YourDictionary

oak quotes

  • Hemight aswell plant anoak ina flower-pot, and expect it to thrive, as imagine he can restore her to vigour in the soil of his shallow cares!

    - EmilyJane Bronte« 
      Wuthering Heights, ch.14.

  • Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast, To soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak.

    -William Congreve
      Almeria to Leonora. The Mourning Bride, act1, sc.1.

  • It comes equally to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. The ashes of an oak in the chimney are no epitaph of that oak, to tell me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell†and when a whirlwind hathblownthedustofthechurchyard intothe church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the church into the churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce,This is the Patrician, this the noble flower, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran.

    -John Donne
    c.1621 Of death. Sermon, 8 Mar.

  •    Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch A broader browner shade; Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech O'er-canopies the glade, Beside some water's rushy brink With me the Muse shall sit, and think.

    -Thomas Gray
      Ode on the Spring, l.11^16.

  • And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel wreaths entwine, Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly, This spray of Western pine!

    - (Francis) Bret Harte
      On the death of Charles Dickens.'Dickens in Camp', stanza10.

  • Of all the trees that grow so fair, Old England to adorn, Greater are none beneath the Sun, Than Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      Puck of Pook's Hill,'Tree Song'.

  • England shall bide till Judgement Tide By Oak, and Ash, and Thorn.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      Puck of Pook's Hill,'Tree Song'.

  • In time the savage bull sustains the yoke; In time all haggard hawks will stoop to lure; In time small wedges cleave the hardest oak, In time the flint is pierced with softest shower, And she in time will fall from her disdain, And rue the sufferance of your friendly pain.

    -Thomas Kyd
    c.1589  The Spanish Tragedy, act 2, sc.1.

  • How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays; And their uncessant labours see Crown'd from some single herb or tree. Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flow'rs and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose.

    - Andrew Marvell
    c.1650^1652  'The Garden' (published1681).

  • The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall, The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry, The builder oak, sole king of forests all, The aspen good for staves, the cypress funeral. The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage, the fir that weepeth still, The willow worn of forlorn paramours, The ewe obedient to the benders will, The birch for shafts, the sallow for the mill, The myrrh sweet bleeding in the bitter wound, The warlike beech, the ash for nothing ill, The fruitful olive, and the platan round, The carver holme, the maple seldom inward sound.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.1, canto1, stanzas 8^9. plantan=plane tree; holme=holly.

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.

Learn more about oak

link/cite print suggestion box