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Prairie Quotes

Browse 142 quotes about Prairie.

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Prairie Quotes

“When we commit to the easy way --- planting one kind of anything --- we gamble. It is simpler, isn't it, to know and promote only a few flowers or trees or grasses for our landscape? We know what they will look like, their requirements and habits. It's more comfortable. A no-brainer. But when we do, we lose the benefits of a vibrant, healthy landscape teeming with different trees, plants and their associated animals, birds, and insects. We lose diversity.”

NatureDiversityPrairieTallgrass Prairie
Book:Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of the Prairie Spirit
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“After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.”

NatureWindSpringMetaphorPrairieNature S BeautySimilies
Book:My Ántonia
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“Grand Sky/Grand Prairie Both harbor the vastness of space. One holds the space Of starlight, thunder snow, rock and icy comets, scrolls Of clouds; the other the spaces inside see heart and ovum, Root webs, spider webs, budded blossoms. They lean together tightly day and night, pressing One into the other, each creating the horizon of the other. They exchange themselves. At evening one becomes The steady night in which the other lives. Yet witness How the moon first rises from the body of the prairie Into the height of the sky that then possesses it. Their horizons are persistent illusion.”

PoetryNatureSkyPoetPoemHorizonPrairieWestern Sky
Book:Quickening Fields
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“While the train flashed through never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns and bright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat in the observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and red dust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like to spend one’s childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat and corn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when the world lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairly stifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavy harvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country is stripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had not grown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was a kind of freemasonry, we said.”

ChildhoodWindWheatPrairieFreemasonryWoodwork
Book:My Ántonia
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“I wish I could wrap up the glitter star-green of this moment and hand it to you like an angel gift. Give you the heat lightning flying in jagged silence over the distant mountains. And the smell of September prairie grass and the even fainter scent of October pine now descending . . .”

QuotesAngelFlyingGrassLightningGiftsOctoberPrairieThe Legacy LettersCarew PapritzLegacy QuotesQuotes By Carew PapritzPine
Book:The Legacy Letters: his Wife, his Children, his Final Gift
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“The prairie I grew up on teaches you to notice, to pay attention. The yolk of the sun as it slides across the dome of the sky streaking the world orange and indigo. The swish of grass in afternoon breeze. The screech of a grackle. During the Golden hour on the prairie, the North Dakota palette reveals the subtle differences between ochre, umber, and sienna.”

HorizonPrairieNorth DakotaGolden HourPastoralSky Colors
Book:Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land
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“I mentioned how I had lived in the oil boom. I described the buttes of the badlands. The smell of the sage. The yolk-yellow breasts of the sage grass. How if you sat long enough, waited for the golden hour, then the entire sweep of the badlands surged into a riot of reds and purples and golds. I told him how there were ponderosa pines tucked into the southwestern pocket of North Dakota, but that they looked shrimpy compared to the ones here, in the rain-forest of the Olympics.”

HorizonPrairieNorth DakotaPastoralButteSky ColorsPonderosa Pines
Book:Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land
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“By sharing it with others, you help ensure that the tallgrass prairie continues to delight future generations. By growing in your knowledge of prairie, you develop a better understanding of the natural world. And by experiencing prairie---over the four seasons, and at various times of day, in all weathers---you develop a heightened sense of awe and wonder that will spill over into every other area of your life. Your adventure is only beginning.”

HikingPrairieNature WritingNature QuoteTallgrass PrairiePrairie StewardshipIntroduction To PrairieNature Adventures
Book:The Tallgrass Prairie: An Introduction
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“Outside the closed windshield, birds hovered mid-air, held aloft by the relentless breeze. Lethbridge was a prairie city, dusty and slow-moving, but it had one constant that separated it from other places on the flatland: Wind. Bracing for it, Lou swung the door open and caught the handle before the gusts could tear it from her hand. Black hair whipped around her face. Scents rose and swirled past, carried by the breeze. Lou breathed in sunbaked soil and sparse golden grasses, motor oil and fast food.”

WindPrairieDanika StoneDark DivideGustCouleesLethbridge
Book:The Dark Divide
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“Lo! body and soul!--this land! Mighty Manhattan, with spires, and The sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships; The varied and ample land,--the South And the North in the light--Ohio's shores, and flashing Missouri, And ever the far-spreading prairies, covered with grass and corn.”

SoulBodyLightLandNew YorkSouthShipsGrassCoveredShoreTidesCornManhattanOhioSparklingPrairieHurryingMissouriSpires
Book:Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1860-1867
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“The prairies were dust. Day after day, summer after summer, the scorching winds blew the dust and the sun was brassy in a yellow sky. Crop after crop failed. Again and again the barren land must be mortgaged for taxes and food and next year's seed. The agony of hope ended when there was not harvest and no more credit, no money to pay interest and taxes; the banker took the land. Then the bank failed.”

YearsNextInterestPaySunSkyLandWindTaxesSummerCreditSeedsDustYellowAgonyAgain And AgainHarvestCropsBankersNext YearNo MoneyBarrenPrairieScorching
Author:Rose Wilder Lane
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“The thought of people in this day and age sitting down to listen to a radio variety show on Saturday evening is rather implausible and was even more so in 1974 when we started “A Prairie Home Companion.” Thank goodness Minnesota Public Radio was too poor to afford good advice or the show never would've got on the air. We only did it because we knew it would be fun to do. It was a dumb idea. I wish I knew how to be that dumb again.”

