Thistle quotes by topic: People and thistles, Scotland and thistle, Gardening and thistles, Attitude to thistle, Women and thistles, Flowers and thistles, Figs and thistles, Rose and thistle, Donkey and thistles, Spines and thistles, Weeds and thistles, Thistles features, Road and thistles, Nature and thistles, Christmas and thistles, etc.
People and thistles
But most of all he was what Meleager calls him, “a thistle with graceful leaves”. (Archilochus)
If you were a plant, you would be a thistle. (C.J. Roberts)
And had a face like a bulldog licking vinegar off a thistle… (Terry Pratchett)
Apparently Phoebus gives him – A crown of thistle. (Charles Hubert Millevoye)
What we sow in youth we reap in age; the seed of the thistle always produces the thistle. (James Thomas Fields)
I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow. (Abraham Lincoln)
You can imagine thistle-down so light that when you run after it your running motion would drive it away from you, and that the more you tried to catch it the faster it would fly from your grasp. And it should be with every man, that, when he is chased by troubles, they, chasing, shall raise him higher and higher. (Henry Ward Beecher)
A stroke of a man knocking a thistle top with a walking stick. (John Arlott)
Scotland and thistle
When the Danes invaded Scotland, they stole a silent night march upon the Scottish camp by marching barefoot; but a Dane inadvertently stepped on a thistle, and his sudden, sharp cry, arousing the sleeping Scots, saved them and their country; hence the Scotch emblem. (Neltje Blanchan)
St. George and the rose symbolize England, St. Andrew and the thistle symbolize Scotland… (Vsevolod Ovchinnikov)
Floral emblems have been often adopted. The houses of York and Lancaster had their roses, the Bourbons of France, the fleur-de-lis, Scotland her thistle, and Ireland her shamrock. (Dorothea Dix)
The double tressure might you see,
First by Achaius borne,
The thistle and the fleur-de-lis,
And gallant unicorn. (Walter Scott)
Triumphant be the thistle still unfurled,
Dear symbol wild! on Freedom’s hills it grows,
Where Fingal stemmed the tyrants of the world,
And Roman eagles found unconquered foes! (Thomas Campbell)
Up wi’ the flowers o’ Scotland,
The emblems o’ the free,
Their guardians for a thousand years,
Their guardians still we’ll be.
A foe had better brave the de’il
Within his reeky cell,
Than our thistle’s purple bonnet,
Or bonny heather bell. (Thomas Hood)
Gardening and thistles
People are most annoyed when no wheat grows in the field where they have sown thistles. (Franz Carl Endres)
Three weeks later, the lawn was densely overgrown with thistles and all sorts of evil spirits, creeping or rooted into the ground a whole cubit. (Karel Capek)
Gardens can be sharp and spiky as well as rose-embowered and honeysuckle-twined: there are corners and settings where thistles are not such an asinine taste after all. (Robin Lane Fox)
Untilled soil, however fertile it may be, will bear thistles and thorns; so it is with man’s mind. (Teresa of Avila)
The thorny thistles on the oily and wet soil of the flower garden (there was a large shady garden around it) reached such large sizes that they almost seemed like trees. (Vsevolod Garshin)
Attitude to thistle
May the fruitful ear be an example to you and the lonely thistle a warning for your entire life. (Friedrich Adolf Krummacher)
Be thankful for the thorns and thistles, which keep you from being in love with this world, and becoming an idolater. (Charles Spurgeon)
It is easier to prevent thistles and habits than to uproot them. (Austin O’Malley)
Pluck the day, not just when it is a rose or a daisy – then it is no great feat – pluck it too if it is a thistle. (Patricia De Martelaere)
The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower? (Henry Ward Beecher)
Women and thistles
She wants a mid-season hat. There is the very one! Of silvery-green straw, trimmed with delicate pale thistles—a perfect poem of spring! (Grazia Deledda)
Lest her creeping-soul clutch this heart of thistle. (Nick Cave)
She is like the thistle that grows up behind my place, a good-looking prickly plant, with a ball of down for a head. (George Manville Fenn)
For I know if I should bid her bring any Lettuces, she would bring Thistles. (Desiderius Erasmus)
As for esoterics—I would fainer exchange musings anent over-shoes than over-souls. And my spirit bears in fertile earthy soil chiefly thistles from which men gather no figs. (Mary MacLane)
Flowers and thistles
But, one fine day, a number of little poppies and thistles and dandelions and burdocks and bell-flowers stuck their heads up above the ground in the midst of the luxuriant rye. (Carl Ewald)
I leave to children exclusively, but only for the life of their childhood, all and every the dandelions of the fields and the daisies thereof, with the right to play among them freely, according to the custom of children, warning them at the same time against the thistles. (Williston Fish)
I see, when I bend close, how each leaflet of a climbing rose is bordered with frost, the autumn counterpart of the dewdrops of summer dawns. The feathery leaves of yarrow are thick with silver rime and dry thistle heads rise like goblets plated with silver catching the sun. (Edwin Way Teale)
I wanted to make a bouquet and include all the good things in it I only found thistles, clover and morning glories the meadow bouquet became colorful and fine. It doesn’t always have to be a little rose, giving a little joy, often goes deeper into the heart. (Erna Ebenwald)
Figs and thistles
Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? (Jesus the Christ)
