Famous quotes containing the words big, oak and/or flat:
“O, pluck was he to the backbone and clear grit through and through;
Boasted and bragged like a trooper; but the big words wouldn’t do;
The boy was dying, sir, dying, as plain as plain could be,
Worn out by his ride with Morgan up from the Tennessee.”
—Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840–1894)
“Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We say justly that the weak person is flat, for, like all flat substances, he does not stand in the direction of his strength, that is, on his edge, but affords a convenient surface to put upon. He slides all the way through life.... But the brave man is a perfect sphere, which cannot fall on its flat side and is equally strong every way.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)