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The post Osho quotes and aphorisms first appeared on The World of English.

Elections quotes

Carl William Brown — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 14:32:10 +0000

Best quotes on Elections

Elections quotes and aphorisms, a collection of great quotations and words of wisdom by various great authors offered by the World of English blog and Carl William Brown.

The total collapse of the public opinion polls shows that this country is in good health. A country that developed an airtight system of finding out in advance what was in people’s minds would be uninhabitable.
Elwyn Brooks White

Democracy never selects the best leader it always selects the best liar and that is why every democracy eventually fails.
Plato

Assuming that fools consider the people the true sovereign, and that in a democracy they consider them the true ruler, I remind you that the people, between Jesus and Barabbas, chose the thief, and allowed the Messiah to be slaughtered and crucified.
Carl William Brown

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
George Jean Nathan

Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.
Oscar Ameringer

The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs.
Elwyn Brooks White

Don’t blame me. I voted with the majority.
Author Unknown

Elections are never right or good, they serve only to give morons some power!
Carl William Brown

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.
Thomas Jefferson

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.
Winston Churchill

We have plenty of confidence in this country, but we are a little short of good men to place our confidence in.
Will Rogers

Mankind will never see an end of trouble until… lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power… become lovers of wisdom.
Plato, The Republic

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?
Will Rogers

Elections are won by men and women chiefly because most people vote against somebody rather than for somebody.
Franklin P. Adams

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
George Eliot

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.
Karl Marx

Best aphorisms on Elections

You don’t have to fool all the people all of the time; you just have to fool enough to get elected.
Gerald Barzan

Politicians and diapers should be changed frequently and all for the same reason.
José Maria de Eça de Queiroz

To win in this country these days you have got to campaign down to a thirteen year-old’s level of mental development.
Willie Brown

Defeat has its lessons as well as victory.
Patrick Buchanan

Politics, it seems to me, for years, or all too long, has been concerned with right or left instead of right or wrong.
Richard Armour

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.
Edmund Burke

Applause, mingled with boos and hisses, is about all that the average voter is able or willing to contribute to public life.
Elmer Davis

Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country – and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.
Charles Krauthammer

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.
Charles de Gaulle

Do not run a campaign that would embarrass your mother.
Robert C. Byrd

Best quotes and aphorisms on Elections

Someone suggested me this definition: politicians, overpaid shit! He might be right!
Carl William Brown

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.
Alan Coren

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.
Louis Brandeis

If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us in these acceptance speeches there wouldn’t be any inducement to go to heaven.
Will Rogers

George Washington is the only president who didn’t blame the previous administration for his troubles.
Author Unknown

Don’t vote, it only encourages them.
Billy Connolly

We have a presidential election coming up. And I think the big problem, of course, is that someone will win.
Barry Crimmins

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.
Henry Cate

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.
H.L. Mencken

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
Mario Cuomo

America: where a little thing like a majority won’t get in the way of democracy!
Author Unknown

Get the fools on your side and you can be elected to anything.
Frank Dane

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?
Author Unknown

Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven’t had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.
Will Rogers

I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
W. C. Fields

When I was a boy I was told that anybody could become President; I’m beginning to believe it.
Clarence Darrow

Our presidential race is beginning to sound more and more like Harry Potter’s duel with the Ministry of Magic.
Dave Beard

I always voted at my party’s call, and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
W. S. Gilbert

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
Sydney J. Harris

Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?
Robert Orben

Truth is not determined by majority vote.
Doug Gwyn

I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.
Alexander Woollcott

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.
Bill Vaughan

In every election in American history both parties have their cliches. The party that has the cliches that ring true wins.
Newt Gingrich

Take our politicians: they’re a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches the first prize.
Saul Bellow

Everybody except us is running for governor.
Barry Gray

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal – that you can gather votes like box tops – is… the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
Adlai Stevenson

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
Robert Byrne

The election is not very far off when a candidate can recognize you across the street.
Kin Hubbard

Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster.
James Harvey Robinson

We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.
Frank McKinney

Anytime you see white men suppose to fight each other an you not white, well you know you got trouble, because they blah-blah loud about Democrat or Republican an they huffing an puff about democracy someplace else but relentless, see, the deal come down evil on somebody don have no shirt an tie, somebody don live in no whiteman house no whiteman country.
June Jordan

Democracy: The state of affairs in which you consent to having your pocket picked, and elect the best man to do it.
Benjamin Lichtenberg

I have just received the following wire from my generous Daddy. It says, “Dear Jack: Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I am going to pay for a landslide.”
John F. Kennedy

