As You Sow Quotes & Sayings

Plants began the process of land colonization about 450 million years ago, accompanied of necessity by tiny mites and other organisms which they needed to break down and recycle dead organic matter on their behalf. Larger animals took a little longer to emerge, but by about 400 million years ago they were venturing out of the water, too. Popular illustrations have encouraged us to envision the first venturesome land dwellers as a kind of ambitious fish - something like the modern mudskipper, which can hop from puddle to puddle during droughts - or even as a fully formed amphibian. In fact, the first visible mobile residents on dry land were probably much more like modern woodlice, sometimes also known as pillbugs or sow bugs. These are the little bugs (crustaceans, in fact) that are commonly thrown into confusion when you upturn a rock or log. — Bill Bryson

Freedom is the right to sow what you want. It's the right to make boots or shoes, it's the right to bake bread from the grain you've sown and to sell it or not sell it as you choose. It's the same whether you're a locksmith or a steelworker or an artist - freedom is the right to live and work as you wish and not as you're ordered to. But there's no freedom for anyone - whether you write books, whether you sow grain, or whether you make boots." That night Ivan Grigoryevich lay — Vasily Grossman

Consider the idea that charisma can be as much a liability as an asset. Your strength of personality can sow the seeds of problems, when people filter the brutal facts from you. — James C. Collins

For me, the times I always regret are missed opportunities to say farewell to good people, to wish them long life and say to them in all sincerity, "You build and do not destroy; you sow goodwill and reap it; smiles bloom in the wake of your passing, and I will keep your kindness in trust and share it as occasion arises, so that your life will be a quenching draught of calm in a land of drought and stress." Too often I never get to say that when it should be said. Instead, I leave them with the equivalent of a "Later, dude!" only to discover there would be no later for us. — Kevin Hearne

One has to reap the fruits of his karma. The law of karma is inevitable and is accepted by all the great philosophies of the world: 'As you sow, so shall you reap.' — Rama Swami

The desire to know the future gnaws at our bones. That is where it started, and might have ended, years ago.
I had cast the stones, seeing their faces flicker and fall: Death, Love, Murder, Treachery, Hope. We are a treacherous people - half of our stones show betrayal and violence and death from those close, death from those far away. It is not so with other peoples. I have seen other sets that show only natural disasters: death from sickness, from age, the pain of a broken heart, loss in childbirth. And those stones are more than half full with pleasure and joy and plain, solid warnings like "You reap what you sow" and "Victory is not the same as satisfaction."
Of course, we live in a land taken by force, by battle and murder and invasion. It is not so surprising that our stones reflect our history. — Pamela Freeman

If you get a bad script, then you start expending energy trying to make a silk purse of a sow's ear. When the script's as good as those on 'Game of Thrones,' say, I don't think there was a single occasion where any of us thought there was a bad scene. — Charles Dance

Listen: this story's one you ought to know,
You'll reap the consequence of what you sow.
This fleeting world is not the world where we
Are destined to abide eternally:
And for the sake of an unworthy throne
You let the devil claim you for his own.
I've few days left here, I've no heart for war,
I cannot strive and struggle any more,
But hear an old man's words: the heart that's freed
From gnawing passion and ambitious greed
Looks on kings' treasures and the dust as one;
The man who sells his brother, as you've done,
For this same worthless dust, will never be
Regarded as a child of purity.
The world has seen so many men like you,
And laid them low: there's nothing you can do
But turn to God; take thought then for the way
You travel, since it leads to Judgment Day — Abolqasem Ferdowsi

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap. — Samuel Butler

As you sow, so shall you reap has a neat ring to it but you are making a grievous mistake if you put your faith in that kind of cheap sentiment. There are no just deserts. The wages of sin are not necessarily hell and the path of goodness is often lined with treachery for the world is predicated upon the principle of randomness. — Kiran Nagarkar

You reap what you sow!" I scream at him as he fades. All the rage I've felt swells in me, blinding me, and fills me with a pulsing, tangible hatred that seeps away only as Apollo's boots deactivate and he tumbles down through the swirling storm. I — Pierce Brown

To see Sow Flower's mother eat that meat was something I'll never forget. She had been raised to be a fine lady and, as hungry as she was, she did not tear into the food as someone in my family might. She used her chopsticks to pull apart slivers of the pork and lift them delicately to her lips. Her restraint and control taught me a lesson I have not strayed from to this day. You may be desperate, but never let anyone see you as anything less that a cultivated woman. — Lisa See

