Sheep Wool Quotes & Sayings

And, if anyone tells you that you know nothing, and you are not nettled at it, then you be sure that you have begun your business. For sheep don't throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk. Thus, therefore, do you likewise not show theorems to the unlearned, but the actions produced by them after they have been digested. — Epictetus

The overseer wouldna speak to me of Ian, but he told me other things that would curl your hair, if it wasna already curled up like sheep's wool." He glanced at me, and a half-smile lit his face, inspite of his obvious perturbation.
"Judging by the state of your hair, Sassenach, I should say that it's going to rain verra soon now. — Diana Gabaldon

After all, the wool of a black sheep is just as warm. — Ernest Lehman

Earl had let Bertie off the porch for some fresh grass and I didn't want Dr. Eustace to see her. She still looked as though we'd put Hannibal Lecter in charge of her shearing and had hired the special effects team from Night of the Living Dead to bandage her. — Susan Juby

As to the most prudent logicians might venture to deduce from a skein of wool the probable existence of a sheep; so you, from the raw stuff of perception, may venture to deduce a universe which transcends the reproductive powers of your loom. — Evelyn Underhill

It is not about the pasture of the sheep, but about their wool.
[Lat., Non est de pastu ovium quaestio, sed de lana.] — Pope Pius II

She cleared her throat once or twice, and said something about poor people should eat a lot of herrings, as they were most nutritious, also she had heard poor people eat heaps of sheeps' heads and she went on to ask if I ever cooked them. I said I would rather be dead than cook or eat a sheep's head; I'd seen them in butchers' shops with awful eyes and bits of wool sticking to their skulls. After that helpful hints for the poor were forgotten. — Barbara Comyns

Have any sheep been seen walking out of the Library with seagoing adventurers clinging to their wool? — Lindsey Davis

If you were going to make sculptures of them, the swivel poems would be disparate objects all attached with hinges and the prose poems would be small sheep wrapped in extra wool. — Matthea Harvey

Heiron, Kyros of Aegina entered, a slow stately walk in a chiton that swept the floor, and fell in folds, like heavy Veretian curtains. 'My son tells a different story.' 'Your son?' said Charls. 'Alexon,' said Heiron, holding out his hand. 'Come here.' As Charls stood amazed, Alexon drew himself up to his full height, pushing back the blue cloak. 'It's true. I am Alexon, son of Heiron,' said Alexon. 'I am not a humble sheep farmer as I claimed.' 'But your insights about wool,' said Charls. 'I often travel anonymously through the province,' said Alexon. 'People show their true natures freely when they don't know who I am.' He — C.S. Pacat

For sheep don't throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk. — Epictetus

It was such a thrill. I found the roughest, toughest girls who love to party. They study and work all day in the Agricultural world and college and then they party. I met one girl at 3 am and she was so drunk and said 'l have to get up and cut a sheep's throat at 9 am.' I met another who was a wool classer. She said 'I can drink to 4 in the morning and class wool from 6 am. So I wrote Girls Out There about them. — Beccy Cole

To find why this sheep's wool was red; and the prize was awarded to a learned man of the North, who demonstrated by A plus B minus C divided by Z, that the sheep must be red, and die of the rot. — Voltaire

It is a known fact that the sheep that give us steel wool have no natural enemies. — Gary Larson

Lie quiet and you will lapse back into peace again. Be like the god Heimdall before the battle call, so still that you can hear the wool grow on the backs of sheep, and the grass grow far away in the lands where the snow melts. — Anne Rice

It is my function as a Christian to imitate Christ; how then can I walk in the sheep's wool with out wearing the Lion's Mane. — Michael Lopez

For example, if you name a sheep "jeb_", you will get a sheep with wool that is fading through color cycles, however, you will get the sheep's original color when you harvest wool from it. When you name a rabbit "toast", it will look like a skinned rabbit, a tribute to the legendary lost rabbit of a player's girlfriend, "toast the bunny". If you name a mob with "Grumm" or "Dinnerbone", you can make a mob turn upside down! These are awesome Minecraft secrets for players. — Ben Stark

