Grass Is Greener Quotes

Grass is greener at other people's feet because they watered it. You need not to let your environment control you; you have what it takes to make it look beautiful! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

In New York the sky is bluer, and the grass is greener, and the girls are prettier, and the steaks are thicker, and the buildings are higher, and the streets are wider, and the air is finer, than the sky, or the grass, or the girls, or the steaks, or the air of any place else in the world. ~ Edna Ferber

When you're winning the grass is greener, the cigars are sweeter and the girls are better looking! ~ Mark Grace

Maybe the grass is greener on the other side depends who was standing in it. Sometimes you have to go over there and look. ~ Lynne Rae Perkins

If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, you can bet the water bill is higher. ~ Debbie Macomber

Get busy watering your own grass so as not to notice whether it's greener elsewhere. ~ Karon Waddell

Where the grass is greener, the water bill is bigger. ~ Rick Warren

So strange is the human being that in the midst of my new life and fulfilled wishes, I was sometimes aware of a slight, fleeting, subconscious desire for solitude, for even boring and empty days. It seemed to me that the time I had spent at home and the dreary uneventful life from which I was so glad to escape, was something desirable. ~ Hermann Hesse

By practicing this little virtue, we counteract the deception that our lives should be more meritorious. It also frees us from the false imaginings of a better life elsewhere than in the state in life that is ours, as in the popular proverb that mistakenly suggests that the grass is greener on the other side. The saint says, instead, that "there is no vocation that does not have its trouble, its bitterness, and its distaste." Nevertheless, "[a] person who no longer has the restlessness of his own will is content with everything: provided that God be served, it does not matter in what manner God employs him; provided that he does his divine will, it is all the same to him ~ Fr. Thomas Dailey

Everybody thinks the grass is greener on the other side. If you talk to most artists, they think they can play something, you know, "If I had stayed playing football in high school, if I had been doing basketball ... " Everybody's got their fantasies and thinks the grass is greener. It's not. It's not. ~ Ice Cube

I looked through others' windows
On an enchanted earth
But out of my own window--
solitude and dearth.

And yet there is a mystery
I cannot understand--
That others through my window
See an enchanted land. ~ Jessie Belle Rittenhouse

The grass is always greener…wherever you water and mow. No matter how big or how small, take care of the things you currently have. See to it that your marriage, your children, your job and the blessings you have been entrusted with get plenty of water and sunshine. Pull the inevitable weeds that pop up, keep that lawn of life manicured and trimmed; don't forget the edging. Add seeds of growth where you find deficiencies, nurture the flowers that bloom and rejoice in the sight of the healthy beauty that lies within your very own fence line. ~ Jason Versey

Even if the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, keep to your own side; it's where you belong. There you can plant your own grass and tend to it. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The contract stuff just happens to be a coincidence to me. I always play every game as if my back is against the wall. That's always something that has been good to me since high school. A lot of people believe the grass is greener on the other side, but I'm not one of those people. It wouldn't be my choice to leave, but the Seahawks know that. ~ Shaun Alexander

Sometimes the grass is greener on the other side of the fence because that's where your neighbor's leaky septic tank is buried. ~ Dakboy

If grass is greener on the other side, why wait at this side of the fence? ~ Swapnil Thakur

I love being married. I love my husband. I think married people always have that thing where they think that the grass is greener on the single side, but all my single friends are like, "Trust me, you don't want to have to actually interact with these people." ~ Aisha Tyler

If the grass is greener in the other fellow's yard- let him worry about cutting it. ~ Fred Allen

The grass is always greener over the septic tank. ~ Erma Bombeck

But here I am in July, and why am I thinking about Christmas pudding? Probably because we always pine for what we do not have. The winter seems cozy and romantic in the hell of summer, but hot beaches and sunlight are what we yearn for all winter. ~ Joanna Franklin Bell

Even if you think the grass is greener on the other side, you're going to have to mow that side too. ~ Joyce Meyer

The more you know, the harder you will find it to make up your mind, it doesn't really matter if you find it. You can't see which grass is greener, chances are it's neither and either way it's easier to see the difference when you're sitting on the fence. ~ Tim Minchin

If the grass looks greener on the other side, it is probably astroturf. ~ Nicky Gumbel

Always he's looking for something, he's chasing it. Always the neighbour's grass is greener, somewhere else, over the next hill." Her smile was slight. "My grass is green enough. ~ Susanna Kearsley

Humans, as a rule, don't like mad people unless they are good at painting, and only then once they are dead. But the definition of mad, on Earth, seems to be very unclear and inconsistent. What is perfectly sane in one era turns out to be insane in another. The earliest humans walked around naked with no problem. Certain humans, in humid rainforests mainly, still do so. So, we must conclude that madness is sometimes a question of time, and sometimes of postcode.
Basically, the key rule is, if you want to appear sane on Earth you have to be in the right place, wearing the right clothes, saying the right things, and only stepping on the right kind of grass. ~ Matt Haig

