Quotes about wood
page 6

Robert Seymour Bridges photo
Harold Demsetz photo
Statius photo

“But the child, lying in the bosom of the vernal earth and deep in herbage, now crawls forward on his face and crushes the soft grasses, now in clamorous thirst for milk cries for his beloved nurse; again he smiles, and would fain utter words that wrestle with his infant lips, and wonders at the noise of the woods, or plucks at aught he meets, or with open mouth drinks in the day, and strays in the forest all ignorant of its dangers, in carelessness profound.”
At puer in gremio vernae telluris et alto gramine nunc faciles sternit procursibus herbas in vultum nitens, caram modo lactis egeno nutricem clangore ciens iterumque renidens et teneris meditans verba inluctantia labris miratur nemorum strepitus aut obuia carpit aut patulo trahit ore diem nemorique malorum inscius et vitae multum securus inerrat.

Source: Thebaid, Book IV, Line 793 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Herman Wouk photo
Patrick Rothfuss photo

“On his first hand he wore rings of stone,
Iron, Amber, Wood and Bone.
There were rings unseen on his second hand,
One was blood in a flowing band,
One was air all whisper thin,
And the ring of ice had a flaw within.
Full faintly shone the ring of flame,
And the final ring was without name.”

A poem from the second book of the The Kingkiller Chronicle, quoted in an interview at Fantasymundo (1 August 2009) http://www.fantasymundo.com/articulos/2207/fantasymundo_entrevista_patrick_rothfuss_nombre_viento
The Wise Man's Fear (2011)

Edward Elgar photo
Gary Snyder photo

“I recalled when I worked in the woods
and the bars of Madras, Oregon.
That short-haired joy and roughness—
America—your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

I Went into the Maverick Bar, from No Nature; New and Selected Poems (1992)

John Heywood photo

“Better one byrde in hand than ten in the wood.”

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

Part I, chapter 11.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Stephen Fry photo
Josh Billings photo

“I had rather be a pot-bellied seed cowcumber, flung carelessly on a wood pile to ripen, than tew be an old bachelor.”

Josh Billings (1818–1885) American humorist

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Lydia Maria Child photo

“Over the river, and through the wood,
To grandfather's house we go;
The horse knows the way,
To carry the sleigh,
Through the white and drifted snow.”

Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880) American abolitionist, author and women's rights activist

The New England Boy's Song About Thanksgiving Day http://www.potw.org/archive/potw64.html, st. 1, from Flowers for Children (1844-1846).
1840s

William Allingham photo
Bernard Cornwell photo
Patrick Nielsen Hayden photo
Gideon Mantell photo
Geoffrey Chaucer photo

“That field hath eyen, and the wood hath ears.”

The Knight's Tale, l. 1524
The Canterbury Tales

Aristophanés photo
Joseph Strutt photo

“And in the woods a fragrance rare
Of wild azaleas fills the air,
And richly tangled overhead
We see their blossoms sweet and red.”

Dora Read Goodale (1866–1953) U.S. poet

Spring Scatters Far and Wide, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 53.

“getting pissed off at the idea of someone going on to wiki pedia and changing the name of the japanese suicide forest to "Warios Woods"”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/937459644229828608]
Tweets by year, 2017

Francesco Petrarca photo

“He knows that I am speaking the truth, for no worm ever gnawed old wood.”

Ei sa che 'l vero parlo:
ché legno vecchio mai non róse tarlo.
Canzone 360, st. 5
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Death

Ian Smith photo

“If I absolutely had to choose, I would take Mugabe in preference to Smith, though. I couldn't stand Smith. I thought he was a man who saw every tree in the wood but couldn't see the wood… He was a really stupid man, Smith; a bigoted, stupid man.”

Ian Smith (1919–2007) Prime Minister of Rhodesia

Lord Carrington, as quoted in Heidi Holland, Dinner with Mugabe, Penguin Books; Reprint edition (5 Feb 2009), ISBN 0143026186.
About

Chris Cornell photo
George Bird Evans photo
Nick Cave photo
Fermín Lasuén photo
Theodore Kaczynski photo
Elias Canetti photo

““He is a lesser figure than X”—how it pleases an Englishman to say that! Never suspecting what basement that would put him in, a wood louse.”

Elias Canetti (1905–1994) Bulgarian-born Swiss and British jewish modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 74
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)

William Cullen Bryant photo

“The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.”

