Thorns And Cactus Quotes

And if not for the caterpillars and butterflies, who will I talk to? You'll be far away. And as for larger creatures, I'm not afraid. I have my thorns ... to protect me. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Could I see that God wanted to transform my life from a somewhat ugly, useless branch to an arrow, a tool usable in His hands, for the furtherance of His purposes?....To be thus transformed, was I willing - am I till willing - for the whittling, sandpapering, stripping, processes necessary in my Christian life? The ruthless pulling off of leaves and flowers might include doing without a television set or washing machine, remaining single in order to see a job done, re-evaluating the worthiness of the ambition to be a "good" doctor (according to my terms an values). The snapping of thorns might include drastic dealing with hidden jealousies and unknown prides, giving up prized rights in leadership and administration. The final stripping of the bark might include lessons to be learned regarding death to self - self-defence,self-pity, self-justification, self-vinidication, self-sufficiency, all the mechanisms of preventing the hurt of too deep involvment. Am I prepared for the pain, which may at times seem like sacrifice, in order to be made a tool in His service? My willingness will be a measure of the sincerity of my desire to express my heartfelt gratitude to Him for his so-great salvation. Can I see such minor "sacrifices" in light of the great sacrifice of Calvary, where Christ gave all for me? ~ Helen Roseveare

Everything drifts. Everything is slowly swirling, philosophies tangled with the grocery lists, unreal-real anxieties like rose thorns waiting to tear the uncertain flesh, nonentities of thoughts floating like plankton, green and orange particles, seaweed
lots of that, dark purple and waving, sharks with fins like cutlasses, herself held underwater by her hair, snared around auburn-rusted anchor chains. ~ Margaret Laurence

I linger near Galileo's telescopes, then round the corner and stand transfixed: I did not expect this- a dark, cool room full of globes of the night sky from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Globo celeste, they are called in Italian: 'celestial globe,' maps of the night sky… I imagine him making another globo celeste, this one smaller, yet still exquisitely painted, still breathtaking in detail. It's a map of the earth still flowing with creation, one you can spin and when you stop it with your finger, there is some tiny detail…some miraculous beauty, some wonderful example from each location at night. The white flower of a night blooming saguaro cactus, the feathers from a great-horned owl, the crunched, smiling face of a particular bat- here, I'm spinning it, I stop it at in the north, where I want there to be something still- he's painted the black-and-white feathers of a loon…or a globe of night sounds, so that by touching your location you hear the night there- the cricket song, the ocean surf, the frog mating calls. ~ Paul Bogard

ANCIENT AIR (39)

I climb up high and look on the four seas,
Heaven and earth spreading out so far.
Frost blankets all the stuff of autumn,
The wind blows with the great desert's cold.
The eastward-flowing water is immense,
All the ten thousand things billow.
The white sun's passing brightness fades,
Floating clouds seem to have no end.
Swallows and sparrows nest in the wutong tree,
Yuan and luan birds perch among jujube thorns.
Now it's time to head on back again,
I flick my sword and sing 'Taking the Hard Road'. ~ Li Bai

How did you get into the castle, Alexandre, son of Gilles Smith?"
Sand shrugged. "A saint kidnapped me from his shrine and put me into a fireplace here. So I guess the answer is, a miracle of Saint Melor. Or so I think. He has not told me."
"If you are trying to antagonize him, you are doing a good job," Perrotte whispered.
Sand scuffed his shoe at her. "I'm just telling the truth!"
"You're very good at telling it in the most maddening way possible."
"Thank you? ~ Merrie Haskell

I guess we all wish we were tough little cactus plants: needing the occasional bit of water but on the whole completely independent, able to protect ourselves when need be. I wanted to be a cactus. I wanted nothing more than to grow spikes and root myself in the ground. ~ Jodi Ann Bickley

Commala-come-come
There's a young man with a gun.
Young man lost his honey
When she took it on the run.

