Shears Quotes

• I'm such a fitness freak that I eat so plain, it's gross. I have oatmeal in the morning and then I have chicken breasts and vegetables and spinach shakes.

  Jason Sellards

  Morning, Vegetables, Oatmeal

  7 Copy quote

• The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion.

  Dean Koontz

  Hands, Pieces, Literature

  Dean Koontz (2007). “Fear Nothing: A Novel”, p.193, Bantam

  52 Copy quote

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• Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

  Sydney Smith

  Anniversary, Marriage, Moving

  Quoted in Lady Holland, Memoir (1855)

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• The statesman shears the sheep; the politician skins them.

  Austin O'Malley

  Funny, Sheep, Political

  7 Copy quote

• And sing to those that hold the vital shears; And turn the adamantine spindle round, On which the fate of gods and men is wound.

  John Milton

  Fate, Men, Turns

  John Milton (1862). “The Poetical Works of John Milton”, p.602

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• I travel so much and am always living out of a suitcase, so my favorite saying is 'Wherever you go, there you are'. I love it because it's reassuring to me that you have to live in the moment wherever you happen to be.

  Jason Sellards

  Live In The Moment, Suitcases, Moments

  6 Copy quote

• Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise

  John Milton

  Spurs, Spirit, Fame

  "Lycidas" l. 70 (1638). A 1619 play thought to be written by John Fletcher, Sir John van Olden Barnavelt act 1, sc. 1, refers to "the desire of glory (That last infirmity of noble minds)." That play was lost and not rediscovered until 1883, so Milton's parallel words were coincidental.

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• Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise. That last infirmity of noble mind. To scorn delights, and live laborious days.

  John Milton

  Mind, Noble, Delight

  "Lycidas" l. 70 (1638). A 1619 play thought to be written by John Fletcher, Sir John van Olden Barnavelt act 1, sc. 1, refers to "the desire of glory (That last infirmity of noble minds)." That play was lost and not rediscovered until 1883, so Milton's parallel words were coincidental.

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• I love Rebel Rebel in Manhattan's West Village for vinyl, but record stores are hard to come by these days. I almost don't even use iTunes. I mostly use music subscription services. But I'll go into Rebel Rebel once a month or so and buy everything I love on vinyl.

  Jason Sellards

  Love, Age, Rebel

  6 Copy quote

• Alas! What boots it with uncessant care To tend the homely slighted Shepherd's trade, And strictly meditate the thankless muse; Were it not better done as others use, To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair? Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th'abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life.

  John Milton

  Sports, Thinking, Hair

  'Lycidas' (1638) l. 64

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• Spring, / you are a pinking shears: you cut / fresh edges on the world.

  Erica Jong

  Spring, Cutting, World

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• I am not kind, I cut people off as with shears and I drop them like nettles.

  Edna O'Brien

  Cutting, People, Kind

  Edna O'Brien (1985). “A Fanatic Heart: Selected Stories of Edna O'Brien”, Plume

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• Men can't be trusted with pruning shears any more than they can be trusted with the grocery money in a delicatessen . . . They are like boys with new pocket knives who will not stop whittling.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Boys, Men, Knives

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• (That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life.

  John Milton

  Life, Thinking, Mind

  'Lycidas' (1638) l. 64

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• As I search the archives of my memory I seem to discern six types or methods [of judicial writing] which divide themselves from one another with measurable distinctness. There is the type magisterial or imperative; the type laconic or sententious; the type conversational or homely; the type refined or artificial, smelling of the lamp, verging at times upon preciosity or euphuism; the demonstrative or persuasive; and finally the type tonsorial or agglutinative, so called from the shears and the pastepot which are its implements and emblem.

  Benjamin Cardozo

  Memories, Writing, Past

  "Law and Literature and Other Essays and Addresses". Book by Benjamin N. Cardozo, 1931.

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• We're left with so little to go on. Only the present is full enough to seem complete, and even that is an optical illusion. The moment is bleeding off the page. We live on the precipice of our perceptions. At the edge of every living instant, the world shears away like a cliff of ice into the sea of what is forgotten.

  Ivan Vladislavic

  Ice, Sea, Perception

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• The finished product is not finished when the actor is. The work is completed by a pair of shears.

  Josef von Sternberg

  Actors, Pairs, Products

  Josef Von Sternberg (1988). “Fun in a Chinese Laundry”

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• But I don't feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn't real and doesn't exist. And that would be stupid.

  Mark Haddon

  Mother, Real, Stupid

  Mark Haddon, Simon Stephens (2013). “Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time: The Play”, p.33, A&C Black

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• My life had taken a stranger turn than I could've ever imagined. What was I doing on this path? Where was I headed really? Who was I to take on a battle between powers I didn't understand— armed with a runaway cat, a uniquely bad drummer, a pair of garden shears, and an Ovaltine-drinking teen Galileo? To save a girl who didn't want to be saved?

  Kami Garcia

  Girl, Taken, Drinking

  4 Copy quote

• It is no disparagement to the garden to say it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns...It will remain a garden only if someone does all these things to it...If you want to see the difference between [the garden's] contribution and the gardener's, put the commonest weed it grows side by side with his hoes rakes, shears, and a packet of weed killer; you have put beauty, energy, and fecundity beside dead, steril things. Just so, our 'decency and common sense' show grey and deathlike beside the geniality of love.

  C. S. Lewis

  Love, Weed, Cutting

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• A good shepherd shears his flock, not flays them.
  [Lat., Boni pastoris est tondere pecus non deglubere.]

  Suetonius

  Shepherds, Flocks, Good Shepherd

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