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

Death of the Flowers http://www.bartleby.com/248/85.html (1832), st. 1

Kevin Rudd photo
Chuck Berry photo
Michael Polanyi photo
Alexander Graham Bell photo
Sarah Grimké photo
William Blake photo

“The fields from Islington to Marybone,
To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood:
Were builded over with pillars of gold,
And there Jerusalems pillars stood.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1800s, Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion (c. 1803–1820), Ch. 1, plate 27, "To the Jews" 1) lines 1-4

Walter Scott photo
Temple Grandin photo

“If by some magic, autism had been eradicated from the face of the earth, then men would still be socializing in front of a wood fire at the entrance to a cave.”

Temple Grandin (1947) USA-american doctor of animal science, author, and autism activist

Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures : My Life with Autism (Expanded Edition).Westminster, MD, USA: Knopf Publishing Group, 2006.

John Calvin photo
William Shenstone photo

“I have found out a gift for my fair;
I have found where the wood-pigeons breed.”

William Shenstone (1714–1763) English gardener

A Pastoral, part I

James Frazer photo
Joseph Heller photo
Théodore Guérin photo
Walter Dornberger photo
Henry Moore photo
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner photo

“A primitive power of artistic sensuousness speaks from the prints, which itself develops directly from the graphic technique that is tied to painstaking effort. Like the 'savage' who with patience cuts the figure.... out of the hard wood, so the artist creates perhaps his purest and strongest pieces.... following the primordial curse, if one may so understand it: from the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

de:Louis de Marsalle, Uber Kirchners Graphik, Genius 3, no. 2 (1921):, p. 263; as quoted in 'The Revival of Printmaking in Germany', I. K. Rigby; in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings - Essays Vol 1.; published by Museum Associates, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California & Prestel-Verlag, Germany, 1986, pp. 52-53
1920's

Dorothy Wordsworth photo
Sorley MacLean photo

“Time, the deer, is in the wood of Hallaig ("Tha tìm, am fiadh, an coille Hallaig")”

Sorley MacLean (1911–1996) Scottish poet

First line of Hallaig
Poetry

Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo

“[Sultan Firoz Tughlaq] convened a meeting of the learned Ulama and renowned Mashaikh and suggested to them that an error had been committed: the Jiziyah had never been levied from Brahmans: they had been held excused, in former reigns. The Brahmans were the very keys of the chamber of idolatry, and the infidels were dependent on them (kalid-i-hujra-i-kufr und va kafiran bar ishan muataqid und). They ought therefore to be taxed first. The learned lawyers gave it as their opinion that the Brahmans ought to be taxed. The Brahmans then assembled and went to the Sultan and represented that they had never before been called upon to pay the Jiziyah, and they wanted to know why they were now subjected to the indignity of having to pay it. They were determined to collect wood and to burn themselves under the walls of the palace rather than pay the tax. When these pleasant words (kalimat-i-pur naghmat) were reported to the Sultan, he replied that they might burn and destroy themselves at once for they would not escape from the payment. The Brahmans remained fasting for several days at the palace until they were on the point of death. The Hindus of the city then assembled and told the Brahmans that it was not right to kill themselves on account of the Jiziyah, and that they would undertake to pay it for them. In Delhi, the Jiziyah was of three kinds: Ist class, forty tankahs; 2nd class, twenty tankahs; 3rd class, ten tankahs. When the Brahmans found their case was hopeless, they went to the Sultan and begged him in his mercy to reduce the amount they would have to pay, and he accordingly assessed it at ten tankahs and fifty jitals for each individual.”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Shams Siraj Afif, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 6 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n381/mode/2up

Christopher Gérard photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Variation: If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he builds his house in the woods the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

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

Investigations have failed to confirm this in Emerson's writings (John H. Lienhard. "A better moustrap" http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1163.htm, Engines of our Ingenuity). Also reported as a misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 25. Note that Emerson did say, as noted above, "I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods".
Misattributed

Elie Wiesel photo
Aldo Leopold photo

“The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. … The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa.”

“November: A Mighty Fortress”, p. 77.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "November: Axe-in-Hand," "November: A Mighty Fortress," and "December: Pines above the Snow"

David Attenborough photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
W. H. Auden photo
John Constable photo
John Ogilby photo

“I'le delight in Vales, near pleasant Floods,
And unrenown'd, haunt Rivers, Hills and Woods.”

John Ogilby (1600–1676) Scottish academic

The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro (2nd ed. 1654), Virgil's Georgicks

Alexander Calder photo

“I started [in Paris, 1920's, making toys] right away, using wire as my main material as well as working with others like string, leather, fabric and wood. Wood combined with wire (with which I could make the heads, tails and feet of animals as well as articulating parts) was almost always my medium of choice. One friend of mine suggested that I should make bodies entirely of wire, and that is how I started to make what I called 'Wire Sculpture.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

In Montparnasse, I became known as the 'King of Wire'.

