Thorns Quotes - Page 9

I know him, February's thrush, And loud at eve he valentines On sprays that paw the naked bush Where soon will sprout the thorns and bines.

George Meredith

Valentine, Paws, Naked

George Meredith (1922). “The Complete Works of George Meredith”, p.8366, Library of Alexandria

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I've seen first-hand the great enthusiasm Portland has for soccer; it's a soccer-smart fan base that generates an incredible atmosphere. I am very much looking forward to the first season of Thorns FC.

Cindy Parlow Cone

Soccer, Smart, Hands

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The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.

Marina Abramovic

Cutting, Gun, Escaping

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The United States reaps the thorns its rulers have planted in the world.

Saddam Hussein

World, United States, Rulers

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You throw thorns, falling in my silence they become flowers.

Gautama Buddha

Flower, Fall, Silence

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How many thorns of human nature - hard, sharp, lifeless protuberances that tear and wound us, narrow prejudices, bristling conceits that repel and disgust us - are arrested developments, calcified tendencies, buds of promise that should have lifted a branch up into the sunny day with fruit; and flowers to delight the heart of men, but now all grown hard, petrified, for want of culture and a congenial soil and climate.

John Burroughs

Flower, Heart, Men

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The Christian church [in its true identity] does not persecute; any more than a lily scratches the thorns, or a lamb pursues and tears the wolves, or a turtledove hunts the hawks and eagles, or a chaste and modest virgin fights and scratches like whores and harlots.

Roger Williams

Christian, Fighting, Eagles

Source: www.libertymagazine.org

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There are thorns everywhere, but along the path of vice, roses bloom above them.

Marquis de Sade

Rose, Vices, Path

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Who is wiser: the man who plants flowers along life's way or the man who makes it bristle with thorns?

Charles Fourier

Flower, Men, Way

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...I remembered the rose bush that had reached a thorny branch out through the ragged fence, and caught my dress, detaining me when I would have passed on. And again the symbolism of it all came over me. These memories and visions of the poor--they were the clutch of the thorns. Social workers have all felt it. It holds them to their work, because the thorns curve backward, and one cannot pull away.

Albion Fellows Bacon

Memories, Compassion, Curves

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To higher or lower ends, they [the majority of mankind] move too often with something of a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming, unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world, at its very sources.

Walter Pater

Moving, Ambition, People

Walter Pater (2011). “The Works of Walter Pater”, p.60, Cambridge University Press

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Whether in a suit or in a loincloth people are ignorant little thorns cutting into one another. They seem incapable of advancing beyond the violent tendencies which at one time were necessary for survival.

Jhonen Vasquez

Cutting, People, Ignorant

"Johnny the Homicidal Maniac". Comic book by Jhonen Vasquez, 1995 - 1997.

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I was born to fight devils and factions. It is my business to remove obstacles, to cut down thorns, to fill up quagmires and to open and make straight paths. If I must have some failing let me rather speak the truth with too great sincerity than once to act the hypocrite and conceal the truth.

Martin Luther

Hypocrite, Cutting, Fighting

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I am made Hand of the King which gives me an enormous amount of power, which I use quite ruthlessly - but skilfully - and Dame Diana Rigg joins us [playing political mastermind the Queen of Thorns] and we have a couple of really good sparring moments.

Charles Dance

Kings, Queens, Couple

"Game of Thrones, Charles Dance interview: ‘I treat Peter Dinklage appallingly’". Interview with James Lachno, www.telegraph.co.uk. March 31, 2013.

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The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation.

John Donne

Friday, Morning, Passion

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It is only by enlarging the scope of one’s tastes and one’s fantasies, by sacrificing everything to pleasure, that the unfortunate individual called Man, thrown despite himself into this sad world, can succeed in gathering a few roses among life’s thorns

Marquis de Sade

Sacrifice, Men, Sacrificing Everything

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The life of each and every one of us has been written. The crucifix is my autobiography. The blood is the ink. The nails the pen. The skin the parchment. On every line of that body I can trace my life. In the crown of thorns I can read my pride. In the hands that are dug with nails, I can read avarice and greed. In the flesh hanging from him like purple rags, I can read my lust. In feet that are fettered, I can find the times that I ran away and would not let him follow. Any sin that you can think of is written there.

Fulton J. Sheen

Pride, Thinking, Blood

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Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the enemy, and sometimes, the failed intention of a masterful ally. But, nevertheless, as they burden you with a vexing brand of love, they become nothing more than the kiss of Judas, pressing a crown of thorns into your flesh.

Addison Webster Moore

Kissing, Duplicity, Enemy

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The true Christian reaction to suffering and sorrow is not the attitude of self-pity, fatalism or resentment; it is the spirit which takes life's difficulties as a God given opportunity, and regards its troubles as a sacred trust, and wears the thorns as a crown.

James Stewart

Christian, Attitude, Opportunity

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God made the rose out of what was left of woman at the creation. The great difference is, we feel the rose's thorns when we gather it; and the other's when we have had it for some time.

Walter Savage Landor

Differences, Rose, Creation

Walter Savage Landor (1846). “The Works of Walter Savage Landor”, p.444

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I know I am dying, but my deathbed is a bed of roses. I have no thorns planted upon my dying pillow. Heaven is already begun!

John Pawson

Bed Of Roses, Heaven, Dying

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If you don't sow your field what harvest other than thorns and weeds can you anticipate?

Mehmet Murat Ildan

Weed, Fields, Harvest

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I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones.

Bruce Chatwin

Wind, Rivers, White

Bruce Chatwin (2003). “In Patagonia”, p.39, Penguin

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Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Charles Dickens

Flower, Memorable, Thinking

Charles Dickens (2016). “British Classics: Great Expectations”, p.62, The Planet

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Let us try to see things from their better side: You complain about seeing thorny rose bushes; Me, I rejoice and give thanks to the gods That thorns have roses.

Alphonse Karr

Rose, Giving, Trying

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