Modern evangelicals like to compare holy things to soft drinks, designer clothes, [and other products in] our modern consumerist culture. The problem with this is not ... the comparison to a created thing. The problem is that it is ... bad poetry. The Bible compares God to very mundane things, but does so with poetic wonder. God shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. ~ Douglas Wilson

A question.
So what are people supposed to do if they want to avoid a collision (thud!) but still lie in the field, enjoying the clouds drifting by, listening to the grass grow - not thinking, in other words? Sound hard? Not at all. Logically, it's easy. C'est simple. The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams, and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.
In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly any collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites.
Reality, reality. ~ Haruki Murakami

Mere life is a luxury, and the color of the grass, of the flowers, of the sky, the wind in the trees, the outlines of the horizon, the forms of clouds, all give a pleasure as exquisite as the sweetest music to the ear famishing for it. The ~ Mark Twain

My wife Ann and I had been digging during the day, transplanting lilies from the front of this abandoned farmhouse back down the road to where we live. We finished. She was tired and laid in the grass. I took a picture. The house is now gone. The walnut trees have been bulldozed and burned. I saw this picture the other day for the first time in years and realized how photographing life within a hundred yards of my front porch had helped me focus on everything I cared about. ~ Larry Towell

I have need of the sky,
I have business with the grass;
I will up and get me away where the hawk is wheeling
Lone and high,
And the slow clouds go by.
I will get me away to the waters that glass
The clouds as they pass.
I will get me away to the woods. ~ Richard Hovey

Baseball is sunshine, green grass, fathers and sons, our rural past. ~ Albert Theodore Powers

The calf is capable of walking quite well now," Dazu said. "He never stumbles."

"But I told you to carry him back here," the teacher said. "The first thing a soldier must learn is to obey orders."

Every day, the calf grew a little heavier, and every day, Dazu had to struggle a little harder. He would collapse, exhausted, when he finally got to the ranch, and the calf would bound out of his arms, glad to be able to walk on his own and stretch out.

When winter rolled around again, Médo handed him a wooden sword and asked him to strike as hard as he could at the practice dummy. Dazu looked with distaste at the crude weapon with no edge, but he swung obediently.

The wooden dummy fell in half, cut clean through. He looked at the sword in his hand with wonder.

"It's not the sword," his teacher said. "Have you looked at yourself lately?" He brought Dazu to stand in front of a brightly polished shield.

The young man could hardly recognize the reflection. His shoulders filled the frame of the mirror. His arms and thighs were twice as thick as he remembered, and his chest bulged over his narrow waist.

"A great warrior trusts not his weapons, but himself. When you possess true strength, you can deal a killing blow even if all you have is a blade of grass.

"Now you're finally ready to learn from me. But first, go thank the calf for making you strong. ~ Ken Liu

A great warrior trusts not his weapons, but himself. When you possess true strength, you can deal a killing blow even if all you have is a blade of grass. "Now ~ Ken Liu

I'm crazy about this City.

Daylight slants like a razor cutting the buildings in half. In the top half I see looking faces and it's not easy to tell which are people, which the work of stonemasons. Below is shadow where any blasé thing takes place: clarinets and lovemaking, fists and the voices of sorrowful women. A city like this one makes me dream tall and feel in on things. Hep. It's the bright steel rocking above the shade below that does it. When I look over strips of green grass lining the river, at church steeples and into the cream-and-copper halls of apartment buildings, I'm strong. Alone, yes, but top-notch and indestructible-like the City in 1926 when all the wars are over and there will never be another one. The people down there in the shadow are happy about that. At last, at last, everything's ahead. The smart ones say so and people listening to them and reading what they write down agree: Here comes the new. Look out. ~ Toni Morrison

The walls are white, the track is grey, the grass is green, and the sky is blue ... your job is to keep them all where they belong. ~ Johnny Rutherford

We Let the Boat Drift

I set out for the pond, crossing the ravine
where seedling pines start up like sparks
between the disused rails of the Boston and Maine.

The grass in the field would make a second crop
if early autumn rains hadn't washed
the goodness out. After the night's hard frost
it makes a brittle rustling as I walk.

The water is utterly still. Here and there
a black twig sticks up. It's five years today,
and even now I can't accept what cancer did
to him -- not death so much as the annihilation
of the whole man, sense by sense, thought
by thought, hope by hope.

Once we talked about the life to come.
I took the Bible from the nightstand
and offered John 14: "I go to prepare
a place for you.""Fine. Good," he said.
"But what about Matthew? 'You, therefore,
must be perfect, as your heavenly Father
is perfect.'" And he wept.

