Thickets Quotes

• Then from the neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of singers, Swinging aloft on a willow spray that hung o'er the water, Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music, That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent to listen.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Air, Water, Bird

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1988). “Selected Poems”, p.49, Penguin

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• Learn from the beasts the physic of the field.

  Alexander Pope

  Medicine, Fields, Beast

  Alexander Pope (1763). “An essay on man: By Alexander Pope, Esq. Enlarged and improved by the author. Together with his MS. additions and variations as in the last edition of his works. With the notes of William, Lord Bishop of Gloucester”, p.70

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• Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I learned about these qualities during my bouts with depression. In that deadly darkness, the faculties I had always depended on collapsed. My intellect was useless; my emotions were dead; my will was impotent; my ego was shattered. But from time to time, deep in the thickets of my inner wilderness, I could sense the presence of something that knew how to stay alive even when the rest of me wanted to die. That something was my tough and tenacious soul.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Animal, Self, Ego

  Parker J. Palmer (2009). “A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life”, p.58, John Wiley & Sons

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• How glad I am to be able to roam in the wood and thicket, among trees and flowers and rocks ... in the country, every tree seems to speak to me, saying, "Holy! Holy", in the woods, there is enchantment which expresses all things.

  Ludwig van Beethoven

  Faith, Country, Flower

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• Once a man strays out of the common herd, he's more likely to meet wolves in the thickets than angels.

  Walter de La Mare

  Angel, Men, Common

  Walter De la Mare (1997). “The Return”, p.115, Courier Corporation

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• In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.

  Saul Bellow

  Business, Confusion, Soul

  Foreword to "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom, 1987.

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• What is now the foliage moving?
  Air is still, and hush'd the breeze,
  Sultriness, this fullness loving,
  Through the thicket, from the trees.
  Now the eye at once gleams brightly,
  See! the infant band with mirth
  Moves and dances nimbly, lightly,
  As the morning gave it birth,
  Flutt'ring two and two o'er earth.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Morning, Spring, Moving

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “May”

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• God passes through the thicket of the world, and wherever His glance falls He turns all things to beauty.

  John of the Cross

  Fall, Saint, World

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• A thicket of summer grass / Is all that remains / Of the dreams of ancient warriors.

  Matsuo Basho

  Summer, Dream, Warrior

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• Know'st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom, Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom, Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows, And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose!

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Blow, Blue, Wind

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Thomas Carlyle (1824). “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship: A Novel”, p.229

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• From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork.

  J. K. Rowling

  Memories, Leaving, Together

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• The beloved is already in our being, as thirst and "otherness." Being is eroticism. Inspiration is that strange
  voice that takes man out of himself to be every thing that he is, everything that he desires; another body,
  another being. Beyond, outside of me, in the green and gold thicket, among the tremulous branches,
  sings the unknown. It calls to me.

  Octavio Paz

  Inspiration, Men, Voice

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• The groves and thickets of smaller trees are full of blooming evergreen vines. These vines are not arranged in separate groups, or in delicate wreaths, but in bossy walls and heavy, mound-like heaps and banks. Am made to feel that I am now in a strange land. I know hardly any of the plants, but few of the birds, and I am unable to see the country for the solemn, dark, mysterious cypress woods which cover everything.

  John Muir

  Country, Wall, Dark

  John Muir (2015). “John Muir’s Incredible Travel Memoirs: A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, My First Summer in the Sierra, The Mountains of California, Travels in Alaska, Steep Trails… (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs & Wilderness Studies from the Naturalist, Environmental Philosopher and Early Advocate of Preservation of Wilderness, the Author of The Yosemite and Picturesque California”, p.38, e-artnow

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• We have hopes and make plans, and if they are dashed or waylaid, we naturally rationalize and redraw the map to locate ourselves anew. Or else we brood and too firmly root. Very few can step forward again and again in what amounts to veritable leaps into the void, where there are no ready holds, where little is familiar, where you get constantly stuck in the thickets of your uncertainties and fears.

