Quotes & Sayings About Toads

When the future you see is worse than the present, one begins to worry. And, oh, I speak of Ghanaian politicians. The tadpoles are out-jumping the toads. — Nana Awere Damoah

I do not hate a proud man, as I do hate the engendering of toads. — William Shakespeare

We should be happy to see toads in our gardens. — Andrienne Soutter-Perrot

Toad, with no one to check his statements or to criticize in an unfriendly spirit, rather let himself go. Indeed, much that he related belonged more properly to the category of what-might-have-happened-had-I-only-thought-of-it-in-time-instead-of-ten-minutes-afterwards. Those are always the best and raciest adventures; and why should they not be truly ours, as much as the somewhat inadequate things that really come off? — Kenneth Grahame

Canadians and Americans may look alike, but the contents of their heads are quite different. Americans experience themselves, individually, as small toads in the biggest and most powerful puddle in the world. Their sense of power comes from identifying with the puddle. Canadians as individuals may have more power within the puddle, since there are fewer toads in it; it's the puddle that's seen as powerless. — Margaret Atwood

Had it pleased heaven
To try me with affliction; had they rain'd
All kinds of sores and shames on my bare head.
Steep'd me in poverty to the very lips,
Given to captivity me and my utmost hopes,
I should have found in some place of my soul
A drop of patience: but, alas, to make me
A fixed figure for the time of scorn
To point his slow unmoving finger at!
Yet could I bear that too; well, very well:
But there, where I have garner'd up my heart,
Where either I must live, or bear no life;
The fountain from the which my current runs,
Or else dries up; to be discarded thence!
Or keep it as a cistern for foul toads
To knot and gender in! Turn thy complexion there,
Patience, thou young and rose-lipp'd cherubin,
Ay, there, look grim as hell! — William Shakespeare

I am against people reaping where they have not sown. But we have a saying that if you want to eat a toad you should look for a fat and juicy one. — Chinua Achebe

The children on the playground all heard her. They took off running together, as far away as possible from Antonia Owens, who might hex you if you did her wrong, and from her aunts, who might boil up garden toads and slip them into your stew, and from her mother, who was so angry and protective she might just freeze you in time, ensuring that you were forever trapped on the green grass at the age of ten or eleven. — Alice Hoffman

Uncultivated minds are not full of wild flowers, like uncultivated fields. Villainous weeds grow in them and they are the haunt of toads. — Logan Pearsall Smith

The chief is the chief. He is the eagle who flies high and cannot be touched by the spit of the toad. — Mobutu Sese Seko

The ocean, for me, is what LSD was to Timothy Leary. He claimed the hallucinogen is to reality what a microscope is to biology, affording a perception of reality that was not before accessible. Shamans and seekers eat mushrooms, drink potions, lick toads, inhale smoke, and snort snuff to transport their minds to realms they cannot normally experience. (Humans are not alone in this endeavor; species from elephants to monkeys purposely eat fermented fruit to get drunk; dolphins were recently discovered sharing a certain toxic puffer fish, gently passing it from one cetacean snout to another, as people would pass a joint, after which the dolphins seem to enter a trancelike state.) — Sy Montgomery

When dragged into prominence by half poets, the result is not poetry, nor till the poets among us can be "literalists of the imagination"
above insolence and triviality and can present for inspection, "imaginary gardens with real toads in them," shall we have it. — Marianne Moore

The poet Marianne Moore famously wrote of 'real toads in imaginary gardens,' and the labyrinth offers us the possibility of being real creatures in symbolic space ... In such spaces as the labyrinth we cross over [between real and imaginary spaces]; we are really travelling, even if the destination is only symbolic. — Rebecca Solnit

Poetry is the art of creating imaginary gardens with real toads. — Marianne Moore

REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm. — Ambrose Bierce

(T)here was a story they used to tell at home about a girl whose punishment was that every time she opened her mouth, snakes and toads came out, snakes and toads with every word. The book didn't say what she did about it, but I've always assumed she probably ended up keeping her mouth shut. — Thomas Mann

Toads are conservative animals, I think, and not much given to expecting the best from fortune. Some weeks ago, well before the end of October, I accidentally dug up one while turning over some garden earth. I was surprised, naturally, when one of the clods heaved over on its die and there, in some annoyance, sat at toad. — Henry Mitchell

