Thorns Quotes - Page 10

• By what sort of experience are we led to the conviction that spirit exists? On the whole, by searching, painful experience. The rose Religion grows on a thorn-bush, and we must not be afraid to have our fingers lacerated by the thorns if we would pluck the rose.

  Felix Adler

  Painful Experiences, Rose, Spirit

  "Life and Destiny". Book by Felix Adler, 1903.

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• You know what’s a great metaphor for love? Sleeping beauty. Because you have to plow through this incredible thicket of thorns in order to get to beauty, and even then, when you get there, you still have to wake her up. — Tiny Cooper

  David Levithan

  Sleep, Order, Tiny

  John Green, David Levithan (2010). “Will Grayson, Will Grayson”, p.150, Penguin

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• Religion is passionate, reckless, destructive, idol-smashing. It's a martyr burning at the stake. It's a crown of thorns and a cross.

  Martha Ostenso

  Idols, Religion, Burning

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• O youth! thou often tearest thy wings against the thorns of voluptuousness.

  Victor Hugo

  Wings, Youth

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• Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assuduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation.

  Washington Irving

  Art, Struggle, Adversity

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• If old age means a crown of thorns, the trick is to wear it jauntily.

  Clare Boothe Luce

  Mean, Age, Crowns

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• Always grow flowers, as that will make your way full of flowers. Never grow thorns, as that will make your way thorny. Never want to target someone on an arrow. You may become the target of that arrow. Never make a well in the way of someone. As you may pass by that way sometime.

  Rahman Baba

  Flower, Arrows, Target

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• Do not conquer the world with force, for force only causes resistance. Thorns spring up when an army passes. Years of misery follow a great victory. Do only what needs to be done without using violence.

  Laozi

  Spring, Army, Conquer The World

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• Sweet tastes have sour closes; and he repents on thorns that sleeps in beds of roses.

  Francis Quarles

  Sweet, Sleep, Bed Of Roses

  Francis Quarles (1859). “Emblems, divine and moral, with a sketch of the life and times of the author”, p.23

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• In 1840 I was called from my farm to undertake the administration of public affairs and I foresaw that I was called to a bed of thorns. I now leave that bed which has afforded me little rest, and eagerly seek repose in the quiet enjoyments of rural life.

  John Tyler

  Bed, Rural Life, Littles

  Farewell remarks, 1845.

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• You can not pluck roses without fear of thorns, Nor enjoy a fair wife without danger of horns.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Marriage, Fear, Wife

  Benjamin Franklin (2013). “Poor Richard's Almanack”, p.41, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Damn it all you can't have the crown of thorns and the thirty pieces of silver.

  Aneurin Bevan

  Political, Crowns, Pieces

  In Michael Foot Aneurin Bevan (1973) vol. 2, ch. 13

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• A crown Golden in show, is but a wreath of thorns, Bring dangers, troubles, cares, and sleepless nights To him who wears the regal diadem

  John Milton

  Night, Historical, Care

  John Milton (1854). “Milton's Paradise lost and Paradise regained, with notes by J. Edmondston”, p.425

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• O! Lover, Enjoyment on the soft body of a lotus is always risky and inconsistent because its route is always surrounded by thorns.

  Manmohan Acharya

  Lotuses, Body, Lovers

  "Gita Milindam (Song of the Bumblebee)". Book by Manmohan Acharya, July 12, 2010.

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• There are many things that are thorns to our hopes until we have attained them, and envenomed arrows to our hearts when we have.

  Victor de Riqueti, marquis de Mirabeau

  Heart, Arrows, Anticipation

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• You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Government, Gold, Bankers

  Speech at Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Ill., 8 July 1896. In an earlier speech in the House of Representatives, 22 Dec. 1894, Bryan had said: "I shall not help crucify mankind upon a cross of gold. I shall not aid in pressing down upon the bleeding brow of labor this crown of thorns."

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• The man who preaches truth and applies it to the lives of his hearers will feel the nails and the thorns. He will lead a hard life, but a glorious one. May God raise up many such prophets. The church needs them badly.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Men, Hard Life, Church

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• Duty, though set about by thorns, may still be made a staff supporting even while it tortures. Cast it away, and, like the prophet's wand, it changes to a snake.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Snakes, May, Prophet

  Douglas William Jerrold (1851). “St. Giles and St. James”, p.277

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• I think most American churchgoers are the soil that chokes the seed because of all the thorns.  Thorns are anything that distracts us from God.  When we want God and a bunch of other stuff, then that means we have thorns in our soil.  A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions, or commitments are piled on top of it.

  Francis Chan

  God, Sports, Religious

  Francis Chan, Preston Sprinkle (2014). “The Francis Chan Collection: Crazy Love, Forgotten God, Erasing Hell, and Multiply”, p.45, David C Cook

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• But the world turns, and even legends change; and somewhere there is a border, and sometime, perhaps, someone will decide to cross it, however well guarded its thorns may be.

  Robin McKinley

  Borders, World, May

  Robin McKinley (2014). “The Door in the Hedge: And Other Stories”, p.45, Open Road Media

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• Dawn crept over the Downs like a sinister white animal, followed by the snarling cries of a wind eating its way between the black boughs of the thorns. The wind was the furious voice of this sluggish animal light that was baring the dormers and mullions and scullions of Cold Comfort Farm.

  Stella Gibbons

  Animal, Wind, Voice

  Stella Gibbons (1977). “Cold comfort farm”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• The only crown Jesus ever wore on earth was a crown of thorns.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Jesus, Crowns, Earth

  Elisabeth Elliot (1988). “Loneliness: it can be a wilderness, it can be a pathway to God”, Oliver-Nelson Books

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• You came to tell us that the great cities are in favour of the gold standard; we reply that the great cities rest upon our broad and fertile plains. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy out farms and the grass will grow in the city...You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Spring, Cities, Magic

  Speech at the Democratic National Convention, Chicago, 1896, in 'The First Battle. A Story of the Campaign of 1896' (1896) vol. 1, ch. 10

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• No more let sins and sorrows grow,
  Nor thorns infest the ground;
  He comes to make His blessings flow
  Far as the curse is found.

  Isaac Watts

  Blessing, Sorrow, Flow

  Isaac Watts, James Manning Winchell (1820). “An Arrangement of the Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs of the Rev. Isaac Watts: To which are Added Indexes, Very Much Enlarged and Improved, to Facilitate the Use of the Whole in Finding Psalms Or Hymns Suited to Particular Subjects Or Occasions”, p.61

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• Writing is more than just the making of a series of comprehensible statements: it is the gathering in of connotations; the harvesting of them, like blackberries in a good season, ripe and heavy, snatched from among the thorns of logic.

  Fay Weldon

  Writing, Gathering, Logic

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