Furrows Quotes & Sayings

I wish I could trust you, Reed, but I know I can't."
His brow furrows in confusion, but there is a wry tilt to his lips, "Why?"
I give him a small smile of my own, "You think you're different from men like Caleb. You see everything in black and white, you don't care about the whole story; you don't care about the gray. Some stories aren't black and white, Agent Reed. — C.J. Roberts

Of course she is. Because she's eight kinds of wonderful, and that's just her legs." Jeb furrows his brow. "What's that supposed to mean?" "Taelor has all the diplomacy of a black widow spider. Garnet's her birthstone. You're wearing her birthday on your lip. Talk about spinning you up in her web. — A.G. Howard

Nothing could be more fearful than losing one's freedom. To be confined. Never to see a golden cloudburst or rivers of sunlight on dark flowers. never to walk your own cultivated furrows. And the memory dangled over his heart like the sword of Damocles. — Joseph Wambaugh

The music stopped. The circle broke. Sometimes a slave will be lost in a brief eddy of liberation. In the sway of a sudden reverie among the furrows or while untangling the mysteries of an early morning dream. In the middle of a song on a warm Sunday night. Then it comes, always - the overseer's cry, the call to work, the shadow of the master, the reminder that she is only a human being for a tiny moment across the eternity of her servitude. — Colson Whitehead

When, late in the war, with the Wehrmacht breaking up on all fronts, our planes were sent to destroy this last major city, I doubt if the question was asked, "How will this tragedy benefit us, and how will that benefit compare with the ill-effects in the long run?" Dresden, a beautiful city, built in the art spirit, symbol of an admirable heritage, so anti-Nazi that Hitler visited it but twice during his whole reign, food and hospital center so bitterly needed now - plowed under and salt strewn in the furrows. — Kurt Vonnegut

They sat as if the weight of the world had in this minute been lifted from them both and left them dumb with surprise. But this lasted only for the moment. Arthur held her murderously tight, as if to vanquish her spirit even in the first short contest. But she responded to him, as if she would break him first. It was stalemate, and they sought relief from the great decision they had just brought upon themselves. He spoke to her softly, and she nodded her head to his words without knowing what they meant. Neither did Arthur know what he was saying; both transmission and reception were drowned, and they broke through to the opened furrows of the earth. — Alan Sillitoe

Storytellers tell stories, of course, but they aren't alone in doing so. The dawn tells a story; so does the sun as it arcs across the sky; so does the sunset. The seasons tell a complex story. The fall of an acorn and the growth of an oak tree tell a story. A farmer's plow and the furrows in a field tell a story as well. Even the waves crashing on a beach tell a story. How easy to see, then, that an ax tells a story, too, at least while it hangs for a moment in the air just before descending onto your neck. That story is: Now you die. — Edward Myers

I love to close my eyes a moment and think of the land outside, white under the mingled snow and moonlight--the heaps of stones by the roadside white--snow in the furrows. Mon Dieu! How quiet and how patient! — Katherine Mansfield

They don't sleep here." My brow furrows. "How do you know?" "I just know," he says. "I can tell by looking at it." Before I can ask him any more, the curtain in the living room moves. The door yanks open, my mother appearing, eyes wide. She looks frantic. "Karissa," she shouts, her voice high-pitched, full of panic. "Oh God. Get away from him, sweetie." I blink a few times, caught off guard, as Naz slips his arms around me, pulling me flush against him. One arm encircles my waist as his other settles along my chest, — J.M. Darhower

Whether our feet are compressed in iron shoes, our faces hidden with veils and masks; whether yoked with cows to draw the plow through its furrows, or classed with idiots, lunatics and criminals in the laws and constitutions of the State, the principle is the same; for the humiliations of the spirit are as real as the visible badges of servitude. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The other aspect of those weekday-evening trips he loved was the light itself, how it filled the train like something living as the cars rattled across the bridge, how it washed the weariness from his seatmates' faces and revealed them as they were when they first came to the country, when they were young and America seemed conquerable. He'd watch that kind light suffuse the car like syrup, watch it smudge furrows from foreheads, slick gray hairs into gold, gentle the aggressive shine from cheap fabrics into something lustrous and fine. And then the sun would drift, the car rattling uncaringly away from it, and the world would return to its normal sad shapes and colors, the people to their normal sad state, a shift as cruel and abrupt as if it had been made by a sorcerer's wand. — Hanya Yanagihara

