Thistles Quotes

The wind is not helpless for any man’s need, Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Still, they were two thorns from the same thistle. Their tactics in terrorizing innocent ladies were identical. Their behavior was downright sinful, but what made it even worse was the fact that neither warrior seemed to realize the effect he had on others.

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.

When on the breath of Autumn’s breeze, From pastures dry and brown, Goes floating, like an idle thought, The fair, white thistle-down; O, then what joy to walk at will, Upon the golden harvest-hill!

Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man.

I wasn’t born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight
No I was all horns and thorns sprung out fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.

A stroke of a man knocking a thistle top with a walking stick

The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.

All problems become smaller if you don’t dodge them, but confront them. Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble.

Even though one is well advanced in virtue, should he stop mortifying himself, he soon would lose his modesty and virtue – just as fertile soul quickly becomes dry and arid and produces nothing but thorns and thistles if it is not cultivated.

You can imagine thistle-down so light that when you run after it your running motion would drive it away from you, and that the more you tried to catch it the faster it would fly from your grasp. And it should be with every man, that, when he is chased by troubles, they, chasing, shall raise him higher and higher.

Be thankful for the thorns and thistles, which keep you from being in love with this world, and becoming an idolater.

Gardens can be sharp and spiky as well as rose-embowered and honeysuckle-twined: there are corners and settings where thistles are not such an asinine taste after all.

What we sow in youth we reap in age; the seed of the thistle always produces the thistle.

All problems become smaller if you don’t dodge them but confront them.

Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down.

Untilled soil, however fertile it may be, will bear thistles and thorns; so it is with man’s mind.

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.

I see, when I bend close, how each leaflet of a climbing rose is bordered with frost, the autumn counterpart of the dewdrops of summer dawns. The feathery leaves of yarrow are thick with silver rime and dry thistle heads rise like goblets plated with silver catching the sun.

If the braine sowes not corne, it plants thistles.

Nothing is less promising than precocity. A young thistle is more like a future tree than is a young oak.

Roads are wet where’er one wendeth, And with rain the thistle bendeth, And the brook cries like a child! Not a rainbow shines to cheer us; Ah! the sun comes never near us, And the heavens look dark and wile.

If your thought is a rose, you are a rose garden; and if it is a thistle, you are fuel for the fire.

Driving down the wrong road and knowing it, The fork years behind, how many have thought To pull up on the shoulder and leave the car Empty, strike out across the fields; and how many Are still mazed among dock and thistle, Seeking the road they should have taken?

A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles.

The life of the earth comes up with a rush in the springtime. All the wild seeds of weed and thistle, the sprouts of vine and bush and tree, are trying to take the fields. Farmers must fight them with harrow and plow and hoe; they must plant the good seeds quickly.

I would sooner look for figs on thistles than for the higher attributes of art from one whose ruling motive… is money.

It is easier to prevent thistles and habits than to uproot them.