And never since harvests were ripened, Or laborers born, Have men gathered figs of the thistle, Or grapes of the thorn! (Phoebe Cary)
Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles. (Kate Douglas Wiggin)
I would sooner look for figs on thistles than for the higher attributes of art from one whose ruling motive… is money. (Asher Brown Durand)
Rose and thistle
Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow. (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I’ve never been able to believe it. I don’t believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. (Lucy Maud Montgomery)
Time is a vase. It depends on whether you put thistles or roses in it. (Rudolf Rolfs)
The destinies are jealous of our prosperity, – And let the thistles last longer than the roses. (Honorat de Bueil, lord of Racan)
Donkey and thistles
A donkey would choose thistles over gold. (Heraclitus)
The donkey among the thistles does not sleep. (Theocritus)
The more donkeys there are in the world, the more thistles are valued. (Alois Essigmann)
If I had to fish for donkey, I would put thistles on my line: a two-year-old child would understand. (Maurice Genevoix)
Spines and thistles
A thistle grows about here which has needles on it that would pierce through leather, I think; if one touches you, you can find relief in nothing but profanity. (Mark Twain)
It is perhaps because the thistle stings that it does not fear drought. You shouldn’t be too lenient: a little hatred protects. (Jules Renard)
And here’s the great spiny thistle, too, that armed highwayman with florid face and pompon in his cap. But he has had his day, and now we see him old and seedy; his spears are broken, and his silvery gray hairs are floating everywhere and glistening in the sun. (William Hamilton Gibson)
Weeds and thistles
Poor weeds—fine tall fresh green thistles and docks spreading out their leaves in lovely curves. I’m sorry for all the things that are not much wanted on this earth. (Marion Harry Spielmann and George Somes Layard)
The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not. (Robert Green Ingersoll)
Bushes, which so often occupy pastures, should be grubbed up, and by all means destroyed; so should all thistles, briers, and large weeds. (J.H. Walden)
Thistles features
Thistles are comprised in a large mixed genus of our English weeds, and wild plants, several of them possessing attributed medicinal virtues. (William Thomas Fernie)
Nothing is less promising than precocity. A young thistle is more like a future tree than is a young oak. (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)
Dense, matted, wool-like hairs, that cover the bristling stems of most thistles, make climbing mighty unpleasant for ants, which ever delight in pilfering sweets. (Neltje Blanchan)
Road and thistles
At the roadside on either hand there were still and ever tall withered thistles and giant fennel with yellow umbels. (Émile Zola)
Along the wayside rose tall, dead thistles, white with age, their great cluster of seed-vessels showing how fine the flower had been. (George Gissing)
At the very edge of the road, an outstretched thistle stretched out its black, charred, thin arms and seemed to cry out: “Stop! Hear us out! Don’t pass by!” (I. Grekova)
Nature and thistles
Occasionally an humble thistle, with its blossom of purple base and intense pink center, thrust up its head through some leafy bower. (J.A. Graves)
Summer laughs, and we see on the seashore – The blue sand thistle blooming. (Victor Hugo)
As the wind blows in its abandon – The white down of the old hoary thistle… (Jacques Amyot)
Christmas and thistles
Sister Susie, sitting on a thistle?
Gosh, oh gee, how happy I’d be
If I could only whistle
All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. (Nat King Cole)
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And fill’d all the stockings; then turn’d with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprung to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle:
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night. (Henry Livingston Jr.)
Desolation and thistles
Then rode Geraint into the castle court,
His charger trampling many a prickly star
Of sprouted thistle on the broken stones.
He looked and saw that all was ruinous. (Alfred Tennyson)
Spirits that call and no one answers;
Ha’nacker’s down and England’s done.
Wind and Thistle for pipe and dancers
And never a ploughman under the Sun.
Never a ploughman. Never a one. (Hilaire Belloc)
Autumn and thistles
Beautiful, indeed, was the scene before them! The myriad leaves of the underbrush and the lofty canopies of the trees were dyed with all the varied colors of an autumn day. Even the thistle, when sheltered by some impending bough, retained its rose-pink bloom. (Henry S. Spalding)
When on the breath of Autumn’s breeze, From pastures dry and brown, Goes floating, like an idle thought, The fair, white thistle-down; O, then what joy to walk at will, Upon the golden harvest-hill! (Mary Howitt)
Problems and thistles
All problems become smaller if you don’t dodge them, but confront them. Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble. (William Halsey)
I could not move a thistle;
The very sparrows in the hedge
Scarce answer to my whistle. (Alfred Tennyson)
Canada and thistles
Well, Dave, we had briers and brambles on the farm, but nothing to compare with those Canadian thistles, or whatever they were. Look at my face. (Roy Rockwood)
What are common weeds in one country are rare, choice plants in another. Where this does not grow, it would be thought exquisite; but the Canada thistle is wide spread throughout the world. (F.B. Smith)
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