If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
Author Unknown

A politician should have three hats. One for throwing into the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.
Carl Sandburg

If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.
Emma Goldman

During a campaign the air is full of speeches – and vice versa.
Author Unknown

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
James Russell Lowell

A new poll showed that if the election was held today, people would be confused because it is normally held in November.
Kevin Nealon

There are always too many Democratic congressmen, too many Republican congressmen, and never enough U.S. congressmen.
Author Unknown

If God had wanted us to vote, he would have given us candidates.
Jay Leno

People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote – a very different thing.
Walter H. Judd

Elections are held to delude the populace into believing that they are participating in government.
Gerald F. Lieberman

Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.
Author Unknown

If elected I shall be thankful; if not, it will be all the same.
Abraham Lincoln

Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage: it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.
Walter Lippmann

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.
Stewart Udall

In politics women type the letters, lick the stamps, distribute the pamphlets and get out the vote. Men get elected.
Clare Boothe Luce

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver’s license age than at voting age.
Marshall McLuhan

Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
Gore Vidal

I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.
Adlai Stevenson

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

Vote early and vote often.
William Porcher Miles

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.
Richard M. Nixon

Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about “character issues.” Either that or just go ahead and determine the presidency with three-legged races and pie-eating contests. It would make better TV.
P. J. O’Rourke

When one may pay out over two million dollars to presidential and Congressional campaigns, the U.S. government is virtually up for sale.
John Gardner

American youth attributes much more importance to arriving at driver’s-license age than at voting age.
Marshall McLuhan

There is a sort of exotic preposterousness about a lot of elections, the way arguments are made even cruder.
Chris Patten

Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.
Michael Novak

My opponent called me a cream puff. Well, I rushed out and got the baker’s union to endorse me.
Claiborne Pell

Which one of the three candidates would you want your daughter to marry?
H. Ross Perot

The only thing we learn from new elections is we learned nothing from the old.
American Proverb

The Republicans have their splits right after election and Democrats have theirs just before an election.
Will Rogers

There isn’t any finer folks living than a Republican that votes the Democratic ticket.
Will Rogers

There are many men of principle in both parties in America, but there is no party of principle.
Alexis de Tocqueville

If a politician murders his mother, the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do, but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.
Meg Greenfield

A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.
James Freeman Clarke

An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names, but are as alike in their principals and aims as two peas in the same pod.
Franklin D. Roosevelt

The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during election of members of parliament; as soon as the members are elected, the people is enslaved; it is nothing. In the brief moment of its freedom, the English people makes such a use of that freedom that it deserves to lose it.
Jean Jacques Rousseau

Reagan won because he ran against Jimmy Carter. If he ran unopposed he would have lost.
Mort Sahl

Votes should be weighed not counted.
Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

The advance planning and sense stimuli employed to capture a $10 million cigarette or soap market are nothing compared to the brainwashing and propaganda blitzes used to ensure control of the largest cash market in the world: the Executive Branch of the United States Government.
Phyllis Schlafly

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.
George Bernard Shaw

Clever and attractive women do not want to vote; they are willing to let men govern as long as they govern men.
George Bernard Shaw

Everyone was tired with the old style politicians and their flowery rhetoric. I just told them there are tough times ahead, but that they would be less tough with me in charge.
Anibal Cavaco Silva

Indeed, you won the elections, but I won the count.
Anastasio Somoza

The universe is not rich enough to buy the vote of an honest man.
St. Gregory The Great

I’m not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning.
Adlai E. Stevenson

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal — that you can gather votes like box tops — is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
Adlai E. Stevenson

If you want to get elected, shake hands with 25, 000 people between and November 7.
Harry S. Truman

Let’s try winning and see what it feels like. If we don’t like it, we can go back to our traditions.
Paul Tsongas

There is no excitement anywhere in the world, short of war, to match the excitement of the American presidential campaign.
Theodore White

Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.
John Quincy Adams

Where annual elections end where slavery begins.
John Quincy Adams

Suffrage is the pivotal right.
Susan B. Anthony

Vote for the man who promises least; he’ll be the least disappointing.
Bernard M. Baruch

The fact that a man is to vote forces him to think. You may preach to a congregation by the year and not affect its thought because it is not called upon for definite action. But throw your subject into a campaign and it becomes a challenge.
John Jay Chapman

Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.
Grover Cleveland

The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
O. Henry

The American people have now spoken, but it’s going to take a little while to determine what they’ve said.
Bill Clinton

