Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Weeds
Call us not weeds, we are flowers of the sea.
E. L. Aveline—The Mother’s Fables.
Great weeds do grow apace.
Beaumont and Fletcher—The Coxcomb. Act IV. Sc. 4.
Still must I on, for I am as a weed,
Flung from the rock, on Ocean’s foam, to sail
Where’er the surge may sweep.
Byron—Childe Harold. Canto III. St. 2.
An ill weed grows apace.
Chapman—An Humorous Day’s Mirth. Evyl weed ys sone y growe. Harl. MS. (1490).
In the deep shadow of the porch
A slender bind-weed springs,
And climbs, like airy acrobat,
The trellises, and swings
And dances in the golden sun
In fairy loops and rings.
Susan Coolidge—Bind-Weed.
The wolfsbane I should dread.
Hood—Flowers.
To win the secret of a weed’s plain heart.
Lowell—Sonnet XXV.
The richest soil, if uncultivated, produces the rankest weeds.
Plutarch—Life of Caius Marcus Coriolanus.
Nothing teems
But hateful docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs,
Losing both beauty and utility.
Henry V. Act V. Sc. 2. L. 51.
Now ’tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted;
Suffer them now, and they’ll o’ergrow the garden
And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.
Henry VI. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 31.
I will go root away
The noisome weeds which without profit suck
The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers.
Richard II. Act III. Sc. 4. L. 37.
Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace.
Richard III. Act II. Sc. 4.
The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet,
Though to itself it only live and die,
But if that flower with base infection meet,
The basest weed outbraves his dignity;
For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.
Sonnet XCIV.