Oxen Quotes - Page 2

• Money appears as measure (in Homer, e.g. oxen) earlier than as medium of exchange, because in barter each commodity is still its own medium of exchange. But it cannot be its own or its own standard of comparison.

  Karl Marx

  Commodity, Standards, Mediums

  Karl Marx (1973). “Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy”, Vintage Books USA

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If oxen and lions had hands and could paint with their hands and produce works of art, as men do, horses would paint the forms of the gods likes horses and oxen like oxen. Each would represent them with bodies according to the bodies of each. So the Ethiopians make their gods black and snub-nosed; the Thracians give theirs red hair and blue eyes.

  Xenophanes

  Art, Horse, Eye

  31 Copy quote

• Beauty drawes more then oxen.

  George Herbert

  Beauty

  George Herbert (1874). “The Complete Works of George Herbert: Prose”, p.349

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vineyards and shining harvests, pastures, arbors,
  And all this our very utmost toil
  Can hardly care for, we wear down our strength
  Whether in oxen or in men, we dull
  The edges of our ploughshares, and in return
  Our fields turn mean and stingy, underfed,
  And so today the farmer shakes his head,
  More and more often sighing that his work,
  The labour of his hands, has come to naught.

  Lucretius

  Work, Mean, Men

  4 Copy quote

• In literature, there are only oxen. The biggest ones are the geniuses-the ones who toil eighteen hours a day without tiring.

  Jules Renard

  Writing, Toil, Genius

  Jules Renard (1964). “The journal of Jules Renard”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happy he who far from business persuits
  Tills and re-tills his ancestral lands
  With oxen of his own breeding
  Having no slavish yoke about his neck.

  Horace

  Land, Yoke, Necks

  4 Copy quote

• Know all things to be like this: A mirage, a cloud castle, A dream, an apparition, Without essence, but with qualities that can be seen. Know all things to be like this: As the moon in a bright sky In some clear lake reflected, Though to that lake the moon has never moved. Know all things to be like this: As an echo that derives From music, sounds, and weeping, Yet in that echo is no melody. Know all things to be like this: As a magician makes illusions Of horses, oxen, carts and other things, Nothing is as it appears.

  Gautama Buddha

  Dream, Buddhist, Horse

  11 Copy quote

• Our panaceas cure but few ails, our general hospitals are private and exclusive. We must set up another Hygeia than is now worshiped. Do not the quacks even direct small doses for children, larger for adults, and larger still for oxen and horses? Let us remember that we are to prescribe for the globe itself.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Horse, Children, Health

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.164, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The air was cold to the lungs, the long grass dripping wet, and the herbs on it gave out their spiced astringent scent. In a little while on all sides the Cicada would begin to sing. The grass was me , and the air, the distant invisible mountains were me, the tired oxen were me. I breathed with the slight night-wind in the thorn trees.

  Isak Dinesen

  Tired, Night, Long Grass

  Isak Dinesen (1938). “Out of Africa”

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.

  William Winwood Reade

  Compassion, Sheep, Looks

  William Winwood Reade (1892). “The Martyrdom of Man”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Ready or not, here I come I'm so tired of this dumb game of hide and seek Olly olly oxen free Show yourself, you're scaring me Come out, come out, where ever you are You've taken this thing way too far

  Sonya Sones

  Taken, Tired, Games

  4 Copy quote

• In 1867, George Campbell, Duke of Argyll, had published The Reign of Law, a book that Darwin found deeply annoying. A supporter of Richard Owen, Campbell argued that while evolution (or Development) might be observable in the fossil record, it was merely evidence of God's purpose. God, for example, would cause horses and oxen to evolve in time to meet human needs. The brightly colored plumage of birds, Campbell went on, were simply God's decorations of nature for humanity's enjoyment.

  Jonathan Clements

  Horse, Book, Law

  5 Copy quote

• I take a slow sip of lukewarm coffee, reopen the book, and read the words scribbled in red ink near the top: Everyone needs an olly-olly-oxen-free.

