Tall Topics



There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,
Daisies, those pearl’d Arcturi of the earth,
The constellated flower that never sets;
Faint oxlips; tender bluebells at whose birth
The sod scarce heaved; and that tall flower that wets
Its mother’s face with heaven-collected tears,
When the low wind, its playmate’s voice, it hears.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)

People can be less than three feet tall and still kill you without a knife.
—Chinese proverb.

A church that can never have done with excommunicating Christ while it exists! Away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall churches! Take a step forward, and invent a new style of out-houses. Invent a salt that will save you, and defend our nostrils.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)