Quotes about blade (208 quotes, page 2)

“Dear Muslima

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and . . . yawn . . . don't tell me yet again, I know you aren't allowed to drive a car, and you can't leave the house without a male relative, and your husband is allowed to beat you, and you'll be stoned to death if you commit adultery. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with.

Only this week I heard of one, she calls herself Skep"chick", and do you know what happened to her? A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating. He really did. He invited her back to his room for coffee. Of course she said no, and of course he didn't lay a finger on her, but even so . . .

And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about! For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin.

Richard”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Blog comment, , to PZ Myers, " Always Name Names https://web.archive.org/web/20110706204901/http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/07/always_name_names.php" (), Pharyngula, quoted in Rebecca Watson, " The Privilege Delusion http://skepchick.org/2011/07/the-privilege-delusion/", Skepchick.
Regarding the Rebecca Watson elevator incident.

Death , Cars , Coffee , Thinking

“Blade grumbled about the absurdities of the theological imagination and why didn’t people have sense enough to smother would-be priests in their cradles?”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 10 (p. 261)

People , Imagination , Sense

“Eggs are generally considered kosher, but what about eggs from chickens who spend their entire lives imprisoned in a cage one cubic foot in size? Food pellets are brought to them on one conveyor belt; their droppings and eggs are taken away on another. The Bible forbids us to torment animals or cause them any unnecessary grief. Raising chickens who can go out sometimes and see the sky or eat a worm or blade of grass is one thing, but manufacturing them in the concentration camp conditions of contemporary "poultry ranches" is quite another.”

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (1924–2014) American writer and activist, Jewish Renewal movement pioneer

The First Step: A Guide for the New Jewish Spirit, with Donald Gropman (New York: Bantam Books, 1983), p. 74.

Food , Grass , Animals

“St Thomas had lots to say about the mystical quality of createdness. For him the creature is truly a mystery, a mystical reality. Sometimes this strikes me so forcibly that I shrink from crushing a gnat or plucking a blade of grass - how dare one do such a thing, except of necessity? Nothing sentimental about this - not even compassion at having to hurt things - simply awe before their Maker. I'd never dare to tear up someone else's sketch or manuscript without first asking the author's permission - unless, of course, he had asked me to do so.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights Letters 1951-59.

Reality , Tear , Grass , Hurt

“Blade Runner is a rare science fiction movie so full of material that pages can be written about it without scratching the surface. A review like this can provide little more than an overview. A detailed exploration of the movie, its style, and its mysteries requires dedication that only someone immersed in Blade Runner lore can provide.”

James Berardinelli (1967) American film critic

Review http://www.reelviews.net/php_review_template.php?identifier=357 of Blade Runner (1982).
Three-and-a-half star reviews

Science

“The clangor of the swords had died away, the shouting of the slaughter was hushed; silence lay on the red-stained snow. The bleak pale sun that glittered so blindingly from the ice-fields and the snow-covered plains struck sheens of silver from rent corselet and broken blade, where the dead lay as they had fallen. The nerveless hand yet gripped the broken hilt; helmeted heads back-drawn in the death-throes, tilted red beards and golden beards grimly upward, as if in last invocation to Ymir the frost-giant, god of a warrior-race…”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Frost-Giant's Daughter" (1953)

Death , God , Silence , Sun

“It's the unreal, sustained glitch in naturalism that makes this genre of TV disturbing to either watch or be on. The Lynchian subjugation of our humanity; warmth and humour, usurped by a sterile, pastel-coloured steel blade benignly thrust again and again into a grey brain.”

Russell Brand (1975) British comedian, actor, and author

Russell Brand - The Guardian (2013)

Nature

“The moral ambivalence of the great mother goddesses has been conveniently forgotten by those American feminists who have resurrected them. We cannot grasp nature's bare blade without shedding our own blood.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 8

Nature

“Because of thee thy Egypt never sues for showers, nor does the parched blade bow to Jove the Rain-giver.”
Te propter nullos tellus tua postulat imbres,<br/>arida nec pluvio supplicat herba Iovi.

Tibullus (-50–-19 BC) poet and writer (0054-0019)

Te propter nullos tellus tua postulat imbres,
arida nec pluvio supplicat herba Iovi.
Bk. 1, no. 7, line 25.
Of the River Nile.
Variant translation: Because of you your land never pleads for showers, nor does its parched grass pray to Jupiter the Rain-giver.
Elegies

“.. wherever you are, you find the sun, a blade of grass, the spirals of the dragonfly. Courage consists of staying at home, close to nature, which could not care less about our disasters. Each grain of dust contains the soul of something marvellous.”

Joan Miró (1893–1983) Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist

Miró admonished art-critic w:Georges Duthuit
1915 - 1940
Source: 'Où allez-vous Miró?' (Where do you go, Miró), Georges Duthuit in Cahiers d'Art 11, nos. 8-10, 1936

Art , Home , Soul , Courage

“Among other things he found a sharp hunting knife, on the keen blade of which he immediately proceeded to cut his finger. Undaunted he continued his experiments, finding that he could hack and hew splinters of wood from the table and chairs with this new toy.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 6 : Jungle Battles

“…when I went out I tried to push the door instead of pulling it. 'Pull it, mate,' said someone, and I had to obey. I nearly tripped over a footscraper and, the door closed, had the impression of loud laughter. The vile blunt-razor-blade wind blew hard from my sister’s house. I felt ashamed and furious. In the East there was politeness, doors opened the right way, there were no footscrapers.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Way , Sister , Laughter , Housing

“The richest soil that was ever prepared would not grow a single blade of grass or the tiniest Weed if that soil were absolutely dry. …There must be water in the soil to dissolve out and transfer its elements in order that the rootlets of the plant shall be able to make the slightest use of these elements. …But …a plant may grow and thrive for a time quite without the presence of soil if its roots are placed in water. … some of the richest soils in the world are those that are absolutely barren and fully merit the designation of desert lands because water is lacking”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

How Plants are Trained to Work for Man (1921) Vol. 5 Gardening

World , Grass , Water , Time

“My work cuts like a steel blade at the base of a man's penis.”