Although he had changed his name, his history came with him, even to his writing. The rhythm of his rain-soaked childhood became a sequence of words. His memories of the understory of the great forest burst into lyrical phrases, as resinous as the sap of a pinecone, as crisp as the shell of a beetle. Sentences grew long, then pulled up short, taking on the tempo of the waves upon the shore, or swayed gently, like the plaintive song of a lone harmonica. His fury became essays that pointed, stabbed, and burned. His convictions played out with the monotonous determination of a printing press. And his affections became poems, as warm and supple as the wool of a well-loved sheep. — Pam Munoz Ryan

Loving the Hands

I could make a wardrobe
with tufts of wool
caught on thistle and bracken.

Lost - the scraps
I might have woven whole cloth.

"Come watch," the man says,
shearing sheep
with the precision of long practice,
fleece, removed all of a piece,
rolled in a neat bundle.

I've been so clumsy
with people people who've loved me.

Straddling a ewe,
the man props its head on his foot,
leans down with clippers,
each pass across the coat a caress.

His dogs, lying nearby,
tremble at every move - as I do,
loving the hands that have learned
to gentle the life beneath them. — Julie Suk

Sugar is gone; silk has gone; iron is threatened; wool is threatened; cotton will go! How long are you going to stand it? At the present moment these industries ... are like sheep in a field. — Joseph Chamberlain

And God did not just ask for the perfect sheep; He also wanted its wool. Deuteronomy 18:4 instructs shepherds to give the first shearing of the sheep as on offering to God. Above the crackling warmth radiating from the stove, I read the verse aloud to Lynne. "Is a first shearing a once-in-a-lifetime offering?" I asked. "Yes, everybody wants the first shearing, especially if it's from one of your best lambs. The first shearing is the finest fleese that's used to the best clothes ... to ask for that is a real sacrifice." ... For the first time in a long while, maybe ever, I had felt with my own hands what God desired from sacrifice. It was nothing like what I expected ... In asking for the first fleece, God isn't asking for the biggest. He wants to smallest and the softest. He doesn't want more-He wants the best." -Scouting the Divine — Margaret Feinberg

The fruit will reveal the tree soon enough. And it is likely better to be momentarily deceived by an occasional wolf than to be constantly and impetuously trying to jerk the wool off of every one of the Lord's sheep. — Paul Earnhart

Merino sheep, Susie told me, are by far the most common breed in Australia - the wool capital of the world - and they have it worst. They are bred to have wrinkled skin, like the shar-pei dog breed, meaning extra surface area of wool per sheep. But near their backsides, those wrinkles serve as breeding grounds for flies and maggots and contribute to a buildup of urine and feces. "So what do the farmers do? They slice big swaths of skin off, using knives or shears, in order to create patches of smooth scar tissue. The process is called 'mulesing.' And they do this, as you can probably guess, without anesthesia or painkillers of any kind," she said with disgust. — Jenny Brown

I scarce ever knew a city that did not wish the destruction of its neighbouring city, nor a family that did not desire to exterminate some other family. The poor in all parts of the world bear an inveterate hatred to the rich, even while they creep and cringe to them; and the rich treat the poor like sheep, whose wool and flesh they barter for money — Voltaire

He was like a sheep being led to be killed. He was quiet, as a lamb is quiet while its wool is being cut; he never opened his mouth. He was shamed and was treated unfairly. He died without children to continue his family. His life on earth has ended. — Davis Bunn

No sheep may leave the flock," he said to anyone who would listen, "unless he comes back again. — Leonie Swann