Quote of Alexander Calder (1952), looking back, from Permanence Du Cirque, in 'Revue Neuf', Calder Foundation, 1952; as quoted in Calder and Mondrian: An Unlikely Kinship, senior-thesis by Eva Yonas http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.517.581&rep=rep1&type=pdf, Ohio State University August 2006, Department of Art History, p.19 – note 26

Calder first began using wire extensively in 1926, creating mechanical toys that would be the precursors to the Paris' 'Cirque Calder'
1950s - 1960s

Robert E. Howard photo
Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo

“A report was brought to the Sultan that there was in Delhi an old Brahman (zunar dar) who persisted in publicly performing the worship of idols in his house; and that people of the city, both Musulmans and Hindus, used to resort to his house to worship the idol. The Brahman had constructed a wooden tablet (muhrak), which was covered within and without with paintings of demons and other objects. On days appointed, the infidels went to his house and worshipped the idol, without the fact becoming known to the public officers. The Sultan was informed that this Brahman had perverted Muhammadan women, and had led them to become infidels. An order was accordingly given that the Brahman, with his tablet, should be brought into the presence of the Sultan at Firozabad. The judges and doctors and elders and lawyers were summoned, and the case of the Brahman was submitted for their opinion. Their reply was that the provisions of the Law were clear: the Brahman must either become a Musulman or be burned. The true faith was declared to the Brahman, and the right course pointed out, but he refused to accept it. Orders were given for raising a pile of faggots before the door of the darbar. The Brahman was tied hand and foot and cast into it; the tablet was thrown on top and the pile was lighted. The writer of this book was present at the darbar and witnessed the execution. The tablet of the Brahman was lighted in two places, at his head and at his feet; the wood was dry, and the fire first reached his feet, and drew from him a cry, but the flames quickly enveloped his head and consumed him. Behold the Sultans strict adherence to law and rectitude, how he would not deviate in the least from its decrees!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Delhi. Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 365 ff https://archive.org/stream/cu31924073036737#page/n379/mode/2up Quoted in Shourie, Arun (2014). Eminent historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India : HarperCollins Publishers.

“In every organization there is a considerable accumulation of dead wood in the executive level.”

Laurence J. Peter (1919–1990) Canadian eductor

Laurence J. Peter (1969) in " Up against the Peter principle http://books.google.nl/books?id=K08EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA59". LIFE - Vol. 67, nr. 3. July 18, 1969. p. 59

Bernice King photo

“When I saw the funeral scene, I just broke down. I ran out of the cabin into the woods, and for nearly 2-1/2 hours, I just cried: "Why, God, did You take him?"”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reflection on experience at age sixteen in "Faces of Faith: A Connection Magazine Anthology" (2006), p. 82.

George William Curtis photo

“But when we freed the slaves we did not say to them, 'Caste shall not grind you with the right hand, but it shall with the left'. We said, 'Caste shall not grind you at all, and you shall have the same guarantees of freedom that we have'. President Johnson defines the liberty springing from the Emancipation amendment as the right to labor and enjoy the fruit of labor to its fullest extent. It is easy to quarrel with this as with every definition. But it is good enough, and it is as true of Connecticut as of Missouri that no man fully enjoys the fruit of his labor who does not have an equality of right before the law and a voice in making the law. That is the final security of the commonwealth, and we are bound to help every citizen attain it, whether it be the foreigner who comes ignorant and wretched to our shores or the native whom a cruel prejudice opposes. Do you tell me that we have nothing to do with the State laws of Alabama? I answer that the people of the United States are the sole and final judges of the measures necessary to the full enjoyment of the freedom which they have anywhere bestowed. If we choose, we may trust a certain class in the unorganized States to secure this liberty, just as we might have chosen to trust Mister Vallandigham, Mister Horatio Seymour, and Mister Fernando Wood to carry on the war. But as we wanted honor and not dishonor, as we wanted victory and not surrender, we chose to trust it to Farragut and Sherman, to Sheridan and Grant. If you don't want a thing done, says the old proverb, send; if you do, go yourself. When Grant started. Uncle Sam went himself. So, if we don't care whether we keep our word to those whom we have freed, we may send, by leaving them to the tender mercies of those who despise and distrust them. But if we do care for our own honor and the national welfare, we shall go ourselves, and through a national bureau and voluntary associations of education and aid, or in some better way if it can be devised, keep fast hold of the hands of those whom the President calls our wards, and not relinquish those hands until we leave in them every guarantee of freedom that we ourselves enjoy.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

John Godfrey Saxe photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Do what we can, summer will have its flies: if we walk in the woods, we must feed mosquitos: if we go a-fishing, we must expect a wet coat.”

