Thorns Quotes - Page 7

My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns;Love is the fire and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals;The metal in this furnace wrought are men's defiled souls.

Robert Southwell

Blow, Love Is, Men

Robert Southwell (1856). “Poetical Works”, p.98

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I plucked a honeysuckle where The hedge on high is quick with thorn, And climbing for the prize, was torn, And fouled my feet in quag-water; And by the thorns and by the wind The blossom that I took was thinn'd, And yet I found it sweet and fair.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Sweet, Climbing, Wind

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Clive Wilmer (2014). “Selected Poems”, p.91, Routledge

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Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows;Compass'd she is with thorns and canker'd bower.Yet, were she willing to be pluck'd and worn,She would be gather'd, though she grew on thorn.

Robert Greene

Sovereign, Would Be, Compass

Robert Greene, “Fawnia”

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Life is a pilgrimage and if you don't play by the rules you don't find the Road to Damascus, you find the Crown of Thorns.

Anita Brookner

Life, Play, Crowns

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Reign of blows cascading down upon your shoulders Far too many men dressed up as soldiers The lamb is brought to the ground Under the weight of the Crown A crown of thorns and dark deeds The swastika and the hammer and sickle Are symbols that reap only weeds

Andy Partridge

Weed, Dark, Men

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... the death of the spirit which threatens every man unless he is conscious of the danger and has a real purpose which can keep it alive and enable it to thrust its way through the choking weeds and thorns to the air and to the sun

Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper

Inspirational, Weed, Real

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Water the fruit trees and don’t water the thorns.

Rumi

Water, Tree, Fruit

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Misanthropy is a suit of armor lined with thorns.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

Suits Of Armor, Misanthropy, Armor

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1994). “Aphorisms”, Ariadne Press (CA)

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Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

Vladimir Nabokov

Simple, Numbers, Gentleman

Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.63, Vintage

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I was astonished to find that the positions my grandfather had defended were now overgrown and entangled with trees and thorns. I suppose I had developed a sense of reverence for the locations he described in his memoirs and letters - the forts and the high emplacements. I had expected them to have been preserved in some way.

Chris Cleave

Tree, Grandfather, Location

"'We Don't Know Our Hearts Until Life Puts Us to the Test'--Chris Cleave on 'Everyone Brave Is Forgiven'". Interview With Erin Kodicek, www.amazonbookreview.com. May 31, 2016.

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Oh that it were with me
As with the flower;
Blooming on its own tree
For butterfly and bee
Its summer morns:
That I might bloom mine hour
A rose in spite of thorns.

Oh that my work were done
As birds' that soar
Rejoicing in the sun:
That when my time is run
And daylight too,
I so might rest once more
Cool with refreshing dew.

Christina Rossetti

Summer, Running, Flower

Christina Rossetti (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Christina Rossetti (Illustrated)”, p.96, Delphi Classics

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Do grant, oh my God, that when my lips approach Yours to kiss You, I may taste the gall that was given to You; when my shoulders lean against Yours, make me feel Your scourging; when my flesh is united with Yours, in the Holy Eucharist, make me feel Your passion; when my head comes near Yours, make me feel Your thorns; when my heart is close to Yours, make me feel Your spear.

Gemma Galgani

Passion, Heart, Kissing

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Perseverance gives power to weakness, and opens to poverty the world's wealth. It spreads fertility over the barren landscape, and buds the choicest flowers and fruits spring up and flourish in the desert abode of thorns and briars.

Samuel Griswold Goodrich

Perseverance, Spring, Flower

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Everything you cherish
Throws you over in the end
Thorns will grab your ankles
From the gardens that you tend.

Robert Hunter

Death, Garden, Dying

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Only an acceptance of both the flowers and the thorns can bring you peace. Peace, after all, is the fruit of total acceptance.

Rajneesh

Attitude, Flower, Acceptance

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There are some things, but not too many, toward which the countryman knows he must be properly respectful if he would avoid pain, sickness and injury. Nature is neither punitive nor solicitous, but she has thorns and fangs as wells as bowers and grassy banks.

Hal Borland

Nature, Pain, Sickness

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A man would have to be an idiot to write a book of laws for an apple tree telling it to bear apples and not thorns, seeing that the apple-tree will do it naturally and far better than any laws or teaching can prescribe.

Martin Luther

Book, Teaching, Writing

John Calvin, Martin Luther (1991). “Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority”, p.9, Cambridge University Press

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This earth is not our home. We are away at school, trying to master the lessons of "the great plan of happiness" so we can return home and know what it means to be there. Over and over the Lord tells us why the plan is worth our sacrifice - and His. Eve called it "the joy of our redemption." Jacob called it "that happiness which is prepared for the saints." Of necessity, the plan is full of thorns and tears - His and ours. But because He and we are so totally in this together, our being "at one" with Him in overcoming all opposition will itself bring us "incomprehensible joy."

Bruce C. Hafen

Home, School, Mean

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You ask me whether I am in good spirits. How could I not be so? As long as Faith gives me strength I will always be joyful. Sadness ought to be banished from Catholic souls... the purpose for which we have been created shows us the path; even if strewn with many thorns, it is not a sad path. It is joyful even in the face of sorrow.

Pier Giorgio Frassati

Faith, Inspiration, Sadness

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Cursed be the ground for our sake. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for us. For out of the ground we were taken, for the dust we are and to the dust we shall return.

Denzel Washington

Taken, Dust, Sake

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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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He hesitated for a moment. Then he said softly, "I love you, Mother." He took my hand and kissed it, and folded my fingers round the stem of the rose. He had stripped it of its thorns.

Barbara Mertz

Mother, Love You, Son

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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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