Why should I tremble at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle husbandman, He purposeth a crop. — Samuel Rutherford

We are drawn to Jesus because "he learned obedience from what he suffered" (Heb. 5:8). People who are growing up are also drawn to individuals who bear battle scars, worry furrows, and tear marks on their faces. Their lessons can be trusted, much more than the unlined faces of those who have never failed - and so have never truly lived. — Henry Cloud

The seeds of first instructions are dropp'd into the deepest furrows. — Martin Farquhar Tupper

After another minute Reuben brought forth the following sentence:
"I ha' scranleted two hundred furrows come five o'clock down i' the bute."
It was a difficult remark, Flora felt, to which to reply. — Stella Gibbons

I cross my arms. "It was a two minute conversation." "I don't think a smaller time frame makes it less unwise." He furrows his eyebrows and touches the corner of my bruised eye with his fingertips. My head jerks back, but he doesn't take his hand away. Instead he sighs. "You know, if you could just learn to attack first, you might do better." "Attack first?" I say. "How will that help?" "You're fast. If you can get a few good hits in before they know what's going on, you could win." He shrugs, and his hand falls. — Veronica Roth

Men were springing up, a black avenging host was slowly germinating in the furrows, thrusting upward for the harvests of future ages. And very soon their germination would crack the earth asunder. — Emile Zola

They cannot understand that the figure of a laborer - some furrows in a plowed field, a bit of sand, sea and sky - are serious objects, so difficult but at the same time so beautiful, that it is indeed worth while to devote one's life to the task of expressing the poetry hidden in them. — Brenda Ueland

A Black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels,
Someday I shall tell of your mysterious births:
A, black velvety corset of dazzling flies
Buzzing around cruel smells,
Gulfs of shadow; E, white innocence of vapors and of tents,
Spears of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of Queen Anne's lace;
I, purples, spitting blood, smile of beautiful lips
In anger or in drunken penitence;
U, waves, divine shudderings of green seas,
The calm of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of furrows
Which alchemy prints on wide, studious foreheads;
O, sublime Bugle full of strange piercing sound,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels;
- O the Omega, the violet ray of her Eyes! — Arthur Rimbaud

My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate. — William Shakespeare

Man takes great pains to heap up riches, and they are like heaps of manure in the furrows of the field, good for nothing unless they be spread. — Matthew Henry

She has no interest in the composition from ten or twenty feet - that will come later. What she wants is topography, the impasto, the furrows where sable hairs were dragged into tiny painted crests to catch the light. Or the stray line of charcoal or chalk, glimpsed beneath a glaze that's three hundred years old. She's been known to take a safety pin and test the porosity of the paint and then bring the point to her tongue. Since old-world grounds contain gesso, glue, and something edible - honey, milk, cheese - the Golden Age has a distinctively sweet or curdled taste. She is always careful to avoid the leads and the cobalts. What — Dominic Smith

And his brow was lofty with thought, and his eye wild with care; and, in the few furrows upon his cheek I read the fables of sorrow, and weariness, and disgust with mankind, and a longing after solitude. — Edgar Allan Poe

The wind is blowing hard around me, the sound is rising in my chest again, and I feel I can fly.And then the branch has shifted under my feet, the deep furrows of the bark have left my back, and I have no time to spread my arms. I am not flying. I am falling. — Ned Hayes

