Canker Quotes & Sayings

In life there are certain sores which, like a kind of canker, slowly erode the soul in solitude. — Sadegh Hedayat

In life there are certain sores that, like a canker, gnaw at the soul in solitude and diminish it. — Sadegh Hedayat

Thou weedy elf-skinned canker-blossom! — William Shakespeare

And writers say, as the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly, blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure even in the prime,
And all the fair effects of future hopes. — William Shakespeare

We are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the minds and affections of our youth ... This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy. — Thomas Jefferson

On the basis of being a woman, by playing an alien, I avoid playing someone's girlfriend here on Earth because that's a bit of a canker sore. — Zoe Saldana

Tom smiled at the Fleming - a bright, friendly smile - and bobbed his head courteously. That confused the jolt-head. Then, by way of making conversation while his confederates gained their positions, he said, "I suppose someone must have told you - your mother, perhaps, or your father, though I doubt you ever knew him - that you're an idle-headed canker. A rank pustule? No? Not even an irksome, crook-pated, pathetical nit?"
The Fleming, his face as red as hot steel, roared and swung a fist like a blacksmith's hammer. — Anna Castle

But how true it is that every pleasure has also its reverse side, in brief, its pain. Or, if not wholly true, how nearly so. Therefore, I have added to most of my pleasures the little flavour of bitterness, the flaw in their perfection, the canker in the damask, the worm at the root, the fear of loss, or of satiety, the fearful risks involved in their very existence, which tang their sweetness, and mind us of their mortality and of our own, and that nothing in this world is perfect. — Rose Macaulay

Yet is there one more cursed than they all,
That canker-worm, that monster, jealousie,
Which eats the heart and feeds upon the gall,
Turning all love's delight to misery,
Through fear of losing his felicity. — Edmund Spenser

My days are in the yellow leaf; The flowers and fruits of love are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief, Are mine alone! — Lord Byron

Whenever something comes into our life that hurts us, we do the decidin' - do I let this work for my good, as God intended, or do I let bitterness grow like a bothersome canker sore in my soul? — Janette Oke

When you behold an aspect for whose constant gloom and frown you cannot account, whose unvarying cloud exasperates you by its apparent causelessness, be sure that there is a canker somewhere, and a canker not the less deeply corroding because concealed. — Charlotte Bronte

The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight. — Walter Savage Landor

...but what I am not interested in, Ms. Clipboard- or Mr. Canker or Mrs. Murmur or Call-me-Carol, all of you- is your questions; even your pointing and tipping Enoch pencils have six sides, my dear definers: pay heed whereon you pinch!; I am interested, almost exclusively, in being interested, and your reductivist probings are only intended to cordon off wings of my mansion; — Evan Dara

It put him out of humor for the rest of the day.It stuck in his craw and festered thered.A nasty little canker sore on the ego.
Snob? Where did the woman get off calling him a snob? And after he'd made the effort to be friendly, even complimenting her on her snooty little riding academy.
He did the evening check himself, as was his habit, and spent considerable time going over the prime filly who was to head down to Hialeah to race there. Ttavis wanted Brian to go along for this one, and he was more than happy to oblige.
It would do him a world of good to put a thousand miles or so between himself and Keeley.
"Shouldn't be looking in that direction, even for a blink," he muttered, then nuzzled the filly. — Nora Roberts

Be mine that silent calm repast,
A conscience cheerful to the last:
That tree which bears immortal fruit,
Without a canker at the root;
That friend which never fails the just,
When other friends desert their trust. — Nathaniel Cotton

The lily I condemned for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair: The roses fearfully on thorns did stand, One blushing shame, another white despair; A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath; But, for his theft, in pride of all his growth A vengeful canker eat him up to death. More flowers I noted, yet I none could see But sweet or colour it had stol'n from thee. — William Shakespeare

I'm Gentleman Death in silk and lace, come to put out the candles. The canker in the heart of the rose. — Anne Rice

In the actual world
the painful kingdom of time and place
dwell care, and canker, and fear. With thought, with the ideal, is immortal hilarity, the rose of joy. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

You're an obnoxious canker-blossom. Go ooze somewhere else. — Tamora Pierce

Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions. — Jack Vance

First try all other means, but if the wound
Heal not, then use the knife, lest to the clean
From the diseased the canker spread. — Ovid

Untouchability is a blot on Hinduism. It is a canker eating into its vitals. — Mahatma Gandhi

