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# Weekend Words: Goose
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-goose/
- Published: 2016-01-31T14:33:34.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:29:56.000Z
- Description: Writing in The New York Times, James Poniewozik boils down Donald Trump's standoff with Fox News to a matter of eggs and geese.
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:17 (2016, 2017, part 1)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2016/01/goose.jpg)

Joris Abrahamsz. van der Haagen, “Geese and Ducks at a Forest Lake” (1650s), oil on panel, 73 x 58 cm. Museum Bredius, The Hague (Image via Web Gallery of Art)

Writing in the *New York Times,* James Poniewozik [boils down](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/28/arts/television/fox-news-vs-trump-setting-free-the-golden-goose.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) 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”**