Weekend Words: Goose
Writing in The New York Times, James Poniewozik boils down Donald Trump's standoff with Fox News to a matter of eggs and geese.
Writing in the New York Times, James Poniewozik boils down Donald Trump’s standoff with Fox News to a matter of eggs and geese: “Fox News may or may not end up with a ratings goose egg Thursday night. But if you don’t draw a line, eventually the golden goose becomes a monster.”
I’ve got a stubborn goose whose gut’s
Honeycombed with golden eggs,
Yet won’t lay one.
She, addled in her goose-wit, struts
The barnyard like those taloned hags
Who ogle men…
—Sylvia Plath, “Rhyme”
“Too many things on my mind,” said Wilbur.
“Well,” said the goose, “that’s not my trouble. I have nothing at all on my mind, but I’ve too many things under my behind.”
—E. B. White, Charlotte’s Web
A fox should not be of the jury at a goose’s trial.
—Thomas Fuller
Is that you, American Eagle?
Or are you the goose that lays the golden egg?
Which is just a stone to anyone asking for meat.
And are you going to go on for ever
Laying that golden egg,
That addled golden egg?
—D. H. Lawrence, “The American Eagle”
What is sauce for the goose may be sauce for the gander but is not necessarily sauce for the chicken, the duck, the turkey or the guinea hen.
—Alice B. Toklas
Think of submitting our measure to the advice of politicians! I would as soon submit the subject of the equality of a goose to a fox.
—Anna Howard Shaw, U.S. Suffragist
The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white.
—Lao-Tzu
I have songs of my own; the shepherds call me a poet; but I’m not inclined to trust them. For I don’t seem yet to write things as as good as either Varius or Cinna, but to be a goose honking among tuneful swans.
—Virgil, Ecologues
I don’t use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.
—Jay Dratler
Goose, if I had you upon Sarum plain,
I’d drive ye cacking home to Camelot.
—Shakespeare, King Lear
When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.
—Charles Kingsley, “Young and Old”
