Mrs Wormwood Quotes

I'm afraid men are not always quite as clever as they think they are. You will learn that when you get a bit older, my girl. ~ Roald Dahl

We are all of us dreamers of dreams;
On visions our childhood is fed;
And the heart of the child is unhaunted, it seems,
By the ghosts of dreams that are dead.

From childhood to youth's but a span
And the years of our youth are soon sped;
Yet the youth is no longer a youth, but a man,
When the first of his dreams is dead.

There's no sadder sight this side the grave
Than the shroud o'er a fond dream spread,
And the heart should be stern and the eyes be brave
To gaze on a dream that is dead.

'Tis a cup as of wormwood and gall
When the doom of a great dream is said,
And the best of a man is under the pall
When the best of his dreams is dead.

He may live on by compact and plan
When the fine bloom of living is shed,
But God pity the little that's left of a man
When the last of his dreams is dead.

Let him show a brave face if he can,
Let him woo fame or fortune instead,
Yet there's not much to do but bury a man
When the last of his dreams is dead. ~ William Herbert Carruth

We would either have a silent, a soft, a perfumed cross, sugared and honeyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and wormwood, mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be disciples. But Christ's cross did not smile on him, his cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death. ~ Samuel Rutherford

Some nights are like honey - and some like wine - and some like wormwood. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

My love and my joy, if I die from illness, madness or sadness, if before the time allotted me by fate is up, I can't get enough of looking at you, enough joy in the dilapidated mills on the emerald wormwood hills, if I don't drink my fill of the transparent water from your immortal hands, if I don't make it to the end, if I don't tell everything that I wanted to tell about you, about myself, if one day I die without saying farewell - forgive me. ~ Sasha Sokolov

Class?" I asked in surprise. "Today?"
"This isn't a spa vacation, Tiger Lily. Just be glad it's History of Wormwood and not conditioning."
"Conditioning?"
"Hope you've got a bottle of Icy Hot in there. ~ Christine Manzari

Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass, - this was my daily work ... ~ Henry David Thoreau

My last good memory of the eighties, before everything went dark, was being sent to Wormwood Scrubs. Not because I'd broken the law again – amazingly – but because I was asked to play a gig there. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

Chorus of Comforters

We are gardeners who have no flowers,
No herb may be transplanted
From yesterday to tomorrow.
The sage has faded in the cradles--
Rosemary lost its scent facing the new dead--
Even wormwood was only bitter yesterday.
The blossoms of comfort are too small
Not enough for the torment of a child's tear.

New seed may perhaps be gathered
In the heart of a nocturnal singer.
Which of us may comfort?
In the depth of the defile
Between yesterday and tomorrow
The cherub stands
Grinding the lightnings of sorrow with his wings
But his hands hold apart the rocks
Of yesterday and tomorrow
Like the edges of a wound

Which must remain open
That may not yet heal.

The lightnings of sorrow do not allow
The field of forgetting to fall asleep.

Which of us may comfort?

We are gardeners who have no flowers
And stand upon a shining star
And weep. ~ Nelly Sachs

I know sage, wormwood, and hyssop, but I can't smell character unless it stinks. ~ Edward Dahlberg

Animals. Let them burn, then. Let the streets be filled with the smell of their sacrifice. Let this place be called racca, ichabod, wormwood.
Flex
And power transformers atop lightpoles bloomed into nacreous purple light, spitting catherine-wheel sparks. High-tension wires fell into the streets in pick-up-sticks tangles ... ~ Stephen King

What is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"
At this, Hermione stood up, her hand stretching towards the dungeon ceiling.
I don't know," said Harry quietly. "I think Hermione does, though, why don't you try asking her?"
A few people laughed; Harry caught sight of Seamus's eye and Seamus winked. Snape, however, was not pleased.
Sit down," he snapped at Hermione. "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?"
There was a sudden rummaging for quills and parchment. Over the noise, Snape said, "And a point will be taken from Gryffindor house for your cheek, Potter. ~ J.K. Rowling

Potter!" said Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?" Powdered ~ J.K. Rowling

To be allowed, no, invited into the private lives of strangers, and to share their joys and fears, was a chance to exchange the Southern bitter wormwood for a cup of mead with Beowulf or a hot cup of tea and milk with Oliver Twist. ~ Maya Angelou