We’d all like to vote for the best man, but he’s never a candidate.
Kin Hubbard

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.
John F. Kennedy

The margin is narrow, but the responsibility is clear.
John F. Kennedy

There can no longer be anyone too poor to vote.
Lyndon B. Johnson

There is no city in the United States in which I can get a warmer welcome and fewer votes than Columbia, Ohio.
John F. Kennedy

You can milk a cow the wrong way once and still be a farmer, but vote the wrong way on a water tower and you can be in trouble.
John F. Kennedy

I’m so insane, I voted for Eisenhower. “Oh yeah, well I’m so insane, I voted for Eisenhower TWICE!”
Ken Kesey

Among free men there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet.
Abraham Lincoln

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
Abraham Lincoln

The effort to calculate exactly what the voters want at each particular moment leaves out of account the fact that when they are troubled the thing the voters most want is to be told what to want.
Walter Lippmann

We just did a survey that showed… something like 65 percent of the [American] people couldn’t vote for the First Amendment if it was up for a vote today.
Peter Prichard

Perhaps America will one day go fascist democratically, by popular vote.
William L. Shirer

Our elections are free, it’s in the results where eventually we pay.
Bill Stern

It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.
Tom Stoppard

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.
Henry David Thoreau

When a fellow tells me he’s bipartisan, I know he’s going to vote against me.
Harry S. Truman

In times of stress and strain, people will vote.
Author Unknown

No matter whom you vote for, the Government always gets in.
Author Unknown

When he first ran for office, he appealed to the voters: “I never stole anything in my life. All I ask is a chance.”
Author Unknown

Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
Gore Vidal

It makes no difference whom you vote for – the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.
Gore Vidal

Voters don’t decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.
George F. Will

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Irish proverbs and sayings

The post Elections quotes first appeared on The World of English.

Ireland quotes and aphorisms

Carl William Brown — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 15:22:00 +0000

Quotes on Ireland

Ireland quotes and aphorisms, quotations and literary thoughts by great and famous Irish writers with also some proverbs.

I know where I’m going I know who’s going with me I know who I love And the devil knows who I’ll marry.
Traditional Irish folk song (Judy Collins) (Ireland quotes and aphorisms)

In Ireland the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs.
John Pentland Mahaffy

Alcohol is a very necessary article… It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
George Bernard Shaw

When the Irishman is found outside of Ireland in another environment, he very often becomes a respected man. The economic and intellectual conditions that prevail in his own country do not permit the development of individuality. No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland, but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don’t believe?”
Quentin Crisp (1908-1999, British author)

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.
George Bernard Shaw

He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.
George Bernard Shaw

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say “I know” instead of “I am learning,” and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

All publicity is good, except an obituary notice.
Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.
Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)

The fickleness of the women I love is only equaled by the infernal constancy of the women who love me.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Here, the churches seemed to shrink away into eroding corners. They seem to have ceased to be essential parts of American life. They no longer give life. It is the huge buildings of commerce and trade which now align the people to attention. These in their massive manner of steel and stone say, Come unto me all ye who labor, and we will give you work.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

If church prelates, past or present, had even an inkling of physiology they’d realize that what they term this inner ugliness creates and nourishes the hearing ear, the seeing eye, the active mind, and energetic body of man and woman, in the same way that dirt and dung at the roots give the plant its delicate leaves and the full-blown rose.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

We sing in a church, why can we not dance there?
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Quotes and aphorisms on Ireland

I would by no means wish a daughter of mine to be a progeny of learning; I don’t think so much learning becomes a young woman: for instance, I would never let her meddle with Greek, or Hebrew, or algebra, or simony, or fluxions, or paradoxes, or such inflammatory branches of learning; nor will it be necessary for her to handle any of your mathematical, astronomical, diabolical instruments; but… I would send her, at nine years old, to a boarding-school, in order to learn a little ingenuity and artifice: then, sir, she would have a supercilious knowledge in accounts, and, as she grew up, I would have her instructed in geometry, that she might know something of the contagious countries: this is what I would have a woman know; and I don’t think there is a superstitious article in it.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Those that vow the most are the least sincere.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Of all the anti-social vested interests the worst is the vested interest in ill-health.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Happiness consists not in having much, but in being content with little.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

Beauty is all very well at first sight, but whoever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead — ahead of myself as well as you.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Ireland quotations

The deep, deep peace of the double-bed after the hurly-burly of the chaise-lounge.
Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)

Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)
When the blind lead the blind, no wonder they both fall into — matrimony.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

