Oxen Quotes

• Happy he who far from business, like the primitive are of mortals, cultivates with his own oxen the fields of his fathers, free from all anxieties of gain.

  Horace

  Father, Agriculture, Anxiety

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• If oxen and horses and lions could draw and paint, they would delineate the gods in their own image.

  Xenophanes

  Horse, Atheism, Lions

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• I come from pioneer stock, developers of the West, people who went out into the wilderness and set up home with nothing but a pair of oxen.

  Joni Mitchell

  Home, People, Pioneers

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• The patience of poverty. In rice fields, backs bent forever. Amazing, man outoxens the oxen and still smiles. The mystery of India, say Indologists.

  Gunter Grass

  Men, Forever, India

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• One hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen.

  James Howell

  Hair, Pairs, Hundred

  'Familiar Letters' (1645-55) bk. 2, letter 4

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• Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.

  Samuel Johnson

  Should, Fats

  Parodying Henry Brooke, in James Boswell 'The Life of Samuel Johnson' (1791) vol. 4, p. 313 (June 1784).

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• One farmer says to me, "You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make the bones with;" and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying himself with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Philosophical, Animal, Vegetarianism

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• The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.

  William Butler Yeats

  God, Time, Years

  Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 4

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• If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens?

  Seymour Cray

  Witty, Strong, Powerful

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• Having your book turned into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into bouillon cubes.

  John le Carre

  Movie, Book, Reading

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• The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black,
  While the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair.
  “If oxen and horses and lions had hands and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men, horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses and oxen would draw them to look like oxen, and each would make the gods' bodies have the same shape as they themselves had.

  Xenophanes

  Horse, Eye, Men

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• Democracy is like three oxen pulling a plough. The oxen are the independent powers, but you have to walk in the same direction; otherwise, you cannot plough and that is what was happening in Colombia. One ox was walking in one direction, the other in another direction, so the democracy was not working.

  Juan Manuel Santos

  Independent, One Direction, Democracy

  "Santos: 'Colombia can play a role . . . that coincides with the U.S. interest'". Interview with Juan Forero, www.washingtonpost.com. December 26, 2010.

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• One ox, two oxen. One fox, two foxen.

  Jenny Lawson

  Two, Foxes

  Jenny Lawson (2012). “Let's Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir)”, p.197, Pan Macmillan

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• And God, the herdsman, goads them on behind.

  William Butler Yeats

  Time, Behinds

  Poems (1895) "The Countess Cathleen" act 4

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• Beauty draws more than oxen.

  George Herbert

  Beauty, Draws

  George Herbert (1836). “The works of George Herbert. containing Parentalia, the 2nd copy wanting the 1st sheet of vol.2].”, p.168

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• My situation is a solemn one: life is offered to me on the condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed, not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures. It will be, without the exception of Noah's Ark, the most remarkable thing of its kind ever seen.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Men, Aquariums, White

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• Tempore difficiles veniunt ad aratra juvenci;
  Tempore lenta pati frena docentur equi.
  In time the unmanageable young oxen come to the plough; in time the horses are taught to endure the restraining bit.

  Ovid

  Time, Horse, Taught

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• Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it. Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.

  Gautama Buddha

  Life, Attitude, Thinking

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• Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think.

  Gautama Buddha

  Motivational, Buddhist, Military

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• Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

  Jonathan Swift

  Science, Feet, Stockings

  Jonathan Swift (1765). “The Works of Dr. Jonathan Swift ...: Accurately Revised ... Adorned with Copper-plates; with Some Account of the Author's Life, and Notes Historical and Explanatory”, p.288

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• It is folly to put the plough in front of the oxen.

  Francois Rabelais

  Order, Folly, Fronts

  "Gargantua" by François Rabelais, ch. XI, 1534.

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• The earth was our home, she would have said, but no less was it home to the oxen that pulled our plows or the elephants that roamed in the forest and worked for us. They lived with us as partners whose well-being was inseparable from our own.

  Eknath Easwaran

  Home, Compassion, Elephants

  Eknath Easwaran “The Compassionate Universe: The Power of the Individual to Heal the Environment”, Nilgiri Press

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• The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

  Jonathan Swift

  Science, Feet, Found

  Jonathan Swift (1803). “The Works”, p.388

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• Too slow, the wagons of years,
  The oxen of days--too glum.
  Our god is the god of speed,
  Our heart--our battle-drum.

  Vladimir Mayakovsky

  Heart, Years, Battle

  Vladimir Mayakovsky (1972). “Poems”

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• My, g**, he was as strong as a team of oxen. That would be strong right?

  James Patterson

  Strong, Team, Would Be

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