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It is easier to prevent thistles and habits than to uproot them.
Sep 29, 2025
If the braine sowes not corne, it plants thistles.
What we sow in youth we reap in age; the seed of the thistle always produces the thistle.
Nothing is less promising than precocity. A young thistle is more like a future tree than is a young oak.
Two things cannot be in one place. Where you tend a rose, my lad, a thistle cannot grow.
Untilled ground, however rich, will bring forth thistles and thorns; so also the mind of man.
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.
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.
The wind is not helpless for any man's need, Nor falleth the rain but for thistle and weed.
If your thought is a rose, you are a rose garden; and if it is a thistle, you are fuel for the fire.
All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
And never since harvests were ripened, / Or laborers born, / Have men gathered figs of the thistle, / Or grapes of the thorn!
Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.
Untilled soil, however fertile it may be, will bear thistles and thorns; so it is with man's mind.
The thistle is a prince. Let any man that has an eye for beauty take a view of the whole plant, and where will he see a more expressive grace and symmetry; and where is there a more kingly flower?
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.
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 want a dish to taste good, rather than to have been seethed in pig's milk and served wrapped in a rhubarb leaf with grated thistle root.
A stroke of a man knocking a thistle top with a walking stick
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.
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.
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.
Nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs, Losing both beauty and utility.
I leave to children exclusively, but only for the life of their childhood, all and every the dandelions of the fields and the daisies thereof, with the right to play among them freely, according to the custom of children, warning them at the same time against the thistles. And I devise to children the yellow shores of creeks and the golden sands beneath the water thereof, with the dragon flies that skim the surface of said waters, and and the odors of the willows that dip into said waters, and the white clouds that float on high above the giant trees.
There would be no call for ecological campaigning had nature not been exploited and abused. We experience the ground now bringing forth thistles as soil erosion devastates formerly arable land and deserts overtake fertile farms. Rivers and the atmosphere are polluted thoughtlessly and we are fearful of the consequences of a depleted ozone layer and the devastation of the greenhouse effect. We are not quite at home in our world, and somewhere in each of us there is a nostalgia for a paradise that has been lost.
I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose WOULD be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage.
The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth The freckled cowslip, burnet, and green clover, Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burrs, Losing both beauty and utility.
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.
A crippled child Said, "How shall I dance?" Let your heart dance We said. Then the invalid said: "How shall I sing?" Let your heart sing We said Then spoke the poor dead thistle, "But I, how shall I dance?" Let your heart fly to the wind We said. Then God spoke from above "How shall I descend from the blue?" Come dance for us here in the light We said. All the valley is dancing Together under the sun, And the heart of him who joins us not Is turned to dust, to dust.
Cultivo una rosa blanca, En julio como en enero, Para el amigo sincero Que me da su mano franca. Y para el cruel que me arranca El corazon con que vivo, Cardo ni oruga cultivo Cultivo una rosa blanca. I have a white rose to tend In July as in January; I give it to the true friend Who offers his frank hand to me. And to the cruel one whose blows Break the heart by which I live, Thistle nor thorn do I give: For him, too, I have a white rose.
Bitterness is like a weed. Remember how hard it always was to pull out thistles once they root? Remember how deep those roots grow, and how if you just snapped off the end of it, the plant would grow right back? You have to dig down deep inside. Let God search your heart. Let Him show you what's there and help you root out all that bitterness. Then you can pray for forgiveness.
The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.
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?
Be thankful for the thorns and thistles, which keep you from being in love with this world, and becoming an idolater.
The soul grows into lovely habits as easily as into ugly ones, and the moment a life begins to blossom into beautiful words and deeds, that moment a new standard of conduct is established, and your eager neighbors look to you for a continuous manifestation of the good cheer, the sympathy, the ready wit, the comradeship, or the inspiration, you once showed yourself capable of. Bear figs for a season or two, and the world outside the orchard is very unwilling you should bear thistles.
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.
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!
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.
I would sooner look for figs on thistles than for the higher attributes of art from one whose ruling motive... is money.
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.
A man that hoards up riches and enjoys them not, is like an ass that carries gold and eats thistles.
... continual hard labor deadens the energies of the soul, and benumbs the faculties of the mind; the ideas become confined, the mind barren, and, like the scorching sands of Arabia, produces nothing; or, like the uncultivated soil, brings forth thorns and thistles. Again, continual hard labor irritates our tempers and sours our dispositions; the whole system become worn out with toil and fatigue; nature herself becomes almost exhausted, and we care but little whether we live or die.
Imagine your mind as a garden and thoughts as the seeds you plant. Habitual negative, unhealthy, self-critical thoughts produce the weeds and thistles of depression, discontent, and anxiety in the garden of your mind. Luckily, the opposite is also true. Consistently planting positive, healthy, constructive thoughts will yield a crop of beautiful feelings, such as gratitude, love, and joy.
[Admiral Nelson's counsel] guided me time and again. On the eve of the critical battle of Santa Cruz, in which the Japanese ships outnumbered ours more than two to one, I sent my task force commanders this dispatch: ATTACK REPEAT ATTACK. They did attack, heroically, and when the battle was done, the enemy turned away. All problems, personal, national, or combat, 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. Carry the battle to the enemy! Lay your ship alongside his!
Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning, as it was to Adam and Eve, who kept their honey-moon in Eden, but had their first little one among the thorns and thistles of the wilderness. It is still the beginning of the home epic - the gradual conquest or irremediable loss of that complete union which make the advancing years a climax, and age the harvest of sweet memories in common.
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.
All problems become smaller if you don't dodge them but confront them.
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