Hens Quotes - Page 2

• It's like the brooding hen sitting over a china egg.

  Navjot Singh Sidhu

  Eggs, Sitting, Brooding

  11 Copy quote

• Go to Old Delhi,and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundred of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire-mesh cages. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them.They know they are next, yet they cannot rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop. The very same thing is done with humans in this country.

  Aravind Adiga

  Country, Brother, Lying

  30 Copy quote

• A Royal Commission is a broody hen sitting on a china egg.

  Michael Foot

  Eggs, Sitting, Royal

  1964 Speech, House of Commons.

  8 Copy quote

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• The hens they all cackle, the roosters all beg,
  But I will not hatch, I will not hatch.
  For I hear all the talk of pollution and war
  As the people all shout and the airplane roar,
  So I'm staying in here where it's safe and it's warm,
  And I WILL NOT HATCH!

  Shel Silverstein

  Fear, War, Airplane

  24 Copy quote

• Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Patriotism, Fever, Stones

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2230, Delphi Classics

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• We need the tonic of the wilderness, to wade sometimes in the marsh where the bitten and the meadow hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Adventure, Smell, Needs

  18 Copy quote

• What's the meaning of all the pious clamor, condemning cocks and hens? Those who have no teeth are the greatest meat-haters.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Hypocrisy, Meat, Teeth

  6 Copy quote

• Mr. Jesmond made a peculiar noise rather like a hen who has decided to lay an egg and then thought better of it.

  Agatha Christie

  Eggs, Peculiar, Noise

  Agatha Christie (1991). “Agatha Christie's Poirot”, Fontana Press

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• It is not unprofessional to give free legal advice, but advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he will not bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house.

  Warren E. Burger

  Giving, Advice, House

  18 Copy quote

• Every hen thinks she has laid the best egg! Can we not all believe as we choose? But the choice of others - what is that to us? Let them alone.

  Phyllis Bottome

  Believe, Acceptance, Thinking

  Phyllis Bottome (1998). “The Mortal Storm”, p.52, Northwestern University Press

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• Is it not shameful and a great scandal that we poor latecomers, we Christians, aided by grace, the Faith, and the sacraments, should be running about like blind hens, ignorant of our own self and of the depth within us?

  Johannes Tauler

  Self, Ignorant, Depth

  10 Copy quote

• One day the President and Mrs. Coolidge were visiting a government farm. Soon after their arrival they were taken off on separate tours. When Mrs. Coolidge passed the chicken pens she paused to ask the man in charge if the rooster copulates more than once each day. "Dozens of times, was the reply." "Please tell that to the President," Mrs. Coolidge requested. When the President passed the pens and was told about the roosters, he asked "Same hen every time?" "Oh no, Mr. President, a different one each time." The President nodded slowly, then said, "Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge."

  Calvin Coolidge

  Taken, Men, One Day

  47 Copy quote

• What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander, but it is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the Guinea hen.

  Alice B. Toklas

  Food, Turkeys, Ducks

  15 Copy quote

• Pain makes hens and poets cackle.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Pain, Creativity, Poet

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.246, Penguin

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• It takes one hen to lay an egg, but seven men to sell it.

  C. J. Dennis

  Business, Men, Eggs

  7 Copy quote

• Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eggs, Chickens, Should

  Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.386, Modern Library

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• Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated; that if you clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves.

  Willa Cather

  Mistake, Thinking, Public Opinion

  Willa Cather (2013). “The Best of Willa Cather”, p.265, Simon and Schuster

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• When you let the wolves guard the hen house, there's bound to be a few chicken dinners.

  James St. James

  House, Dinner, Chickens

  James St. James (2003). “Party Monster: A Fabulous But True Tale of Murder in Clubland”, p.82, Simon and Schuster

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• The unwritten rules of behaviour are infinite in number, finely shaded, and subtle to the last fraction of a degree. They are not to be broken. If broken, the rules of forgiveness leading to re-establishment are equally of air and iron. I learn these rules with rather less ease than my contemporaries because, in the back streets of my being, a duel is developing and increasing in fervour between my instinct which knows why something is so, and my hen-pecking intelligence which wishes to analyse why something is so.

  Hal Porter

  Art, Air, Iron

  Hal Porter, Mary Lord (1980). “Hal Porter”, Univ of Queensland Pr

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• Progress? It ought to be stopped, that's what I say. If the Lord meant chickens to come out of incubators he'd never have made hens, it stands to reason.

  Winifred Holtby

  Change, Progress, Resistance

  Winifred Holtby (1937). “Pavements at Anderby: tales of "South riding" and other regions by Winifred Holtby”

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• When the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British parliament was advised by an artful man [Sir William Keith], who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people. That it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them. But that they should not do it openly; but to weaken them and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.

  George Mason

  Men, Gun, America

  George Mason's address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 14, 1788.

  58 Copy quote

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• I go on working for the same reason that a hen goes on laying eggs. There is in every living creature an obscure but powerful impulse to active functioning. Life demands to be lived. Inaction, save as a measure of recuperation between bursts of activity, is painful and dangerous to the healthy organism- in fact, it is almost impossible. Only the dying can be really idle.

  H. L. Mencken

  Life, Success, Powerful

  7 Copy quote

• People in Washington seem as hypnotized by precedence as though they were hens with their beaks on a chalk line.

  Alice Roosevelt Longworth

  People, Lines, Beaks

  19 Copy quote

• The ego camouflages itself like a fox born and raised in a hen house. Its only worry is that you fail to notice its presence every so often and start acting without fear

  Dean Cavanagh

  Worry, House, Ego

  7 Copy quote

• Some men ease themselves like setting hens into the nest of death.

  John Steinbeck

  Men, Ease, Nests

  John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.113, Penguin

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