Imaginary gardens with real toads in them ...
... if you demand on one hand,
the raw material of poetry in
all its rawness and
that which is on the other hand
genuine, then you are interested in poetry. — Marianne Moore

A poetess who had died young of cancer had said in one of her poems that for her, on sleepless nights, 'the night offers toads and black dogs and corpses of the drowned. — Yasunari Kawabata

Toads, beetles, bats. — Gary D. Schmidt

Sometimes I felt the bloated Toad, hideous and pampered with the poisonous vapours of the dungeon, dragging his loathsome length along my bosom: Sometimes the quick cold Lizard rouzed me leaving his slimy track upon my face, and entangling itself in the tresses of my wild and matted hair: Often have I at waking found my fingers ringed with the long worms which bred in the corrupted flesh of my Infant. — Matthew Gregory Lewis

The long and painstakingly detailed discussions seemed to me nothing more than the incessant nattering of toads in a water filled ditch and of no greater consequence. — Stephen R. Lawhead

Words are cold, muddy toads trying to understand sprites dancing in a field-but they're all we have. — Yann Martel

Well, that explains why we jumped into bed with each other so quickly. We were both hornier than a bucket of desert toads. — Olivia Cunning

I'm sure I've been a toad, one time or another. With bats, weasels, worms ... I rejoice in the kinship. Even the caterpillar I can love, and the various vermin. — Theodore Roethke

It's a terrible thing for a man when his woman gangs up on him wi' a toad — Terry Pratchett

When the demon was muscling for action she was like the princess in the fairy tale from whose mouth toads fell. The small part of her which remained outside the dominion of her temper stood aghast but inefficient as one after the other the reptiles showered forth. — Elizabeth Goudge

Morning, Mr. Nick." "My, don't you look dapper." He looked to find Lilly in the doorway. "And doesn't your mama look pretty as a daisy." "Not daisy. Daffodil." Levi hopped down the steps. "That's her favorite flower, but her dress is green, so I guess she's pretty as a toad." Nick chuckled. "Only you would think toads are pretty." "Toads — Lorna Seilstad

[Marianne Moore's definition of genuine poetry]
Imaginary gardens with real toads in them. — Marianne Moore

The toad beneath the harrow knows Exactly where each tooth point goes. — Rudyard Kipling

Most of us live our lives like toads, sitting perfectly still, under a plantain leaf. We are waiting for a fly to come our way. When it comes out darts the tongue. We nab it.
That is all. We eat it. — Sherwood Anderson

If I was good each week, my father would take me to a different pet store each Saturday. I had a snake, horny toads, turtles, lizards, rabbits, guinea pigs ... I kept my alligator in the bathtub until it got too big. — Dick Van Patten

And hence the poet must seek to be essentially anonymous,
He must die a little death each morning,
He must swallow his toad and study his vomit
as Baudelaire studied la charogne of Jeanne Duval. — Delmore Schwartz

Helpless, unknown, and unremembered, most human beings, however sensitive, idealistic, intelligent, go through life as passengers rather than chauffeurs. Although we may pretend that it is the chauffeur who is the social inferior, most of us, like Toad of Toad Hall, would not mind a turn at the wheel ourselves. — Ralph Harper

Cane toads are all over the place.'
'Are they edible?'
'Heck, no. They're poisonous.'
'That is disappointing.' Hunger gnawed at her insides.
'Do you like frog's legs?'
Just the legs? She was hungry. She would eat the whole thing at the moment! 'Are the legs your specialty?'
'Mine? I can't cook to save myself. — Cheryse Durrant

It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal, complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it. — Mark Twain

It occurs to me that Jude does this too, changes who she is depending on who she's with. They're like toads changing their skin color. How come I'm always just me? — Jandy Nelson

Turns out, most girls would rather put on lip gloss than play with sand toads. — Jenny Lundquist

If it is your duty to croak like the toad, then
go ahead! And with all your might! Make them
hear you! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

while a picked body of Toads, known at the Die-hards, or the Death-or-Glory Toads, will storm the orchard and carry everything before — Kenneth Grahame

Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today's winners are tomorrow's blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope. — Hunter S. Thompson

Witches and sorcerers cultivated plants with the power to "cast spells" -- in our vocabulary, "psychoactive" plants. Their potion recipes called for such things as datura, opium poppies, belladona, hashish, fly-agaric mushrooms (Amanita muscaria), and the skin of toads (which can contain DMT, a powerful hallucinogen). These ingredients would be combined in a hempseed-oil-based "flying ointment" that the witches would then administer vaginally using a special dildo. This was the "broomstick" by which these women were said to travel. (119) — Michael Pollan

The music of all creatures has to do with their loves, even of toads and frogs. Is it not the same with man? — Henry David Thoreau

Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss. If you peer beneath the bits and pieces of the moss, you'll see toads, small insects, a whole host of life that prospers in that miniature environment. A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city. — Sylvia Earle

In the pre-war era when itinerant home-remedy salesmen still wandered the country, they had a traditional patter for selling a potion that was supposed to be particularly effective in treating burns and cuts. A toad with four legs in front and six behind would be placed in a box with mirrors lining the four walls. The toad, amazed at its own appearance from every angle, would break into an oily sweat. This sweat would be collected and simmered for 3,721 days while being stirred with a willow branch. The result was the marvelous potion.
When writing about myself, I feel something like that toad in the box. — Akira Kurosawa

Fine food is poison. It can be as bitter as antimony and bitter almonds and as repulsive as swallowing live toads. Like the poison the emperor took every day to stop himself being poisoned, fine food must be taken daily until the system becomes immune to its ravages and the taste buds beaten and abused to the point where they not only accept but savour every vile concoction under the sun. — Lisa St. Aubin De Teran

I felt as if I had no control over what I said, as if loathsome, ugly words were waiting inside me like snakes and toads looking for a chance to sneak out before I could stop them. — Gloria Whelan

I am glad that the life of pandas is so dull by human standards, for our efforts at conservation have little moral value if we preserve creatures only as human ornaments; I shall be impressed when we show solicitude for warty toads and slithering worms. — Stephen Jay Gould

If it will be an intolerable thing to suffer the heat of fire for a year or a day, or an hour, what will it be to suffer ten thousand times more for ever? What if thou wert to suffer Lawrence 's death, to be roasted upon a gridiron; or to be scraped or pricked to death as other martyrs were; or if thou wert to feed upon toads for a year together? If thou couldst not endure such things as these, how wilt thou endure the eternal flames ? — Richard Baxter

I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp, - tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. — Henry David Thoreau

Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like Surinam toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred young ones on its back. — Washington Allston

For most of the hours of the day - and most of the months of the year - the sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and stinging lizards, but a hell for pigs and Tennesseans. — Larry McMurtry

Bulldogs are adorable, with faces like toads that have been sat on. My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind; So flew'd, so sanded; their heads are hung with ears that sweep away the morning dew ... — William Shakespeare

Members of the Coyote Clan are not easily identified, but there are clues. You can see it in their eyes. They are joyful and they are fierce. They can cry louder and laugh harder than anyone on the planet. And they have an enormous range.
The Coyote Clan is a raucous bunch: they have drunk from desert potholes and belched forth toads. They tell stories with such virtuosity that you'll swear you've been in the presence of preachers.
The Coyote Clan is also serene. They can float on their backs down the length of any river or lose entire afternoons to the contemplation of stone.
Members of the Clan court risk and will dance on slickrock as flash floods erode the ground beneath their feet. It doesn't matter. They understand the earth re-creates itself day after day. — Terry Tempest Williams

Here
you warriors
why this moaning and complaining? Have you no more sense than toads and vipers? Our time hasn't come. Have you no patience? Are we not the 'trodden weed' still? The time is not yet here for us to raise our heads. Must you still complain? — Eiji Yoshikawa

Long ago," he said, "I thought like you that my mother would always keep the window open for me; so I stayed away for moons and moons and moons, and then flew back; but the window was barred, for mother had forgotten all about me, and there was another little boy sleeping in my bed."
I am not sure that this was true, but Peter thought it was true; and it scared them.
"Are you sure mothers are like that?"
"Yes."
So this was the truth about mothers. The toads! — J.M. Barrie

At the Moor
Wanderer in the black wind; quietly the dry reeds whisper
In the stillness of the moor. In the gray sky
A flock of wild birds follows;
Slanting over gloomy waters.
Turmoil. In decayed hut
The spirit of putrescence flutters with black wings.
Crippled birches in the autumn wind.
Evening in deserted tavern. The way home is scented all around
By the soft gloom of grazing herds;
Apparition of the night; toads plunge from brown waters. — Georg Trakl

I spent most of my life believing there would never be a Prince Charming out there for me. Kissing toads can have that effect on a girl. — Elizabeth A. Reeves

Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut. — Neil Gaiman

I believe my strength has something to do with memory, with that concept of fluid time. For while I recall with clarity the terror of abuse, I also recall the green and lovely dream of childhood, the moist membrane of a leaf against my nose, the toads that peeled a golden pool in the palm of my hand. Pleasures, pleasures, the recollections of which have injected me with a firm and unshakable faith. I believe Dostoevski when he wrote, "If one had only one good memory left in one's heart, even that may be the means of saving us." I have gone by memory. — Lauren Slater

We're an easy target for remarks about crossing the border and turning the clock back fifteen years, or a hundred. We're a state that's known for pineapples and cane toads, old bad attitudes and the brain-addling heat that comes from the Tropic of Capricorn sitting right across our middle. We're that kind of state - hot and steamy, unlovely and unloved, far too much fodder here for metaphors about festering and putrefaction. — Nick Earls

Families ... Could not live with them, could not turn them into toads. — Alexandra Ivy

The toads bellowed mournfully, and the twilight was enrobing the professor. Here it was ... the night. Moscow ... white lamps turning on somewhere outside ... Lost and miserable, Pankrat stood fearfully at attention, arms at his sides ... — Mikhail Bulgakov

It rained toads the day the White Council came to town. — Jim Butcher

A careful observation of Nature will disclose pleasantries of superb irony. She has for instance placed toads close to flowers. — Honore De Balzac

Men are vile inconstant toads. — Mary Wortley Montagu

He spent two decades wandering the wilderness, overmedicated, set upon by the tax man, divorce lawyers, everything but a rain of toads. There were more fights and pills and liquor and car crashes and women and discharge of firearms - accidental and on purpose - than a mortal man could be expected to survive, but he played. — Rick Bragg

Toads are to dragons what carrots are to unicorns. — Ness Kingsley

The marsh toads interviewed the eagle
'How come you venture so high?
Aren't you scared you'll hit the ceiling
That blue metal dome they call the sky?'

The eagle knew these earth-bound creatures
Were ignorant of
boundless space
And couldn't conceive
of infinities
Not being born to the wind's embrace."
From Bachchoo's Fables — Farrukh Dhondy

I don't know why I am in such a reminiscent mood except that spring and the reappearance of toads always awakens the old acquisitive instinct. The only thing that keeps me from starting a collection is the fact that no rule exists against it. — Jean Webster

How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can't. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, spring is still spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it. — George Orwell

I am filthy. I am riddled with lice. Hogs, when they look at me, vomit. My skin is encrusted with the scabs and scales of leprosy, and covered with yellow pus.[ ... ] A family of toads has taken up residence in my left armpit and, when one of them moves, it tickles. Mind one of them does not escape and come and scratch the inside of your ear with its mouth; for it would then be able to enter your brain. In my right armpit there is a chameleon which is perpetually chasing them, to avoid starving to death: everyone must live.[ ... ] My anus has been penetrated by a crab; encouraged by my sluggishness, he guards the entrance with his pincers, and causes me a lot of pain. — Comte De Lautreamont

Rupert: " ... At this rate, somebody is bound to upset the Warlock once too often, and we'll end up with a Court full of bemused looking toads."
"He wouldn't dare use his magic here," said the Champion.
"Don't bet on it," said Rupert. "The High Warlock has all the practicality and self-preservation instincts of a depressed lemming. — Simon R. Green

George Stout saw through their acts. "I am sick of all schemers," he wrote, "of all the vain crawling toads who now edge into positions of advantage and look for selfish gain or selfish glory from all this suffering."13 — Robert M. Edsel

In shape they were like horrible toads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant. We had never before seen them save at night, and indeed they are nocturnal animals save when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been. We now stood amazed at the sight, for their blotched and warty skins were of a curious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight struck them with an ever-varying rainbow bloom as they moved. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Irabu is a fat, pus-y toad. — George Steinbrenner

Occasionally they would hear a harsh croak or a splash as some amphibian was disturbed, but the only creature they saw was a toad as big as Will's foot, which could only flop in a pain-filled sideways heave as if it were horribly injured. It lay across the path, trying to move out of the way and looking at them as if it knew they meant to hurt it.
'It would be merciful to kill it,' said Tialys.
'How do you know?' said Lyra. 'It might still like being alive, in spite of everything.'
'If we killed it, we'd be taking it with us,' said Will. 'It wants to stay here. I've killed enough living things. Even a filthy stagnant pool might be better than being dead.'
'But if it's in pain?' said Tialys.
'If it could tell us, we'd know. But since it can't, I'm not going to kill it. That would be considering our feelings rather than the toad's.'
They moved on. — Philip Pullman

He was one of the many toads you have to go through to find the prince. — Nora Roberts

The moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screechowl. — Washington Irving

If that a pearl may in a toad's head dwell, And may be found too in an oyster shell. — John Bunyan

Whenever you see a toad jumping in broad daylight, then know that something is after its life. — Chinua Achebe

If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? ... I think that by retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and ... toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable. — George Orwell

I smelled of gin. Not just casually, as if I had taken four or five drinks of a winter morning to get out of bed on, but as if the Pacific Ocean was pure gin and I had nosedived off the boat deck. The gin was in my hair and eyebrows, on my chin and under my chin. It was on my shirt. I smelled like dead toads. — Raymond Chandler

If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would have made them cute and furry. — Dave Barry

I will be very sad when global warming and toxins kill off all the toads and frogs and salamanders. Here's hoping we, as humans, figure out a way to be less stupid. — Moby

Mick Jagger is about as sexy as a pissing toad. — Truman Capote

Like all the girls back then I knew that being too clever was much worse than being too tall. Being five foot three, tongue-tied and blonde I mostly passed muster, except that I was so unskilled in small talk that I sometimes blurted big words (hypocrisy, or pretentiousness), which jumped out of my mouth like the toads of the fairy tale before I knew it. In any case, you could cultivate the wrong sort of silence - the sort that implied brooding self-absorption rather than attentiveness. — Lorna Sage

A Toad, can die of Light - Death is the Common Right Of Toads and Men — Emily Dickinson

After the sorts of winters we have had to endure recently, the spring does seem miraculous, because it has become gradually harder and harder to believe that it is actually going to happen. Every February since 1940 I have found myself thinking that this time winter is going to be permanent. But Persephone, like the toads, always rises from the dead at about the same moment. Suddenly, towards the end of March, the miracle happens and the decaying slum in which I live is transfigured. — George Orwell

One of these days I'm going to say the wrong thing to the wrong mage, and I'll be spending the rest of my days searching for Mrs Right Toad. — Elf Sternberg

He once told me that an August evening was "as hot as three toads in a Cuisinart," a comparison that left me blinking two days later. — Dean Koontz

Strange and fantastic things really happen. During a rainstorm in Australia, fish fall from the sky; several Southern states consider legislation that would make the licking of toads illegal; Lisa Presley marries Michael Jackson. You read these things and you think to yourself that realism may not be the best medium through which to express the real world. — Karen Joy Fowler

A man should swallow a toad every morning to be sure of not meeting with anything more revolting in the day ahead. — Nicolas Chamfort

The oldest woman in the village, Paciencia,
predicts the weather from the flight of birds:
Today it will rain toads, she says,
squinting her face into a mystery of wrinkles
as she reads the sky - tomorrow,
it will be snakes. — Judith Ortiz Cofer

The toad has indeed no superior as a destroyer of noxious insects, and he possesses no bad habits and is entirely inoffensive himself, every owner of a garden should treat him with utmost hospitality. — Celia Thaxter

Turning people into toads is usually redundant. — Mary Beth Robb

A simple intuition, a single observation, can open vistas of unimagined potential. Once caught in the web of an idea, the researcher is happily doomed, for the outcome is always uncertain, and the resolution of the mystery may take years to unfold. Such was the case in my encounter with the magic toads of the Americas. — Wade Davis

Death is the common right Of toads and men, - Of earl and midge The privilege. Why swagger then? The gnat's supremacy Is large as thine. — Emily Dickinson

Scientists' minds may jump around like amorous toads, but they do seem to accept such behavior in one another. — Caleb Carr

A hundred bloodthirsty badgers, armed with rifles, are going to attack Toad Hall this very night, by way of the paddock. Six boatloads of Rats, with pistols and cutlasses, will come up the river and effect a landing in the garden; while a picked body of Toads, known as the Die-hards, or the Death-or-Glory Toads, will storm the orchard and carry everything before them, yelling for vengeance. — Kenneth Grahame