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben, Whose fire-hearts sowed our furrows when The world was worthy of such men. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It was like penetrating deep into white marble with the pounding live thrust of
his chisel beating upward through the warm living marble with one "Go!", his whole body behind the heavy hammer, penetrating through ever deeper and deeper furrows of soft yielding living substance until he had reached the explosive climax, and all of his
fluid strength, love, passion, desire had been poured into the nascent form, and the marble block, made to love the and of the true sculptor, and responded, giving of its inner heat
and substance and fluid form, until at last the sculptor and the marble had totally coalesced, so deeply penetrating and infusing each other that they had become one, marble and man and organic unity, each fulfilling the other in the greatest act of art and love known to the human species. — Irving Stone

we pass the fields of Perry and Madrone and where they make wine, and it's all there, all sweet the furrows of brown, with blossoms and one time we took a siding to wait for 98 and I ran out there like the hound of the Baskervilles and got me a few old prunes not longer fitten to eat - the propietor seeing me, trainman running guiltily back to engine with a stolen prune, always I was running, always was running, running to throw switches, running in my sleep and running now - happy. — Jack Kerouac

Under the current 'tyranny of slenderness' women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible. The very contours of a woman's body takes on as she matures - the fuller breasts and rounded hips - have become distateful. The body by which a woman feels herself judged and which by rigorous discipline she must try to assume is the body of early adolescence, slight and unformed, a body lacking flesh or substance, a body in whose very contours the image of immaturity has been inscribed. The requirement that a woman maintain a smooth and hairless skin carries further the theme of inexperience, for an infantilized face must accompany her infantilized body, a face that never ages or furrows its brow in thought. The face of the ideally feminine woman must never display the marks of character, wisdom, and experience that we so admire in men. — Sandra Lee Bartky

Before my eyes daily as we sailed way down upon the Suwannee River were visions of spring furrows at Clouds Creek, the warmed earth opened up behind the plow; of wildflowered meadows, cool and verdant, and airy open woods along the shaded creeks, winding southeast to the Edisto. That spring landscape turned forever and away in my mind's eye, changing softly into gold greens of upland summer in that lost land where I was born, the country of my forefathers, the heart of home. Clouds Creek - my earth - was the wellspring and the source of Edgar Watson, all the Eden he had ever wished or hoped to find. — Peter Matthiessen

Up on the bridge of the Anubis, the storm paws loudly on the glass, great wet flippers falling at random in out of the night whap! the living shape visible just for the rainbow edge of the sound - it takes a certain kind of maniac, at least a Polish cavalry officer, to stand in this pose behind such brittle thin separation, and stare each blow full in its muscularity. Behind Procalowski the clinometer bob goes to and fro with his ship's rolling: a pendulum in a dream. Stormlight has turned the lines of his face black, black as his eyes, black as the watchcap cocked so tough and salty aslant the furrows of his forehead. Light clusters, clear, deep, on the face of the radio gear . . . fans up softly off the dial of the pelorus . . . spills out portholes onto the white river. — Thomas Pynchon

I've tried not to be trapped in repetitive furrows of my own. — Frances Itani

We see time's furrows on another's brow, And death intrench'd, preparing his assault; How few themselves in that just mirror see! — Edward Young

If you can wear the hard times of your life as furrows on your brow, you can wear the good times as a twinkle in your eye. — Robert Breault

I want pure colors, melting clouds, accurately drawn details, a sunburst above a receding road with the light reflected in furrows and ruts, after rain. And no girls ... There is one subject which I am emphatically opposed to: any kind of representation of a little girl. — Vladimir Nabokov

Everyone has a secret life. Perhaps yours is merely a gossamer web of thoughts and fantasies woven in the hidden furrows of your mind. Or furtive deeds performed on the sly or betrayals large and small that, if revealed, would change how you are perceived.
-Dracula in Love by Karen Essex — Karen Essex

In the aftermath of the wind the air was dry, burning, so clear that she could see the ploughed furrows of firebreaks on distant mountains. Not even the highest palms moved. The stillness and clarity of the air seemed to rob everything of its perspective, seemed to alter all perception of depth, and Maria drove as carefully as if she were reconnoitering an atmosphere without gravity. — Joan Didion

Let the earth look at me, and bless me, for now I am fecund and sacred, like the palms and the furrows. — Gabriela Mistral

