Willy Thorn Quotes

I first met Brother Booker at the House of Peace, while delivering donated Christmas trees and lights during the holidays.
I had no grasp of the depth of the man's character, or the quality of the individuals he surrounded himself with. But I remember walking away amazed by the man, and marveling at the chaos that swirled around him...having researched his life and talked with many of his nearest and dearest, I am even more amazed today. ~ Willy Thorn

And indeed he had no sooner come to the field than he saw all the toadstools leaning over one way, and that the way he was going; for just as thorn trees all lean away from the sea, so toadstools and every plant that has any touch of mystery, such as foxgloves, mulleins and certain kinds of orchis, when growing anywhere near it, all lean towards Elfland. By this one may know before one has heard a murmur of waves, or before one has guessed an influence of magical things, that one comes, as the case may be, to the sea or the border of Elfland. ~ Lord Dunsany

Her returned in the evening, drier, sharper, a man with a closer kinship with a thorn bush. ~ Jose Eduardo Agualusa

Mother said we had reached the Age of Reason and had to be good now. We must have because we wanted Willy Starr instead. ~ Marie Clair

When the roses are gone, nothing is left but the thorn. ~ Ovid

The bee, though it finds every rose has a thorn, comes back loaded with honey from his rambles; and why should not other tourists do the same? ~ Thomas Chandler Haliburton

Look, you can't take people off their planet willy-nilly. It's called alien abduction, and is frowned upon in the most respectable circles. ~ S.E. Anderson

Everything that humans can imagine is a possibility in reality. ~ Physicist Willy Karen

He who holds onto a grudge holds onto a thorn expecting it to prick the one who wronged him. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Keep yourselves from idols." The warning isn't given to them because it wasn't a real danger or because there was an off chance someone might fall into idolatry. It was given because this is our root problem on any given day. It is what we, especially as followers of Jesus, must fight against. ~ Joe Thorn

Every lion has a time in their life when a thorn has got to them at one point. ~ Tony Robbins

Now he stood in the farthest end of the cave, in front of the great lion chase he had watched Thorn paint so long ago. He saw again: it was by far the greatest painting in the the cave, maybe the world. Maybe it would always be the greatest painting. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Catching frogs can take a toll on your body. I have repeatedly been battered and actually was knocked out cold when I dove headfirst into a cypress tree. One time, I jumped out of a boat to catch a frog in a thicket, and as I lunged to grab the frog, a purple poisonous thorn stuck me behind the ear. I vomited for three days and my face was badly swollen. If it had stuck me in the temple, I probably would have died. My greatest frog catch occurred after our boat ran aground. I saw the biggest bullfrog I've ever seen! The problem was, there were three snakes in between the frog and me: a cottonmouth water moccasin, a nonvenomous water snake, and then a bigger fish snake. Undeterred, I triple-jumped the three snakes and grabbed the frog in one swoop. Then I triple-jumped back the other way without getting bit. It probably wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done, but, hey, I got the frog! ~ Jase Robertson

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. ~ Seamus Heaney

No rose without a thorn. Yes, but many a thorn without a rose. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

The longstanding thorn in your side Captain Numos is stupid. In fact, Numos is so dense that I'm surprised he doesn't have his own event horizon. ~ Jack Campbell

My name's Alis K. From now on you will be Willy. Come on, let's push the bicycles for a bit."

Ingrid aka 'Alis K'
The Informer ~ Steen Langstrup

There is nothing that can replace the absence of someone dear to us, and one should not even attempt to do so. One must simply hold out and endure it. At first that sounds very hard, but at the same time it is also a great comfort. For to the extent the emptiness truly remains unfilled one remains connected to the other person through it. It is wrong to say that God fills the emptiness. God in no way fills it but much more leaves it precisely unfilled and thus helps us preserve
even in pain
the authentic relationship. Further more, the more beautiful and full the remembrances, the more difficult the separation. But gratitude transforms the torment of memory into silent joy. One bears what was lovely in the past not as a thorn but as a precious gift deep within, a hidden treasure of which one can always be certain. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

They [some countries] borrowed money to go acquire things, Indian power plants and Danish newspapers and British soccer teams. And they did it willy-nilly, and they themselves a story, that Icelandic history and culture and DNA leaves us very well-suited to being investment bankers. ~ Michael Lewis

To Hope

Oh, Hope! thou soother sweet of human woes!
How shall I lure thee to my haunts forlorn!
For me wilt thou renew the wither'd rose,
And clear my painful path of pointed thorn?
Ah come, sweet nymph! in smiles and softness drest,
Like the young hours that lead the tender year,
Enchantress! come, and charm my cares to rest: -
Alas! the flatterer flies, and will not hear!
A prey to fear, anxiety, and pain,
Must I a sad existence still deplore?
Lo! - the flowers fade, but all the thorns remain,
'For me the vernal garland blooms no more.'
Come then, 'pale Misery's love!' be thou my cure,
And I will bless thee, who, tho' slow, art sure. ~ Charlotte Turner Smith

More fundamentally, it is a dream that does not die with the onset of manhood: the dream is to play endlessly, past the time when you are called home for dinner, past the time of doing chores, past the time when your body betrays you past time itself. ~ John Thorn

Not every thought is a flower; some are thorns. But while a flower may make you fall asleep and too see dreams, a thorn will wake you up and make you to think! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw - the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don't want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am! Why can't I say that, Willy? ~ Arthur Miller

Before man's fall the rose was born,St. Ambrose says, without the thorn;But for man's fault then was the thornWithout the fragrant rose-bud born; But ne'er the rose without the thorn. ~ Robert Herrick

Excuse me? I believe the correct words you're looking for are Thank you, Thorn, for saving our asses when we got caught with our britches down. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Thorn stood without motion, for only when you are truly still can you be the centre. She stood without sound, for only silent can you listen. She stood without fear, for only the fearless can understand their peril.

Thorn waited. Fearless as flowers, bright, fragile, open to the sky. Brave, as only those who've already lost can be. ~ Mark Lawrence

The one thing she hated worse than being fussed over was being ignored. ~ Joe Abercrombie

Why Roses Crave Thorns"

Petals detach from a wilting bud - a single stem plucked before fully blossomed. They descend in hesitant swirls, too soft and limp to shatter like teardrops. One by one they light to blanket a single shadow below.

She is a rose, young and innocent, with beauty incomparable to shame all others. She has flowered enough to stop the observer in his tracks, awestruck. He is compelled to reach out and touch. The petals delight at a silken caress, her bud everything desirable but defenseless - without a sharp edge to make an admirer pause, to warn the intrusive hand. 'Stay back! Stay back!'

His fingers curl around the stem to tug, and suddenly the rose craves a thorn.

It is madness not to want her and yet madness to cut her down. Let the flower thrive and blush to someday flaunt layers of silken favors! But the world will not have it. A single stem is severed in a selfish moment of desire - a yearning to hold and possess.

Alone and forgotten her petals cry, raining in hesitant swirls where they accumulate to blanket her shadow below. Dry, withered, craving the thorns. Beautiful no more. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Stop," Jesse said.
I stared up at him, almost panting with fear.
"Stop, beloved," he said more gently, and took up my clenched fist with both hands. "I've upset you, and I shouldn't have. I don't want you to dread yourself. I don't want you to dread what is to come. Like I said, you're exceptional, so there may be nothing to worry about at all. But whatever happens, whatever you face, I'll face it with you. Do you hear?"
"How can you say it? It nearly happened on the roof today. You can't know-"
"I will be with you. We're together now, and the universe knows I won't let you make your sacrifice alone. Dragon protects star. Star adores dragon. An age-old axiom. Simple as that."
I looked down at our hands, both of his curled over mine. I unclenched my fist. Blood from the thorn smeared my skin.
"The universe," I muttered. "The same universe that has produced the Kaiser and bedbugs and Chloe Pemington. How reassuring."
With the same absolute concentration he might have shown for turning flowers into gold, Jesse Holms smoothed out my fingers between his, wiping away the blood. He turned my hand over and lifted it to his lips. His next words fell soft as velvet into the heart of my palm.
"Those nights, in the sweetest dark, we shared our dreams. That's you answer. I was stitched into yours, and you were stitched into mind, and that was real, I promise you." I felt his lips curve into a smile. The unbelievably sensual, ticklish scuff of his w ~ Shana Abe

If she's a lady, I'm a vernicious knid. (Eddie Albert in Willy Wanka and the Chocolate Factory) ~ Roald Dahl

At times God will delay granting you relief in order to draw you closer to himself. He might want to teach you just how helpless you really are and how all-sufficient he really is. Sometimes God will allow you to suffer for a season to test and strengthen your faith. ~ Joe Thorn

Willy: Remember those two beautiful elm trees out there? When I and Biff hung the swings between them?
Linda: Yeah, like being a million miles from the city. ~ Arthur Miller

I'm T. Thorne Rose and I did it hard
Til I wound up dyin in the Zen schoolyard
Can't you see it's more important here to use your brain
Than to poison up your body killin other people's pain
Yes, it's Other People's Pain,
That's a trick you might have missed
So let your Sister Rosie hip you to this little twist
The news, the Blues, the pain, the strain,
the lies we've heard since birth
Are only true if we, ourselves, think that's what life is worth
But when you realize that we are all Queens and Kings
You'll drop the death, take a deep breath,
and hear life when it sings
Don't get lost and washed away like a teardrop in the rain
No abuse of any kind has ever come to any gain
Sister T. Thorn Rose from the group Goldensealed ~ Doug "Ten" Rose

What kind of people did he have aboard, Willy?" "Smart-ass kids." "Tourists, college kids?" He stared through me for a moment. "I knew one of them." "One of the kids?" "What the hell are we talking about? One of the kids. Yes. You know over the bridge on the right there, past where they're building is a place called Charlie Char-Broil. ~ John D. MacDonald

Your face was furrowed by the plow of grief, and blood flowed freely from Your thorn-crowned brow; such ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If you're not a thorn in somebody's side, you aren't doing Christianity right. ~ Mother Angelica

The difference was not that one was a pessimist and the other an optimist, it was that one's pessimism had led to an ethos of fear, and the other's pessimism had led to a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was. One shrank, the other flailed. One toed the line, the other crossed it out. Much of the time they were at loggerheads, and because Willy found it so easy to shock his mother, he rarely wasted an opportunity to provoke an argument. If only she'd the wit to back off a little, he probably wouldn't have been so insistent about making his points. Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world. ~ Paul Auster

The National League was born the following year, as an attempt to exert the control of capital over labor. ~ John Thorn

No one gave a crap that I was the kid from 'Free Willy'. You're not in some wispy fantasyland where everyone's telling you 'yes' all the time, which happens a lot to actors. ~ Jason James Richter

Not that I want to be thin. Heaven forbid. I do not want to take up less space in the world. I should like to take up more... ~ Ellen Hart

He who wants a rose must respect her thorn. ~ Andre Gide