To think, when one is no longer young, when one is not yet old, that one is no longer young, that one is not yet old, that is perhaps something.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

We lose our hair, our teeth! Our bloom, our ideals.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

And say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Think where man’s glory most begins and ends, and say my glory was I had such friends.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
George Fabricius (1678-1707, Irish dramatist)

Observe this, that tho a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she’s still virtuous; that’s a maxim.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One’s relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

Here we have bishops, priests, and deacons, a Censorship Board, vigilant librarians, confraternities and sodalities, Duce Maria, Legions of Mary, Knights of this Christian order and Knights of that one, all surrounding the sinner’s free will in an embattled circle.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books nobody reads.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

The drama’s altar isn’t on the stage: it is candle-sticked and flowered in the box office. There is the gold, though there be no frankincense or myrrh; and the gospel for the day always The Play will Run for a Year. The Dove of Inspiration, of the desire for inspiration, has flown away from it; and on it’s roof, now, the commonplace crow caws candidly.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

I open with a clock striking, to beget an awful attention in the audience — it also marks the time, which is four o clock in the morning, and saves a description of the rising sun, and a great deal about gilding the eastern hemisphere.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

In a good play every speech should be as fully flavored as a nut or apple.
J. M. Synge (1871-1909, Irish poet, dramatist)

Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

Oliver Goldsmith quotes on Ireland

A man’s errors are his portals of discovery.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Finality is death. Perfection is finality. Nothing is perfect. There are lumps in it, said the Philosopher.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)

The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life, or of the work, and if it take the second must refuse a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

There is nothing that can be changed more completely than human nature when the job is taken in hand early enough.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.
Sean O’Casey (1884-1964, Irish dramatist)

Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

The doctor found, when she was dead, her last disorder mortal.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Every doctor will allow a colleague to decimate a whole countryside sooner than violate the bond of professional etiquette by giving him away.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The test of a man or woman’s breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing — a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I want to be all used up when I die.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.
Percival Arland Ussher (1899-1980, Irish author, critic)

I balanced all, brought all to mind, the years to come seemed waste of breath, a waste of breath the years behind, in balance with this life, this death.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

James Joyce Quotes on Ireland

My valor is certainly going, it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out as it were, at the palms of my hands!
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
Iris Murdoch (British novelist, philosopher)

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

A woman is a branchy tree and man a singing wind; and from her branches carelessly he takes what he can find.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)

To be born woman is to know — although they do not speak of it at school — women must labor to be beautiful.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

The poor would never be able to live at all if it were not for the poor.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

There’s no scandal like rags, nor any crime so shameful as poverty.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Poverty does not produce unhappiness: It produces degradation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The seven deadly sins… food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

What do I know of man’s destiny? I could tell you more about radishes.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth, We are happy when we are growing.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Joy is the will which labours, which overcomes obstacles, which knows triumph.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding something outside us.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Language is the amber in which a thousand precious and subtle thoughts have been safely embedded and preserved. It has arrested ten thousand lightning flashes of genius, which, unless thus fixed and arrested, might have been as bright, but would have also been as quickly passing and perishing, as the lightning.
Richard Chevenix Trench (1807-1886, Irish ecclesiastic, archbishop of Dublin)

Samuel Beckett Quotes on Ireland

Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Praise is the only gift for which people are really grateful.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

Mountains appear more lofty the nearer they are approached, but great men resemble them not in this particular.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

If one wishes to become rich they must appear rich.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)

Borrowed thoughts, like borrowed money, only show the poverty of the borrower.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

I would uphold the law if for no other reason but to protect myself.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

Fate is not an eagle, it creeps like a rat.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

Nothing happens, nobody comes, nobody goes, it’s awful.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

The chief prerequisite for a escort is to have a flexible conscience and an inflexible politeness.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

Conscience has no more to do with gallantry than it has with politics.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

The true use of speech is not so much to express our wants as to conceal them.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)

I don’t want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

From my earliest days I have enjoyed an attractive impediment in my speech. I have never permitted the use of the word “stammer.” I can’t say it myself.
Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)

Superstition is only the fear of belief, while religion is the confidence.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849, Irish writer and socialite)

You must be fit to give before you can be fit to receive.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute! Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin, and then the work will be completed.
John Anster (1789–1867, Irish poet)

Oscar Wilde Quotes on Ireland

Silences have a climax, when you have got to speak.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

Birth was the death of him.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Those who know the least obey the best.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment. How many people can boast as much?
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Better never than late.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Words are always getting conventionalized to some secondary meaning. It is one of the works of poetry to take the truants in custody and bring them back to their right senses.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

