
“The sharp employ the sharp; verily, a man may be known by his attorney.”
Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, The Dragonbone Chair (1988), Chapter 31, “The Councils of the Prince” (p. 502).
“The sharp employ the sharp; verily, a man may be known by his attorney.”
Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
“Converse with men makes sharp the glittering wit,
But God to man doth speak in solitude.”
Sonnet, Highland Solitude; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 729.
Source: I Capture the Castle
“Life, struck sharp on death,
Makes awful lightning.”
Bk. I, l. 210-214.
Aurora Leigh http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/barrett/aurora/aurora.html (1857)
Context: Life, struck sharp on death,
Makes awful lightning. His last word was, 'Love–'
'Love, my child, love, love!'–(then he had done with grief)
'Love, my child.' Ere I answered he was gone,
And none was left to love in all the world.
Narrator, p. 118
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)
“Whan the sunne shinth make hay, whiche is to say,
Take time whan time comth, lest time steale away.”
When the sun shines make hay, which is to say,
Take time when time comes, lest time steal away.
Part I, chapter 3.
Proverbs (1546)