Angela Carter (1940–1992) English novelist

Response to a student's question in her writing class, as quoted by Louis Menand in the New Yorker (June 8-15, 2009), p. 112.

“In creating, the only hard thing's to begin;
A grass-blade's no easier to make than an oak,
If you've once found the way you've achieved the grand stroke.”

James Russell Lowell A Fable for Critics

Pt. I - Emerson, st. 1
A Fable for Critics (1848)

Way , Grass

“Why should I love? flinging down pearl and gem
To those who scorn, at least care not for them:
Why should I hate? as blades in scabbards melt,
I have no power to make my hatred felt;”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Title poem
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Love , Hate

“We’re best at the long high throws. Like when you take four or five steps and rip it— It’s almost like a shotput approach, the steps, four or five quick, one over the other, kind of sideways-like—and then you slash away with that fucker, it’s such a violent act, throwing that white thing, you’re first cradling it to your breast and then you whip that fucker as hard as you can while keeping it level, keeping it straight, but otherwise with everything you can send with it you whip that fucker like it had blades on it and you wanted it to cut straight through the paperblue sky like a screen, rip through it and have it be blood and back space beyond.”

Dave Eggers (1970) memoirist, novelist, short story writer, editor, publisher

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius (2000)

“Blade muttered, “Makes as much sense as the story of any other god. Meaning it don’t.””

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 10 (p. 261)

God , Sense

“In everywhere we look,
In everyone we meet,
In every blade of grass,
Allah, Allah, Allah, in everyone we meet.”

Aaron Weiss

Allah, Allah, Allah.
It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All A Dream! It's Alright (2009)

Grass

“It was difficult to believe these things had taken place such a very long time ago. The events seemed distant, as though he had only read about them and not experienced them at all. He knew that at this point his death was far closer, far more tangible. That was something he could almost touch. One could feel one’s mortal form progressing slowly to ruin, like that old abbey—the signs were undeniable. Things went wrong inside a man and did not come right again. That was the truth that hung over one’s head like a blade. Injuries and illnesses were no longer easily repaired. And as with some part of a painting that he could never get right, the great danger was to see nothing but what was wrong. The trap of age.”

Sean Russell (1952) author

Source: Sea Without a Shore (1996), Chapter 7 (p. 89)

Death , Truth , Age , Feeling

“And Love is like the lightning in its might,
Winging where least bethought its fiery flight,
Melting the blade, despite the scabbard's guard.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Golden Violet - The Child of the Sea
The Golden Violet (1827)

Love

“The God of All Life was really more like a light than anything else, and the whole divine arena just lit up as if a universal spotlight was turned on from the inside of things, bathing every visible object. Everything Emir saw was lit up as if even the blades of grass had bulbs inside them, though bulbs hadn't been invented yet or spotlights either. Still, a new kind of superlight splashed out over the arena. More than this, the light itself was somehow kindly and alive, as if the God of All Life was everywhere at once, made of light, but with a presence inside that was invisible.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Emir's Education In The Proper Use of Magical Powers (1979), p. 65-66

Life , God , Light , Grass

“So it's entirely fair to say, and I've said it before, that the way Neuromancer-the-novel "looks" was influenced in large part by some of the artwork I saw in 'Heavy Metal'. I assume that this must also be true of John Carpenter's 'Escape from New York', Ridley Scott's 'Blade Runner'", and all other artefacts of the style sometimes dubbed 'cyberpunk.'”

William Gibson book Neuromancer

Those French guys, they got their end in early.
William Gibson http://brmovie.com/FAQs/BR_FAQ_BR_Influence.htm
Neuromancer (1984), About Neuromancer

Way , Guy , Parting

“As a trader you often walk on the blade. Be careful and don't step off.”

Marc Rich (1934–2013) businessman

Advice to a new employee. Quoted in The Economist, 6 July 2013 http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21580438-marc-rich-king-commodities-died-june-26th-aged-78-marc-rich

“Economic progress… means the discovery and application of better ways of doing things to satisfy our wants. The piping of water to a household that previously dragged it from a well, the growing of two blades of grass where one grew before, the development of a power loom that enables one man to weave ten times as much as he could before, the use of steam power and electric power instead of horse or human power — all these things clearly represent economic progress.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Remark: Kenneth Boulding gave the same example in his 1945 The economics of peace, p. 74
Source: 1950s, Principles of economic policy, 1958, p. 23

Way , Grass , Water , Time

“If we study Japanese art, you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass..”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in Vincent's letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Sept. 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 542), p. 39
1880s, 1888

Art , Intelligence , Study , Grass

“The street's alive as secret debts are paid.
Contacts made, they vanished unseen.
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine.
The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street, down in Jungleland.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Jungleland"
Song lyrics, Born to Run (1975)

Secret

“And down the dunes a thousand guns lie crouched,
Unseen, beside the flood —
Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouched
That wait and watch for blood. Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,
Walk grave and thoughtful men,
Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's blade
As lightly as the pen.”