Politics unfortunately abounds in shams that must be treated reverentially for every politician who would succeed. If you are the sort of man whose stomach revolts against treating shams reverentially, you will be well advised to stay out of politics altogether and set up as a prophet; your prophecies may perhaps sow good seed for some future harvest. But as a politician you would be impotent. For at any given time the bulk of your countrymen believe firmly and devoutly, not only in various things that are worthy of belief, but also in illusions of one kind and another; and they will never submit to have their affairs managed for them by one who appears not to share in their credulity. — F. S. Oliver

Do you make a study of pigs, Monsieur?" she asked, with a muffled note of amusement.
"Of course. I've observed them frequently on my breakfast plate." They had neared the first of the pens, where a stockman was lovingly bathing the ears of an enormously fat spotted sow. Five piglets squealed and gurgled about her panting bulk. "Note the marvelous coil of the tail." He gestured with his cane. "Absolute perfection!"
"And those ears," Callie said, nodding sagely. "She appears to have two!"
"Four legs," Trev added, cataloging all her points.
"Are you certain she has legs?" Callie asked dubiously. "I don't see any."
"They are hidden under her porcine vastness," he informed her. He tilted his head speculatively as they reached the pen. "Unless she has wheels. Perhaps she rolls from place to place? — Laura Kinsale

If you will believe me, you who are young, yours is the golden season of life. As you have heard it called, so it verily is, the seed-time of life; in which, if you do not sow, or if you sow tares instead of wheat, you cannot expect to reap well afterwards, and you will arrive at little. And in the course of years when you come to look back, if you have not done what you have heard from your advisers,-and among many counsellors there is wisdom,-you will bitterly repent when it is too late. — Thomas Carlyle

You may break the clods, you may sow your seeds, but what can you do without the rain? As absolutely needful is the divine blessing. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Never forgive, never forget. Do it once and do it right. You reap what you sow. Plans go to hell as soon as the first shot is fired. Protect and serve. Never off duty. — Lee Child

There is a popular conception about karma, and that is that as you sow, so shall you reap. That's only true if you're a farmer. — Frederick Lenz

What do you say to taking up our game where we left off? I was winning, you will recall.'
Winning, for all love: how your ageing memory does betray you, my poor friend,' said Stephen, fetching his 'cello. They tuned, and at no great distance Killick said to his mate, 'There they are, at it again. Squeak, squeak; boom, boom. And when they do start a-playing, it's no better. You can't tell t'other from one. Never nothing a man could sing to, even as drunk as Davy's sow.'
I remember them in the Lively: but it is not as chronic as a wardroom full of gents with German flutes, bellyaching night and day, like we had in Thunderer. No. Live and let live, I say.'
Fuck you, William Grimshaw. — Patrick O'Brian

One thing I love about life and God: the creator of life.
Within a blink of an eye; things can change either good or bad. It depends on how you want it.
Good in the sense that luck will come to you; if you wish, want, need or even require the good changes.
But, bad same as good changes; but, if you are evil. The evil you did will bite you in the ass. Remember these quotes:
- You sow what you reap
- Karma is a bitch (if you are evil) or Karma is a blessing (if you are good)
- What goes around will eventually come around
- What goes up will come down
So be careful what you do to others.
That's why I am always cautious on the way I treat people. Yes; I am not perfect. But, I always try to be the best I can as a good and loving person despite my roots that is horrifying. — Temitope Owosela

Don't sow your desires in someone else's garden; just cultivate your own as best you can; don't long to be other than what you are, but desire to be thoroughly what you are. Direct your thoughts to being very good at that and to bearing the crosses, little or great, that you will find there. Believe me, this is the most important and least understood point to the spiritual life. We all love according to what is our taste; few people like what is according to their duty or to God's liking. What is the use of building castles in Spain when we have to live in France? — Saint Francis De Sales

Have you noticed that you feel better around some people than others? You smile more in their presence and afterward feel a little lighter, a bit more cheerful? I think of those people as "purveyors of hope." They help me to know that beyond every mountain I face there is a path ... even if I can't see it from the valley. — Steve Goodier