[The Utopians] marvel that any mortal can take pleasure in the weak sparkle of a little gem or bright pebble, when he has a star, or the sun itself, to look at. They are amazed at the foolishness of any man who considers himself a nobler fellow because he wears clothing of specially fine wool. No matter how delicate the thread, they say, a sheep wore it once, and still was nothing but a sheep ... They do not understand why a dunderhead with no more brains than a post, and who is as depraved as he is foolish, should command a great many wise and good people simply because he happens to have a great pile of gold. — Thomas More

When I closed the door Grandmother was already seated at her spinning wheel. Her foot was on the treadle but her eyes were thoughtfully on me. The spinner was beautifully carved of dark oak with leaves twining their way round and round the outer rim. It must have been very old, as the designs were too fanciful to have been made i the new England. She called to me and asked me if I could spin. I told her yes, well enough, but that I could sew better, which was a statement only half true. A camp surgeon would have a better hand with a cleaver to a limb than I with a needle on the cloth. She spun the wool through knotted fingers glistening with sheep's oil and wrapped the threads neatly around the bobbin. Gently probing, she teased out the story of our days in Billerica just as she teased out the fine thread from the mix and jumble of the coarse wool in her hands. — Kathleen Kent

The concrete highway was edged with a mat of tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass heads were heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog's coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse's fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in sheep's wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and dispersed, every seed armed with an appliance of dispersal, twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for animals and for the wind, for a man's trouser cuff or the hem of a woman's skirt, all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but each possessed of the anlage of movement. — John Steinbeck

If wool shrinks when you wash it, why don't sheep get smaller when it rains? — Ron Brackin

But unvented - ahh! One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up, one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. I very much doubt if anything is really new when one works in the prehistoric medium of wool with needles. The products of science and technology may be new, and some of them are quite horrid, but knitting? In knitting there are ancient possibilities; the earth is enriched with the dust of the millions of knitters who have held wool and needles since the beginning of sheep. Seamless sweaters and one-row buttonholes; knitted hems and phoney seams - it is unthinkable that these have, in mankind's history, remained undiscovered and unknitted. One likes to believe that there is memory in the fingers; memory undeveloped, but still alive. — Elizabeth Zimmermann

For even sheep do not vomit up their grass and show to the shepherds how much they have eaten; but when they have internally digested the pasture, they produce externally wool and milk. Do you also show not your theorems to the uninstructed, but show the acts which come from their digestion. — Epictetus

Though this is my first trip to the United Kingdom, I am a proud Anglophile. I admire the practical temperament of the people. I love the artful details of daily life: a hand-stitched tea cozy in the shape of a Victorian mansion, the Wellie boots, the sheep's wool stockings, and the best tailors in the world. — Adriana Trigiani

The same goes for our dealings with sheep. Sheep raising in Japan has failed precisely because we've viewed sheep merely as a source of wool and meat. The daily-life level is missing from our thinking. We minimize the time factor to maximize the results. It's like that with everything. In other words, we don't have our feet on solid ground. — Haruki Murakami

Like seeing roasted meat and other dishes in front of you and suddenly realizing: This is a dead fish. A dead bird. A dead pig. Or that this noble vintage is grape juice, and the purple robes are sheep wool dyed with shellfish blood. Or making love - something rubbing against your penis, a brief seizure and a little cloudy liquid. Perceptions like that - latching onto things and piercing through them, so we see what they really are. That's what we need to do all the time - all through our lives when things lay claim to our trust - to lay them bare and see how pointless they are, to strip away the legend that encrusts them. Pride is a master of deception: when you think you're occupied in the weightiest business, that's when he has you in his spell. — Marcus Aurelius

As scientific research demonstrates, llama wool's very coarseness and its range of fibers from fine to thick mean that it can be woven into clothing that's superior to down, fleece, sheep wool, and alpaca wool in criteria ranging from warmth to water resistance to usable life. — David Roberts

The genesis of my coat, made from fine wool, spinning backwards through the looms, onto the body of a lamb, a black sheep a bit apart from the flock, grazing on the side of a hill. A lamb opening its eyes to the clouds that resemble for a moment the woolly backs of his own kind. — Patti Smith