You know it is not my interest to pay the principal, or my principal to pay the interest.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

So long as one does not despair, so long as one doesn’t look upon life bitterly, things work out fairly well in the end.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

In dreams begin responsibility.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Education is not the filling of the pail, but, the lighting of the fire.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

A man is original when he speaks the truth that has always been known to all good men.
Patrick Kavanagh (1905-1967, Irish poet, author)

Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.
James Stephens (1882-1950, Irish poet, author)

I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile and cunning.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

I… chose my wife as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well.
Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774, Anglo-Irish author, poet, playwright)

A pretty wife is something for the fastidious vanity of a roue to retire upon.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)

This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

A nation is the same people living in the same place.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

G.B. Shaw Quotes on Ireland

The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine… a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.
Conor Cruise O’Brien (1917-, Irish historian, critic, and statesman)

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

One drink is too many for me and a thousand not enough.
Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)

I have fed purely upon ale; I have eat my ale, drank my ale, and I always sleep upon ale.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

I’m only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Love (understood as the desire of good for another) is in fact so unnatural a phenomenon that it can scarcely repeat itself, the soul being unable to become virgin again and not having energy enough to cast itself out again into the ocean of another’s soul.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

Let me go to hell, that’s all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.
Robert Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972, Irish poet)

Don’t set your wit against a child.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

The tears of the world are a constant quality. For each one who begins to weep, somewhere else another stops. The same is true of the laugh.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

It is only to the happy that tears are a luxury.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)

Habit is a great deadener.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

The moment we pass out of our habits we lose all sense of permanency and routine.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.
Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)

The heart that has truly loved never forgets, but, as truly, loves on to the close.
Thomas Moore (1779-1852, Irish poet)

It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Samuel Beckett Quotes on Ireland

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Sometimes a noble failure serves the world as faithfully as a distinguished success.
Edward Dowden (1843-1913, Irish critic)

Nothing is funnier than unhappiness, I grant you that. Yes, yes, it’s the most comical thing in the world.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
Robert Cecil Day-Lewis (1904-1972, Irish poet)

A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, our stitching and unstinting has been naught.
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939, Irish poet, playwright.)

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

That old man dies prematurely whose memory records no benefits conferred. They only have lived long who have lived virtuously.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

The latter part of a wise person’s life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745, Anglo-Irish satirist)

How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

The bastard! He doesn’t exist!
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

Money swore an oath that nobody who did not love it should ever have it.
Irish Proverb (Sayings of Irish origin)

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity, and beauty as conspicuously as the want of it represents illness, weakness, disgrace, meanness, and ugliness.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I shall write a book some day about the appropriateness of names. Geoffrey Chaucer has a ribald ring, as is proper and correct, and Alexander Pope was inevitably Alexander Pope. Colley Cibber was a silly little man without much elegance and Shelley was very Percy and very Bysshe.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

I think a child should be allowed to take his father’s or mother’s name at will on coming of age. Paternity is a legal fiction.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

Jonathan Swift Quotes on Ireland

He who has never hoped can never despair.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

I believe I was impatient with unintelligent people from the moment I was born: a tragedy — for I am myself three-parts a fool.
Patrick Campbell (1913-1980, Irish humorist)

Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.
George Fabricius (1678-1707, Irish dramatist)

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950, Irish-born British dramatist)

There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the fault of his feet.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

He comes into the world God knows how, walks on the water, gets out of his grave and goes up off the Hill of Howth. What drivel is this?
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

Grant me some wild expressions, Heavens, or I shall burst.
George Farquhar (c.1677-1707, Irish playwright)

Ay, ay, the best terms will grow obsolete: damns have had their day.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

It is not the literal past, the “facts” of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language.
Brian Friel (1929-, Irish playwright, author)

Absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

I was court-martial in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
Brendan F. Behan (1923-1964, Irish writer)

The heart may think it knows better: the senses know that absence blots people out. We really have no absent friends. The friend becomes a traitor by breaking, however unwillingly or sadly, out of our own zone: a hard judgment is passed on him, for all the pleas of the heart.
Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973, Anglo-Irish novelist)

When delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a lover’s apprehension.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816, Anglo-Irish dramatist)

There comes a point in many people’s lives when they can no longer play the role they have chosen for themselves. When that happens, we are like actors finding that someone has changed the play.
Brian Moore (1921-, Irish novelist)

You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving.
Amy Carmichael (1867-1951, Irish missionary)

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not.
James Joyce (1882-1941, Irish author)

There is nothing so consoling as to find one’s neighbor’s troubles are at least as great as one’s own.
George Moore (1852-1933, Irish writer)

Make sense who may. I switch off.
Samuel Beckett (1906-1989, Irish dramatist, novelist)

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The post Ireland quotes and aphorisms first appeared on The World of English.