Henry Timrod (1828–1867) Poet from the American South

"Charleston", st. 4–5

Men , Lie , Waiting

“A woman just gave birth to a prince today and dressed him in scarlet. He'll put the priest in his pocket, put the blade to the heat, take the motherless children off the street and place them at the feet of a harlot.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Infidels (1983), Jokerman

Children , Birth

“But no - what’s this? The branch on which he is sitting is weak. That is not all: wood-mice are gnawing away at it: before long they will eat through it and it will snap and fall. The branch sags down over a well. Aha! Escape! Perhaps our hero can swim? But the well is dry and there are snakes writhing and hissing on its bed. As the branch bends lower, he perceives a solitary blade of grass on wall of well. On top of the blade of grass gleams a drop of honey. What is our hero to do? What action does our puranic man quintessential Indian, take in the situation? He bends with the branch and licks up the honey…. What did you expect? Some neat solution to the problem? The tiger changes its mind and goes away? Amitabh Bachchan leaps to the rescue? Don’t be silly. One strength of Indian mind is that it knows some problems cannot be resolved and it learns to make best of them. That is the Indian answer to the insuperable difficulty. One does not fight against that by which one is certain to be overwhelmed; but one finds the best way, for oneself, to live with it. This is our national aesthetic. Without it, india as we know it could not survive.”

Shashi Tharoor book The Great Indian Novel

The Great Indian Novel (1989)

Way , Problem , Grass , Learning

“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind,—this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for. The more we think of it, the more attractive and desirable it becomes. To do some work that is needed, and to do it thoroughly well; to make our toil count for something in adding to the sum total of what is actually profitable for humanity; to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, or, better still, to make one wholesome idea take root in a mind that was bare and fallow; to make our example count for something on the side of honesty and cheerfulness, and courage, and good faith, and love - this is an aim for life which is very wide, and yet very definite, as clear as light. It is not in the least vague. It is only free; it has the power to embody itself in a thousand forms without changing its character. Those who seek it know what it means, however it may be expressed. It is real and genuine and satisfying. There is nothing beyond it, because there can be no higher practical result of effort. It is the translation, through many languages, of the true, divine purpose of all the work and labor that is done beneath the sun, into one final, universal word. It is the active consciousness of personal harmony with the will of God who worketh hitherto.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Source: Ships and Havens https://archive.org/stream/shipshavens00vand#page/28/mode/2up/search/more+we+think+of+it (1897), p.27

Love , Life , God , World

“"It is undeniably beautiful, do you not agree?" Jarlaxle asked, looking back at the soaring cathedral, with its tall spires, soaring buttresses, and great, colored windows.
"The mask of a god," Entreri replied sourly.
"The mask or the face?" asked the always-surprising Jarlaxle.
Entreri stared hard at his companion, and back at the towering cathedral. "The mask," he said, "or perhaps the illusion, concocted by those who seek to elevate themselves above all others and have not the skills to do so."
Jarlaxle looked at him curiously.
"A man inferior with the blade or with his thoughts can still so elevate himself," Entreri explained curtly, "if he can impart the belief that some god or other speaks through him. It is the greatest deception in all the world, and one embraced by kings and lords, while minor lying thieves on the streets of Calimport and other cities lose their tongues for so attempting to coax the purses of others."
That struck Jarlaxle as the most poignant and revealing insight he had yet pried from the mouth of the elusive Artemis Entreri, a great clue as to who this man truly was.”

R. A. Salvatore book Servant of the Shard

Servant of the Shard

God , World , Beauty , Color

“Winnowing leaves, you steal nests,
None charge you, you're not halted
By armed band, lieutenant's hand,
Blue blade or flood or downpour.”

Dafydd ap Gwilym (1320–1380) Welsh poet

Nythod ddwyn, cyd nithud ddail,
Ni'th dditia neb, ni'th etail,
Na llu rhugl, na llaw rhaglaw,
Na llafn glas na llif na glaw.
"Y Gwynt" (The Wind), line 13; translation by Joseph P. Clancy, from Gwyn Jones (ed.) The Oxford Book of Welsh Verse in English (Oxford: OUP, 1977) p. 39.

“The third element alone remains — the institution itself, acting in such a way as to make social acts a state of habit and instinct. This element — history proves it — has never missed its aim, never has it acted as a double-bladed sword; and its influence has only been weakened when custom strove to become immovable, crystallized, to become in its turn a religion not to be questioned when it endeavored to absorb the individual, taking all freedom of action from him and compelling him to revolt against that which had become, through its crystallization, an enemy to progress.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Religion , Way , History , Question

“You know, if I would have understood the potential of… doing, or adapting comic book characters to feature films, and also the tie-in to gaming and digital technology, when I was doing the first Blade films, then I’d be in a different business right now. I’d be in a whole different ball game.”

Wesley Snipes (1962) film actor, Martial artist, film producer

Wesley Snipes, Wesley Snipes interview: 'Robert Downey Jr called me for advice about Iron Man' http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/11016602/Wesley-Snipes-interview-Robert-Downey-Jr-called-me-for-advice-about-Iron-Man.html, Daily Telegraph, 9 August 2014

Books , Game , Business

“And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade”

Jean Toomer (1894–1967) American poet and novelist

from "Reapers"
Poems from Cane (1923)

“And a wandering beauty is a blade out of its scabbard.
You know how dangerous, gentlemen of threescore?
May you know it yet ten more.”

