These yard quotes will inspire you. Yard a unit of linear measure equal to 3 feet (0.9144 meters) or a cylindrical spar, tapering to each end, slung across a ship’s mast for a sail to hang from.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging yard quotes, yard sayings, and yard proverbs.
Best Yard Quotes
- “If you don’t try to win you might as well hold the Olympics in somebody’s back yard.” ~ Jesse Owens
- “I always thought a yard was three feet, then I started mowing the lawn.” ~ Lettie Cowman
- “It always amazes me to think that every house on every street is full of so many stories; so many triumphs and tragedies, and all we see are yards and driveways.” ~ Glenn Close
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“The word good has many meanings.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
- “Without a doubt in my mind, I should be in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. You look at my stats without my USFL stats, and I don’t know how you can argue with that. Look at my combined yards. I’m not one to make excuses, so I’ll play by their rules and not even count the USFL stats.” ~ Herschel Walker
- “He hits the ball 130 yards and his jewelry goes 150.” ~ Bob Hope
- “The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.” ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton
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“If I had to choose between dribbling past 5 players and scoring from 40 yards at Anfield or shagging miss world, it’d be a hard choice. Thankfully, I’ve done both” ~ George Best
- “The best way to gain more yards is advance the ball down the field from the line of scrimmage.” ~ John Madden
- “Don’t design your backyard from the outside looking in. Design from your window looking out.” ~ Janet Macunovich
- “The teacher should make a concerted effort never to lose his temper in the presence of the class. If a man, he may take refuge in profane soliloquies. If a woman, she may follow the example of one sweet-faced tranquil girl who went out in the yard and gnawed a post.” ~ William Lyon Phelps
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“Luke Willson… I believe will have as many catches and more yards than Rob Gronkowski.” ~ Sterling Sharpe
- “One of the grandest figures that ever frequented Eastern Yorkshire was William Smith, the distinguished father of English Geology. My boyish reminiscence of the old engineer, as he sketched a triangle on the flags of our yard, and taught me how to measure it, is very vivid. The drab knee-breeches and grey worsted stockings, the deep waistcoat, with its pockets well furnished with snuff-of which ample quantities continually disappeared within the finely chiseled nostril-and the dark coat with its rounded outline and somewhat quakerish cut, are all clearly present to my memory.” ~ William Crawford Williamson
- “The white Aylesbury duck is, and deservedly, a universal favorite. Its snowy plumage and comfortable comportment make it a credit to the poultry yard, while its broad and deep breast, and its ample back, convey the assurance that your satisfaction will not cease at its death.” ~ Isabella Beeton
- “The hardest shot in golf is a mashie at 90 yards from the green, where the ball has to be played against an oak tree, bounces back into a sandtrap, hits a stone, bounces on the green and then rolls into the cup. That shot is so difficult I have made it only once.” ~ Zeppo Marx
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“The coffee was boiling over a charcoal fire, and large slices of bread and butter were piled one upon the other like deals in a lumber yard.” ~ Charles Dickens
- “Exactly. She does not shine as a wife even in her own account of what occurred. I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind, as you are aware, Watson, but my experience of life has taught me that there are few wives having any regard for their husbands who would let any man’s spoken word stand between them and that husband’s dead body. Should I ever marry, Watson, I should hope to inspire my wife with some feeling which would prevent her from being walked off by a housekeeper when my corpse was lying within a few yards of her.” ~ Arthur Conan Doyle
- “Go ahead and gamble a lie. A person who will not tell you seven lies within a hundred yards is useless as a man.” ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo
- “When I breathe down my nose to say how do you do to a horse, it can hear that breath at anything up to twenty yards, for horses, have the most acute sense of hearing.” ~ Barbara Woodhouse
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“I still subscribe to the minority view that all horses are offensive weapons and not to be trusted a yard.” ~ M.M. Kaye
- “I know with my size, a lot of people might think I’m like a slasher, a make-you-miss guy, which I can do that. But I also like to lower my shoulder and get the tough yards, too. I like contact. I like to mix it up.” ~ Javon Ringer
- “Went to 16 and hit a really bad 3 wood for my second shot and got stuck in the bunker about 70 yards from the pin. Poor execution chunked it, hit a good chip up to about eight feet, missed it.” ~ Trent Dilfer
- “Don’t believe you have to travel far and wide to discover opportunities. The best opportunities will always be found in your own backyard, and not halfway around the world in someone else’s backyard. You have to look for them, however.” ~ Ernie J Zelinski