PeopleIdeasShowsHomeWould BeAgeFunWishPoorAirAdviceGoodnessSittingRadioEveningVarietyDumbCompanionThis DaySaturdayGood AdviceSitting DownMinnesotaPrairiePublic RadioSaturday Evening
Author:Garrison Keillor
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“There was only - spring itself, the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm high wind - rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive ... If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.”

IfsShouldLightKnownSkyWindSpringRedShould HaveEssenceCloudsWarmRisingSunshinePaleSinkingRestlessnessImpulsivePrairieShould Have KnownBlindfolds
Book:The Best of Willa Cather
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“Nature does not conquer the world to God. It never has. It never will. In America, with its vast abounding wealth, its grand expanse of prairie, its reach of river, and its exuberant productiveness, there is danger that our riches will draw us away from God, and fasten us to earth; that they will make us not only rich, but mean; not only wealthy, but wicked. The grand corrective is the cross of Christ, seen in the sanctuary where the life and light of God are exhibited, and where the reverberation of the echoes from the great white throne are heard.”

WorldMeanDoeLightEarthAmericaChristWealthWhiteRichHeardDangerDrawsRiversCrossesRichesConquerWickedWealthyEchoesThronesSanctuaryPrairieExpanseConquer The WorldReverberation
Author:Richard Salter Storrs
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“I fell in love with my country - its rivers, prairies, forests, mountains, cities and people. No one can take my love of country away from me! I felt then, as I do now, it's a rich, fertile, beautiful land, capable of satisfying all the needs of its people. It could be a paradise on earth if it belonged to the people, not to a small owning class.”

PeopleIfsNeedsCountryEarthBeautifulFeltCitiesClassUnited StatesRichLandMountainCapableRiversFalling In LoveEqualityForestsParadisePatrioticBelongingSatisfyingFertilePrairieCountry LoveParadise On EarthBeautiful Land
Book:The Rebel Girl: an autobiography, my first life (1906-1926).
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“The spring rains woke the dormant tillers, and bright green shoots sprang from the moist earth and rose like sleepers stretching after a long nap. As spring gave way to summer, the bright green stalks darkened, became tan, turned golden brown. The days grew long and hot. Thick towers of swirling black clouds brought rain, and the brown stems glistened in the perpetual twilight that dwelled beneath the canopy. The wheat rose and the ripening heads bent in the prairie wind, a rippling curtain, an endless, undulating sea that stretched to the horizon.”

WayLongEarthBlackSeaWindGrewSummerSpringRainHotGreenRoseCloudsEndlessGoldenBrownHorizonThickTwilightPerpetualTowersStemBentCurtainsStretchingStalkingWheatNapsDormantPrairieSleepersRipeningCanopyBlack CloudsSpring Rain
Book:The Infinite Sea: The Second Book of the 5th Wave
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“I was 12 when I ordered my first guitar out of the worn and discolored pages of the Sears and Roebuck catalog. The story that I bought it on the installment plan is untrue, the invention of a Hollywood press agent. Local color. I paid cash, $8, money I had saved as a hired hand on my uncle Calvin's farm, baling and stacking hay. Prairie hay, used as feed for the cattle in winter. It was mean work for a wiry boy, but ambition made me strong.”

FirstsMeanMadeStoriesHandsUsedStrongBoysPlansColorAmbitionPagesHollywoodPaidPressesGuitarWinterSavedInventionLocalsAgentsFarmsCashWornUnclesCattleUntruePrairieHaySearsStacking
Author:Gene Autry
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“As to scenery (giving my own thought and feeling), while I know the standard claim is that Yosemite, Niagara Falls, the Upper Yellowstone and the like afford the greatest natural shows, I am not so sure but the prairies and plains, while less stunning at first sight, last longer, fill the esthetic sense fuller, precede all the rest, and make North America's characteristic landscape.”

KnowsGivingFirstsShowsFeelingsLastsAmericaFallNaturalMy OwnStandardsSightClaimsLandscapeCharacteristicsSceneryStunningNorth AmericaThoughts And FeelingsPrairieYosemiteNiagaraYellowstoneNiagara Falls
Book:Specimen Days & Collect
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“I think every parent knows that, like, boys and girls are different. And we just dont take that into account in schools on those things like required reading lists. Cause that was my experience, say, with my son, who had to read Little House on the Prairie when he was in third grade.”

ThinkingKnowsLittlesDifferentSchoolGirlReadingHouseCausesParentBoysSonThirdsAccountsListsGradesMy SonBoy And GirlPrairieThird GradeLike A BoyLittle House On The Prairie
Author:Jon Scieszka
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“Nothing is more dreadful than private duels in America. The two adversaries attack each other like wild beasts. Then it is that they might well covet those wonderful properties of the Indians of the prairies - their quick intelligence, their ingenious cunning, their scent of the enemy.”

WellsTwoMightAmericaEnemyWonderfulPropertyBeastScentCunningAdversariesIngeniousPrairieWild Beasts
Book:From The Earth To The Moon / De la terre à la lune (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)
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