John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974) American poet

"Judith of Bethulia", line 4.
Chills and Fevers (1924)

Beauty

“O sweet clean earth, from whom the green blade cometh!
When we are dead, my best belovèd and I,
Close well above us, that we may rest forever,
Sending up grass and blossoms to the sky.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

Source: Discordants (1916), IV

Grass , Dead

“I wanted to kill myself. I would have done it, too, if I had owned a gun. I was considering the gruesome alternatives — pills, slitting my wrists with a razor blade, jumping off a bridge — when another student called to ask me a detailed question on relativity. There was no way, after fifteen minutes of thinking about Mr. Einstein, that suicide was still a viable option. Divorce, certainly. Celibacy, highly likely. But death was out of the question. I could never have prematurely terminated my love affair with physics.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

"Richard Wakefield" in Rama II (1989)
1980s

Love , Death , Way , Question

“The editor introduces Muhammad Ghuri in the Taj-ul-Maasir of Hasan Nizami as follows: 'After dwelling on the advantage and necessity of holy wars, without which the fold of Muhammad's flock could never be filled, he says that such a hero as these obligations of religion require has been found, 'during the reign of the lord of the world Mu'izzu-d dunya wau-d din, the Sultan of Sultans, Abu-l Muzaffar Muhammad bin Sam bin Husain' the destroyer of infidels and plural-worshippers etc.,' and that Almighty Allah had selected him from amongst the kings and emperors of the time, 'for he had employed himself in extirpating the enemies of religion and the state, and had deluged the land of Hind with the blood of their hearts, so that to the very day of resurrection travellers would have to pass over pools of gore in boats, - had taken every fort and stronghold which he attacked, and ground its foundations and pillars to powder under the feet of fierce and gigantic elephants, - had sent the whole world of idolatry to the fire of hell, by the well-watered blade of his Hindi sword, - had founded mosques and colleges in the places of images and idols'.'The narrative proceeds: 'Having equipped and set in order the army of Islam, and unfurled the standards of victory and the flags of power, trusting in the aid of the Almighty, he proceeded towards Hindustan…”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 209-212. Quoted in Sita Ram Goel : The Calcutta Quran Petition, ch. 6.

War , World , Religion , Travel

“In vain she strives with dying hands
To wrench away the blade:
Fixed in her ribs the weapon stands,
Closed by the wound it made.
Bloodless and faint, she gasps for breath;
Her heavy eyes sink down in death;
Her cheek's bright colors fade.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Source: Translations, The Aeneid of Virgil (1866), Book XI, p. 427

Death , Color

“Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The great artificer
Made my mate.”

Robert Louis Stevenson book Songs of Travel and Other Verses

No. XXVI, My Wife.
Songs of Travel and Other Verses (1896)

“To Greece we give our shining blades.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Evenings in Greece, First Evening.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“You can keep your sword, for you fought proper. Like a proper soldier. Take your blade to paradise, and tell them you were killed by another proper soldier.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Private Richard Sharpe to the Tippoo Sultan, p. 372
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Tiger (1997)

“Wow. Well on a personal level this century has been going so well for us, we finished our album, I had a little baby boy a little while ago, the whole Jubilee 2000 work has been incredible, just everything has been going great. There's also been some great breakthroughs in science, the disposible mobile phone, 3 blade razor and the female orgasmatron which is great - anyway now this... thanks everybody our record company has been great, our management have been great and our producer's amazing.”

The Edge (1961) Irish rock musician, guitar player of U2

2001
Acceptance speech at the Grammy's

Boy , Science , Baby , Personality

“Silence lay like a white shroud over all. Kane wrenched his dirk clear and a trickle of seeping blood followed sluggishly, then ceased. The Puritan mechanically swished the blade through the air to shake off the red drops which clung to the steel, and as it flashed in the lanthorn light, it seemed to Jack Hollinster to glitter like a blue flame—a flame which had been quenched in scarlet.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

"The Blue Flame of Vengeance" (1968)

Light , Silence

“Now he conducted her through his armouries where he kept his weapons and weapons for his fighting men and all panoply of war. There he showed her swords and spears, maces and axes and daggers, orfreyed and damascened and inlaid with jewels; byrnies and baldricks and shields; blades so keen, a hair blown against them in a wind should be parted in twain; charmed helms on which no ordinary sword would bite. And Juss said unto the Queen, "Madam, what thinkest thou of these swords and spears? For know well that these be the ladder's rungs that we of Demonland climbed up by to that signiory and principality which now we hold over the four corners of the world." She answered, "O my lord, I think nobly of them. For an ill part it were while we joy in the harvest, to contemn the tools that prepared the land for it and reaped it."”

Eric Rücker Eddison book The Worm Ouroboros

Ch. 33 : Queen Sophonisba in Galing, p. 499 http://www.sacred-texts.com/ring/two/two39.htm
The Worm Ouroboros (1922)

Men , War , World , Thinking

“Lo and behold! God made this
starry wold,
The maggot and the mold; lo and
behold!
He taught the grass contentment
blade by blade,
The sanctity of sameness in a shade.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

Impromptu poem, made at the request of reporters, printed in "Markham v. Prodigy" http://jcgi.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,928761,00.html TIME magazine (23 November 1925)

God , Grass

“Sitting here at Haidakhan, Mahaprabhuji has control over every particle of the Creation by the power of His mere wish, by His very thought. (…) Mahaprabhuji has control over the elements, the spiritual world - to say nothing of the world of men. He is the Creator, Sustainer and Destroyer of the world. Not a single blade of grass can grow but that He wills it. He has incarnated in a human body for the welfare of mankind. His sole desire - is to make it possible for the whole world to be liberated. He shall do His utmost to achieve liberation of the world.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Vishnu Dutt Shastriji about Mahaprabhuji
31 August 1983
The Teachings of Babaji

Men , World , Grass

“The Sultan, contrary to the disposition of man, which induces him to prefer a soft to a hard couch, and the splendour of the cheeks of pomegranate-bosomed girls to well-tempered sword blades, was so offended at the standard which Satan had raised in Hind, that he determined on another holy expedition to that land.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 33 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Girl

“Each somersault whipped out a perfect arc of shiny drops from his thick black hair. Then, as if it were his decision and not gravity’s, he opened the blade of his body toward the water and pierced its placid blue surface.”

Andrea Lewis (writer) Microsoft employee

“The Empire Pool” Conclave: A Journal of Character, Issue 5, (Spring, 2013)
2010-

Decision , Water , Perfection

“Everything was giant-sized, as if I were looking through binoculars. "I" was walking up giant stalks. At first I didn't know what they were or what I was, for that matter. The stalks were tall as redwood trees, and suddenly "I" realized that I was an insect of some kind. This was a grass blade. I thought I was a fly in a gigantic forest -- a giant fly, because everything was so large and super-real, and I'm used to thinking of flies as small. But I was an ordinary fly. I realized, and this was what the world looked like! Oddly enough, this made me feel better, I didn't care what I was; as long as I was something. So I felt myself go up the grass blade. It's impossible to verbalize the sensations I had, but I remember being aware of the weight of my wings. They seemed very sturdy and reassuring.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Psychic Politics: An Aspect Psychology Book (1976), p. 62

World , Feeling , Thinking , Tree

“When we think of the crowded tenements, with hard asphalt pavements and never a blade of grass or a tree; of the ghettos and colonies in cities; of the unsightly industrial towns; of the labor shacks along our great construction works; of the derailed box cars; of the immigrant section across the railroad track; of the small towns without parks or playgrounds or music or books; and then turn to the villages from which most of the immigrants come friendly in their associations and restful in their relationship to the wider life outside the longing of the immigrant to return is understood. Even the crowded cities of their native countries have places where one may rest the spirit and satisfy the hunger for beauty, by the expenditure of a carfare or the effort of a short walk. The grim beauty of our cities, their vitality, their ambition and determination, and that crude joy of living through which many currents of our life flow, will not always keep the immigrants from returning even to the poverty of some of their native towns.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life , Hunger , Books , Beauty

“where is the halo
that should glow 'round your face
and where are the wings that
should grow from your shoulder blades?”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, In My Tribe (1987), City of Angels

“A gnarled old branch dulls the blade that severs a sapling.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lini
(15 October 1993)

“No company in its right mind tries to sell to everyone. Gillette does not try to sell razor blades to preteens, and Kimberly-Clark doesn't try to sell its Huggies to childless families. A savvy steel company doesn't try to sell steel to every steel-using company.”

Philip Kotler (1931) American marketing author, consultant and professor

Philip Kotler (2012). Kotler On Marketing, p. 125: About defining the Target Market

Family

“[Looper's] sort of a down-to-earth Blade Runner: it feels real. It's that style of sci-fi that could actually exist in 30 years.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (1981) American actor, director, producer, and writer

Los Angeles Times http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/04/13/looper-trailer-joseph-gordon-levitt-completes-time-travel-circle/, 2012

Feeling

“Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife. Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life. Oooh.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"Bright College Days"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

Life , World

“Knowing now what we have learned, unless the need were urgent, I could no more sink the blade of an ax into the tissues of a living tree than I could drive it into the flesh of a fellow human.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

"The Crooked Wood", p. 208
The Journey Home (1977)

Tree , Learning

“Like a steely blade in a silken sheath
We don't see what they're made of
They shout about love, but when push comes to shove
They live for the things they're afraid of

And the knowledge that they fear is a weapon to be used against them…
- The Weapon (Part II of 'Fear') (1982)”

Neil Peart (1952–2020) Canadian-American drummer , lyricist, and author

Rush Lyrics

Love , Fear , Knowledge , Parting

“Whose wit in the combat, as gentle as bright,
Ne'er carried a heart-stain away on its blade.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

On the Death of Sheridan.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart

“He kept flinching. The low sun shone in the face of a two-hundred-foot-tall wind turbine in the field across the crick, and its blades cast long scything shadows over them. … The sun above blinking on and off with each cut of a blade. … Something about their being in motion, in a place where everything else was almost pathologically still, seized the attention; they always seemed to be jumping out at you from behind corners.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Thanksgiving (prologue)
Reamde (2011), Part I: Nine Dragons

Sun

“There rise her timeless capitals of Empires daily born,
Whose plinths are laid at midnight, and whose streets are packed at morn;
And here come hired youths and maids that feign to love or sin
In tones like rusty razor-blades to tunes like smitten tin.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Naaman's Song http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/LimitsRenewals/naamansong.html, Stanza 2.
Other works

Love , Youth

“Up to eight feet long and as heavy as a lioness, the adult Komodo dragon brandishes steak-knifelike teeth - sharp, recurved blades with serrated cutting edges. Showing the same sagacity found in veteran Nile crocodiles, fully adult dragons know their hunting territory from years of experience. They know where to lie along hilly game trails, awaiting the light footsteps of a deer. Attacks are instant successes or failures because the ora has no stamina, and if it misses on the first short rush, it has little sustained speed for a long pursuit. When an attack succeeds, the cruel rows of slashing teeth cut fearful wounds on the rump and thigh of ambushed animals and the stricken prey may die of massive infection days later even if it manages to break free from the dragon's mouth. Tethered livestock suffer truly terrible cuts across the legs when an ora slinks into the compound under cover of the warm Indonesian nights. Several humans, both native and European visitors, have died in savage daylight attacks. The victims simply had no warning sign that the ora was waiting patiently a few feet from the trail's edge.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 62-63
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Lie , Fear , Game , Failure

“Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We’ll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we’ll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.”

Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy

Source: His Dark Materials, The Amber Spyglass (2000), Ch. 23 : No Way Out

World , Home , Star , Grass

“It seeks but will not be sought.
It finds but will not be found.
It holds the one who would touch,
Who would cut away pain and ill.
But its blade cuts two ways
and will not be turned.
If you value your well-being,
Impede not its way.
Treat the toucher doubly well,
For he bears the weight
Of the balance that must be struck.”

