Acorn Quotes

Although we experience our nonphysical levels of self as potential, they are also functional in our lives. An acorn is a potential oak tree, but the oak tree could be seen as the essence of the acorn, guiding its development into the oak tree. ~ Shepherd Hoodwin

As we actually taste the flavor of what he's teaching, we begin to see that it's not proverbs for daily living, or ways of being virtuous. He's proposing a total meltdown and recasting of human consciousness, bursting through the tiny acorn-selfhood that we arrived on the planet with into the oak tree of our fully realized personhood. He pushes us toward it, teases us, taunts us, encourages us, and ultimately walks us there. ~ Cynthia Bourgeault

... possibility to acquire conscience is already in man when born; this possibility given - free - by Nature. But is only possibility. Real conscience can only be acquired by work, by learning to understand self first. Even your religion - western religion - have this phrase "Know thyself". This phrase most important in all religions. When begin know self already begin have possibility become genuine man. So first thing must learn is know self by this exercise, self-observation. If not do this, then will be like acorn that not become tree - fertilizer. Fertilizer which go back in ground and become possibility for future man. ~ Fritz Peters

No oak trees without acorns' may be a formally true proposition, but that this acorn did in fact produce this oak tree, there and then, is not a teleological necessity; it is a circumstantial occurrence" (OH 104-5). Because history is what happened, not what must have happened, there is no room in an authentic historical explanation for teleological causes. ~ Terry Nardin

When serpents bargain for the right to squirm
and the sun strikes to gain a living wage -
when thorns regard their roses with alarm
and rainbows are insured against old age
when every thrush may sing no new moon in
if all screech-owls have not okayed his voice
- and any wave signs on the dotted line
or else an ocean is compelled to close
when the oak begs permission of the birch
to make an acorn - valleys accuse their
mountains of having altitude - and march
denounces april as a saboteur
then we'll believe in that incredible
unanimal mankind (and not until) ~ E. E. Cummings

Storytellers tell stories, of course, but they aren't alone in doing so. The dawn tells a story; so does the sun as it arcs across the sky; so does the sunset. The seasons tell a complex story. The fall of an acorn and the growth of an oak tree tell a story. A farmer's plow and the furrows in a field tell a story as well. Even the waves crashing on a beach tell a story. How easy to see, then, that an ax tells a story, too, at least while it hangs for a moment in the air just before descending onto your neck. That story is: Now you die. ~ Edward Myers

The silver-haired elf woman Yaela had knelt by the side of the grave, taken an acorn from the pouch on her belt, and planted it directly above Wyrden's chest. And then the twelve elves, Arya included, sang to the acorn, which took root and sprouted and grew twining upward, reaching and grasping toward the sky like a clutch of hands. When the elves had finished, the leafy oak stood twenty feet high, with long strings of green flowers at the end of every branch. Eragon had thought it was the nicest burial he had ever attended. ~ Christopher Paolini

ACORN is organizing to make sure the job of rebuilding New Orleans is done by the people of New Orleans and truly benefits the communities who have been hurt the most. ~ Roseanne Barr

The tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. We ~ Malcolm Gladwell

a chocolate bar on the side counts. ~ Annie Acorn

Humankind's greatest gift is that we are indeterminate beings. Unlike the tough and leathery seed of an acorn, which will grow into a magnificent oak tree, none of us has a predetermined final configuration of our ultimate essence. Our mental temperament is pliable. We make conscious and subconscious choices that govern who we become. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

It is the opinion of most thoughtful students of life that happiness in this world depends chiefly on the ability to take things as they come. An instance of one who may be said to have perfected this attitude is to be found in the writings of a certain eminent Arabian author who tells of a traveller who, sinking to sleep one afternoon upon a patch of turf containing an acorn, discovered when he woke that the warmth of his body had caused the acorn to germinate and that he was now some sixty feet above the ground in the upper branches of a massive oak. Unable to descend, he faced the situation equably. 'I cannot,' he observed, 'adapt circumstances to my will: therefore I shall adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here.' Which he did. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

What is a human being, then?'
'A seed.'
'A ... seed?'
'An acorn that is unafraid to destroy itself in growing into a tree. ~ David Zindell

The hastily crafted [stimulus] bill, with its corrupt funding of ACORN and other favors, is a disgracefully irresponsible effort to expand the public sector, diminish the private sector, empower the autocrats, and further divest us of our individual liberties - all at the expense of present and future generations. ~ David Limbaugh