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“I normally run the 40-yard dash in 4.9, but when a 280-pound guy is chasing me, I run it in 4.6.” ~ John Elway
- “‘Sblood, you starveling, you elf-skin, you dried neat’s tongue, you bull’s pizzle, you stock-fish! O for breath to utter what is like thee! you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bowcase; you vile standing-tuck!” ~ William Shakespeare
- “To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten. The first ‘second’ is when you come out of the blocks. The next is when you look up and take your first few strides to attain gain position. By that time the race is actually about half over. The final ‘second’ – the longest slice of time in the world for an athlete – is that last half of the race, when you really bear down and see what you’re made of. It seems to take an eternity, yet is all over before you can think what’s happening.” ~ Jesse Owens
- “It was bad enough to have toppled from the Olympic heights to make my living competing with animals. But the competition wasn’t even fair. No man could beat a racehorse, not even for 100 yards.” ~ Jesse Owens
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“The referee was only five or seven yards away from that incident.” ~ Peter Drury
- “Every act of motherhood contains a dual intent, as the mother holds the child close and prepares it to move way from her, as she supports the child and stands it firmly on its own feet, and as she guards it against danger and sends it out across the yard, down by the stream, and across the traffic-crowded highway. Unless a mother can do both – gather her child close and turn her child out toward the world – she will fail in her purpose.” ~ Margaret Mead
- “It’s even occurred to me, as a teeny little subversive whisper of a thought, that if we stop mowing the lawn right now, it will probably be a long, long time before the yard gets overrun by lions and snakes.” ~ Barbara Ehrenreich
- “Women: Can’t live with them, can’t bury them in the back yard without the neighbors seeing.” ~ Shaun Williamson
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“Amarillo, just turn to the left and 500 yards down” ~ Peter Kay
- “My interest in science was excited at age nine by an article on astronomy in National Geographic; the author was Donald Menzel of the Harvard Observatory. For the next few years, I regularly made star maps and snuck out at night to make observations from a locust tree in our back yard.” ~ Dudley R. Herschbach
- “One thing about tourists is that it is very easy to get away from them. Like ants they follow a trail and a few yards each side of that trail there are none.” ~ Nancy Mitford
- “A lot of times I did lose yards on a run, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.” ~ Barry Sanders
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“I was in the back part of the bunker, so I had to carry the whole bunker. It was probably 20 yards.” ~ Trent Dilfer
- “I classify Sao Paolo this way: The Governor’s Palace is the living room. The mayor’s office is the dining room and the city is the garden. And the favela is the back yard where they throw the garbage.” ~ Carolina Maria de Jesus
- “I think people underestimate the importance of lighting – layers of lighting, not just one light. I do a lighting seminar where I take a $300-a-yard fabric and a $3-a-yard fabric. I show what lighting can do to either one.” ~ Candice Olson
- “The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire.” ~ Charles Dickens
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“If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness.” ~ Andy Rooney
- “I just love people. I love this country. I am the American dream. I grew up by the airport with a dirt yard. Never in my life should I have been a success. So that’s what I love about this country [USA], is you get out there and you have the opportunity and you work hard at it, and you can be a success.” ~ Jeff Foxworthy
- “I don’t care very much for literary shrines and hauntsI knew a woman in London who boasted that she had lodgings from the windows of which she could throw a stone into Carlyle’s yard. And when I said, “Why throw a stone into Carlyle’s yard?” she looked at me as if I were an imbecile and changed the subject.” ~ Carolyn Wells
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“I’ve been treated there (Camden Yards in Baltimore) just like everywhere else: you got everyone booing for you. I take that as a compliment.” ~ Albert Belle
- “Girls . . . were allowed to play in the house . . . and boys were sent outdoors. . . . Boys ran around in the yard with toy guns going kksshh-kksshh, fighting wars for made-up reasons and arguing about who was dead, while girls stayed inside and played with dolls, creating complex family groups and learning how to solve problems through negotiation and roleplaying. Which gender is better equipped, on the whole, to live an adult life, would you guess?” ~ Garrison Keillor
- “All you’ve got is the word of a fool dog. It’s been my experience that a bloodhound is the foolishest dog that is. I don’t remember of anybody ever keeping a bloodhound for a yard dog. They’re such dad blasted fools.” ~ Laurence Stallings
- “I learn immediately from any speaker how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of today. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and books only copy the language which the field and the work-yard made.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “If an alien visitor were to hover a few hundred yards above the planet, it could be forgiven for thinking that cars were the dominant life form, and that human beings were a kind of ambulatory fuel cell: injected when the car wished to move off, and ejected when they were spent.” ~ Heathcote Williams
