Ploughing Quotes

• For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Patriotic

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Powerful Poems (Annotated Edition)”, p.183, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The future is carved out of the present moment. Tomorrow's harvest depends upon today's ploughing and sowing.

  Chinmayananda Saraswati

  Inspiring, Moving, Heart

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• What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

  Justin Townes Earle

  Song, Writing, Bob

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• I am content with nothing, restless and ambitious... and I despise myself for the vanity, which formed half the stimulus to my exertions. Oh would that I were one of those plodding wise fools who having once set their hand to the plough go on nothing doubting.

  Thomas Huxley

  Wise, Thinking, Vanity

  "Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest". Book by Adrian Desmond (p. 84), 1997.

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• Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.

  George Orwell

  Running, Fear, Animal

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.22, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Man is the only creature that consumes without producing

  George Orwell

  Animal, Men, Eggs

  Animal Farm (1945) ch. 1

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• It is often said it is no matter what a man believes if he is only sincere. This is true of all minor truths, and false of all truths whose nature it is to fashion a man's life. It will make no difference in a man's harvest whether he thinks turnips have more saccharine matter than potatoes--whether corn is better than wheat. But let the man sincerely believe that seed planted without ploughing is as good as with, that January is as favorable for seed sowing as April, and that cockle seed will produce as good a harvest as wheat, and will it make no difference?

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Fashion, Believe, Men

  henry ward beecher (1858). “life thoughts,”, p.16

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• To teach one who has no curiosity to learn, is to sow a field without ploughing it.

  Richard Whately

  Science, Curiosity, Fields

  Francis Bacon, Richard Whately (1858). “Essays: With Annotations by Richard Whately”, p.491

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• ....the ancient ritual of the earth; ploughing and planting, reaping and threshing. The fundamental business remains unaltered; it is only the methods and tools that science is changing.

  Patience Strong

  Tools, Fundamentals, Earth

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• There is only one way fit for a man - Heroism, or Master-Morality, or Violence. All the other people in between are ploughing the sand.

  C. S. Lewis

  Men, People, Heroism

  "The Pilgrim's Regress". Book by C. S. Lewis, p. 100, 1933.

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• This means that they are bound by law and custom to plough the fields of their masters, harvest the corn, gather it into barns, and thresh and winnow the grain; they must also mow and carry home the hay, cut and collect wood, and perform all manner of tasks of this kind.

  Jean Froissart

  Home, Mean, Cutting

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• We often plough so much energy into the big picture, we forget the pixels.

  Silvia Cartwright

  Energy, Pixels, Forget

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• All you have in comedy, in general, is just going with your instincts. You can only hope that other people think that what you think is funny is funny. I don't have an answer but I just try to plough straight ahead.

  Will Ferrell

  Thinking, People, Trying

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• The glacier was God's great plough . . . set at work ages ago to grind, furrow, and knead over, as it were, the surface of the earth?

  Louis Agassiz

  Work, Age, Earth

  Louis Agassiz (1876). “Geological Sketches”

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• The crowd, still shouting, gives way before us. We plough our way through. Women hold their aprons over their faces and go stumbling away. A roar of fury goes up. A wounded man is being carried off.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Men, Giving, Crowds

  Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “The Road Back: A Novel”, p.249, Random House

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• We are going to inherit the earth . There is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie may blast and burn its own world before it finally leaves the stage of history. We Are not afraid of ruins. We who ploughed the prairies and built the cities can build again, only better next time. We carry a new world, here in our hearts. That world is growing this minute.

  Buenaventura Durruti

  Heart, Cities, History

  Interview with Pierre van Paassen, The Toronto Daily Star, July 24, 1936.

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• The earth doesn't belong to anyone. It is the land upon which all of us are to live for many years, ploughing, reaping and destroying. You are always a guest on this earth and have the austerity of a guest. Austerity is far deeper than owning only a few things. The very word austerity has been spoilt by the monks, by the sannyasis, by the hermits. Sitting on that high hill alone in the solitude of many things, many rocks and little animals and ants, that word has no meaning.

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Spiritual, Animal, Rocks

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• And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

  Sojourner Truth

  Mother, Strong Women, Jesus

  Sojourner Truth, “Ain't I A Woman?”

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• Courage to me means ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life-not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living. A sort of insistence on the value of life and the worth of transient things...My courage is faith-faith in the eternal resilience of me-that joy'll come back, and hope and spontaneity. And I feel that till it does, I've got to keep my lips shut and my chin high, and my eyes wide

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Mean, Eye, People

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• And yet, we know how fatal the pursuit of liveliness may be: it may result in ... tiresome acrobatics. ... Flashy effects distract the mind. They destroy their persuasiveness; you would not believe a man was very intent on ploughing a furrow if he carried a hoop with him and jumped through it at every other step. ... When virtuosity gets the upper hand of your theme, or is better than your idea, it is time to quit.

  Katherine Anne Porter

  Believe, Men, Ideas

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• Cincinnatus was ploughing his four jugera of land upon the Vaticanian Hill, the same that are still known as the Quintian Meadows, when the messenger brought him the dictatorship, finding him, the tradition says, stripped to the work.

  Pliny the Elder

  Land, Four, Messengers

  Pliny the Elder (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of Pliny the Elder (Illustrated)”, p.845, Delphi Classics

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• As he rounded the corner, he saw two dozen men, naked to the waist, digging a hole thirty yards square at the side of the path. For a moment he was baffled. It seemed to have no agricultural purpose; there was no more planting or ploughing to be done. Then he realized what it was. They were digging a mass grave. He thought of shouting an order to about turn or at least to avert their eyes, but they were almost on it, and some of them had already seen their burial place. The songs died on their lips and the air was reclaimed by the birds.

  Sebastian Faulks

  Song, Eye, Men

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• But what manner of use would it be ploughing through that darkness?' asked Drinian. Use?' replied Reepicheep. 'Use, Captain?' If you mean by filling our bellies or our purses, I confess it will be no use at all. So far as I know we did not set sail to look for things useful but to seek honour and adventures. And here is as great an adventure as I have ever heard of, and here, if we turn back, no little impeachment of all our honours.

  C. S. Lewis

  Adventure, Mean, Darkness

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• The strength that I have comes from irrigating the citrus plantation, ploughing in the vineyard, guarding the melon fields at night. I believe that's what gave me the strength.

  Ariel Sharon

  Believe, Night, Vineyards

  Interview With Matt Rees, content.time.com. May 14, 2005.

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• Well, I am ploughing on my canvases as they do on their fields (the peasants). It goes badly enough in our profession - in fact that has always been so, but at the moment it is very bad.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Fields, Facts, Moments

  Vincent van Gogh (1929). “Further Letters of Vincent Van Gogh to His Brother, 1886-1889”

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