My neighbor honks and waves driving by.
She counsels troubled students; keeps bees;
her goats follow her to the mailbox.

Last Sunday afternoon we went canoeing on the pond. Something terrible at school had shaken her. We talked quietly far from shore. The paddles
rested across our laps; glittering drops
fell randomly from their tips. The light
around us seemed alive. A loon-itinerant-
let us get quite close before it dove, coming up
after a long time, and ~ Jane Kenyon

Your fame is as the grass, whose hue comes and goes, and His might withers it by whose power it sprang from the lap of the earth. ~ Dante Alighieri

I don't suppose I really know you very well - but I know you smell like the delicious damp grass that grows near old walls and that your hands are beautiful opening out of your sleeves and that the back of your head is a mossy sheltered cave when there is trouble in the wind and that my cheek just fits the depression in your shoulder. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald

Della & I are drunk at the top of Mont-Royal. We have an open blue plastic thermos of red wine at our feet. It's the first day of spring & it's midnight & we've been peeling off layers of winter all day. We stand facing each other, as if to exchange vows, chests heaving from racing up & down the mountain to the sky. My face is hurting from smiling so much, aching at the edges of my words. She reaches out to hold my face in her hands, dirty palms form a bowl to rest my chin. I'm standing on a tree stump so we're eye to eye. It's hard to stay steady. I worry I may start to drool or laugh, I feel so unhinged from my body. It's been one of those days I don't want to end. Our goal was to shirk all responsibility merely to enjoy the lack of everyday obligations, to create fullness & purpose out of each other. Our knees are the colour of the ground-in grass. Our boots are caked in mud caskets. Under our nails is a mixture of minerals & organic matter, knuckles scraped by tree bark. We are the thaw embodied.

She says, You have changed me, Eve, you are the single most important person in my life. If you were to leave me, I would die.

At that moment, our breath circling from my lungs & into hers, I am changed. Perhaps before this I could describe our relationship as an experiment, a happy accident, but this was irrefutable. I was completely consumed & consuming. It was as though we created some sort of object between us that we coul ~ Zoe Whittall

Everything has yet to be invented. I never say 'green' - I say 'greener.' It's greener simply because this is a continuum of change, improvement and discovery. ~ Yves Behar

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer
and what trees and seasons smelled like
how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich. ~ John Steinbeck

If passion was a substance I would say it is dark brown, and then blood red. It's like wet grass, tons of it soaked in mud. It's warm and it stinks like shit and it's unaccountably and endlessly good. It's thick and it goes on for miles and it isn't so much deep as bottomless and it holds you in its grip, you never drown. And then it goes. That's all you know. ~ Eileen Myles

I am wild, I will sing to the trees,
I will sing to the stars in the sky,
I love, I am loved, he is mine,
Now at last I can die!
I am sandaled with wind and with flame,
I have heart-fire and singing to give,
I can tread on the grass or the stars,
Now at last I can live! ~ Sara Teasdale

I sit in some long grass, watch for a while to see if I can find some ants working. The thing about watching ants is, you see some order and elegance to the whole works. And also is it a time of you wondering who is higher, really. But ~ Elizabeth Berg

Really? I love being onstage." I shuffled my feet against the fake grass. "My favorite thing is that feeling when you're waiting in the wings, in the dark, totally hidden, but you can feel the audience out there, and then you step out and the lights hit you, and you're blinded for a second, and you could be anywhere, but you know you're inside this thing that you're helping to create, and it's like - it's like electricity. ~ Jacqueline West

The grass is green
The tulip is red
A ginger cat walks over
The pink almond petals on the flower bed.
Enough has been said to show
It is life we are taking about.

- Oh grateful colours; bright looks! ~ Stevie Smith

You turn dark shadows into canopies of hope and dry grass into gold.
My heart is spoiled and my breath consumed when the beauty of earth
gives a glimmer of understanding to the beauty of You. ~ Amy Litzelman

It is an extraordinary and beautiful thing that God, in creation ... works with the beauty of matter; the reality of things; the discoveries of the senses, all five of them; so that we, in turn, may hear the grass growing; see a face springing to life in love and laughter ... The offerings of creation ... our glimpses of truth. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

One group is singing in the middle of the grass, still wearing their masks. Their voices blend beautifully but with all their swaying and kicking of debris, they look more like drunken pirates after a raid. ~ Susan Ee

Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. ~ C.S. Lewis

For if life, once empty of attachments
and sweet illusions, is a starless winter night,
still it's enough for me of mortal fate
and comfort and revenge that I can lie here
lazy, lifeless on the grass,
watching the sea and earth and sky, and smile. ~ Giacomo Leopardi

The place of horror turns out to be no more than a green scoop, sometimes shadowed, sometimes shining with the bilberries and grass within it, as if a mouth had opened from which streamed a beam of light. So my uncle Robert's death, which had looked from a distance to be an all-consuming tragedy was, close-up, the story of a man finding release from his pain and how his brother had showed such defiant love. The past was a grave, a trap - and yet, also neither of these. Just light, coming and going.
At the wolf pit you imagine you will stare into a hole littered with bones, but what draws you to that place is not what you take from it. The wolf pit seems a delicate illusion. You walk towards it; there is nothing, just a curve of the moor; then it is a soft green light, and then it is nothing again. ~ Will Cohu

According to Mr Walt, there once was a place so utterly desolate, lacking in natural resources, and devoid of charm and beauty that nobody wanted to live there. And because it was such a miserable stink hole, no one bothered to name it. Then one day came a man and wife so utterly down and out that when their wagon broke there was nothing for them to do but stay, like Job on his ash heap, and wait for the end. With nothing to do they established the place as a trash dump, taking refuse from better-off pioneers on their way to greener pastures. In this way they eked a poor but bearable existence. The man's name is not remembered but the woman was called Alice and over time this bleak barren tract of worthless soil became known as the Dump of Alice. Through contraction, it has passed down to us today as Dallas. ~ James Hold

It was such ecstacy to dream, and dream - till you got a bite.

A scorpion bite. Then the first duty was to get up out of the grass and kill the scorpion; and the next to bathe the bitten place with alcohol or brandy; and the next to resolve to keep out of the grass in the future. Then came an adjournment to the bedchamber and the pastime of writing up the day's journal with one hand and the destruction of mosquitoes with the other - a whole community of them at a slap. Then, observing an enemy approaching - a hairy tarantula on stilts - why not set the spittoon on him? It is done, and the projecting ends of his paws give a luminous idea of the magnitude of his reach. Then to bed and become a promenade for a centipede with forty-two legs on a side and every foot hot enough to burn a whole through a raw-hide. More soaking with alcohol, and a resolution to examine the bed before entering it, in future. Then wait, and suffer, till all the mosquitoes in the neighborhood have crawled in under the bar, then slip out quickly, shut them in and sleep peacefully on the floor till morning. Meantime, it is comforting to curse the tropics in occasional wakeful intervals. ~ Mark Twain

Past the flannel plains and blacktop graphs and skylines of canted rust, and past the tobacco-brown river overhung with weeping trees and coins of sunlight through them on the water downriver, to the place beyond the windbreak, where untilled fields simmer shrilly in the A.M. heat: shattercane, lamb's-quarter, cutgrass, sawbrier, nutgrass, jimsonweed, wild mint, dandelion, foxtail, muscadine, spinecabbage, goldenrod, creeping charlie, butter-print, nightshade, ragweed, wild oat, vetch, butcher grass, invaginate volunteer beans, all heads gently nodding in a morning breeze like a mother's soft hand on your cheek. An arrow of starlings fired from the windbreak's thatch. The glitter of dew that stays where it is and steams all day. A sunflower, four more, one bowed, and horses in the distance standing rigid and still as toys. All nodding. Electric sounds of insects at their business. Ale-colored sunshine and pale sky and whorls of cirrus so high they cast no shadow. Insects all business all the time. Quartz and chert and schist and chondrite iron scabs in granite. Very old land. Look around you. The horizon trembling, shapeless. We are all of us brothers.

Some crows come overhead then, three or four, not a murder, on the wing, silent with intent, corn-bound for the pasture's wire beyond which one horse smells at the other's behind, the lead horse's tail obligingly lifted. Your shoes' brand incised in the dew. An alfalfa breeze. Socks' burrs. Dry scratching inside a cu ~ David Foster Wallace

Dystopia is not always an unhappy place. There are, as it happens, certain dystopias in which it's perfectly possible to be happy as a clam. Vast numbers of people go through life never even realizing that they're in one, might live through the real-time decay from freedom to tyranny and never notice the change.
It basically comes down to wanderlust.
Imagine your life as a path extending through time and society. To either side are fences festooned with signs: No Trespassing, Keep Off the Grass, Thou Shalt Not Kill. These are the constraints on your behavior, the legal limits of acceptable conduct. You are free to wander anywhere between these barriers-- but cross one and you risk the weight of the law.
Now imagine that someone starts moving those fences closer together.
How you react-- whether you even notice-- depends entirely on how much you wandered beforehand. A lot of people never deviate from the center of the path their whole lives, would never understand what all those fringe radicals are whining about; after all, *their* lives haven't changed any. It makes no difference to them whether the fences are right on the shoulder or out past the horizon.
For the rest of us, though, it's only a matter of time before you wander back to a point you've always been free to visit in the past, only to find a fence suddenly blocking your way. ~ Peter Watts