There's a joy without canker or cark,
There's a pleasure eternally new,
'T is to gloat on the glaze and the mark
Of china that's ancient and blue. — Andrew Lang

Then if thou hast
A heart of wreak in thee, that wilt revenge
Thine own particular wrongs and stop those maims
Of shame seen through thy country, speed
thee straight,
And make my misery serve thy turn: so use it
That my revengeful services may prove
As benefits to thee, for I will fight
Against my canker'd country with the spleen
Of all the under fiends. — William Shakespeare

The canker which the trunk conceals is revealed by the leaves, the fruit, or the flower. — Pietro Metastasio

Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation. — Samuel Johnson

Lust is an enemy to the purse, a foe to the person, a canker to the mind, a corrosive to the conscience, a weakness of the wit, a besotter of the senses, and finally, a mortal bane to all the body. — Pliny The Elder

A frenzied passion for art is a canker that devours everything else. — Charles Baudelaire

The canker of self-consciousness has been long in me, so like a lot of writers I not only do a thing, I see myself doing it too - it's almost like not being alone. That morning our hero skipped in his skivvies down to the shore of the sea . . . it was dark . . . the fog . . . Storytelling! — Charles D'Ambrosio

We are too near the scene of tragedy to realize that this canker or untouchability has traveled far beyond its prescribed limits and has sapped the very foundation of the whole nation. — Mahatma Gandhi

Working in Britain, particularly in the public services, they should be prepared to accept the terms and conditions of their employment. To claim special communal rights (or should one say rites?) leads to a dangerous fragmentation within society. This communalism is a canker; whether practised by one colour or another it is to be strongly condemned. — Enoch Powell

And each and every one, it seems, falls to stagnation, and in that stagnation evil men rise, through greed or lust for power. Like canker buds, they find their way in any government, slipping through seams in the well-intended laws, coaxing the codes to their advantage, finding their treasures and securing their well-being at the expense of all others, and ever blaming the helpless, who have no voice and no recourse. To the laborers they cry, "Beware the leech!" and the leech is the infirm, the elderly, the downtrodden. So do they deflect and distort reality itself to secure their wares, and yet, they are never secure, for this is the truest rhyme of history, that when the theft is complete, so will the whole collapse, and in that collapse will fall the downtrodden and the nobility alike. — R.A. Salvatore

O me, you juggler, you canker-blossom, you thief of love! — William Shakespeare

In some quiet way, the expression and feelings of gratitude have a wonderful cleansing or healing nature. Gratitude brings warmth to the giver and the receiver alike. Gratitude expressed to our Heavenly Father in prayer for what we have brings a calming peace - a peace which allows us to not canker our souls for what we don't have. — Robert D. Hales

Pity that gold should always bring with it the canker - covetousness. — Fanny Fern

Truth only smells sweet forever, and illusions, however innocent, are deadly as the canker worm. — James Anthony Froude

Outward attacks and troubles rather fix than unsettle the Christian, as tempests from without only serve to root the oak faster; while an inward canker will gradually rot and decay it. — Hannah More

Know my name is lost, By treason's tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit; Yet am I noble as the adversary I come to cope. — William Shakespeare

We are often infinitely mistaken, and take the falsest measures, when we envy the happiness of rich and great men; we know not the inward canker that eats out all their joy and delight, and makes them really much more miserable than ourselves. — Joseph Hall

Grief heals ... unshed tears fester like a canker in the soul. — Jacqueline Carey

E'en Beauty mourns in her decaying bower,
That Time upon her angel brow should set
His crooked autograph, and mar the jet
Of glossy locks. Lo! how her chaplet green,
The hoar frost and the canker worm destroy.
Decay's dull film obscures those matchless eyes. — Isaac McLellan

Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows;Compass'd she is with thorns and canker'd bower.Yet, were she willing to be pluck'd and worn,She would be gather'd, though she grew on thorn. — Robert Greene

Peevishness may be considered the canker of life, that destroys its vigor and checks its improvement; that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot consume. — Samuel Johnson

There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a kind of canker. — Sadegh Hedayat

Jess's feelings about Leslie's father poked up like a canker sore. You keep biting it, and it gets bigger and worse instead of better. — Katherine Paterson

The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English. — Mahatma Gandhi

The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution. — Thomas Jefferson

The United States is evil ... it is the canker of the world. — Henry De Montherlant

Let the public mind become corrupt, and all efforts to secure property, liberty, or life by the force of laws written on paper will be as vain as putting up a sign in an apple orchard to exclude canker worms. — Horace Mann