Wherever a ship ploughs the sea, or a plough furrows the field; wherever a mine yields its treasure; wherever a ship or a railroad train carries freight to market; wherever the smoke of the furnace rises, or the clang of the loom resounds; even in the lonely garret where the seamstress plies her busy needle
there is industry. — James A. Garfield

The fields are black and ploughed, and they lie like a great fan before us, with their furrows gathered in some hand beyond the sky, spreading forth from that hand, opening wide apart as they come toward us, like black pleats that sparkle with thin, green spangles. — Ayn Rand

I love the word 'fantasy' ... but I love it for the almost infinite room it gives an author to play: an infinite playroom, of a sort, in which the only boundaries are those of the imagination. I do not love it for the idea of commercial fantasy. Commercial fantasy, for good or for ill, tends to drag itself through already existing furrows, furrows dug by J. R. R. Tolkien or Robert E. Howard, leaving a world of stories behind it, excluding so much. There was so much fine fiction, fiction allowing free reign to the imagination of the author, beyond the shelves of genre. That was what we wanted to read. — Neil Gaiman

And his paths shall be many, and who shall know his name, for he shall be beorn among us many times, in many guises, as he has been and ever will be, time without end. His coming shall be like the sharp edge of the plow, turning our lives in furrows form out of the places where we lie in our silence. The breaker of binds; the forger of chains. The maker of futures; the unshaper of destiny.
-from Commentaries on the Prophecies of the Dragon, by Jurith Dorine, Right Hand to the Queen of Almoren, 742 AB, the Third Age — Robert Jordan

What do you want, Allie? Tell me one thing you've been dying to do but haven't gotten around to doing."

Her forehead furrows as she thinks it over. "Well. I've been wanting to start a new cleanse, but I keep putting it off."

"I have no idea what that means."

"I go on these juice cleanses a couple times a year," she explains. "It sucks, because you're stuck on a liquid diet for two whole weeks, but you feel so much better afterward."

"You're a fucking weirdo. Pick something else. Something normal."

She pauses, deep in thought again, and then her expression brightens. "I've always wanted to learn how to salsa dance."

Fuck. That's such a chick thing to say. "Then do it," I tell her. — Elle Kennedy

After the sprout had broken through the (surface of) the ground," the handbook continues, the farmer should say a prayer to Ninkilim, the goddess of field mice and vermin, lest they harm the growing grain; he should also scare off the flying birds. When the barley has grown sufficiently to fill the narrow bottoms of the furrows, it is time to water it; and when it "stands high as (the
straw of) a mat in the middle of a boat," it is time to water it a second time. He is to water it a third time when it is "royal" barley, that is, when it has reached its full height. Should he then notice a reddening of the wet grain, it is the dread samana-dis- ease, which endangers the crops. If the barley is doing well, however, he is to water it a fourth time and thus obtain an extra yield of 10 per cent. — Samuel Noah Kramer

To dig a straight furrow, the plowman needs to keep his eyes on a fixed point ahead of him. That keeps him on a true course. If, however, he happens to look back to see where he has been, his chances of straying are increased. The results are crooked and irregular furrows ... Fix your attention on your ... goals and never look back on your earlier problems ... If our energies are focused not behind us but ahead of us
on eternal life and the joy of salvation
we assuredly will obtain it. — Howard W. Hunter

See Time has touched me gently in his race,
And left no odious furrows in my face. — George Crabbe

Sam shakes his head, still marveling at the hulking warship. "So they have a secret weakness right? Like how you can shoot that one spot on the Death Star and the whole thing blows up?"
Adam's brow furrows. "What's a Death Star?"
Sam throws up his hands. "We're screwed. — Pittacus Lore

The plough of Time breaks up our Eden-land, And tramples down its fruitful flowery prime. Yet thro' the dust of ages living shoots O' the old immortal seed start in the furrows; And, where Love looked on with glorious eye, These quicken'd germs of everlastingness Flower lusty, as of old in Paradise! — Gerald Massey

