Grass

This page is for the monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base.  "Grass" can also be a slang term for marijuana.

Grasses, or more technically graminoids, are monocotyledonous, usually herbaceous plants with narrow leaves growing from the base.

• Nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn.
  • Francis Bacon, Essays (1625), "Of Gardens".

• The grass is always greener over the septic tank.
  • Erma Bombeck, title of book (1976).

• Gather leaves and grasses,
  Love, to-day;
  For the Autumn passes
  Soon away.
  Chilling winds are blowing.
  It will soon be snowing.
  • John Henry Boner, "Gather Leaves and Grasses", reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

• Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
  • Hal Borland, Countryman: A Summary of Belief.

• There is not one little blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make men rejoice.
  • John Calvin, as quoted in Thomas F. Tierney, The Value of Convenience: Genealogy of Technical Culture (1993), p. 128.

• If grass can grow through cement, love can find you at every time in your life.
  • Cher, quoted in The Times, 30 May 1998.

• That the trees are high and the grasses short is a mere accident of our own foot-rules and our own stature. But to the spirit which has stripped off for a moment its own idle temporal standards the grass is an everlasting forest, with dragons for denizens; the stones of the road are as incredible mountains piled one upon the other; the dandelions are like gigantic bonfires illuminating the lands around; and the heath-bells on their stalks are like planets hung in heaven each higher than the other.
  • G. K. Chesterton, The Defendant (1901), "A Defence of Humilities".

• Each blade of grass has its spot on earth whence it draws its life, its strength; and so is man rooted to the land from which he draws his faith together with his life.
  • Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, Chapter 21.

• THE GRASS so little has to do,—
  A sphere of simple green,
  With only butterflies to brood,
  And bees to entertain,
  And stir all day to pretty tunes
  The breezes fetch along,
  And hold the sunshine in its lap
  And bow to everything.
  • Emily Dickinson, "Nature".

• You could cover the whole world with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through.
  • Attributed to Ilya Ehrenburg by Patricia Blake in The New York Times Book Review, 22 October 1967, p. 1.

• The grass is not, in fact, always greener on the other side of the fence. Fences have nothing to do with it. The grass is greenest where it is watered. When crossing over fences, carry water with you and tend the grass wherever you may be.
  • Robert Fulghum, It Was on Fire When I Lay Down on It (1988).

• All flesh is grass, and the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass witherith, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass.
  • Isaiah 40:6-7, KJV

• It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed, Chapter 3.

• Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
  Shovel them under and let me work —
  I am the grass; I cover all.
  • Carl Sandburg, "Grass" (1918).

• We trample grass and prize the flowers of May,
  Yet grass is green when flowers do fade away.
  • Robert Southwell, "Scorn not the Least".

• The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass – I the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.
  • Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), Chapter 8, "The Village"

• We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it.
  • Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), Chapter 17, "Spring".

• A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
  How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he.
  I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
  • Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, "Song of Myself" (6) (1855–1881)
• I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars.
  • Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, "Song of Myself" (31) (1855–1881).

• She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
  But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
  • William Butler Yeats, Crossways (1889), "Down By The Salley Gardens".

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 336.

• The scented wild-weeds and enamell'd moss.
  • Thomas Campbell, Theodric.

• Grass grows at last above all graves.
  • Julia C. R. Dorr, Grass-Grown.

• We say of the oak, "How grand of girth!"
  Of the willow we say, "How slender!"
  And yet to the soft grass clothing the earth
  How slight is the praise we render.
  • Edgar Fawcett, The Grass.

• A blade of grass is always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another.
  • Samuel Johnson, Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes of Johnson, p. 100.

• The green grass floweth like a stream
  Into the ocean's blue.
  • James Russell Lowell, The Sirens, line 87.

• O'er the smooth enamell'd green
  Where no print of step hath been.
  • John Milton, Arcades.

• And pile them high at Gettysburg
  And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
  Shovel them under and let me work.
  ** *
  I am the grass.
  Let me work.
  • Carl Sandburg, Grass.

• While the grass grows—
  The proverb is something musty.
  • William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act III, scene 2, line 358.

• How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!
  • William Shakespeare, Tempest, Act II, scene 1, line 52.

• Whylst grass doth grow, oft sterves the seely steede.
  • George Whetstone, Promos and Cassandra (1578).