  Jay Asher

  Coffee, Book, Ink

  Jay Asher (2011). “Thirteen Reasons Why”, p.91, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the chopper would praise a pine, he will commonly tell you that the one he cut was so big that a yoke of oxen stood on its stump; as if that were what the pine had grown for, to become the footstool of oxen.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Cutting, Yoke, Praise

  Henry David Thoreau (1873). “The Maine Woods”, p.234

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearth-side ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! yet, I feel If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel, In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so.

  Thomas Hardy

  Lonely, Loneliness, Years

  Thomas Hardy (2009). “Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses: Easyread Large Bold Edition”, p.77, ReadHowYouWant.com

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Graciousness, courtesy, compassion-this is hesed. Hesed is a quality that extends even to the animals and the land. The sabbath rest principle of Hebrew law included the needs of the livestock (Exod. 23:12). After seven years of planting and harvesting, the land itself needed "a year of complete rest" (Lev. 25:5). Even the soil of the vineyards was not to be overtaxed by planting other crops between the rows (Deut. 22:9). The oxen that trod out the grain were not to be muzzled so that they could eat while they worked (Deut. 25:4). And so on.

  Richard J. Foster

  Animal, Compassion, Years

  10 Copy quote

• If one ox could not do the job they did not try to grow a bigger ox, but used two oxen. When we need greater computer power, the answer is not to get a bigger computer, but . . .to build systems of computers and operate them in parallel.

  Grace Hopper

  Jobs, Two, Trying

  72 Copy quote

• That girls should not marry for money we are all agreed. A lady who can sell herself for a title or an estate, for an income or aset of family diamonds, treats herself as a farmer treats his sheep and oxen--makes hardly more of herself, of her own inner self, in which are comprised a mind and soul, than the poor wretch of her own sex who earns her bread in the lowest state of degradation.

  Anthony Trollope

  Marriage, Girl, Money

  Anthony Trollope (2015). “Framley Parsonage”, p.247, Booklassic

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is true, these Roman Catholics, priests and all, impress me as a people who have fallen far behind the significance of their symbols. It is as if an ox had strayed into a church and were trying to bethink himself. Nevertheless, they are capable of reverence; but we Yankees are a people in whom this sentiment has nearly died out, and in this respect we cannot bethink ourselves even as oxen.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Yankees, People, Catholic

  Henry David Thoreau (2016). “A Yankee in Canada”, p.17, Graphic Arts Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hither rolls the storm of heat;
  I feel its finer billows beat
  Like a sea which me infolds;
  Heat with viewless fingers moulds,
  Swells, and mellows, and matures,
  Paints, and flavors, and allures,
  Bird and brier inly warms,
  Still enriches and transforms,
  Gives the reed and lily length,
  Adds to oak and oxen strength,
  Transforming what it doth infold,
  Life out of death, new out of old.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Sea, Giving, Bird

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.182, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Christmas Eve I saw a stable, low and very bare, A little child in a manger. The oxen knew Him, had Him in their care, To men He was a stranger, The safety of the world was lying there, And the world's danger.

  Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

  Children, Lying, Men

  7 Copy quote

• And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.

  John the Apostle

  Jesus, Father, Sheep

  23 Copy quote

• It seemed a strange thing to him, when earth was earth and rain was rain, that scrawny pines should grow in the scrub, while by every branch and lake and river there grew magnolias. Dogs were the same everywhere, and oxen and mules and horses. But trees were different in different places.

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

  Dog, Horse, Rain

  Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (2011). “The Yearling”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• From high Meonia's rocky shores I came, Of poor decsent, Acoetes is my name, My sire was measly born: no oxen ploughed, His fruitful fields, nor in his pastures lowed, His whole estate within the waters lay' With lines and hooks he caught the finny prey; His art was all his livelehood, which he Thus with his dying lips bequeathed to me: In streams, my boy, and rivers take thy chance; There swims', said he, Thy whole inheritance.

  Ovid

  Art, Boys, Sea

  4 Copy quote

• Keep in mind that this appears in the same book of the Bible that approves the death sentence for a child who curses his parents, owners of oxen who injure someone through the owner's negligence, anybody who works or kindles a fire on Sunday, and anyone who has sex with an animal.

  Jim Butcher

  Sex, Children, Book

  Jim Butcher (2008). “White Night: A Novel of the Dresden Files”, p.23, Penguin

  13 Copy quote

  Show source