S'mimasen," Alyss said repeatedly as they brushed against passerby.
"What does that mean?" Will asked as they reached a stretch of street bare of any other pedestrians. He was impressed by Alyss's grasp of the local language.
"It means 'pardon me,'" Alyss replied, but then a shadow of doubt crossed her face. "At least, I hope it does. Maybe I'm saying 'you have the manners of a fat, rancid sow. — John Flanagan

Proceed, philosophers, teach, enlighten, enkindle, think aloud, speak aloud, run joyously towards the bright daylight, fraternise in the public squares, announce the glad tidings, scatter plenteously your alphabets, proclaim human rights, sing your Marseillaises, sow enthusiasms, broadcast, tear off green branches from the oak trees. Make thought a whirlwind. This multitude can be sublimated. Let us learn to avail ourselves of this vast combustion of principles and virtues, which sparkles, crackles and thrills at certain periods. These bare feet, these naked arms, these rags, these shades of ignorance, these depths of abjectness, these abysses of gloom may be employed in the conquest of the ideal. Look through the medium of the people, and you shall discern the truth. This lowly sand which you trample beneath your feet, if you cast it into the furnace, and let it melt and seethe, shall become resplendent crystal, and by means of such as it a Galileo and a Newtown shall discover stars. — Victor Hugo

When you work you fulfill a part of earth's furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born,
And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit.
Work is love made visible — Kahlil Gibran

Several centuries ago the greatest writer in history described the two most menacing clouds that hang over human government and human society as "malice domestic and fierce foreign war." We are not rid of these dangers but we can summon our intelligence to meet them.

Never was there more genuine reason for Americans to face down these two causes of fear. "Malice domestic" from time to time will come to you in the shape of those who would raise false issues, pervert facts, preach the gospel of hate, and minimize the importance of public action to secure human rights or spiritual ideals. There are those today who would sow these seeds, but your answer to them is in the possession of the plain facts of our present condition. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

If you have sown in love and tried to do everything as unto Jesus Christ, then you will reap happiness and joy and will be able to enjoy the everlasting presence of the Lord in all you lay your hand to, and do. — Sunday Adelaja

Every tree, every growing thing as it grows,
says THIS truth, you harvest what you sow. — Rumi

Another point of economy is to look for seed of the same kind as you sow, and not to hope to buy one kind with an other kind. Friendship buys friendship; justice, justice; military merit, military success...Yet there is commonly a confusion of expectations on these points. Hotspur lives for the moment, praises himself for it, and despises Furlong, that he does not. Hotspur of course is poor, and Furlong is a good provider. The odd circumstance is that Hotspur thinks it a superiority in himself, this improvidence, which ought to be rewarded with Furlong's lands. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is time for everything. As you sow, may you have the patience to wait for your harvest. — Lailah Gifty Akita

As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment. — Joseph Murphy

As you sell your soul and sow your seeds, and you wound yourself and your loved ones bleed. And your habits grow and your conscience feeds, on all that you thought you should be. — Don McLean

There were three loyal, honest and prayerful friends behind the remarkable wisdom of Daniel. They stood in the gap when he was interpreting the king's dream and it came to pass. The stood in the gap when Daniel was in the lion's den and lions became powerless. Daniel too, was a loyal, honest and prayerful towards his three friends. He stood in the gap when his friends were thrown into the blazing fire and 'The Master Himself' turned up as a fourth man. Why don't you choose to be a loyal, honest and prayerful friend to someone today. Be supportive because you reap what you sow and no one can change that principle. — Euginia Herlihy

In America, karma is best expressed in popular phrases like what goes around, comes around and what you sow, you will reap. Karma has also been referred to as having a boomerang effect where the thoughts and actions that you send out into the world turn around and come back at you ... Jesus says, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Karma goes a step further and dictates that What you do unto others will come back to you. I think Jesus and the Hindus really had the same idea. Think about that the next time you want to say or do something nasty to someone else! — Carmen Harra

The emergence of intelligent algorithms and networks such as LaunchCode, which can be used by employers as trusted validators to sow people into the system and not weed them out of it, holds the promise of unlocking a lot of wasted talent. Says Lewis: "If you can do the job, you should get the job." Fortunately, — Thomas L. Friedman

As well might you leave the fairies to plough your land or the idle winds to sow it, as sit down and wait for freedom. — Thomas Davis

As you start your day, are you wondering what you will reap, or are you wondering what you will sow? — John C. Maxwell

Then a ploughman said , speak to us of work : in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life ,
And to love life throught labour is to be intimate with inmost secrets .
And what is it to work with love ?
it is to weave the colth with threads from your heart , even as if your beloved were to wear that colth .
It is to build a house with affection , even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house .
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy , even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit .
It is to change all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit .
He who works in marble , and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone , is nobler than he who ploughs the soil. — Kahlil Gibran

Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican toadies? You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will's readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class sycophancy. — Norman Mailer

Why me?' he said. 'That's how all men answer. And all men have a knot on their shoes, something they don't know how to do; an inability that binds them to others. Society depends on this asymmetry between people these days: a dovetailing of skills and competence. But the Flood? If the Flood came and one needed a Noah? Not so much a just man as a man able to bring along the few things it would take to start again. You see, you don't know how to tie your shoes, somebody else doesn't know how to plane wood, someone else again has never read Tolstoy, someone else doesn't know how to sow grain and so on. I've been looking for him for years, and, believe me, it's hard, really hard; it seems people have to hold each other by the hand like the blind man and the lame who can't go anywhere without each other, but argue just the same. It means if the Flood comes we'll all die together. — Italo Calvino

Sow flowers to make a garden bloom around you,
The thorns you sow will prick your own feet.
Arrows shot at others
Will return to hit you as they fall.
You yourself will come to teeter on the lip
Of a well dug to undermine another.
Though you look at others with contempt,
It's you whose body will be reduced to dust.
Humanity is all one body;
To torture another is simply to wound yourself.
[ ... ]Make your path straight now, by the bright light of day;
For pitch darkness will come without warning. — Rahman Baba

You build and do not destroy; you sow goodwill and reap it; smiles bloom in the wake of your passing, and I will keep your kindness in trust and share it as occasion arises, so that your life will be a quenching draught of calm in a land of drought and stress. — Kevin Hearne

Go on philosophers
teach, enlighten, kindle, think aloud, speak up, run joyfully toward broad daylight, fraternize in the public squares, announce the glad tidings, lavish your alphabets, proclaim human rights, sing your Marseillaises, sow enthusiasms, tear off green branches from the oak trees. Make thought a whirlwind. This multitude can be sublimated. Let us learn to avail ourselves of this vast conflagration of principles and virtues, which occasionally sparkles, bursts, and shudders. These bare feet, these naked arms, these rags, these shades of ignorance, depths of despair, the gloom can be used for the conquest of the ideal. Look through the medium of the people, and you will discern the truth. This lowly sand that you trample underfoot, if you throw it into a furnace and let it melt and seethe, will become sparkling crystal; and thanks to such as this a Galileo and a Newton will discover the stars. — Victor Hugo

New karma is being made all the time. When one acts with a positive motivation, goodness is furthered. When one acts out of negative motivation, negativity is furthered. "We can recondition ourselves to act with wisdom. The important thing to understand here is that you are not a victim. You are your own master. 'As you sow, so shall you reap. — Lama Surya Das

You may find that you have been telling yourself that practicing optimism is a risk, as though, somehow, a positive attitude will invite disaster and so if you practice optimism it may increase your feelings of vulnerability. The trick is to increase your tolerance for vulnerable feelings, rather than avoid them altogether.
[ ... ]
Optimism does not mean continual happiness, glazed eyes and a fixed grin. When I talk about the desirability of optimism I do not mean that we should delude ourselves about reality. But practicing optimism does mean focusing more on the positive fall-out of an event than on the negative. ... I am not advocating the kind of optimism that means you blow all your savings on a horse running at a hundred to one; I am talking about being optimistic enough to sow some seeds in the hope that some of them will germinate and grow into flowers. — Philippa Perry

The truth is this: Pride must die in you or nothing of heaven can live in you. Under the banner of the truth, give yourself up to the meek and humble spirit of the holy Jesus. Humility must sow the seed or there can be no reaping in heaven. Look not at pride only as an unbecoming temper, nor at humility only as a decent virtue: for the one is death and the other is life; the one is hell and the other is heaven. So much as you have of pride within you, you have of the fallen angel alive in you; so much as you have of true humility, so much you have of the Lamb of God within you. — Andrew Murray