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forest quotes

  • Like Rome, Nkongsamba was built on seven hills, but there all similarity ended. Set in undulating tropical rain forest, from the air it resembled nothing so much as a giant pool of crapulous vomit on somebody's expansive unmown lawn.

    -William Andrew Murray Boyd
    A Good Man in  Africa, ch.1.

  • When the oak-tree is fallen, the whole forest echoes with it; but a hundred acorns are planted silently by some unnoticed breeze.

    -Thomas Carlyle
      Critical and Miscellaneous Essays,'History'.

  • I was a man lucky enough to have discovered a political theory, a man who was caught up in the whirlpool of Cuba's political crisis long before becoming a fully- fledged communist. Discovering Marxism was like finding a map in a forest.

    - Fidel Castro (Ruz)
    Speech, Chile,18 Nov.

  • O fickle Fortune, why this cruel sporting? Why thus torment us poor sons of day? Nae mair your smiles can cheer me, nae mair your frowns can fear me, For the flowers of the forest are a' wade away.

    - Richard Cobden
      'The Flowers of the Forest'. wade = weeded. The last line is often rendered 'For the flowers of the forest are withered away'.

  • 'Is there anybody there?'said theTraveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest's ferny floor.

    -Walter de la Mare
      'The Listeners'.

  • I've heard the lilting at our yowe-milking, Lasses a-lilting before the dawn o'day; But now theyare moaning on ilka green loaning: 'The Flowers of the Forest are a' wede away'. See Cockburn 224:55.

    -Jean also known as Jane Elliot Elliot
      'The Flowers of the Forest', stanza1.

  • There, I believed, lay the greatest secrets of the past yet preserved inour world of today.Ihad cometotheturn of the road; and for better or worse I chose the forest path. 319

    - Percy Harrison Fawcett
      Of South  America. Collected in Brian Fawcett (ed) Exploration Fawcett (1953).

  • This land is your land, this land is my land, From California to the New York Island. From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.

    -Woody (Woodrow Wilson) Guthrie
      'This Land isYour Land'.

  • On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble; His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves; The wind it plies the saplings double, And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

    - A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
      A Shropshire Lad, no.31.

  • Corneille is to Shakespeare†as a clipped hedge is to a forest.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
    Quoted in Mrs Piozzi  Anecdotes of the Late Samuel Johnson (1786).

  • O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth, Tasting of Flora and the country green, Dance, and Proven c° al song, and sunburnt mirth! O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

    -John Keats
      Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St.  Agnes and Other Poems,'Ode to a Nightingale', stanza 2.

  • And those who watch at that midnight hour From Hall orTerrace or loftyTower, Cry as the wild light passes along, 'The Dong!the Dong! The wandering Dong through the forest goes! The Dong!the Dong! The Dong with a Luminous Nose!'

    - Edward Lear
    Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany and  Alphabets,'The Dong with a Luminous Nose'.

  • Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black, Cutting through the forest with a golden track.

    - (Nicholas) Vachel Lindsay
      The Congo and Other Poems,'The Congo', pt.1.

  • This is the forest primeval.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      Evangeline, prologue.

  • By the shore of Gitche Gumee By the shining Big-Sea-Water, Stood the wigwam of Nokomis, Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis. Dark behind it rose the forest, Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees, 516 Rose the firs with cones upon them; Bright before it beat the water, Beat the clear and sunny water, Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      The Song of Hiawatha, pt.3,'Hiawatha's Childhood'.

  •    A single sparkcan start a forest fire.Our forces, although small at present, will grow rapidly.

    -Mao Zedong or MaoTse-tung
      Letter, 5  Jan.

  • Art will liberate itself from the needs and desires of men. No longer will we paint a forest ora horseas we like oras theyappear to us, but as they really are.

    - Franz Marc
    ^15  Aphorisms.

  • Uneasily the leaves fall at this season, forgetting what to do or where to go; the red amnesiacs of autumn drifting thru the graveyard forest. What they have forgotten they have forgotten: what they meant to do instead of fall is not in earth or time recoverable the fossils of intention, the shapes of rot.

    - Al Purdy
      Poems forAll theAnnettes,'Pause' (revised1968).

  •    He isgone on the mountain, He is lost to the forest, Like a summer-dried fountain, When our need was the sorest.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Lady of the Lake, canto 3, stanza16,'Coronach'.

  • He that steals a cow from a poor widow, or a stirk from a cottar, is a thief; he that lifts a drove from a Sassenach laird, is a gentleman-drover. And, besides, to take a tree from the forest, a salmon from the river, a deer from the hill, or a cow from a Lowland strath, is what no Highlander need ever think shame upon.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      Evan Dhu Maccombich to EdwardWaverley.Waverley, ch.18.

  • Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
      'Ode to theWestWind', l.57^61.

  • Where the satyrs are chattering, nymphs with their flattering Glimpse of the forest enhance All the beauty of marrow and cucumber narrow And Ceres will join in the dance.

    - Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell
      Fa c° ade,'Tarantella'.

  • I have come to the borders of sleep, The unfathomable deep Forest, where all must lose Their way, however straight Or winding, soon or late; They cannot choose.

    - (Philip) Edward Thomas
      'Lights Out'.

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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