The Christmas Tree

Carl William Brown — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 09:14:56 +0000

Christmas tree legends

The Christmas Tree, an article that explains its legend, origin and tradition, with some enlightening merry quotes to enrich the great value of the Christmas period.

Snowflakes felt so awesome in winter season. There is a main figure in Christmas known as Santa Claus. And the main theme of Christmas is jingle bell, a very famous tune known all other the world. People use this tune a lot all over the Christmas event, and it feels so good like something very positive that will bring peace and happiness in our lives.

Moving between the legs of tables and of chairs, rising or falling, grasping at kisses and toys, advancing boldly, sudden to take alarm, retreating to the corner of arm and knee, eager to be reassured, taking pleasure in the fragrant brilliance of the Christmas tree.
T. S. Eliot

It is curious to what a degree one may become attached to a fine tree, especially when it is placed where trees are rare.
Christian Nestell Bovee

The Christmas tree is the dot on the i.
Frank Taylor

The trees that bud and blossom forth, Throughout the world from south to north, Are tokens that a life will bloom When manhood’s passed beyond the tomb.
T. Augustus Forbes Leith

Three things are needed to make a Christmas tree: ornaments, the tree and faith in the future.
Armenian proverb

I stone got crazy when I saw somebody run down them strings with a bottleneck. My eyes lit up like a Christmas tree and I said that I had to learn.
Muddy Waters

My beer-drenched soul is sadder than all the dead Christmas trees in the world.
Charles Bukowski

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.
Roy L. Smith

It’s not what’s under the Christmas tree that matters, it’s who’s around it.
Charlie Brown

A Christian should resemble a fruit tree with real fruit, not a Christmas tree with decorations tied on.
John Stott

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.
Burton Hillis

Christmas tree origins

I grew up with a Christmas tree, I’m going to stay with a Christmas tree.
Thomas Menino

The perfect Christmas tree, all Christmas trees are perfect.
Charles N. Barnard

Some Christmas tree ornaments do more than glitter and glow, they represent a gift of love given a long time ago.
Tom Baker

The Christmas tree is beautiful only when it is finished and when the lights can be turned on, the crib is not, the crib is beautiful when you do it or even when you think about it.
Luciano De Crescenzo

Taking down the Christmas tree makes it feel official: time to get back to joyless and cynical.
Greg Fitzsimmons

I never thought it was such a bad little tree. It’s not bad at all, really. Maybe it just needs a little love.
Linus Van Pelt

What will we find under the Christmas tree this year? Oh my God, I think the roots!
Carl William Brown

Glittering tinsel, lights, glass balls, and candy canes dangle from pine trees.
Richelle E. Goodrich

The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature.
Andy Rooney

There is new life in the soil for every man. There is healing in the trees for tired minds and for our overburdened spirits, there is strength in the hills, if only we will lift up our eyes. Remember that nature is your great restorer.
Calvin Coolidge

The earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine.
James Irwin

Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead.
Bill Bryson

Look at a tree, a flower, a plant. Let your awareness rest upon it. How still they are, how deeply rooted in Being. Allow nature to teach you stillness.
Eckhart Tolle

He that planteth a tree is the servant of God, He provideth a kindness for many generations, And faces that he hath not seen shall bless him.
Henry Van Dyke

Christmas tree quotes

Now I’m an old Christmas tree, the roots of which have died. They just come along and while the little needles fall off me replace them with medallions.
Orson Welles

Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 25 feet tall.
Larry Wilde

They’ve got plastic Christmas trees now. They’re hard to tell from the real aluminum ones.
Milton Berle

I was only kicking down the Christmas tree to get the star on top.
Ray Bradbury

I don’t know what I believe. I guess that makes me a christmas tree agnostic.
Stephanie Perkins

Only look what is still on the ugly old Christmas tree!” said he, trampling on the branches, so that they all cracked beneath his feet. And the Tree beheld all the beauty of the flowers, and the freshness in the garden; he beheld himself, and wished he had remained in his dark corner in the loft; he thought of his first youth in the woods, of the merry Christmas Eve, and of the little Mice who had listened with so much pleasure to the story of Klumpy-Dumpy.
Hans Christian Andersen

A Christmas tree, the perfect gift for a guy. The plant is already dead.
Jay Leno

