Straws Quotes - Page 2

• He who would search for pearls must dive below.

  John Dryden

  Errors, Pearls

  'All for Love' (1678) prologue

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• 'Tis a good thing to laugh at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness.

  John Dryden

  Funny, Laughter, Humorous

  John Dryden (1990). “The Works of John Dryden, Volume XX: Prose 1691-1698 De Arte Graphica and Shorter Works”, p.56, Univ of California Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I've always been more than a little mystified by poets who seem to think talking to people as directly as possible is a bad thing. I mean, I don't want to set up a straw man here: I understand that for many poets - and for me, at times - writing truly means writing in a way that is difficult, simply because the poem is trying to grasp for something elusive. So the difficulty of the poem is just unavoidable, and not in any way artificially imposed. So "as possible" is the key part of the phrase above, I suppose.

  Matthew Zapruder

  Mean, Writing, Men

  Source: therumpus.net

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Oft stumbles at a straw.

  Edmund Spenser

  The Shepherd's Calendar "July" l. 99 (1579)

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Your lot in life? A lot is something you draw, like straws. It's chance. You didn't get this life by chance. You chose it on purpose. If you're dissatisfied from it, you can change it.

  Jennifer Echols

  Life, Purpose, Chance

  Jennifer Echols (2009). “Going Too Far”, p.113, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas . . . You cannot make bricks without straw.

  Arnold Bennett

  Ideas, Firsts, Bricks

  Arnold Bennett (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of Arnold Bennett (Illustrated)”, p.10463, Delphi Classics

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For oaths are straws, men's faiths are wafer-cakes,
  And hold-fast is the only dog.

  William Shakespeare

  Dog, Men, Cake

  'Henry V' (1599) act 2, sc. 3, l. [53]

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hatred, like straw, makes for a lumpy mattress.

  Karen Kijewski

  Hate, Hatred, Mattresses

  5 Copy quote

• If this is a war, my side has the nuclear bomb. We have K Street. We have Wall Street. Debbie doesn't have anybody. I want a government that is responsive to the people who got the short straw in life.

  Warren Buffett

  Wall, Fear, War

  4 Copy quote

• Life is populated with scarecrows—all those people and things that seem so scary and trouble our sleep. Isn't it nice to know that most of them turn out to be made of nothing but straw?

  Jerry Spinelli

  Nice, Sleep, People

  Jerry Spinelli, Eileen Spinelli (2014). “Today I Will”, Knopf Books for Young Readers

  43 Copy quote

  Show source

• I cannot go on.... All that I have written seems to me like so much straw compared to what I have seen and what has been revealed to me.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Goes On, Has Beens, Written

  16 Copy quote

• A thousand hills, but no birds in flight,
  Ten thousand paths, with no person's tracks.
  A lonely boat, a straw-hatted old man,
  Fishing alone in the cold river snow.

  Liu Zongyuan

  Lonely, Men, Fishing

  Liu Zongyuan, “River Snow”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Shortest straw pulls the skunk's tail.

  Samuel Hopkins Adams

  Tails

  Samuel Hopkins Adams (1989). “Grandfather Stories”, p.145, Syracuse University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• But who would force the soul tilts with a straw Against a champion cased in adamant

  William Wordsworth

  Soul, Champion, Tilt

  William Wordsworth (1847). “The Poems of William Wordsworth”, p.327

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• The key to life is imagination. If you don't have that, no mater what you have, it's meaningless. If you do have imagination...you can make feast of straw.

  Jane Stanton Hitchcock

  Happiness, Keys, Imagination

  Personal Quote, www.imdb.com.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• A woman in agony of spirit might turn her head just so; a man in deep humiliation probably would wring his hands in such a way. From straws like these, drawn from completely different sources, the fabric of a character may be built.

  Eleanor Robson Belmont

  Character, Men, Hands

  Eleanor Robson Belmont (1957). “The Fabric of Memory”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happiness is a Slurpee and a hot pink straw.

  Jenny Han

  Hot, Hot Pink

  Jenny Han (2010). “It's Not Summer Without You”, p.256, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Can you walk on water? You have done no better than a straw. Can you fly through the air? You are no better than a gnat. Conquer your heart-then you may become somebody.

  Khwaja Abdullah Ansari

  Heart, Air, Gnats

  16 Copy quote

• Every man's life is a train made of straw which tries to move on a track made of fire! The very next stop is ashes and dust.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Life, Moving, Men

  4 Copy quote

• One of the reasons we think this market will start to run out of gas at some point is that you've essentially created as much gold from straw as you can from this financial alchemy

  Scott Simon

  Running, Thinking, Gold

  4 Copy quote

• It's a dangerous fire begins in the bed-straw.

  George Herbert

  Fire, Bed, Dangerous

  George Herbert, Christopher Harvey, George Gilfillan (1857). “The poetical works of George Herbert”, p.324

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For want of a block, man will stumble at a straw.

  Jonathan Swift

  Block, Men, Trying

  4 Copy quote

• The coward wants resolution, which the brave man can do without. He recognizes no faith above a creed, thinking this straw by which he is moored does him good service, because his sheet anchor does not drag.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Faith, Men, Thinking

  Henry David Thoreau, Bradford Torrey, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn (1906). “Cape Cod and Miscellanies”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• An epigram is but a feeble thing - With straw in tail, stuck there by way of sting.

  William Cowper

  Tails, Way, Stuck

  William Cowper, Sir Humphrey Sumner Milford (1971). “Poetical works”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We come to the New Testament, where again a host of imperative verbs is mustered in support of that miserable bondage of free-choice, and the aid of carnal Reason with her inferences and similes is called in, just as in a picture or a dream you might see the King of the flies with his lances of straw and shields of hay arrayed against a real and regular army of seasoned human troops. That is how the human dreams of Diatribe go to war with the battalions of divine words.

  Martin Luther

  Dream, Kings, Real

  4 Copy quote