Once the man vacates the room, Genova motions toward the table between us. "Gun."
I hold up my hands. "I don't have one."
His brow furrows. "You came unarmed?"
"I never carry a gun," I say, "but that doesn't mean I'm unarmed."
Everything's a weapon if you look at it the right way.
"Knives, then."
"None of those, either."
"Then what do you got?"
"Not much." I consider it for a moment. "Some spare change, a peppermint, my wallet ... oh, and I've got a pen in my pocket."
He looks at me with disbelief. "A pen."
Reaching into my pocket, I pull out a simple black ballpoint ink pen.
Probably cost a dollar.
"You gonna kill somebody with that?" he asks.
I shrug, setting it on the table. "You never know. — J.M. Darhower

We must not hope to be mowers, And to gather the ripe gold ears, Unless we have first been sowers And water the furrows with tears. It is not just as we take it, This mystical world of ours, Life's field will yield as we make it A harvest of thorns or of flowers. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

All the suffering and torment wrought at places of execution, in torture chambers, madhouses, operating theatres, under the arches of bridges in late autumn - all these are stubbornly imperishable, all these persist, are inaccessible but cling on, envious of everything that is, stuck in their own terrible reality. People would like to be allowed to forget much of it, their sleep gliding softly over these furrows in the brain, but dreams come and push sleep aside and fill the picture again. And so they wake up breathless, let the light of a candle dissolve the darkness as they drink the comforting half-light as if it was sugared water. But, alas, the edge on which this security is balancing is a narrow one. Given the slightest little turn and their gaze slips away from the familiar and the friendly, and the contours that had so recently been comforting take the sharp outlines of an abyss of horror. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Easter is ...
Joining in a birdsong,
Eying an early sunrise,
Smelling yellow daffodils,
Unbolting windows and doors,
Skipping through meadows,
Cuddling newborns,
Hoping, believing,
Reviving spent life,
Inhaling fresh air,
Sprinkling seeds along furrows,
Tracking in the mud.
Easter is the soul's first taste of spring. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Do not focus your thoughts among the confused wheels of secondary causes, as -'O if this had been, this had not followed!' Look up to the master motion of the first wheel. In building, we see hewn stones and timbers under hammers and axes, yet the house in this beauty we do not see at the present, but it is in the mind of this builder. We also see unbroken clods, furrows, and stones, but we do not see the summer lilies, roses, and the beauty of a garden. Even so we do not presently see the outcome of God's decrees with his blessed purpose. It is hard to believe when his purpose is hidden and under the ground. Providence has a thousand keys to deliver his own even when all hope is gone. Let us be faithful and care for our own part, which is to do and suffer for him, and lay Christ's part on himself and leave it there; duties are ours, events are the Lord's. — Samuel Rutherford

Historical research to this day remains unorganized, and the historian is expected to make his own instruments or do without them; and so with wooden ploughs we continue to draw lonely furrows, most successfully when we strike sand. — Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier

Promise me you won't leave without telling me." "I'm not planning on it." That wasn't the answer he needed. His eyes pierced hers. "Promise me." The furrows between her brows deepened as she took a step back. "I can't do that. I don't know what's going to happen. I'll do whatever's best for Jack and me. That's the only promise I can make. — Denise Hunter

Storm leans towards her and says in a teaching voice, "Joyans consider it is rude to express one's true opinion unless it is unequivocally flattering."
Her brow furrows. "Then how do the express anything at all? — Rae Carson

So few things we need to know.
And the old wisdoms shudder in us and grow slack.
Like renunciation. Like the melancholy beauty
of giving it all up. Like walking steadfast
in the rhythms, winter light and summer dark.
And the time for cutting furrows and the dance — Robert Hass

The wrinkles in my brow,
The furrows in my face,
Say, limping age will lodge him now
Where youth must give him place. — Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux Of Harrowden

We saw Time's varied traces Were deep on every hand - Indeed, upon the people, More marked than on the land. The bands that once with firmness Could grasp the axe and blade, Now move with trembling motion, By strength of nerve decayed. The change in form and feature And furrows on the cheek Of Time's increasing volume, In plain, round numbers speak. And thus, as in a mirror's Reflection, we were told, With stereotyped impressions, The fact of growing old. — Eliza R. Snow