F. Paul Wilson book The Touch

Poem about the Dat-Tay-Vao
The Touch (1986)

Pain , Way

““How many hundreds of thousands,” it said, “have these padres turned to Christianity and keep on turning! How many hundreds of children have they swallowed up! On how many more they have cast their nets! How much evil is yet to come upon us by their means! If we sleep as heretofore, in a short time they will turn all to Christianity without exceptions, and our temples will he changed into churches… When Christianity has laid waste the land, will a blade of Hinduism grow there? When the flood rushes up over our heads it will be too late. It is because of our carelessness that these strangers insult our gods in the open streets during our festivals.””

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)

God , Children , Sleep , Evil

“A light on Marmion’s visage spread,
And fired his glazing eye:
With dying hand, above his head,
He shook the fragment of his blade,
And shouted "Victory!-
Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!"”

Walter Scott Marmion

Were the last words of Marmion.
Canto VI, st. 32.
Marmion (1808)

Light , Victory

“And a blade twitched into his heart, beginning the slow, massive bleeding he would never be able to stop, no matter what else he might accomplish. He was surprised and puzzled as he walked with that mortal wound in him, for it occurred to him that, although the wound would be the death of him, it would be the life of him too.”

Edward Lewis Wallant (1926–1962) American writer

Children at the Gate (1962)

Life , Death , Heart

“The Kindle is just the razor. The books are the blades — ka-ching!”

David Pogue (1963) Technology writer, journalist and commentator

" The Kindle: Good Before, Better Now http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/technology/personaltech/24pogue.html," The New York Times, February 24, 2009.

Books

“On one side, lemons are selling for a shilling a dozen; on the other, oranges for sixpence. One man blows a horn in your ear, and offers you the Standard; another exerts his lungs, and shews you the Courier. Pencils are to be had for a penny; and penknives, with from three to six blades each, for eighteen pence a-dozen. A fellow with a trunk turns its corner on your temples; another deposits a box, with the grocery of a family —sugar, soap, candles, and all—on your toes. A gigantic gentleman nearly knocks you down in his hurry; and an elderly Jew slips past you so neatly, that you tumble over him before you are aware. Every body is always too late, and therefore every body is in a bustle. Two policemen keep the peace; and half-a-dozen individuals, whose notions on the law of property are at variance with established principles or prejudices, attend for the purpose of breaking it. Add to these some females with shawls and sharp elbows; and pattens, whose iron rings are for the benefit of foot-passengers. Such is the White Horse Cellar, and the pavement from Dover Street to Albemarle Street.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Family , Peace , Law , Past

“Wilt Thou not visit me?
The plant beside me feels Thy gentle dew;
And every blade of grass I see,
From Thy deep earth its quickening moisture drew.”

Jones Very (1813–1880) American poet and essayist

From The Prayer

Feeling , Grass

“I never lamented about the vicissitudes of time or complained of the turns of fortune except on the occasion when I was barefooted and unable to procure slippers [shoes]. But when I entered the great mosque of Kufah with a sore heart and beheld a man without feet I offered thanks to the bounty of God, consoled myself for my want of shoes and recited:
'A roast fowl is to the sight of a satiated man
Less valuable than a blade of fresh grass on the table
And to him who has no means nor power
A burnt turnip is a roasted fowl.”

Saadi book Gulistan of Sa'di

Source: Gulistan (1258), Chapter 3, story 19. Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold. ( Persian version https://ganjoor.net/saadi/golestan/gbab3/sh18/)

God , Shoe , Grass , Time

“Real truth was out there in the shattered outhabs of Vervun hive. Real truth was waiting and silence, courage and stealth. Real truth was the ability to function in extremes. To fire a cannon and miss and try again. To fix a silver blade to the end of a las-weapon and leap from safety into a shroud of smoke, prepared as you did so to really use that makeshift spear. Real truth was a tiny hole in a man's forehead.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

In Remembrance (2005)

Truth , Courage , Silence , Waiting

“The brightest blades grow dim with rust,
The fairest meadow white with snow.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

Chanson without Music; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“All the efforts of several hundred thousand people, crowded in a small space, to disfigure the land on which they lived; all the stone they covered it with to keep it barren; how so diligently every sprouting blade of grass was removed; all the smoke of coal and naphtha; all the cutting down of trees and driving off of cattle could not shut out the spring, even from the city. The sun was shedding its light; the grass, revivified, was blooming forth, where it was left uncut, not only on the greenswards of the boulevard, but between the flag-stones, and the birches, poplars and wild-berry trees were unfolding their viscous leaves; the limes were unfolding their buds; the daws, sparrows and pigeons were joyfully making their customary nests, and the flies were buzzing on the sun-warmed walls. Plants, birds, insects and children were equally joyful. Only men—grown-up men—continued cheating and tormenting themselves and each other. People saw nothing holy in this spring morning, in this beauty of God's world—a gift to all living creatures—inclining to peace, good-will and love, but worshiped their own inventions for imposing their will on each other.”

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 1

Love , Men , God , Children

“Now, a new creature, I in Christ am born,
The old man stripped away; -- I am new-made;
And mounting in me, like the sun at morn,
Love breaks my heart, even as a broken blade:
Christ, First and Only Fair, from me hath shorn
My will, my wits, and all that in me stayed,
I in His arms am laid,
I cry and call --
O Thou my All,
O let me die of Love!”

Jacopone da Todi (1236–1306) Italian Franciscan mystic

From All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time, As air becomes the medium for light when the sun rises, and as wax melts from the heat of fire, so the soul drawn to that light is resplendent, feels self melt awayby Robert Ellsberg

Love , Sun , Heart , Christ

“I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist.”

W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) English librettist of the Gilbert & Sullivan duo

The Mikado (1885)

People

“The attempt by eleven southern—and slaveholding—states to secede from the Union in the winter and spring of 1860-61 presented the United States with the greatest internal political challenge it had ever faced. Because the Constitution had created a federal Union, secession (which broke the ties of Union) was a dagger at the heart of the American polity. The fact that this secession was motivated by Southerners' determination to protect their investment in human slavery added a cruel twist of the blade. Not only did secession fracture the Union, it did so on behalf of a practice which obliterated the fundamental natural right to liberty, which the federal Constitution was supposed to protect.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

2000s, States' Rights and Wrongs (2008)

Spring , Motivation , Nature , Winter

“You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, "Are you Martin Luther King?"
And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that's punctured, you drown in your own blood — that's the end of you.
It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I've forgotten what those telegrams said. I'd received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I've forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I'll never forget it. It said simply, "Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the Whites Plains High School." She said, "While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I'm simply writing you to say that I'm so happy that you didn't sneeze."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze.
1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)

Books , World , School , Girl

“"If you believe in a God, miss, pray now." "You don't?" "I believe in the Baker rifle and in the 1796 Pattern heavy cavalry sword, so long as you grind down the back blade so that the point don't slide off a Frog's ribs. If you you don't grind down the back blade, miss, then you might as well just beat the bastards to death with it."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Richard Sharpe and Miss Sarah Fry, p. 205
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Escape (2003)

Death , God

“Like Duchamp's 'ready mades' - manufactured objects which qualified as art because he chose to call them such, the most unremarkable and inappropriate items - a pin, a plastic clothes peg, a television component, a razor blade, a tampon - could be brought within the province of punk (un)fashion… Objects borrowed from the most sordid of contexts found a place in punks' ensembles; lavatory chains were draped in graceful arcs across chests encased in plastic bin liners. Safety pins were taken out of their domestic 'utility' context and worn as gruesome ornaments through the cheek, ear or lip… fragments of school uniform (white bri-nylon shirts, school ties) were symbolically defiled (the shirts covered in graffiti, or fake blood; the ties left undone) and juxtaposed against leather drains or shocking pink mohair tops.”

Dick Hebdidge

Dick Hebdidge (1979). . p.106-12

School , Art , Fashion , Clothes

“The Nereids, swimming in from all directions, met them here, and Lady Thetis coming up astern laid her hand on the blade of the steering-oar to guide them through the Wandering Rocks.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book IV. Homeward Bound, Lines 930–932

“There is in the lovely Martian landscape not a footprint, not an artifact, not even an old beer can, not a blade of grass, not a kangaroo rat, not even, so far as we can tell, a microbe. Mars and the Moon and Venus… the only planets that we've landed on—are utterly lifeless. …in our solar system we may discover that there is life only on this world. This says that life is not guaranteed, that life requires something special, something improbable.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006)

Love , Life , World , Beer

“The classical support for as-if models in the social sciences stems from the economist Milton Friedman (1953), who, like the psychologist B. F. Skinner, saw little value in modeling cognitive processes. In contrast, our aim is to understand actual decision processes, not only the outcomes. There is a good reason for this. Without modeling the cognitive blade of Simon's scissors, it is utterly impossible to determine in what environments heuristics succeed, that is, their ecological rationality.”

Gerd Gigerenzer Heuristics

Gerd Gigerenzer, Ralph Hertwig, and Thorsten Pachur, Heuristics: The Foundations of Adaptive Behavior, 2015.

Understanding , Support , Decision , Science

“(on Blades of Glory) Playing the assholes in the movie is fun.”

Will Arnett (1970) Canadian actor

"Interview:Will Arnett and Amy Poehler," CHUD.com (March 29, 2007) http://www.chud.com/index.php?type=interviews&id=9525
2007

“Back and forth the fantastic tableaux would spin, past his cruel plebe hazing, the self-discovery at the West Texas Military Academy, the patriarchal Judge MacArthur, all beard and cigar smoke, presiding over dynastic feats at Washington's 1201 N Street; the chimes of the drawing-room clock there telling off the quarters; the ceremonial changing of the guard at Leavenworth; his father's tales of Sherman's dauntless Boys in Blue; his mother's imperious commands to fight and fight and never lower his blade short of victory; the clean crack of Krag rifles and the warm prickling of desert sand as he played with his brother outside the fort stockade; the rumbling of the sunset gun and Pinky's face tilting downward, her lambent smile gilding the child's upturned features while he clutched at her cascading skirts; the yellow notes of the bugles as he stirred in his cradle; the chant of sergeants hawking cadence on the parade ground outside; and, snapping proudly in the overarching sky above him, the flag, and the flag, and the flag.”

William Manchester (1922–2004) (April 1, 1922 – June 1, 2004) American author, journalist and historian

Source: American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964 (1978), p. 709

Smile , Boy , Change , Past

“And their mouths are cut like razor blades, and their eyes are like stilettos, and her radiator's steaming and her teeth are in a wreck, she won't let you kiss her, but what in the hell do you expect?”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

"Small Change", Small Change (1976).

Hell , Kiss

“it is absurd … to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass ("Dialectic of Teleological Judgment" §75)”

Immanuel Kant book Critique of Judgment

Critique of Judgment (1790)

Hope , Intelligence , Grass

“In answer to your first question, of course God was good in bed! He's perfect in every way! God not only knows the secret path to the clitoris, but he's also aware of a little nerve just underneath the right shoulder blade connected directly to a lady's pleasure centre!”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

Ask Yahtzee 3
Fully Ramblomatic, Features

God , Pleasure , Secret , Way

“strongest blade in the world, howeve, r it is so fragile as to shatter when handled by any force other than the delicate touch of a lesbian.”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/235218148800991233]
Tweets by year, 2012

World

“Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Review of Nabokov's Lolita (1958).
Context: Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly.