  Chang-Rae Lee

  Roots, Maps, Littles

  Chang-rae Lee (2014). “On Such a Full Sea: A Novel”, p.98, Penguin

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• The best way to find out things, if you come to think of it, is not to ask questions at all. If you fire off a question, it is like firing off a gun; bang it goes, and everything takes flight and runs for shelter. But if you sit quite still and pretend not to be looking, all the little facts will come and peck round your feet, situations will venture forth from thickets and intentions will creep out and sun themselves on a stone; and if you are very patient, you will see and understand a great deal more than a man with a gun.

  Elspeth Huxley

  Running, Gun, Men

  Elspeth Huxley (2000). “The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood”, p.264, Penguin

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• To most outsiders, modern mathematics is unknown territory. Its borders are protected by dense thickets of technical terms; its landscapes are a mass of indecipherable equations and incomprehensible concepts. Few realize that the world of modern mathematics is rich with vivid images and provocative ideas.

  Ivars Peterson

  Math, Ideas, World

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• Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.

  John of the Cross

  Men, Divine Wisdom, Soul

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• Orthodox Judaism is a thicket of detailed injunctions, Biblical commandments elaborated during centuries of prohibited proselytizing, functioning to limit interaction with outsiders. At the opposite extreme, Islam, still the most rapidly expanding of faiths, demands little immediate knowledge from those who would convert. The convert is permitted to enter and then to learn by participation, although there are plenty of detailed regulations and abstruse theological ideas to be pursued later, and the regulations do effectively separate believers from nonbelievers.

  Mary Catherine Bateson

  Biblical, Opposites, Ideas

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• Guided by film...we approach, if at all, ideas no longer on highways leading through the void but on paths that wind through the thicket of things.

  Siegfried Kracauer

  Wind, Ideas, Void

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• Because we've become so ecologically minded now, they have developed a product called Rapidly Dissolving Toilet Paper. Just how rapidly are we talking? 'Cause I don't want to have to play Beat the Clock in the thicket.

  Bill Engvall

  Talking, Play, Causes

  FaceBook post by Bill Engvall from Mar 28, 2013

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• How often from the steep Of echoing hill or thicket have we heard Celestial voices to the midnight air, Sole, or responsive each to other's note, Singing their great Creator?

  John Milton

  Air, Voice, Singing

  John Milton (1837). “Paradis perdu: de Milton”, p.286

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• There is a hill beside the silver Thames, Shady with birch and beech and odorous pine; And brilliant underfoot with thousand gems, Steeply the thickets to his floods decline.

  Robert Bridges

  Brilliant, Hills, Silver

  Robert Bridges (1912). “Poetical Works Of Robert Brides Excluding The Eight Dramas”

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• The Englishman foxtrots as he fox-hunts, with all his being, through thickets, through ditches, over hedges, through chiffons, through waiters, over saxophones, to the victorious finish; and who goes home depends on how many the ambulance will accommodate.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Home, Saxophone, Foxes

  Edna St. Vincent Millay (1924). “Distressing dialogues”

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• America's belated embrace of government health care is going to be far more expensive and disastrous than the Euro-Canadian models. Whatever one's philosophical objection to the Canadian health system, it is, broadly, fair: Unless you're a cabinet minister or a big time hockey player, you'll enjoy the same equality of crappiness and universal lack of access that everybody else does. But, even before it's up-and-running, Pelosi-Reid-Obamacare is an impenetrable thicket of contradictory boondoggles, shameless payoffs and arbitrary shakedowns.

  Mark Steyn

  Running, Philosophical, Hockey

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• Some people hate the very name of statistics, but I find them full of beauty and interest. Whenever they are not brutalized, but delicately handled by the higher methods, and are warily interpreted, their power of dealing with complicated phenomena is extraordinary. They are the only tools by which an opening can be cut through the formidable thicket of difficulties that bars the path of those who pursue the Science of Man.

  Francis Galton

  Hate, Cutting, Men

  Natural Inheritance Normal Variability (pp. 62-3)

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