“When I was in Bessastaðir I had a jug of water—and an ax. A well-sharpened ax is a fine tool. On the other hand I've never been fond of the gallows, and never less than when I wrestled a hanged man.”
Jón Hreggviðsson
Íslandsklukkan (Iceland's Bell) (1946), Part II: The Fair Maiden
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Halldór Laxness 216
Icelandic author 1902–1998Related quotes
“A crossbow?” Pigeon asked.
I left my battle-ax in my other jeans,” the man said.”
Source: The Candy Shop War
"Who ’ll turn Grindstones" from Essays from the Desk of Poor Robert the Scribe, Doylestown, Pa., (1815); first published in the Wilkesbarre Gleaner (1811).
"She may have lost a Picasso..." The Daily Express, 15 January 2001.
“If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything.”
This first appears in the Isaac Newton : A Biography (1934), citing unpublished papers by John Conduitt reporting an anecdote of an occassion where Conduitt asked Newton where he obtained the tools to make his reflecting telescope. Newton is said to have laughed and replied, "If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me I had never made anything of it."
Disputed
"Sisters of Mercy"
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: Yes, you who must leave everything that you cannot control,
It begins with your family, and soon it comes round to your soul.
Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:
When you're not feeling holy your loneliness says that you've sinned.
“Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.”
Late in the Evening
Song lyrics, One-Trick Pony (1980)