...The [Renaissance] interest in education was also influenced by a changing economy. For different reasons in different countries, agriculture was becoming less lucrative, and many farmers decided to move to the cities to take up new occupations. However, to succeed in a trade they needed to know how to read and perform bookkeeping tasks ... Those who remained on the farm found life much the same as in the Middle Ages. In fact, in some agricultural regions the Renaissance economy devastated farmers. For example, as the wool industry grew in importance, more landowners in England decided to raise sheep instead of growing crops. They therefore needed fewer farmworkers, and many peasants lost their livelihoods. — Patricia D. Netzley

Sheep!" Angel cried, catching sight of some fluffy brown wool. "Anne is quite the animal lover," Fang said to me as we followed Angel. "Horses, sheep, goats. Chickens. Pigs." "Yeah," I said. "I wonder who's for dinner?" He flashed one of his rare smiles at me, and it was like the sun coming out. I felt my cheeks get hot and strode on ahead. — James Patterson

I must be honest about the fact that I'm made extremely uneasy by excessive noise, and that I do not care for shouted instructions. If I'd been meant to be a sheep, I reasoned, I'd have been born with wool instead of skin. — Alan Bradley

When he [Colin] reached the center of the field, he paused to catch his breath and scan the area for telltale tufts of wool. When the lamb failed to appear, he cupped his hands around his mouth and tried again. "Dinner!"
This time, his call earned an answer. Several answers. In fact, the ground shook with the collective bestial response. He spied several large, dark forms lumbering toward him through the twilight dusk. He blinked, trying to make them out. These weren't sheep. No, they were ...
Cows. Large cows. Remarkably fast and menacing cows. A small herd of them, all thundering straight for him where he stood in the center of the field.
Colin took a few steps backward. "Wait," he said, holding up his hands. "I didn't mean you. — Tessa Dare

It didn't work. He still had wool in his teeth. I couldn't make love to him. He had bone fragments and wool in his incisors, you know?"
"Yeah, sheep remnants would be a major mood killer," Trinity agreed, — Stephanie Rowe

The wool of a thousand sheep in good pasture at the least ought to yield fifty marks a year, the wool of two thousand one hundred marks, and so forth, counting by thousands. — Robert Grosseteste

Everything smelled of sheep. The dandelions were suddenly more sheep than flower, each petal reflecting wool and the sound of a bell ringing off the yellow. But the thing that smelled the most like sheep, was the very sun itself. When the sun went behind a cloud, the smell of the sheep decreased, like standing on some old guy's hearing aid, and when the sun came back again, the smell of the sheep was loud, like a clap of thunder inside a coffee cup.

(from "On Paradise", page 50) — Richard Brautigan

Today, most women are surrounded by ingenious gadgets. They don't grow the peas or raise the chicken that they serve for dinner; instead they hunt and gather in the grocery store. They go through catalogs or department stores to buy clothes instead of shearing sheep, carding wool, and weaving cloth for skirts and coats and blankets. — Helen Fisher

(Sheep are some of the nastiest creatures in the world. They're smelly, stupid things that have been bred to have way too much hair, meaning that all their bodily fluids and drippings get felted right into the wool. If not for bleach, we'd all walk around covered in sheep shit all the time. Agriculture is not a pretty thing.) — Seanan McGuire

Everywhere the weak execrate the powerful, before whom they cringe; and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell. — Voltaire

Only yesterday an express train tore up a whole flock of sheep not far from here, over forty dead animals, flung through the air like cotton-wool balls, the good shepherd fallen asleep drunk somewhere, the dog in the field alone, not a hope. Now the shepherd has to bear joint responsibility for the whole loss, or don't you think he bears a responsibility, dear television audience, write and let us know what you think, it's your views that count. — Elfriede Jelinek

The man had asked, Why do you want sheep? The wool? Meat? Monroe's answer had been, For the atmosphere. — Charles Frazier