Absinthe, or wormwood, the liquorice-flavoured, plant-based liqueur, had been popular in France throughout the 19th century. Though the drink was of Swiss origin, heavy tax on import had encouraged H.L. Pernod to start producing it commercially in France at the end of the 18th century.12 It was a tremendous success, and as the 19th century unfolded, its popularity soared. Exceedingly potent, it was closer to a soft drug than a drink. 'The drunkenness it gives does not resemble any known drunkenness,' bemoaned Alfred Delvau. 'It makes you lose your footing right away […] You think you are headed towards infinity, like all great dreamers, and you are only headed towards incoherence.'13 In excess, absinthe could have a fatal effect on the nervous system, and by the time Maria started attending the bars and cafés where it was served, it had become a national curse. A favourite drink among the working classes precisely because of its relative cheapness for the effect produced, absinthe became the scapegoat for a host of social ills, not least the Commune.
(...)
Absinthe found a dedicated following among artists, writers and poets (including Charles Baudelaire), for whom the liquor became the entrancing 'green fairy'. Its popularity in these circles was due primarily to its intoxicating effect, but also because its consumption was accompanied by a curious ritual which appealed to quirky individuals with a taste for the extraordinary. To counteract the drink's inherent bit ~ Catherine Hewitt

Another's wife is a white swan, and ours is bitter wormwood. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted

For my sake the fruit forbidden?

Must your light like mine be hidden,

Your young life like mine be wasted,

Undone in mine undoing,

And ruined in my ruin,

Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?' -

She clung about her sister,

Kissed and kissed and kissed her:

Tears once again

Refreshed her shrunken eyes,

Dropping like rain

After long sultry drouth;

Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,

She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,

That juice was wormwood to her tongue,

She loathed the feast:

Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,

Rent all her robe, and wrung Her hands in lamentable haste... ~ Christina Rossetti

Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys. ~ C.S. Lewis

[A] truly humble spirit humbles itself as much amid honors as amid insults, acting like the honeybee which makes its honey equally as well from the dew that falls on the wormwood as from that which falls on the rose. ~ Vincent De Paul

Wormwood Echoed.
She Had Only To Listen.
And She Was Not Fucking Ready.
Because in her heart,
she knew she might
never come back. ~ Laken Cane

And now he couldn't cloak it any longer, the leaking sense of loss, more fucking loss, soaking through into the same old general, swirling sense of betrayal, years upon pissed-away years of it, made bitter and particular on his tongue now, as if Grace-of-Heaven had come wormwood into his mouth in those final clenched, pulsing seconds. ~ Richard K. Morgan

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of the waters; and the name of the star is called wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. ~ Frederik Pohl

Miss Wormwood: Calvin, your test was an absolute disgrace! It's obvious you haven't read any of the material. Our first president was not Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and you ought to be ashamed to have turned in such preposterous answers!
Calvin: I just don't test well. ~ Bill Watterson

Desire is poison at lunch and wormwood at dinner; your bed is a stone, friendship is hateful and your fancy is always fixed on one thing. ~ Pietro Aretino

The 'Desert' sweeps up to the walls of Baghdad, but it is a misnomer to call the vast level of rich, stoneless, alluvial soil a desert. It is a dead flat of uninhabited earth; orange colocynth balls, a little wormwood, and some alkaline plants which camels eat, being its chief products. After the inundations, reedy grass grows in the hollows. ~ Isabella Bird

Funny, that. For so long Wormwood had desired the throne and then, when he'd had it, it hadn't been worth desiring after all. ~ John Connolly

What a writer's message is is totally unimportant. Either he is agreeing with life by affirming, or he is saying life is just a bowl of wormwood. ~ Stanley Elkin

On rolls the stream with a perpetual sigh;
The rocks moan wildly as it passes by;
Hyssop and wormwood border all the strand,
And not a flower adorns the dreary land. ~ William C. Bryant

Doctor," came the reply, "I'm going to do all the things you tell me not to do. If I've got to live the sort of life you have described, I don't care how short it is." Having spat the wormwood out, ~ Edmund Morris

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
[deleted scene]
Professor Severus Snape: For your information Potter, Asphodel and Wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of the Living Death, a Bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons. As for Monkshood and Wolfbane, they are the same plant which also goes by the name of Aconite. Well, why aren't you all copying this down? ~ J.K. Rowling

The best of God's saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of His children must bear the cross. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon