Stumps Quotes:

I'm not trying to stump anybody... it's the beauty of the language that I'm interested in.

- Buddy Holly

topic: Trying, Language, Stumps

Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts.

- Charles Fort

source: Charles Fort (2006). “Wild Talents”, p.279, Cosimo, Inc.

topic: Octopus, Way, Stumps

I'd like to see him go out and bat one day with a stump. I tell you that's what he's been doing all this while

- Greg Chappell

topic: One Day, Bats, Stumps

The problems seem so easy out there on the stump. Deficits shrink with a rhetorical flourish.

- Hugh Sidey

topic: Problem, Easy, Stumps, Rhetorical

You can stump any stoner with one question: What were we just talking about?

- Jim Breuer

topic: Funny, Talking, Stumps, Stoners

You can cut the tension with a cricket stump.

- Murray Walker

source: "Happy birthday Mr F1: A birthday tribute to motorsport legend Murray Walker" by Byron Young, www.mirror.co.uk. October 10, 2012.

topic: Cutting, Stumps, Cricket

Look for a tree stump in the woods. Compare it to love.

- Colette Inez

source: Colette Inez (1993). “Getting under way: new and selected poems”, Story Line Pr

topic: Tree, Looks, Woods, Stumps

A choir of seedlings arching their necks out of rotted tree stumps, sucking life out of death. I am the forest's conscience, but remember, the forest eats itself and lives forever.

- Barbara Kingsolver

source: Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.443, Faber & Faber

topic: Tree, Forever, Forests, Stumps, Seedlings

If you wish in this world to advance your merits you're bound to enhance; you must stir it and stump it, and blow your own trumpet, or, trust me, you haven't a chance.

- William Gilbert

topic: Blow, Wish, World, Stumps

This Forest eats itself and lives forever.

- Barbara Kingsolver

topic: Forever, Forests, Stumps, Seedlings

I forged myself out of a vacuum. I crawl along the highway on hacked off stumps year after year. Some wonder how and why. I never do.

- Henry Rollins

topic: Years, Vacuums, Wonder, Stumps, Forged

But this tree in the yard-this tree that men chopped down...this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up it's stump-this tree lived! It lived! And nothing could destroy it.

- Betty Smith

topic: Men, Tree, Trying, Stumps, Bonfire

I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don't already know, and make me laugh. I don't care what you look like, just turn me on.

- Henry Rollins

topic: Hate, Laughing, Soul, Stumps, Turn Me

Down the mine I dreamed of cricket; I bowled imaginery balls in the dark; I sent the stumps spinning and heard them rattling in the tunnels. No mishap was going to stop me from bowling in the real game, especially this one.

- Harold Larwood

topic: Real, Dark, Tunnels, Stumps, Mishaps

Bouillabaisse is only good because cooked by the French, who, if they cared to try, could produce an excellent and nutritious substitute out of cigar stumps and empty matchboxes.

- Norman Douglas

source: 1911 Siren Land,'Rain on the Hills'.

topic: Food, Trying, Culture, Stumps, Matchboxes

'I don't need very much now,' said the boy, 'just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired.' 'Well,' said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could, "well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest.'And the boy did. And the tree was happy.

- Shel Silverstein

source: Shel Silverstein, “The Giving Tree”

topic: Book, Tired, Boys, Stumps, Well Said

If I didn't have fake nails, my fingers would be bloody stumps.

- Nikki Cox

topic: Fake People, Nails, Would Be, Stumps

A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make a speech for conservation.

- Adlai E. Stevenson

source: "Mark Souder: The Hypocrisy of the Hypocrite" by Diana Butler Bass, www.beliefnet.com. May 18, 2010.

topic: Fake People, Hypocrite, Cutting, Stumps, Hypocrit

what makes us so afraid is the thing we half see, or half hear, as in a wood at dusk, when a tree stump becomes an animal and a sound becomes a siren. And most of that fear is the fear of not knowing, of not actually seeing correctly.

- Edna O'Brien

topic: Fear, Animal, Knowing, Stumps

The borderline between prose and poetry is one of those fog-shrouded literary minefields where the wary explorer gets blown to bits before ever seeing anything clearly. It is full of barbed wire and the stumps of dead opinions.

- Ursula K. Le Guin

source: Ursula K. Le Guin (1997). “Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places”, p.104, Grove Press

topic: Prose And Poetry, Fog, Wire, Stumps, Barbed Wire

Mud and water and the stumps of trees. In every direction that was all there was. Bodies fell, but the trees died standing up.

- Josh Ritter

source: Josh Ritter (2011). “Bright's Passage: A Novel”, p.13, Dial Press

topic: Water, Tree, Body, Stumps

You might pitch a ball on the off stump and think you have bowled a good ball and he walks across and hits it for two behind midwicket. His bat looks so heavy but he just waves it around like it's a toothpick.

- Brett Lee

topic: Thinking, Two, Bats, Stumps, Cricketers

Joe Lieberman may be Moses on the stump, but when it comes to policies and votes, he boogies with the Golden Calf.

- Don Feder

topic: May, Golden, Vote, Stumps, Boogie

It is wonderful how soon a piano gets into a log-hut on the frontier. You would think they found it under a pine-stump. With it comes a Latin grammar, and one of those tow-head boys has written a hymn on Sunday. Now let colleges, now let senates take heed! for here is one who, opening these fine tastes on the basis of the pioneer's iron constitution, will gather all their laurels in his strong hands.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

source: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1911). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.21, Рипол Классик

topic: Strong, Latin, Sunday, Stumps, Strong Hands

Criticism is an alluring substitute for creation, because tearing things down, unlike building them up, really is as easy as falling off a stump. It's blissfully simple to strike a savvy, sophisticated pose by attacking someone else's creations, but the old adage is right: Any fool can burn down a barn. Building one is something else again.

- Martha Beck

topic: Fall, Simple, Criticism, Stumps, Alluring

Some Democrats and their advocates in the press believe Obamacare, a year into implementation, is no longer much of a factor in the midterm elections. But no one has told Republican candidates, who are still pounding away at the Affordable Care Act on the stump. And no one has told voters, especially those in states with closely contested Senate races, who regularly place it among the top issues of the campaign.

- Byron York

topic: Believe, Race, Years, Stumps, Midterms

This junkyard is an environmental nightmare, strewn with tree stumps, old tires, derelict vehicles, scrap metal and other waste. This owner may be failing to properly dispose of vehicle fluids and other contaminating chemical-laden trash, possibly imperiling groundwater and wells. He is junking the law as well as the environment.

- Richard Blumenthal

topic: Law, Tree, Environmental, Stumps, Scrap

Just take them rascals [rapists, killers, child abusers] out in the swamp / Put 'em on their knees and tie 'em to a stump / Let the rattlers and the bugs and the alligators do the rest,

- Charlie Daniels

topic: Children, Ties, Knees, Stumps, Abusers

Even if you don't mind Romneycare, or the abortion flip-flop, or any of the rest, there's a more basic problem: He's not a natural campaigner, and on the stump he instinctively recoils from any personal connection with the voters.

- Mark Steyn

topic: Abortion, Mind, Voters, Stumps, Recoil

My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness—what old and hard-worked staleness, masquerading as the all-new!

- D. H. Lawrence

source: Letter to Aldous and Maria Huxley, 15 August 1928, in H. T. Moore (ed.) 'Collected Letters of D. H. Lawrence' (1962) vol. 2

topic: Dirty, Cabbage, Juice, Stumps, Joyce

Sometimes I would come back from a run, and my artificial leg would have a puddle of blood from my stump. I wouldn't go to sick bay. In that year, if I had gone to sick bay, they would have written me up. I didn't go to sick bay. I'd go somewhere and hide and soak my leg in a bucket of hot water with salt in it--an old remedy. Then I'd get up the next morning and run.

- Carl Brashear

topic: Running, Morning, Years, Stumps

Dad took moving pictures of us children washing dishes, so that he could figure out how we could reduce our motions and thus hurry through the task. Irregular jobs, such as painting the back porch or removing a stump from the front lawn, were awarded on a low-bid basis. Each child who wanted extra pocket money submitted a sealed bid saying what he would do the job for. The lowest bidder got the contract.

- Frank B. Gilbreth Jr.

source: FRANK B. GILBRETH JR. (1948). “CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN”

topic: Jobs, Dad, Children, Stumps, Washing Dishes

If bumblebee leavings and stump paste are so good for you, why can't any of those guys (in the health stores) grow full beards?

- Calvin Trillin

topic: Guy, Leaving, Bumblebees, Stumps, Health Food

A box of new crayons! Now they’re all pointy, lined up in order, bright and perfect. Soon they’ll be a bunch of ground down, rounded, indistinguishable stumps, missing their wrappers and smudged with other colors. Sometimes life seems unbearably tragic.

- Bill Watterson

topic: Order, Color, Perfect, Stumps, Sometimes In Life

I'm a native West Virginian and I've been called everything from a hillbilly to a stump jumper. I'm always proud of it; I'm very proud to be a West Virginian.

- John Raese

topic: Proud, West, Hillbilly, Stumps, Virginians

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued reams of playground regulations and actually gone so far as to recommend against "tripping hazards, like tree stumps and rocks." Maybe we should just bulldoze the local parks and put in a couple of blobs... made of plastic.

- Lenore Skenazy

topic: Nature, Couple, Rocks, Stumps

Known colloquially as 'winter,' 'golden needle,' and 'velvet foot' mushrooms, enoki mushrooms grow across much of the world, inhabiting dead conifer trees and stumps, and generally appearing throughout the late fall and winter months.

- Paul Stamets

topic: Fall, Winter, Mushrooms, Stumps, Winter Months

The brush is a more powerful and rapid tool than the point or the stump... the main thing that the brush secures is the instant grasp of the grand construction of a figure.

- Thomas Eakins

topic: Powerful, Tools, Construction, Stumps

I always thought 'Stump' was kind of like, you dropped something on your foot. It's not the most exotic rock-star name.

- Patrick Stump

topic: Stars, Rocks, Names, Stumps

Don't let despair mutate your flesh Look at my twisted stumps of thought See the fingers, listen to the voice I am slowly becoming the end of the line.

- Henry Rollins

topic: Voice, Despair, Looks, Stumps

There are no words and there is no singing, but the music has a voice. It is an old voice and a deep voice, like the stump of a sweet cigar or a shoe with a hole. It is a voice that has lived and lives, with sorrow and shame, ecstasy and bliss, joy and pain, redemption and damnation. It is a voice with love and without love. I like the voice, and though I can't talk to it, I like the way it talks to me. It says it is all the same, Young Man. Take it and let it be.

- James Frey

topic: Sweet, Pain, Men, Stumps, Joy And Pain

I was pretty realistic to people about what we could get done, and the situation we were in, and trying to tamp down expectations. If you listen to my stump speeches, if you listen to what I said at Grant Park, I kept on saying, "Look, this is not just about me, this is not going to happen in one year, or one term, or even one presidency." And we tried to layer into everything we were saying a sense of hope, but also realism.

- Barack Obama

source: Source: www.theatlantic.com

topic: Years, People, Expectations, Stumps

There are times in a person's life when he or she must make a choice to believe. I choose to believe the sun will rise tomorrow. I also choose to believe that if you go to bed hungry you will wake up ready to eat. I've met a group of men in a faraway country who choose to believe that if you stand on a tree stump for an hour you will gain sympathy for trees. I am already quite sympathetic to trees, so I choose to think they are bonkers.

- Obert Skye

source: Obert Skye (2009). “The Wrath of Ezra”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

topic: Country, Believe, Men, Stumps

I'd like to find whoever taught the Stump that extra work builds character and push him down the stairs," Neal told Kel at lunch.

- Tamora Pierce

source: Tamora Pierce (2014). “Protector of the Small Quartet”, p.81, Random House Books for Young Readers

topic: Character, Lunch, Taught, Stumps, Extra Work

Allow your attention to gently alight on your belly, as if you were coming upon a shy animal sunning itself on a tree stump in a clearing in the forest. Feel your belly rise or expand gently on the inbreath, and fall or recede on the outbreath.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn

source: Jon Kabat-Zinn (2013). “Full Catastrophe Living, Revised Edition: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation”, p.61, Hachette UK

topic: Fall, Animal, Tree, Stumps

The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in theinfringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.

- Henry David Thoreau

source: Henry David Thoreau (2017). “The Most Alive is the Wildest – Thoreau’s Complete Works on Living in Harmony with the Nature: Walden, Walking, Night and Moonlight, The Highland Light, A Winter Walk, The Maine Woods, A Walk to Wachusett, The Landlord, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Autumnal Tints, Wild Apples…”, p.299, e-artnow

topic: Rain, Men, Wind, Stumps, Observance

I know what every colored woman in this country is doing... Dying. Just like me. But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.

- Toni Morrison

source: Sula (1973)

topic: Country, Women, Differences, Stumps, Redwoods

It is rather suitable for umpires to dress like dentists, since one of their tasks is to draw stumps.

- John Arlott

topic: Umpires, Dresses, Tasks, Stumps

Biggest dream?” I was proud of this one because I knew it would stump him. It required forethought. “Kiss you.” “That’s not funny,” I said, holding his eyes, grateful I didn’t stutter. “No, but it made you blush.

- Becca Fitzpatrick

source: Becca Fitzpatrick (2013). “The Complete Hush, Hush Saga: includes Hush, Hush; Crescendo; Silence and Finale”, p.22, Simon and Schuster

topic: Dream, Grateful, Eye, Stumps, Forethought

Geek cred points for trying to stump me, but sorry, you'll have to do better than that. Would you like to try anime for a hundred?" When she looked blank, he sighed. "What took it down, anime, or the Jeopardy reference?

- Rachel Caine

topic: Sorry, Anime, Trying, Stumps, Claire Danvers