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“I’d like to go out in the front yard and shout something. “None of this is worth it!” That’s what I’d like people to hear.” ~ Raymond Carver
- “It is easier to start taxes than to stop them. A tax an inch long can easily become a yard long. That has been the history of the income tax. Would not the sales tax be likely to have a similar history [in the U.S.]? … Canadian newspapers report that an increase in the sales tax threatens to drive the Mackenzie King administration out of office. Canada began with a sales tax of 2%…. Starting this month the tax is 6%. The burden, in other words, has already been increased 200% … What the U.S. needs is not new taxes, is not more taxes, but fewer and lower taxes.” ~ B. C. Forbes
- “If you’ve got a plot the size of a car or a tiny yard in Italy, you’re going to be growing tomatoes and basil and celery and carrots, and everybody is still connected to the land.” ~ Frances Mayes
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“Their voices reach out into the empty yard, plunge deep into the hills, go right through the heart.” ~ Marguerite Duras
- “Ask a glass of water why it pities the rain. Ask the lunatic yard dog why it tolerates the leash.” ~ Terrance Hayes
- “I come from down south, where vegetation does not know its place. Honeysuckle can work through cracks in your walls and strangle you while you sleep. Kudzu can completely shroud a house and a car parked in the yard in one growing season. Wisteria can lift a building off its foundation, and certain terrifying mints spread so rapidly that just the thought of them on a summer night can make your hair stand on end.” ~ Bailey White
- “People who believe the earth was created 6000 years ago, when it’s actually 4.5 billion years old, should also believe the width of North America is 8 yards. That is the scale of the error.” ~ Richard Dawkins
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“Our impatience of miles, when we are in a hurry; but it is still best that a mile should have seventeen hundred and sixty yards.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “By the time I was twelve, I had started my own theater company and was doing plays in the backyard and the front yard and all over the neighborhood, so, you know, I was definitely a lifer even back when I was 10.” ~ Carrie Preston
- “When the boys come into my yard for leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I enter into nature’s game, and affect to grant the permission reluctantly, fearing that any moment they will find out the imposture of that showy chaff. But this tenderness is quite unnecessary; the enchantments are laid on very thick. Their young life is thatched with them. Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the children in the hovel I saw yesterday; yet not the less they hang it round with frippery romance, like the children of the happiest fortune.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “No Church-yard is so handsome, that a man would desire straight to bee buried there.
[No churchyard is so handsome that a man would desire straight to be buried there.]” ~ George Herbert -
“Give the enemy an inch, hell take a yard.” ~ Monica Crowley
- “My field-mouse had made a set of brand-new tracks; here and there they etched themselves, following the brown flowers. It seemed as if uncommon spirits had seized their little maker, for sometimes he had leaped a yard, the festive mite! There was no other track pursuing; the leaps must have been mere joy.” ~ Anne Bosworth Greene
- “When I was a kid, we always had big gardens, acres of stuff we grew out in the yard.” ~ Randy Houser
- “It was a narrow world, a world that was standing still. But the narrower it became, the more it betook of stillness, the more this world that enveloped me seemed to overflow with things and people that could only be called strange. They had been there all the while, it seemed, waiting in the shadows for me to stop moving. And every time the wind-up bird came to my yard to wind its spring, the world descended more deeply into chaos.” ~ Haruki Murakami
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“I would sacrifice 1,000 yards rushing to win a Super Bowl. But I want to be the first back to have back-to-back 2,000-yard seasons.” ~ Adrian Peterson
- “My wife Ann and I had been digging during the day, transplanting lilies from the front of this abandoned farmhouse back down the road to where we live. We finished. She was tired and laid in the grass. I took a picture. The house is now gone. The walnut trees have been bulldozed and burned. I saw this picture the other day for the first time in years and realized how photographing life within a hundred yards of my front porch had helped me focus on everything I cared about.” ~ Larry Towell
- “Writing comes into being to retain information across time and across space. Before writing, communication is evanescent and local; sounds carry a few yards and fade to oblivion. The evanescence of the spoken word went without saying. So fleeting was speech that the rare phenomenon of the echo, a sound heard once and then again, seemed a sort of magic.” ~ James Gleick
