling
Will take me by surprise. My heart's prepared for aching
The moment you take wing.
But not, my friend, for breaking
While there's another spring.

Singing, Heart, Summer

“Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Through the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Lady of Shalott

Pt. I, st. 2
The Lady of Shalott (1832)

“Although at that time there were very many temples of idols around the lake, when the Khwaja saw them, he said: ‘If God and His Prophet so will, it will not be long before I raze to the ground these idol temples.’“
It is said that among those temples there was one temple to reverence which the Raja and all the infidels used to come, and lands had been assigned to provide for its expenditure. When the Khwaja settled there, every day his servants bought a cow, brought it there and slaughtered it and ate it…“So when the infidels grew weak and saw that they had no power to resist such a perfect companion of God, they… went into their idol temples which were their places of worship. In them there was a dev, in front of whom they cried out and asked for help…“…The dev who was their leader, when he saw the perfect beauty of the Khwaja, trembled from head to foot like a willow tree. However much he tried to say ‘Ram, Ram’, it was ‘Rahim, Rahim’ that came from his tongue… The Khwaja… with his own hand gave a cup of water to a servant to take to the dev… He had no sooner drunk it than his heart was purified of darkness of unbelief, he ran forward and fell at the Heaven-treading feet of the Khwaja, and professed his belief…“The Khwaja said: ‘I also bestow on you the name of Shadi Dev [Joyful Deval]’…“…Then Shadi Dev… suggested to the Khwaja, that he should now set up a place in the city, where the populace might benefit from his holy arrival. The Khwaja accepted this suggestion, and ordered one of his special servants called Muhammad Yadgir to go into the city and set in good order a place for faqirs. Muhammad Yadgir carried out his orders, and when he had gone into the city, he liked well the place where the radiant tomb of the Khwaja now is, and which originally belonged to Shadi Dev, and he suggested that the Khwaja should favour it with his residence…“
…Mu‘in al-din had a second wife for the following reason: one night he saw the Holy Prophet in the flesh. The prophet said: ‘You are not truly of my religion if you depart in any way from my sunnat.’ It happened that the ruler of the Patli fort, Malik Khitab, attacked the unbelievers that night and captured the daughter of the Raja of that land. He presented her to Mu‘in al-din who accepted her and named her Bibi Umiya.”

Moinuddin Chishti (1142–1236) Sufi saint

About Shykh Mu‘in al-Din Chishti of Ajmer (d. AD 1236). Siyar al-Aqtab by Allah Diya Chishti (1647). Quoted in P.M. Currie, The Shrine and Cult of Mu‘in al-Din Chishti of Ajmer, OUP, 1989 p. 74-87

God, Religion, Beauty, Way

“The word witch is related to the root of the word "willow," a very flexible tree.”

Starhawk (1951) American author, activist and Neopagan

Bodhi Tree lecture (1999)
Context: The word witch is related to the root of the word "willow," a very flexible tree. Since ancient times witches have been known as those who can bend or shape fate. We twist the energies. The idea of witch became synonymous with wise woman, and with others who were herbalists and healers and keepers of the old traditions after the advent of Christianity. We were the ones who really knew the land and knew what grew there, and how to use it.

Tree

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

With a shake of his poor little head he replied,
"Oh, Willow, titwillow, titwillow!"
The Suicide's Grave (from The Mikado).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Singing, Bird, Tree

“What use the green river, the gold place, if time and
death pinned human in the pocket of my land not rest
from taking underground the green all-willowed and
white rose and bean flower and morning-mist picnic of
song in pepper-pot breast of thrush?”

Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand author

Owls Do Cry, pt, 1, chap. 4, 1961

Flowers, Death, Time