“Bethou me, said sparrow, to the crackled blade,
And you, and you, bethou me as you blow,
When in my coppice you behold me be.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

“My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

" Sir Galahad http://home.att.net/%7ETennysonPoetry/sg.htm", st. 1 (1842)

Men , Heart

“Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
Context: Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child's balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying

“Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"Love the Wild Swan" (1935)
Context: I hate my verses, every line, every word.
Oh pale and brittle pencils ever to try
One grass-blade's curve, or the throat of one bird
That clings to twig, ruffled against white sky.
Oh cracked and twilight mirrors ever to catch
One color, one glinting flash, of the splendor of things.

Bird , Grass

“Oh fountain of blood, forever inexhaustible! Life will be a knife, a gray and agile and cutting and exact and arbitrary blade that falls and slashes and divides. To crack, to claw, to quarter, the verbs that move with giant steps against us!”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

The Clerk's Vision (1949)
Context: No use going out or staying at home. No use erecting walls against the impalpable. A mouth will extinguish all the fires, a doubt will root up all the decisions. It will be everywhere without being anywhere. It will blur all the. mirrors. Penetrating walls and convictions, vestments and well-tempered souls, it will install itself in the marrow of everyone. Whistling between body and body, crouching between soul and soul. And all the wounds will open because, with expert and delicate, although somewhat cold, hands, it will irritate sores and pimples, will burst pustules and swellings and dig into the old, badly healed wounds. Oh fountain of blood, forever inexhaustible! Life will be a knife, a gray and agile and cutting and exact and arbitrary blade that falls and slashes and divides. To crack, to claw, to quarter, the verbs that move with giant steps against us!
It is not the sword that shines in the confusion of what will be. It is not the saber, but fear and the whip. I speak of what is already among us. Everywhere there are trembling and whispers, insinuations and murmurs. Everywhere the light wind blows, the breeze that provokes the immense Whiplash each time it unwinds in the air. Already many carry the purple insignia in their flesh. The light wind rises from the meadows of the past, and hurries closer to our time.

Life

“The blade entered his body to the hilt.
No sooner had I done this thing than I recoiled, wild with terror at the deed.”

Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer

Source: Andre Cornelis (1886), Ch. 13
Context: I was suddenly carried away by rage to the point of losing all control over my frenzy. "Ah!" I cried, "since you will not do justice on yourself, die then, at once!" I stretched out my hand and seized the dagger which he had recently placed upon the table. He looked at me without flinching, or recoiling; indeed presenting his breast to me, as though to brave my childish rage. I was on his left bending down, and ready to spring. I saw his smile of contempt, and then with all my strength I struck him with the knife in the direction of the heart.
The blade entered his body to the hilt.
No sooner had I done this thing than I recoiled, wild with terror at the deed. He uttered a cry. His face was distorted with terrible agony, and he moved his right hand towards the wound, as though he would draw out the dagger. He looked at me, convulsed; I saw that he wanted to speak; his lips moved, but no sound issued from his mouth. The expression of a supreme effort passed into his eyes, he turned to the table, took a pen, dipped it into the inkstand, and traced two lines on a sheet of paper within his reach. He looked at me again, his lips moved once more, then he fell down like a log.

“Treating the sword blade the same as the staff,
Turning the chariot wheel into chaff.”

Nathalia Crane (1913–1998) American writer

"The Dust" 
Venus Invisible and Other Poems (1928)
Context: Treating the sword blade the same as the staff,
Turning the chariot wheel into chaff.
Toppling a pillar and nudging a wall,
Building a sand pile to counter each fall.
Yielding to nothing — not even the rose,
The dust has its reasons wherever it goes.

“It is as if a man, who was given a blade so marvelously keen that it would sever anything, should use its edge for driving in nails.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Source: Patriotism and Christianity http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Patriotism_and_Christianity (1896), Ch. 17
Context: One free man will say with truth what he thinks and feels amongst thousands of men who by their acts and words attest exactly the opposite. It would seem that he who sincerely expressed his thought must remain alone, whereas it generally happens that every one else, or the majority at least, have been thinking and feeling the same things but without expressing them.
And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.
And as soon as this opinion is established, immediately by imperceptible degrees, but beyond power of frustration, the conduct of mankind begins to alter.
Whereas at present, every man, even, if free, asks himself, "What can I do alone against all this ocean of evil and deceit which overwhelms us? Why should I express my opinion? Why indeed possess one? It is better not to reflect on these misty and involved questions. Perhaps these contradictions are an inevitable condition of our existence. And why should I struggle alone with all the evil in the world? Is it not better to go with the stream which carries me along? If anything can be done, it must be done not alone but in company with others."
And leaving the most powerful of weapons — thought and its expression — which move the world, each man employs the weapon of social activity, not noticing that every social activity is based on the very foundations against which he is bound to fight, and that upon entering the social activity which exists in our world every man is obliged, if only in part, to deviate from the truth and to make concessions which destroy the force of the powerful weapon which should assist him in the struggle. It is as if a man, who was given a blade so marvelously keen that it would sever anything, should use its edge for driving in nails.
We all complain of the senseless order of life, which is at variance with our being, and yet we refuse to use the unique and powerful weapon within our hands — the consciousness of truth and its expression; but on the contrary, under the pretext of struggling with evil, we destroy the weapon, and sacrifice it to the exigencies of an imaginary conflict'.

Quotes about blade page 2

Quotes about blade
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