Quotes about yew

A collection of quotes on the topic of yew, tree, cross, dark.

Quotes about yew

“I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars…”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

Source: Letters of Ted Hughes

“There is a Yew-tree, pride of Lorton Vale,
Which to this day stands single, in the midst
Of its own darkness, as it stood of yore.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Yew-Trees, l. 1 (1803).

Tree

“If I have one final word to say, I have to quote Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew, when I met him after being appointed first prime minister. He told me this, 'You look like your father, you talk like your father, but please don't be like your father'. I think, what he said summed up my father. It is enough. With such an assessment, maybe it is not even necessary to write a book on Sihanouk and on me.”

Norodom Ranariddh (1944) Cambodian politician

, p. 136.

Books, Quotes, Thinking

“Let me tell you about the English War Bow, Joscelyn. It is a simple thing, med of yew, a peasant's tool, really. My huntsman can use one, but he is the only man in Berat who has ever mastered the weapon. Why do you think that is? I'll tell you anyway. It takes years, Joscelyn, many years to master the yew bow. Ten years? Probably that long, and after ten years a man can send an arrow clean through armor at two hundred paces. Splat! A thousand ecus of man, armor, and weaponry fallen to a peasant's bow. And it isn't luck, Joscelyn. My huntsman can put an arrow through a bracelet at a hundred paces. He can pierce mail coat at two hundred. I've seen him put an arrow through an oak door at a hundred and fifty, and the door was three inches thick!”

Bernard Cornwell The Grail Quest

The Count of Berat, p. 111
The Grail Quest, Heretic (2003)

War, Thinking

“Strew on her roses, roses,
And never a spray of yew.
In quiet she reposes:
Ah! would that I did too.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"Requiescat" (1853), st. 1

“My silks and fine array,
My smiles and languished air,
By love are driv'n away;
And mournful lean Despair
Brings me yew to deck my grave:
Such end true lovers have.”

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

Song (My Silks and Fine Arrays), st. 1
1780s, Poetical Sketches (1783)

Love, Smile, Lovers, Despair

“Over the years I have had the most contact with Lee Kuan Yew, most recently in 2006, and have always found him impressive, even though we do not always see eye to eye. I met him first when he was George Shultz's guest at the famous (or infamous, depending on your perspective) Bohemian Grove, a male only bonding retreat among the redwoods of California.”

Alan Greenspan (1926) 13th Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the United States

Source: 2000s, The Age of Turbulence (2008), Chapter Fifteen, "The Tigers and the Elephant", p. 312.

Dependency

“What gentle ghost, besprent with April dew,
Hails me so solemnly to yonder yew?”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Elegy on the Lady Jane Pawlet, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919); comparable to "What beckoning ghost along the moonlight shade / Invites my steps, and points to yonder glade?", Alexander Pope, in To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady.