sword

  Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness.We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

—Wordsworth,William

Boys' hate was dangerous, it was keen and bright, a miraculous birthright, like Arthur's sword snatched out of the stone.

—Munro, Alice ne¤  e Laidlaw

Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word. The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!

—Wilde, Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

—Bible (NewTestament)

And it is a good sign that this masquerading knight- errant, this pretended champion of the rights of every other nation except those of the Irish nation, should be obliged to throw off the mask today, and to stand revealed as the man who by his own utterances is prepared to carry fire and sword into your homesteads unless you humbly abase yourselves before him, and before the landlords of the country.

—Parnell, Charles Stewart

Like an ambassador that beds a queen With the nice caution of a sword between.

—Cleveland,John

China asked for a sword, and we gave her a dull paring knife.

—Bridges, (Henry) Styles

Ireland never was contented† Say you so? You are demented. Ireland was contented when All could use the sword and pen, And whenTara rose so high That her turrets split the sky, And about her courts were seen Liveried Angels robed in green, Wearing, by St. Patrick's bounty, Emeralds big as half a county.

—Landor,Walter Savage

Puisque ceux qui avaient le devoir de manier l'e¤  pe¤  e de la France l'ont laisse¤  e tomber brise¤  e, moi, j'ai ramasse¤   le tron c° on du glaive. Since those whose duty it was to wield the sword of Francehave let it fall shattered totheground,Ihavetaken up the broken blade.

—de Gaulle, Charles

The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh: but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones. Many have fallen by the edge of the sword: but not so many as have fallen by the tongue.

—Bible (Apocrypha)

The Minstrel-boy to the war isgone, In the ranks of death you'll find him; His father's sword he has girded on, And his wild harp slung behind him.

—Moore,Thomas

And the L God said,Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:Therefore the L God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the tree of life.

—Bible (Old Testament)

When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal† But I brought myself down. I gave them a sword and they stuck it in and twisted it with relish. And I guess that if Ihad been intheir position,I'd have donethesame thing.

—Nixon, Richard M(ilhous)

Lieutenant, is that your sword, or are you just glad to see me?

—West, Mae

Without the Empire we should be tossed like a cork in the cross current of world politics.It is at once our sword and our shield.

—Hughes,William Morris

Let him who has a rifle use his rifle, let him who has a sword use his sword! And let those who have no sword take up pick-axes and sticks.

—Ho Chi Minh originally NguyenThatThanh

God the Omnipotent! King, who ordainest Great windsThy clarions, lightningsThy sword.

—Ellerton,John

By this also ye must know that women have dominion over you: doye not labourand toil, and give and bring all to the woman? Yea, a man taketh his sword, and goeth his way to rob and to steal, to sail upon the sea and upon rivers; And looketh upon a lion, and goeth in the darkness; and when he hath stolen, spoiled, and robbed, he bringeth it to his love.

—Bible (Apocrypha)

   'That isthe Ladye of the Lake,'seyde Merlion.'There ys a grete roche, and therein ys as fayre a paleyce as ony on erthe, and rychely besayne. And thys damesel woll come to you anone, and than speke ye fayre to hir, that she may gyff you that swerde.'

—Malory, SirThomas   d.1471

My Sword, I give to him that shall succeed me in my Pilgrimage, and my Courage and Skill, to himthat can get it. My Marks and Scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me, that Ihave fought his Battles, who now will be my Rewarder† As he went, he said,Death, where is thy Sting? And as he went down deeper, he said,Grave where is thy Victory? So he passed over, and the Trumpets sounded for him on the other side.

—Bunyan,John

Some doubt the courage of the Negro.Go to Haiti and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they thinkof the Negro's sword.

—Phillips,Wendell

   We shall never sheath the sword which we have not lightly drawn until Belgium recovers in full measure all and more than all that she has sacrificed, until France is adequatelyassured against the menace of aggression, until the rights of the smaller nationalities of Europe are placed upon an unassailable foundation and until the military domination of Prussia is wholly and finally destroyed.

—Asquith

   A strange manner of battle, where one side works by constant motion and ceaseless charges, while the other can but endure passivelyas it standsfixed tothesod.The Norman arrow and sword worked on: in the English ranks the only movement was the dropping of the dead: the living stood motionless.

—William of Poitiers   11c.

I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.

—Blake,William

The oil can is mightier than the sword.

—Dirksen, Everett McKinley

It is better that all of these peasants should be killed rather than that the sovereigns and magistrates should be destroyed, because the peasants take up the sword without God's authority.

—Luther, Martin

Beneath the rule of men entirely great, the pen is mightier than the sword.

—Lytton

Hinc quam sit calamus saevior ense patet. From this it is clear how much the pen is worse than the sword.

—Burton, Robert pseudonym DemocritusJunior

Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken; Beside him two horsesöa plough! Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn-man there in the sunset, And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!

—Colum, Padraic

For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.

—Bible (NewTestament)

Soldiers of the ploughshare as well as soldiers of the sword.

—Ruskin,John

What our sword has won in half a year, our sword must guard for half a century.

—Moltke, Helmuth von, Count

The sword of the L, and of Gideon.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

—Bible (NewTestament)

   Then said Jesus unto him,Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

—Bible (NewTestament)

  And there he bounde the gyrdyll aboute the hyltis, and threw theswerde as farre intothewatirashemyght. And there cam an arme and an honde above the watir, and toke hit and cleyght hit, and shoke hit thryse and braundysshed, and than vanysshed with the swerde into the watir.

—Malory, SirThomas   d.1471

The new industrial revolution is a two-edged sword. It may be used for the benefit of humanity, assuming that humanity survives long enough to reach a period in whichsuch a benefit ispossible.If, however, we proceed along the clear and obvious lines of our traditional behavior, and follow our traditional worship of progress and the fifth freedomöthe freedom to exploitöit is practically certain that we shall have to face a decade or more of ruin and despair.

—Wiener, Norbert

   Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a two- edged sword in their hand.

—Bible (Old Testament)

Oh thou, that dear and happy isle The garden of the world ere while, Thou paradise of four seas, Which heaven planted us to please, But, to exclude the world, did guard With watery if not flaming sword; What luckless apple did we taste, To make us mortal, and thee waste?

—Marvell, Andrew

We draw the sword with a clean conscience and with clean hands.

—Wilhelm II, Kaiser

Wounds inflicted by the sword heal more easily than those inflicted by the tongue.

—Cardinal Richelieu