Blight Quotes

• Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

  Charles Dickens

  Exercise, Men, Sight

  Charles Dickens (2005). “A Tale of Two Cities - Literary Touchstone Edition”, p.87, Prestwick House Inc

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• Humans have grown like a cancer. We're the biggest blight on the face of the earth.

  Ingrid Newkirk

  Cancer, Earth, Faces

  Washingtonian magazine, February 1, 1990.

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• America today stands poised on a pinnacle of wealth and power, yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space, and of an over-all environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight.

  Stewart Udall

  Nature, Land, America

  Stewart L. Udall (1963). “The Quiet Crisis”

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• All things with which we deal preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Weed, Spring, Rain

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.157

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• Oh for a tongue to curse the slave Whose treason, like a deadly blight, Comes o'er the councils of the brave, And blasts them in their hour of might!

  Charles Lamb

  Bravery, Might, Tongue

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• Some say that happiness is not good for mortals, & they ought to be answered that sorrow is not fit for immortals & is utterly useless to any one; a blight never does good to a tree, & if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit, let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight.

  William Blake

  Happiness, Tree, Sorrow

  William Blake (1966). “Complete Writings: With Variant Readings”, p.830, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I don't believe in evil; I believe only in horror. In nature there is no evil, only an abundance of horror: the plagues and the blights and the ants and the maggots.

  Isak Dinesen

  Believe, Evil, Ants

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• There is a middlebrow snobbery in America that praises everything on public television and disdains everything on the commercial networks as a blight.

  Henry Fairlie

  America, Television, Praise

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• Lord, confound this surly sister, blight her brow with blotch and blister, cramp her larynx, lung and liver, in her guts a galling give her.

  John Millington Synge

  Sister, Giving, Lord

  John Millington Synge (2008). “The Complete Works of J. M. Synge”, p.446, Wordsworth Editions

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• We beg you to save young America from the blight of race prejudice. Do not bind the children within the narrow circles of your own lives.

  Charles Hamilton Houston

  Children, Race, Circles

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• There is a sort of jealousy which needs very little fire; it is hardly a passion, but a blight bred in the cloudy, damp despondency of uneasy egoism.

  George Eliot

  Jealousy, Passion, Fire

  George Eliot (1994). “Middlemarch”, p.175, Wordsworth Editions

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• If there is any justice in the world, then eighties rock will never again serve to blight humanity as it did in that dark decade!

  Vivian Campbell

  Dark, Rocks, Justice

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• Kill if you must, but never hate: Man is but grass and hate is blight, The sun will scorch you soon or late, Die wholesome then, since you must fight

  Robert Graves

  Hate, Fighting, Men

  Robert Graves, Beryl Graves, Dunstan Ward (1999). “Complete poems”, Carcanet Pr

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• Over the whole earth- this infinitely small globe that possesses all we know of sunshine and bird song- an unfamiliar blight is creeping: man- man, who has become at last a planetary disease and who would, if his technology yet permitted, pass this infection to another star.

  Loren Eiseley

  Song, Stars, Sunshine

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• When I came to Detroit, if you threw a stone up in the air it would hit an autoworker on its way down. A few years after that, if you threw a stone in the air it'd hit an abandoned house or a vacant lot on its way down. And most people saw those vacant lots as blight. But meanwhile during World War II, blacks had moved from the South to the North. And they saw these vacant lots as places where you could grow food for the community. And so urban agriculture was born.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  War, Agriculture, Air

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

  James Russell Lowell

  Light, Choices, Forever

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.66

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• Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say that a noncomformist is a blight on society. But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge, that one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and stunning contribution to her culture.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Mean, Healing, Sheep

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• Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.

  James Russell Lowell

  Men, Knowing Who You Are, Nations

  'The Present Crisis' (1845)

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• What exile from himself can flee? To zones, though more and more remote, Still, still pursues, where'er I be, The blight of life--the demon Thought.

  Lord Byron

  Demon, Exile, Pursue

  Lord Byron (1854). “Childe Harold's pilgrimage”, p.57

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• It is ever so with the things that Men begin: there is a frost in Spring, or a blight in Summer, and they fail of their promise.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Summer, Spring, Men

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings”, p.855, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Racism is a blight on the human conscience. The idea that any people can be inferior to another, to the point where those who consider themselves superior define and treat the rest as subhuman, denies the humanity even of those who elevate themselves to the status of gods.

  Nelson Mandela

  Ideas, Racism, People

  Nelson Mandela (2011). “Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations”, p.323, Pan Macmillan

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• Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, But which will bloom most constantly? The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring ,Its summer blossoms scent the air; Yet wait till winter comes again, And who will call the wild-briar fair? Then, scorn the silly rose-wreath now, And deck thee with holly's sheen, That, when December blights thy brow, He still may leave thy garland green.

  Emily Dickinson

  Summer, Sweet, Spring

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• I thought about how stupid it is, that all of us are born destined to desire somebody else, though desire brings with it such disappointment and pain. Humankind's history must be scored bloody with heartbreak. This hankering for affection is a blight upon us.

  Sonya Hartnett

  Pain, Disappointment, Stupid

  Sonya Hartnett (2006). “Surrender”, Candlewick Press (MA)

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• It's hard to believe that, in the 1970's, America was virtually hunger-free. During the past two decades, we have allowed hunger to attack our most precious resource, our children. We must reinstate and strengthen programs to eliminate this blight on our society.

  Kurtwood Smith

  Children, Believe, Past

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• I find those wind turbines around Lake George to be utterly offensive. I think they're just a blight on the landscape.

  Joe Hockey

  Thinking, Lakes, Wind

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