The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess.
Tess Gerritsen

A dog looking at a lit Christmas tree thinks: they finally put the light in the toilet.
Romano Bertola

Christmas trees don’t grow on trees; they need rainbows, lumberjacks, and Leprechauns on unicorns playing jock jams on glockenspiels.
Ryan Ross

Make your plate look like a Christmas tree, I tell people, mostly green with splashes of other bright colors.
Victoria Moran

There’s no experience quite like cutting your own live Christmas tree out of your neighbor’s yard.
Dan Florence

True natural Christmas trees

The smell of pine needles, spruce and the smell of a Christmas tree, those to me, are the scents of the holidays.
Blake Lively

Christmas is a very enjoyable event ever. It is a great feast for everyone. Kids, adults and grandparents. Everyone enjoy this occasion very much. Parents give presents to their children and this brings happiness in their hearts. An enormous amount of joy comes through this period which is a real gem for us. Therefore how could we avoid talking of one of the main symbol of this religious celebration, which is certainly the Christmas Tree, so let’s read about its fascinating history.

The Christmas tree today is a common custom to most of us. There are many interesting connections to ancient traditions such as Egyptian and Roman customs, early Christian practices, and Victorian nostalgia. However, most scholars point to Germany as being the origin of the Christmas tree.

Long before the advent of Christianity, plants and trees that remained green all year had a special meaning for people in the winter. Just as people today decorate their homes during the festive season with pine, spruce, and fir trees, ancient peoples hung evergreen boughs over their doors and windows. In many countries it was believed that evergreens would keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits, and illness.

In the Northern hemisphere, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on December 21 or December 22 and is called the winter solstice. Many ancient people believed that the sun was a god and that winter came every year because the sun god had become sick and weak. They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well. Evergreen boughs reminded them of all the green plants that would grow again when the sun god was strong and summer would return.

The ancient Egyptians worshipped a god called Ra, who had the head of a hawk and wore the sun as a blazing disk in his crown. At the solstice, when Ra began to recover from his illness, the Egyptians filled their homes with green palm rushes, which symbolized for them the triumph of life over death.

Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree

Early Romans marked the solstice with a feast called Saturnalia in honor of Saturn, the god of agriculture. The Romans knew that the solstice meant that soon, farms and orchards would be green and fruitful. To mark the occasion, they decorated their homes and temples with evergreen boughs.

In Northern Europe the mysterious Druids, the priests of the ancient Celts, also decorated their temples with evergreen boughs as a symbol of everlasting life. The fierce Vikings in Scandinavia thought that evergreens were the special plant of the sun god, Balder.

One of the earliest stories relating back to Germany is about Saint Boniface. In 722, he encountered some pagans who were about to sacrifice a child at the base of a huge oak tree. He cut down the tree to prevent the sacrifice and a Fir tree grew up at the base of the oak. He then told everyone that this lovely evergreen, with its branches pointing to heaven, was a holy tree – the tree of the Christ child, and a symbol of His promise of eternal life.

Germany is credited with starting the Christmas tree tradition as we now know it in the 16th century when devout Christians brought decorated trees into their homes. Some built Christmas pyramids of wood and decorated them with evergreens and candles if wood was scarce. Another story tells that perhaps it was Martin Luther responsible for the origin of the Christmas tree.

This story says that one Christmas Eve, about the year 1500, he was walking through the snow-covered woods and was struck by the beauty of the snow glistened trees. Their branches, dusted with snow, shimmered in the moon light. When he got home, he set up a small fir tree and shared the story with his children. He decorated the Christmas tree with small candles, which he lighted in honor of Christ’s birth.

Another legend says that in the early 16th century, people in Germany combined two customs that had been practiced in different countries around the globe. The Paradise tree (a fir tree decorated with apples) represented the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.

Christmas tree in Rio de Janeiro

The Christmas Light, a small, pyramid-like frame, usually decorated with glass balls, tinsel and a candle on top, was a symbol of the birth of Christ as the Light of the World. Changing the tree’s apples to tinsel balls and cookies and combining this new tree with the light placed on top, the Germans created the tree that many of us know today.

In the 1840s and 50s, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert popularized the Christmas tree in England. Prince Albert decorated a tree and ever since that time, the English, because of their love for their Queen, copied her Christmas customs including the Christmas tree and ornaments. An engraving of the Royal Family celebrating Christmas at Windsor was published in 1848 and their German traditions were copied and adapted.

Another story about the origin of the Christmas tree says that late in the Middle Ages, Germans and Scandinavians placed evergreen trees inside their homes or just outside their doors to show their hope that spring would soon come.

Most 19th-century Americans found Christmas trees an oddity. The first record of one being on display was in the 1830s by the German settlers of Pennsylvania, although trees had been a tradition in many German homes much earlier. The Pennsylvania German settlements had community trees as early as 1747. But, as late as the 1840s Christmas trees were seen as pagan symbols and not accepted by most Americans.

It is not surprising that, like many other festive Christmas customs, the tree was adopted so late in America. To the New England Puritans, Christmas was sacred. The pilgrims’s second governor, William Bradford, wrote that he tried hard to stamp out “pagan mockery” of the observance, penalizing any frivolity. The influential Oliver Cromwell preached against “the heathen traditions” of Christmas carols, decorated trees, and any joyful expression that desecrated “that sacred event.” In 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts enacted a law making any observance of December 25 (other than a church service) a penal offense; people were fined for hanging decorations. That stern solemnity continued until the 19th century, when the influx of German and Irish immigrants undermined the Puritan legacy.

The early 20th century saw Americans decorating their trees mainly with homemade ornaments, while the German-American sect continued to use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies. Popcorn joined in after being dyed bright colors and interlaced with berries and nuts. Electricity brought about Christmas lights, making it possible for Christmas trees to glow for days on end. With this, Christmas trees began to appear in town squares across the country and having a Christmas tree in the home became an American tradition.

Christmas tree best wishes

Research into customs of various cultures shows that greenery was often brought into homes at the time of the winter solstice. It symbolized life in the midst of death in many cultures. The Romans were known to deck their homes with evergreens during of Kalends of January 15. Living trees were also brought into homes during the old Germany feast of Yule, which originally was a two month feast beginning in November. The Yule tree was planted in a tub and brought into the home. But there is no evidence that the Christmas tree is a direct descendent of the Yule tree.

Evidence does point to the Paradise tree however. This story goes back to the 11th century religious plays. One of the most popular was the Paradise Play. The play depicted the story of the creation of Adam and Eve, their sin, and their banishment from Paradise. The only prop on the stage was the Paradise tree, a fir tree adorned with apples. The play would end with the promise of the coming Savior and His Incarnation. The people had grown so accustomed to the Paradise tree, that they began putting their own Paradise tree up in their homes on December 24.

Christmas trees have been sold commercially in the United States since about 1850. In 1979, the National Christmas Tree was not lighted except for the top ornament. This was done in honor of the American hostages in Iran. The tallest living Christmas tree is believed to be the 122-foot, 91-year-old Douglas fir in the town of Woodinville, Washington. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree tradition began in 1933. Franklin Pierce, the 14th president, brought the Christmas tree tradition to the White House. In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge started the National Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony now held every year on the White House lawn.

Since 1966, the National Christmas Tree Association has given a Christmas tree to the President and first family. Most Christmas trees are cut weeks before they get to a retail outlet. In 1912, the first community Christmas tree in the United States was erected in New York City. Christmas trees generally take six to eight years to mature. Christmas trees are grown in all 50 states including Hawaii and Alaska. 90 percent of all Christmas trees are grown on farms. More than 1,000,000 acres of land have been planted with Christmas trees. On average, over 2,000 Christmas trees are planted per acre.

You should never burn your Christmas tree in the fireplace. It can contribute to creosote buildup. Other types of trees such as cherry and hawthorns were used as Christmas trees in the past. Thomas Edison’s assistants came up with the idea of electric lights for Christmas trees. In 1963, the National Christmas Tree was not lit until December 22nd because of a national 30-day period of mourning following the assassination of President Kennedy. Teddy Roosevelt banned the Christmas tree from the White House for environmental reasons. On the contrary the 2020 Christmas Tree is an 18 ½ foot Fraser Fir from West Virginia. It will serve as a centerpiece for Christmas decorations in the Blue Room of the White House. The White House Christmas Tree must stand 18-19 feet tall and reach the ceiling of the Blue Room, where the chandelier is removed each holiday season to accommodate the tree.

And last but not least, if you want to choose the perfect Christmas tree visit the website of The American Christmas Tree Association (ACTA) which is a non-profit organization established to help families create holiday memories and build traditions by choosing the perfect Christmas tree. www.christmastreeassociation.org/

Instead if you need a good short story for your children about Christmas or the Christmas tree, you can find many of them at this link:
https://americanliterature.com/author/hans-christian-andersen/short-story/the-fir-tree

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