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

1840s, Essays: First Series (1841)

Felicia Hemans photo

“The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed.”

Felicia Hemans (1793–1835) English poet

Stanza 1.
The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers http://www.poetry-archive.com/h/landing_of_the_pilgrim_fathers.html (1826)

Iamblichus photo
Roberto Clemente photo

“I hit many what you call the "bad bol" pitches, and get good wood. The bol' travel like bullet. That remind me, I hit 565 foote hum-rum in Chicaga last year; the bol' disappear from centerfield, and Raj Hornsby tell me it longest drive he ever saw hit out of Wrigley Field. The bol' feel good on the bat but I feel bad at heart, when no writer with our team play up the big drive. I feel effort not appreciated.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted by Bill Nunn, Jr. in The New Pittsburgh Courier (June 25, 1960); reproduced in Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero https://books.google.com/books?id=jIhcvFs-k1cC&pg=PA98 (2006) by David Maraniss, p. 98
Comment: Clemente is not entirely correct. At least nationally (via TSN's weekly Pirates report), one veteran Pirates beat writer did do his part to publicize the blast. See Les Biederman (5/27/59 and 6/6/66) in Media, as well as Ernie Banks in Opponents.
Baseball-related, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1960</big>

Théodore Rousseau photo
Daniel McCallum photo
Le Corbusier photo

“You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.
But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: "This is beautiful."”

Le Corbusier (1887–1965) architect, designer, urbanist, and writer

That is Architecture. Art enters in.
Vers une architecture [Towards an Architecture] (1923)

John Milton photo
Vitruvius photo
Ferdinand Hodler photo
Vanna Bonta photo

“Pure at heart: to be like a flower that blooms as gloriously, brilliantly in a secluded wild wood, not seen and praised.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Rewards of Passion (Sheer Poetry) (1981)

James Weldon Johnson photo
Ellsworth Kelly photo

“What countries, what visitations,
what pomp
would satisfy me as thoroughly as Blackwater Woods
on a sun-filled morning, or, equally, in the rain?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"Am I Not Among the Early Risers"
West Wind (1997)

Will Cuppy photo
John Heywood photo

“Ye can not sée the wood for trées.”

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

You cannot see the wood for trees.
Part II, chapter 4.
Proverbs (1546)

Christopher Titus photo
Jadunath Sarkar photo

““Under it there can be only one faith, one people and one all overriding authority. The State is a religious trust administered solely by His people (the faithful) acting in obedience to the Commander of the Faithful, who was in theory, and very often in practice too, the supreme General of the Army of militant Islam (Janud). There could be no place for non-believers. Even Jews and Christians could not be full citizens of it, though they somewhat approached the Muslims by reason of their being ‘People of the Book’ or believers in the Bible, which the Prophet of Islam accepted as revealed… “As for the Hindus and Zoroastrians, they had no place in such a political system. If their existence was tolerated, it was only to use them as hewers of wood and drawers of water, as tax-payers, ‘Khiraj-guzar’, for the benefit of the dominant sect of the Faithful. They were called Zimmis or people under a contract of protection by the Muslim State on condition of certain services to be rendered by them and certain political and civil disabilities to be borne by them to prevent them from growing strong. The very term Zimmi is an insulting title. It connotes political inferiority and helplessness like the status of a minor proprietor perpetually under a guardian; such protected people could not claim equality with the citizens of the Muslim theocracy.”

Jadunath Sarkar (1870–1958) Indian historian

Jadunath Sarkar, cited in R.C. Majumdar (ed.), The History of the Indian People and Culture, Volume VI, The Delhi Sultanate, Bombay, 1960, pp. 617-18. Quoted in S.R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583

“Playing in the woods with knives is manly.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

-Pg 1
The Way of Men (2012)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo

“What is the light from yon deep wood flashing —
What the sound on the wild wind borne?
What the dark ranks that are onwards dashing
To the voice of the pealing horn?
Who are they that thundering go? —
It is the Black Hunt of the bold Litzou!”

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

The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1835) Versions from the German (First Series.) - 'The Black Hunt of Litzou'
Translations, From the German

Patrick Buchanan photo
Haruki Murakami photo
William L. Shirer photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Michel Chossudovsky photo

“The budget targets imposed by the Bretton Woods institutions, combined with the effects of the devaluation, trigger the collapse of public investment.”

Michel Chossudovsky (1946) Canadian economist

Source: The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order - Second Edition - (2003), Chapter 3, Policing Countries Through Loan "Conditionalities", p. 53