Commala-come-one!
She took it on the run!
Left her baby lonely
But he baby ain't done.

Commala-come-coo
The wind'll blow ya through.
Ya gotta go where ka's wind blows ya
Cause there's nothin else to do.

Commala-come-two!
Nothin else to do!
Gotta go where ka's wind blows ya
Cause there's nothin else to do.

Commala-come-key
Can you tell me what ya see?
Is it ghosts or just the mirror
That makes ya wanna flee?

Commala-come-three!
I beg ya, tell me!
Is it ghosts or just your darker self
That makes ya wanna flee?

Commala-come-ko
Whatcha doin at my do'?
If ya doan tell me now, my friend
I'll lay ya on de flo'.

Commala-come-fo'!
I can lay ya low!
The things I've do to such as you
You never wanna know.

Commala-gin-jive
Ain't it grand to be alive?
To look out on Discordia
When the Demon Moon arrives.

Commala-come-five!
Even when the shadows rise!
To see the world and walk the world
Makes ya glad to be alive.

Commala-mox-nix!
You're in a nasty fix!
To take a hand in traitor's glove
Is to grasp a sheaf of sticks!

Commala-come-six!
Nothing there but thorns and sticks!
When your find your hand in ~ Stephen King

The life of each and every one of us has been written. The crucifix is my autobiography. The blood is the ink. The nails the pen. The skin the parchment. On every line of that body I can trace my life. In the crown of thorns I can read my pride. In the hands that are dug with nails, I can read avarice and greed. In the flesh hanging from him like purple rags, I can read my lust. In feet that are fettered, I can find the times that I ran away and would not let him follow. Any sin that you can think of is written there. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

You can trust a few some of the time, and most none of the time. Feel lucky if you have even one to trust all of the time. ~ V.C. Andrews

Is there any one among you who believes he can be spared the way? Can he swindle his way past the pain of Christ? I say: Such a one deceives himself to his own detriment. He beds down on thorns and fire. No one can be spared the way of Christ, since this way leads to what is to come. ~ C. G. Jung

When you go to a garden, do you look at thorns or flowers? Spend more time with the roses and jasmine. ~ Rumi

She imagined him leaning against the shuttle, entertaining thoughts of scolding her for dressing like a ragged commoner. Never mind that her present outfit was light years ahead in comfort.

(Actually, he's wishing he had been less critical of you earlier. He feels bad that you won't acknowledge his presence, and he blames himself.)

(Quit it, Ian. I'm not going to feel sorry for him.)

She caught her protector's shrewd grin, highlighted by the fire's glow. (You already do, Queenie.)

(This talent of yours is really annoying.)

He leaned close to her ear and whispered, "That's not what you thought earlier when you wanted to get ahold of Efren."

"One tiny rosebud in a handful of thorns," she retorted. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I remember very clearly someone saying, 'Don't shake hands with the cactus,' and I thought, 'Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?' Shaking hands is a friendly gesture. ~ Benedict Cumberbatch

Oh that it were with me
As with the flower;
Blooming on its own tree
For butterfly and bee
Its summer morns:
That I might bloom mine hour
A rose in spite of thorns.
Oh that my work were done
As birds' that soar
Rejoicing in the sun:
That when my time is run
And daylight too,
I so might rest once more
Cool with refreshing dew. ~ Christina Rossetti

I want to be known as the 23 year-old who is foolishly in love with a Prince she can't see. I want to rejoice while holding the rose of singleness, even when my hands bleed from its thorns. I want to resist the urge to envy the pairs growing in the middle of my neighbors' gardens. I want to be rooted in the simple truth that unripen pairs taste like lies and lingering loneliness. 
I want to put Jesus on my bullet wound and cling to His heart wrenching hope because He was kind enough to be a Band-Aid when He should have stayed a King. ~ Katie Kiesler Nelson

A Halloween flower,
if ever there was one,
would smell like an onion,
have thorns like a rose.
With charcoal black petals
and vines that entangle,
t'would grow under moonlight
in mud, I suppose. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

I'm an observer of life. I like to watch people, and I like to watch cactus. I like to talk to mountains and communicate with my friends in the other spheres and dimensions. ~ Frederick Lenz

It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of somebody else's thorns in addition to his own. ~ Charles Dickens

The bird with the thorn in its breast, it follows an immutable law; it is driven by it knows not what to impale itself, and die singing. At the very instant the thorn enters there is no awareness in it of the dying to come; it simply sings and sings until there is not the life left to utter another note. But we, when we put the thorns in our breasts, we know. We understand. And still we do it. Still we do it. ~ Colleen McCullough

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ME AND YOU

When I hold a rose,
I see the soft, velvety petals
and smile, because
tucked between
those precious petals
is a special gift -
the one of a fragrance,
pure and sweet.
When you hold a rose,
you see the thorns
along the stem,
and you frown
because those thorns
can bring you pain
and cause you to bleed.
I see the gift.
You see the tragedy.
More and more
I fear that one of these days
someone will hand me a rose
and all I will see
are thorns.
Talk about tragedy. ~ Lisa Schroeder

You can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the goddamn contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbrush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail, you'll see something, maybe. ~ Edward Abbey

Wilf: God bless the cactuses! The Doctor: That's cactI. Alien: And that's racist! ~ Russell T. Davies

What about my kiss? ~ Sarah J. Maas

You don't do that.
You don't just announce that your dad built a mysterious house on a sacred spot for dryads, then get up and leave without an explanation.
So, of course, that's what Meg did.
"See you in the morning," she announced to no one in particular.
She trudged up the ramp, still barefoot despite traipsing past twenty different species of cactus, and slipped into the dark. ~ Rick Riordan

How such Ideals do realize themselves; and grow, wondrously, from amid the incongruous ever-fluctuating chaos of the Actual: this is what World-History, if it teach any thing, has to teach us, How they grow; and, after long stormy growth, bloom out mature, supreme; then quickly (for the blossom is brief) fall into decay; sorrowfully dwindle; and crumble down, or rush down, noisily or noiselessly disappearing. The blossom is so brief; as of some centennial Cactus-flower, which after a century of waiting shines out for hours! ~ Thomas Carlyle

As they passed the giant saguaro cacti, Amelia knew they were getting close to home. They were magnificent, standing like humungous pitchforks in the middle of the desert. To her, it represented the American West...
Amelia noticed Sam in the distance. He seemed intrigued by the Teddy Bear Chollas. Sam was not originally from Arizona, so he seemed enchanted by the fuzzy little cactus.
As he reached toward it, Amelia yelled, "Stop! No! Don't touch that, Sam!"
But it was too late. The little razor sharp needles seemed to jump toward his finger... ~ Linda Weaver Clarke

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Be courteous, kind, and forgiving. Be gentle and peaceful each day. Be warm and human and grateful, And have a good thing to say. Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike, Be witty and happy and wise. Be honest and love all your neighbors, Be obsequious, purple, and clairvoyant. Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus. Be dull and boring and omnipresent. Criticize things you don't know about. Be oblong and have your knees removed. Be sure to stop at stop signs, And drive fifty-five miles an hour. Pick up hitchhikers foaming at the mouth, And when you get home get a master's degree in geology. Be tasteless, rude, and offensive. Live in a swamp and be three-dimensional. Put a live chicken in your underwear. Go into a closet and suck eggs. ~ Steve Martin

And what does it matter whether God speaks to us from amongst the thorns or the flowers? ~ Francis De Sales

O ye dead Poets, who are living still Immortal in your verse, though life be fled, And ye, O living Poets, who are dead Though ye are living, if neglect can kill, Tell me if in the darkest hours of ill, With drops of anguish falling fast and red From the sharp crown of thorns upon your head, Ye were not glad your errand to fulfill? ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow