Roots Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Poetry and music I have banished,
But the stupidity
Of root, shoot, blossom or clay
Makes no demand.
I bend my body to the spade
Or grope with a dirty hand.

William Butler Yeats

It is something like the way dame Nature gathers round a foreign body an envelope of some insensitive tissue which can protect from evil that which it would otherwise harm by contact. If this be an ordered selfishness, then we should pause before we condemn any one for the vice of egoism, for there may be deeper root for its causes than we have knowledge of.

Country things are the necessary root of our life - and that remains true even of a rootless and tragically urban civilization. To live permanently away from the country is a form of slow death.

The Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin.

A man desiring to understand the world looks about for a clue to its comprehension. He pitches upon some area of commonsense fact and tries to understand other areas in terms of this one. The original area becomes his basic analogy or root metaphor.

It is not a question so much of a 'tree like a figure' or a 'root like a figure' - it is a question of bringing out the anonymous personality of these things.

Graham Sutherland

If a woman is not fit to manage the internal matters of a house, she is fit for nothing, and should never be put in a house or over a house, any way. Good housekeeping lies at he root of all the real ease and satisfaction in existence.

Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford

So true is it that all sin is ultimately against the Lord; so bitter is the root of self.

Alfred Edersheim

The worlds in which we live at heart are one, The world "I am," the fruit of "I have done"; And underneath these worlds of flower and fruit, The world "I love,"--the only living root.

To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.

The world is a spinning die, and everything turns and changes: man is turned into angel, and angel into man, and the head into the foot, and the foot into the head. Thus all things turn and spin and change, this into that, and that into this, the topmost to the undermost, and the undermost to the topmost. For at the root all is one, and salvation inheres in the change and return of things.

Manners are the root, laws only the trunk and branches. Manners are the archetypes of laws. Manners are laws in their infancy; laws are manners fully grown,--or, manners are children, which, when they grow up, become laws.

Necessity is always the first stimulus to industry, and those who conduct it with prudence, perseverance and energy will rarely fail. Viewed in this light, the necessity of labor is not a chastisement, but a blessing,--the very root and spring of all that we call progress in individuals and civilization in nations.

If the world suffers from mental deterioration or from moral degradation, then something goes wrong at the very root of civilization or culture. Even though that civilization may drag out for a considerable period, it grows less and less vital and ultimately tumbles down.

Jawaharlal Nehru

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.

Charles Caleb Colton

In Hindu philosophy the whole creation is regarded as the Vishnu Lila, the play of Vishnu. Lila means dance or play. Also in Hindu philosophy, they call the world illusion; and in Latin the root of the word illusion is ludere, to play.

It is curious that the leaf should so love the light and the root so hate it.

The square root of 2 is like the Yeti or the Loch Ness monster, the snows of yesterday, the dusky ghost of the dusty window - it is not there, it cannot be found, it is not a part of the furniture of this or any other world.

David Berlinski

An image, a dance step, a song may function from time to time as entertainment, but the root and full practice of the arts lies in the recognition that art is power, an instrument of communion between the self and all that is important, all that is sacred.

The egg creams of Avenue A in New York and the root beer float....are among the high points of American gastronomic inventiveness.

In April the sweet showers fall And pierce the drought of March to the root, and all The veins are bathed in liquor of such power As brings about the engendering of the flower.

Geoffrey Chaucer

The most rapid way to change a root thought, or sponsoring idea, is to reverse the thought-word-deed process. Do the deed that you want to have the new thought about. Then say the words that you want to have your new thought about. Do this often enough and you'll train the mind to think a new way.

Neale Donald Walsch

Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere;
Sweet is the juniper, but sharp his bough;
Sweet is the eglantine, but stiketh nere;
Sweet is the firbloome, but its braunches rough;
Sweet is the cypress, but its rynd is tough;
Sweet is the nut, but bitter is his pill;
Sweet is the broome-flowre, but yet sowre enough;
And sweet is moly, but his root is ill.

The legend of the jungle heritage and the evolution of man as a hunting carnivore has taken root in man's mind... He may even believe that equal pay will do something terrible to his gonads.

Elaine Morgan (writer)

He in whom all this is destroyed, and taken out with the very root, he, when freed from hatred and wise, is called respectable.