Eventually, even a blind squirell will find an acorn. ~ Jim Cornette

The conservative may clamor against reform, but he might as well clamor against the centrifugal force. He sighs for the "good old times,"
he might as well wish the oak back into the acorn. ~ Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Praise everybody, I say to such: never be squeamish, but speak out your compliment both point-blank in a man's face, and behind his back, when you know there is a reasonable chance of his hearing it again. Never lose a chance of saying a kind word. As Collingwood never saw a vacant place in his estate but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in; so deal with your compliments through life. An acorn costs nothing; but it may sprout into a prodigious bit of timber. ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the Little People arriving. He was here before the Kings and the graves and the Barrow-wights. When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless - before the Dark Lord came from Outside. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

How true it is that our destinies are decided by nothings and that a small imprudence helped by some insignificant accident, as an acorn is fertilized by a drop of rain, may raise the trees on which perhaps we and others shall be crucified. ~ Henri Frederic Amiel

There are situations in life which are beyond one. The sensible man realizes this, and slides out of such situations, admitting himself beaten. Others try to grapple with them, but it never does any good. When affairs get in a real tangle, it is best to sit still and let them straighten themselves out. Or, if one does not do that, simply to think no more about them. This is Philosophy. The true philosopher is the man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his arm-chair. One's attitude towards Life's Little Difficulties should be that of the gentleman in the fable, who sat down on an acorn one day and happened to doze. The warmth of his body caused the acorn to germinate, and it grew so rapidly that, when he awoke, he found himself sitting in the fork of an oak sixty feet from the ground. He thought he would go home, but, finding this impossible, he altered his plans. "Well, well," he said, "if I cannot compel circumstances to my will, I can at least adapt my will to circumstances. I decide to remain here." Which he did, and had a not unpleasant time. The oak lacked some of the comforts of home, but the air was splendid and the view excellent.
Today's Great Thought for Young Readers. Imitate this man. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Each human being is bred with a unique set of potentials that yearn to be fulfilled as surely as the acorn yearns to become the oak within it. ~ Aristotle.

If footballs were the size of acorns, they'd be easy to lose in the forest. Virginity is also easy to lose in the forest, and mine, believe it or not, was shaped like an acorn. ~ Jarod Kintz

House GOP Leader John Boehner on Monday rightly sounded the alarm over billions in stimulus tax dollars that could potentially go to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). But the Republican leadership has only scratched the surface over what amounts to a bottomless slush fund for a bigger coalition of housing entitlement thugs. ~ Michelle Malkin

Oak trees come out of acorns, no matter how unlikely that seems. An acorn is just a tree's way back into the ground. For another try. Another trip through. One life for another. ~ Shirley Ann Grau

The tree does not end at it's skin but exists also in the rain that falls downwind, many miles from the forest. In the seed exists the acorn, the oak, and the shade. ~ Stephen Harrod Buhner

An acorn would never brag about giving shade. ~ Tim Cook

What I have in mind when I start to write could fit inside an acorn-an acorn, moreover, that rarely if ever grows into an oak. Write fiction and you relinquish reason. You start with an acorn and you end up with a mackerel. ~ Philip Roth

I watch a squirrel get run over by a car on my walk to work. She is lying dead in the street and still has an acorn in her little hands. I am amazed at how she is able to hold on to her acorn after being tumbled like that, after bouncing so high off the street. I walk over to the squirrel and see that her face is blown to bits and looks like uncased sausage spilling onto the asphalt. But that acorn is still so tight in her hands. I pick her up by her tail, take off my dress shirt and swaddle her in it, then put her in my bag. I know right where she is as I walk into work, everybody looking at me, everybody asking me about my shirtlessness. The world is as steady as if it were sewn into the skin of the universe. ~ Zachary Schomburg

New Rule: Since Glenn Beck is clearly onto us, liberals must launch our plan for socialist domination immediately. Listen closely, comrades, I've received word from General Soros and our partners in the UN
Operation Streisand is a go. Markos Moulitsas, you and your Daily Kos-controlled army of gay Mexican day laborers will join with Michael Moore's Prius tank division north of Branson, where you will seize the guns of everyone who doesn't blame America first, forcing them into the FEMA concentration camps. That's where ACORN and I will re-educate them as atheists and declare victory in the war on Christmas. ~ Bill Maher

The acorn does not know that it will become a sapling. The sapling does not remember when it was an acorn, and only dimly senses that it will become a mighty oak. The oak recalls fondly when it was a sapling, loves being a mighty oak, and joyfully creates new acorns. ~ J. Earp

Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fullness and completion? ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

My eyes change color depending on my mood and what I'm wearing. If I'm wearing an acorn brown shirt, my eyes look like squirrel fur. And if I'm wearing no shirt at all, my eyes look more nude and flesh-colored. I guess my ex girlfriend, Zelda, said it best when her friend asked her what I look like and she said: "He looks like you'd imagine him to look like, if you had no imagination. ~ Jarod Kintz

Men educate each other in reason by contact or collision, and keep each other sane by the very conflict of their separate hobbies. Society as a whole is the deadly enemy of the particular crotchet of each, and solitude is almost the only condition in which the acorn of conceit can grow to the oak of perfect self-delusion. ~ Edwin Percy Whipple

Even a blind hog can find an acorn once in a while ~ William F. Shumaker

The greatest achievement was at first and for a time only a dream. Just as the oak sleeps in the acorn, and the bird waits in the egg, so dreams are the seedlings of realities. ~ Jeff Wheeler

The tallest oak tree once was an acorn that any pig could have swallowed. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The acorn of honest inquiry has often sprouted and matured into a great oak of understanding. ~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf

We are all only mortal," said the Master, even more slowly. "We do only what we can do. All the Elemental priests have certain teachings in common: one of them is that everyone, every human, every bird, badger and salamander, every blade of grass and every acorn, is doing the best it can. This is the priests' definition of mortality: the circumstance of doing what one can is that of doing one's best. Only the immortals have the luxury of furlough. Doing one's best is hard work; we rely on our surroundings because we must; when our surroundings change, we stumble. If you are running as fast as you can, only a tiny roughness of the ground may make you fall. ~ Robin McKinley

The giant oak tree of a story, started with a small acorn of a thought.
-T.A. Cline ~ T.A. Cline

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I want you to use your misplaced acorn for a brain before the squirrel comes looking for it again. ~ Scott Lynch

If you allow spirit to have dominion in your heart you will have dominion in your life. That changes thinking. That IS the miracle. That I'm not just a child of the body, I'm a child of the universe and in the universe I am programmed for greatness, and the fact that I don't have money in my bank account now doesn't mean I'm any less programmed for greatness. I was programmed for greatness just like the acorn is programmed to be an oak tree. ~ Marianne Williamson

Hermione looked far and far and George was a midge and a leaf was the size of a house and an acorn-cup would shelter herself ... for ... I am a tree planted by the river of water ... I am in the word tree. I am tree exactly. ~ H.D.

Before the acorn can bring forth the oak, it must become itself a wreck. No plant ever came from any but a wrecked seed. ~ Hannah Whitall Smith

Biologists often talk about the "ecology" of an organism: the tallest oak in the forest is the tallest not just because it grew from the hardiest acorn; it is the tallest also because no other trees blocked its sunlight, the soil around it was deep and rich, no rabbit chewed through its bark as a sapling, and no lumberjack cut it down before it matured. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

I'm not cool with ACORN or the working families' party, or people that vote like democrats and run on Republican lines. ~ Doug Hoffman

Acorn struggles in pain to crack the hard shell and emerge. For it senses that out there… exists more and it knows it. It feels that there is a sun, even if Acorn hasn't seen it. It has felt some warmth and energy and it aches for more. ~ Robin Rumi

Under the stars we are as one. Theirs is the power of countless years. They see our grief and know our pain, yet still they shine and their light gives us hope. From acorn to oak, but even the mightiest of oaks shall fall. Thus do we recognize the great wheel of life and death and life once more. We surrender our departed souls under the stars and may the Green gather them to him. ~ Robin Jarvis

The night I filled an inside straight: Even a blind hog's gonna root up an acorn once in a while. ~ Edward Abbey

Which was no abode of the dead because there was no death, not Lion and not Sam: not held fast in earth but free in earth and not in earth but of earth, myriad yet undiffused of every myriad part, leaf and twig and particle, air and sun and rain and dew and night, acorn oak and leaf and acorn again, dark and dawn and dark and dawn again in their immutable progression and, being myriad, one ... ~ William Faulkner

As naturally as the oak bears an acorn and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! ~ George Bernard Shaw

I've been fighting with Acorn, alongside Acorn, on issues you care about, my entire career. ~ Barack Obama

Colonel Matterson reading from wrinkled scripture of that long yellow hand:
The flag is America. America is the plum. The peach. The watermelon. America is the gumdrop. The pumpkin seed. America is television.
Now, the cross is Mexico. Mexico is the walnut. The hazelnut. The acorn. Mexico is the rainbow. The rainbow is wooden. Mexico is wooden.
Now, the green sheep is Canada Canada is the fir tree. The wheat field. The calendar.
The night is the Pacific Ocean. ~ Ken Kesey

It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn. ~ Alan Watts

CNN and MSNBC, our primary competitors, are trying to figure out how to beat us. There are some good, smart people at those networks, and even occasionally a blind pig finds an acorn. ~ Roger Ailes

I trust and believe that this College, this seed that we have sown, will grow to shelter and nurture generations who may add most notably to the strength and happiness of our people, and to the knowledge and peaceful progress of the world. 'The mighty oak from an acorn towers; A tiny seed can fill a field with flowers.' ~ Winston Churchill

The greater the acorn the greater the oak tree. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

INTROSPECTION: LOOKING WITHIN
What is there to say about the inner life? It is as complex as the watery byways of Venice, Delicate as the hands of an infant child, Curious and compact as the wisdom of an acorn. It is as magnificent as the profile of an African queen.
It eludes comprehension and yet it is ever present, Enveloping every moment of life.
One lives from the inside out. A gnarl of emotion, biography, memory, and spirit. Each blending and bending into the other Like knotted strands of crocheted comforter. It is a world I will never truly understand, And yet the only reality I can ever know.
What ~ Karyn D. Kedar

Apart from the positive woes of perdition, an eternity of wretchedness grows from the want of love to Christ as naturally as the oak grows from the acorn, or the harvest from the scattered grain. It is not that love to Christ merits heaven; it does far better, it makes heaven. It is, as it were, the organ of sensation that takes note of heaven's blessedness. ~ Andrew Kennedy Hutchison Boyd

A seed is alive while it waits. Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year-old oak tree that towers over it. Neither the seed nor the old oak is growing; they are both just waiting. Their waiting differs, however, in that the seed is waiting to flourish while the tree is only waiting to die. ~ Hope Jahren

My thoughts turn to something I read once, something the Zen Buddhists believe. They say that an oak tree is brought into creation by two forces at the same time. Obviously, there is the acorn from which it all begins, the seed which holds all the promise and potential, which grows into a tree. Everybody can see that. But only a few can recognize that there is anther force operating here as well-the future tree itself, which wants so badly to exist that it pulls the acorn into being, drawing the seedling forth with longing out of the void, guiding the evolution from nothingness to maturity. In this respect, say the Zens, it is the oak tree that creates the very acorn from which it was born. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Nothing can match the treasure of common memories, of trials endured together, of quarrels and reconciliations and generous emotions. It is idle, having planted an acorn in the morning, to expect that afternoon to sit in the shade of the oak. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

The acorn of ambition often grows into an oak from which men hang. ~ H. Rider Haggard

Miss Rook, on a scale of one to pomegranate, how dangerous would you say this situation has become?"

"Dangerous?" I faltered.

"Yes, Miss Rook," prompted Jackaby, in your expert opinion."

"On a scale of one to pomegranate?" I followed his lead, checking over the notes I had scribbled in my notepad and speaking in my most audible, serious whisper. "I should think ... acorn? Possibly badger. Time alone will tell. ~ William Ritter

An acorn does not see itself as a seed, but as an oak tree. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Then in my early teens, when the home computer bubble was blowing, I had one of the first, an Acorn Atom, and used to write primitive adventures on that. ~ Graham Nelson

My house was once an acorn. ~ Roger Deakin

You fell out of a tree? What are you, an acorn? ~ Steven Levenson, Dear Evan Hansen

=Lost Hope= You cast to ground the hope which once was mine, But did the while your harsh decree deplore, Embalming with sweet tears the vacant shrine, My heart, where Hope had been and was no more. So on an oaken sprout A goodly acorn grew; But winds from heaven shook the acorn out, And filled the cup with dew. ~ Alfred Tennyson

I invented the pelican, but probably not the acorn or unicorn. ~ Daniel Davis

…it was not whim or wildness which made me go, but a sudden clear realization that tho you were the first man of importance to me, you could not be the last. - Gwendolyn MacEwen to Milton Acorn, 1963 (age 21) ~ Jeanette Lynes

The Law of Divine Compensation posits that this is a self-organizing and self-correcting universe: the embryo becomes a baby, the bud becomes a blossom, the acorn becomes an oak tree. Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression. ~ Marianne Williamson

He turned the teacup the other way up. "But this way it looks more like an acorn. … What's that?" He scanned his copy of Unfogging the Future. " 'A windfall, unexpected gold.' Excellent, you can lend me some … and there's a thing here," he turned the cup again, "that looks like an animal … yeah, if that was its head … it looks like a hippo … no, a sheep …" Professor Trelawney whirled around as Harry let out a snort of laughter. "Let me see that, my dear," she said reprovingly to Ron, sweeping over and snatching Harry's cup from him. Everyone went quiet to watch. Professor Trelawney was staring into the teacup, rotating it counterclockwise. "The falcon … my dear, you have a deadly enemy. ~ J.K. Rowling

Think of the self that God has given as an acorn. It is a marvelous little thing, a perfect shape, perfectly designed for its purpose, perfectly functional. Think of the grand glory of an oak tree. God's intention when He made the acorn was the oak tree. His intention for us is '… the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.' Many deaths must go into our reaching that measure, many letting-goes. When you look at the oak tree, you don't feel that the loss' of the acorn is a very great loss. The more you perceive God's purpose in your life, the less terrible the losses seem. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Remember the acorn. Even when you don't see it growing, it's pushing past the dirt. Reaching for the sun. Growing stronger. ~ Sharon G. Flake

An infinity of forest lies dormant within the dreams on one acorn. ~ Wayne W. Dyer

With two eyes you see my face. With three you could see my heart. With two you can see that oak tree there. With three you could see the acorn the oak grew from and the stump that it will one day become. With two you see no farther than your walls. With three you would gaze south to the Summer Sea and north beyond the Wall. ~ George R R Martin

I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to nature, it dies; and so a man. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Wisdom is a tree of slow growth; the rings around its trunk are earthly lives, and the grooves between are the periods between lives. Who grieves that an acorn is slow in becoming an oak? ~ Elsa Barker

The difference between man and God is significant - but it is one of degree, not kind. It is the difference between an acorn and an oak tree, a rosebud and a rose, a son and a father ... Every man is a potential god in embryo. ~ Tad R. Callister

Get you gone, you dwarf,
You minimus of hindering knotgrass made,
You bead, you acorn! ~ William Shakespeare

Have no fear," the voice told her, "for in thee lies the hope of all. Only thou can deliver the land from darkness."
"How can I?" she asked. "I am just one against so many."
The eyes gleamed behind the dappling leaves. "Yet the smallest acorn may become the tallest oak," came the answer. ~ Robin Jarvis

The mind has grown to its present state of consciousness as an acorn grows into an oak, or as saurians developed into mammals. ~ Carl Jung

The acorn becomes an oak by means of automatic growth; no commitment is necessary. The kitten similarly becomes a cat on the basis of instinct. Nature and being are identical in creatures like them. But a man or woman becomes fully human only by his or her choices and his or her commitment to them. People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day by day. These decisions require courage. ~ Rollo May

For the life of him, he couldn't figure why these East Enders called themselves black. He kept looking and looking, and the colors he found were gingersnap and light fudge and dark fudge and acorn and butter rum and cinnamon and burnt orange. But never licorice, which, to him, was real black. ~ Jerry Spinelli

You know, when you get your first asparagus, or your first acorn squash, or your first really good tomato of the season, those are the moments that define the cook's year. I get more excited by that than anything else. ~ Mario Batali

This, I thought, was why the bees and birds landed on him--he clearly had a whole world inside him with rivers of honey and a heart made from flowers. Bernard was just like a closed bud, an acorn with a tree inside, a song yet to be heard. ~ Michelle Cuevas

Organic growth is a cyclical process; it is just as true to say that the oak is a potential acorn as it is to say the acorn is a potential oak. But the process of writing a poem, of making any art object, is not cyclical but a motion in one direction toward a definite end. ~ W. H. Auden

We are, in a certain way, defined as much by our potential as by its expression. There is a great difference between an acorn and a little bit of wood carved into an acorn shape, a difference not always readily apparent to the naked eye. The difference is there even if the acorn never has the opportunity to plant itself and become an oak. Remembering its potential changes the way in which we think of the acorn and react to it. How we value it. If an acorn were conscious, knowing its potential would change the way that it might think and feel about itself. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

An acorn is an oak tree turned inside out. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The boughs of the oak are roaring inside the acorn. ~ Charles Tomlinson