O Jesus, I could be a mule or plow the furrows with my hands if need be or hold those rickety walls up with my back if need be if I knew that somewhere in this world in the pocket of some night I could open my legs to some cowboy lean hips but you are trying to tell me no and O my sweet Jesus what kind of cross is that? — Toni Morrison

God fails not to sow blessings in the furrows. — Jeremy Taylor

He remains everlastingly the same. There are no furrows on his eternal brow. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

From the standpoint of what eternity is it better to have read a thousand books than to have ploughed a million furrows? — W. Somerset Maugham

Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but overlaid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions and phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own. And thus, the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. — John Stuart Mill

The great and amorous sky curved over the earth, and lay upon her as a pure lover. The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven for both man and animal, for both thick and strong, germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud and brought forth the buds in the orchards. And it is I who empowered these moist espousals, I the great Aphrodite ... — Aeschylus

Remember that thy heart will shed its pleasures as thine eye its tears, and both leave loathsome furrows. — Philip James Bailey

They shall stand there to be judged, but not to be acquitted. Fear shall lay hold upon them there; they shall not stand their ground; they shall flee away; they shall not stand in their own defence; for they shall blush and be covered with eternal contempt. Well may the saints long for heaven, for no evil men shall dwell there, "nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous." All our congregations upon earth are mixed. Every Church hath one devil in it. The tares grow in the same furrows as the wheat. There is no floor which is as yet thoroughly purged from chaff. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

But our good humour was restored when we saw Lord John Roxton waiting for us upon the platform, his tall, thin figure clad in a yellow tweed shooting-suit. His keen face, with those unforgettable eyes, so fierce and yet so humorous, flushed with pleasure at the sight of us. His ruddy hair was shot with grey, and the furrows upon his brow had been cut a little deeper by Time's chisel, but in all else he was the Lord John who had been our good comrade in the past. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I suppose, in some sense, wills are like maps: they are the imprint we leave, the places our affections have been entrenched; the work we have done; the money we have burrowed away; the furrows and the paths that lead back to spaces we have gone, and marked, and loved. — Lauren Oliver

His point is that we are what we think, and our lives run in the direction of our thoughts. If we think angry thoughts, we'll be angry; if we think positive thoughts, we'll be positive; if we think negative thoughts, we'll be negative. The mind is a garden, and we have to cultivate it, and we are responsible for the kind of seed we sow into the furrows of our mind. — Robert J. Morgan

The city is always recruited from the country. The men in cities who are the centres of energy, the driving-wheels of trade, politics or practical arts, and the women of beauty and genius, are the children or grandchildren of farmers, and are spending the energies which their fathers' hardy, silent life accumulated in frosty furrows in poverty, necessity and darkness. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Prefer spacious interactions with fewer people. And it means that, when you converse, you are more interested in sharing ideas than in talking about people and what they're doing. In a conversation with someone sharing gossip, the introvert's eyes glaze over and his brow furrows as he tries to comprehend how this conversation could interest anyone. This is not because the introvert is morally superior - he just doesn't get it. As we've discussed, introverts are energized and excited by ideas. Simply talking about people, what they do and who they know, is noise for the introvert. He'll be looking between the lines for some meaning, and this can be hard work! Before long, he'll be looking for a way out of the conversation. But when an introvert is hanging out — Laurie A. Helgoe

In a conversation with someone sharing gossip, the introvert's eyes glaze over and his brow furrows as he tries to comprehend how this conversation could interest anyone. This is not because the introvert is morally superior - he just doesn't get it. As we've discussed, introverts are energized and excited by ideas. Simply talking about people, what they do and who they know, is noise for the introvert. He'll be looking between the lines for some meaning, and this can be hard work! Before long, he'll be looking for a way out of the conversation. — Laurie A. Helgoe

Of all the conditions to which the heart is subject suspense is one that most gnaws and cankers into the frame. One little month of that suspense, when it involves death, we are told by an eye witness in "Wakefield on the Punishment of Death," is sufficient to plough fixed lines and furrows in a convict of five and twenty,
sufficient, to dash the brown hair with grey, and to bleach the grey to white. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton