Quotes About Sharpening

#1. Fire on the mountain," the granny woman said. "They up there sharpening they swords." Then she said that word again: freedom.

Terry Bisson

#2. The outbreath is like a whetstone, and the mind is like the knife or sword that is being sharpened on that stone. When you sharpen a knife, you draw the blade of the knife across the sharpening stone. Following your outbreath is like drawing the blade of mind across the breath. Then

Chogyam Trungpa

#3. Ildiko had been tempted more than a few times to cross her eyes and watch their reaction.
"Don't even think about it, wife. You'll notice half of them are sharpening or cleaning their weapons. All I need is for someone to inadvertently slice themselves open because you startled them.

Grace Draven

#4. I didn't dare to dream of making money. But now of course, I've made many thousands of dollars sharpening pencils.

David Rees

#5. Night wasn't so much falling as sharpening its claws.

Jim Butcher

#6. It's iron that can sharpen iron; wood cannot do that.

Israelmore Ayivor

#7. I tell students that even if they don't like math right now, they can use math as a brain-sharpening tool - a tool that not only builds the foundation for a great career, but that also builds self-confidence, no matter what they choose to do with their lives.

Danica McKellar

#8. Leaders are passionate learners. Leaders are always seeking ways to improve themselves by sharpening their skills. They fully embrace the fact that growing leaders lead growing organizations.

Gary Rohrmayer

#9. I've been really surprised about a lot of the negative comments about artisanal pencil sharpening. Like, it really rubs some people the wrong way.

David Rees

#10. Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far asblather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.

Anton Chekhov

#11. Who the hell did that
just sat around, sharpening his knife collection like it was no big deal?

Kit Rocha

#12. On the other side of the curtain, children were squabbling, a baby was crying, and there was the smell of rat-and-cabbage casserole. Someone was sharpening an axe. And someone else was snoring. For a dwarf in Ankh-Morpork, solitude was something that you had to cultivate on the inside. Books

Terry Pratchett

#13. I'd like to thank Sony for their gracious hospitality, and for not repeatedly punching me in the face. If I seem a little nervous, it's because Kevin Butler was introduced to me backstage as the VP of sharpening things.

Gabe Newell

#14. If you ask me to cut down a tree I'll spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.

Abraham Lincoln

#15. Sharpen your life always; even though it will come to an end like a pencil, we have to keep on writing

Munia Khan

#16. I talked to people in the pencil industry and I talked to people as I was sharpening their pencils about the frustrations they have with pencils, so I really did do my research and I do know more about pencils than most people.

David Rees

#17. Images at their passionate and truthful best are as powerful as words can ever be. If they alone cannot bring change, they can at least provide and understanding mirror of man's actions, thereby sharpening human awareness and awakening conscience.

Cornell Capa

#18. The Bible is not a tool for sharpening our religious competence, but a living and active sword for cleaving our double-minded thoughts and motives, exposing and transforming the contents of our hearts.

Richard J. Foster

#19. To me, if you're lucky enough to make stuff that people will pay money for, do a good job. Really do a good job. Especially if you're talking about real stuff, like terror atrocities and human rights abuses and pencil-sharpening techniques.

David Rees

#20. The healthy being craves an occasional wildness, a jolt from normality, a sharpening of the edge of appetite, his own little festival of Saturnalia, a brief excursion from his way of life.

Robert Morrison MacIver

#21. The party that leans upon the workers but serves the bourgeoisie, in the period of the greatest sharpening of the class struggle, cannot but sense the smells wafted from the waiting grave.

Leon Trotsky

#22. I braced my hands on my hips, examining the drop, the trees, the lake beyond. "What did I do wrong?"

Azriel, who had been sharpening Truth-Teller in his lap, flicked his hazel eyes up to me. "Aside from the tree?

Sarah J. Maas

#23. The freeway is the last frontier. It is unsurpassed as a training ground for the sharpening of survival skills.

Sheila Ballantyne

#24. The blast that swept him came off New Hampshire snow-fields and ice-hung forests. It seemed to have traversed interminable leagues of frozen silence, filling them with the same cold roar and sharpening its edge against the same bitter black-and-white landscape.
("The Triumph Of The Night")

Edith Wharton

#25. God encounters are to occur and continue throughout the life of a believer, constantly bringing each of us into a higher level of spiritual consciousness, constantly sharpening our spiritual senses, constantly challenging our complacency and status quo mentality.

Robin Bertram

#26. I gazed at the far woods and knew our enemies were also sharpening their blades. They had to be confident. They knew the dawn would bring them a battle, victory, plunder, and reputation.

Bernard Cornwell

#27. If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening the ax.

Abraham Lincoln

#28. I think Broadway is good for sharpening your skills. It's the best for really reaching the zenith of your talent. You go so far and reach the peak of it and you say, "Maybe this is the best performance I can do."

Michael Jackson

#29. Grandma Harken was sharpening her garden shears. Her hands slowed on the file and she said finally, "He'll get in trouble and he'll figure it out. Best to do it without us standing over him. It's the only way anybody ever learns to clean up after themselves.

Ursula Vernon

#30. The People's Liberation Army should play the role of shock troops, overcoming fatigue and sharpening vigilance to make new contributions.

Jiang Zemin

#31. ..the Zimmers sharpening their sarcasm. Over an early dinner, they chipped away at each other like little Michelangelos, placing every stroke of the mallet with care and devotion.

Amor Towles

#32. We manipulate nature as if we were stuffing an Alsatian goose. We create new forms of energy; we make new elements; we kill crops; we wash brains. I can hear them in the dark sharpening their lasers.

Erwin Chargaff

#33. Looking from afar - from present to past, from exile to homeland, from island back to mainland, mountain-top at lowland - results notin vision's diffusion but in its sharpening; not in memory's dispersal but in it's plenishment.

Robert Macfarlane

#34. Giant agencies are wobbling like drunkards ... the rest of you should be sharpening your knives,

Dan Wieden

#35. Advance towards socialism cannot but cause the exploiting elements to resist the advance, and the resistance of the exploiters cannot but lead to the inevitable sharpening of the class struggle.

Joseph Stalin

#36. Like a butcher sharpening knife on knife
I sharpen heart on heart inside me.

Yehuda Amichai

#37. You enhance the beauty of your life by sharpening your awareness and deepening your consciousness.

Debasish Mridha

#38. The gray-green surface changes to the bright colors of our three images, sharpening and deepening all at once. And although we don't speak, I know we all see it: Together we look like our mother. Her same eyes, her same mouth, open in surprise to see, at last, her long-cherished wish.

Amy Tan

#39. The completion of a rigorous course in mathematics - it is not even necessary that the student does well in such a course - appears to be an excellent means of sharpening the mind and developing mental skills that are of general benefit.

Keith Devlin

#40. A novel's whole pattern is rarely apparent at the outset of writing, or even at the end; that is when the writer finds out what a novel is about, and the job becomes one of understanding and deepening or sharpening what is already written. That is finding the theme.

Diane Johnson

#41. Invention is activity of mind, as fire is air in motion; a sharpening of the spiritual sight, to discern hidden aptitudes.

Martin Farquhar Tupper

#42. I started sharpening pencils at the census and how that was a difficult time in my life because my marriage was ending and I had quit cartooning and I didn't know what to do with myself.

David Rees

#43. No refining of one's taste in matters of art or literature, no sharpening of one's powers of insight in matters of science or psychology, can ever take the place of one's sensitiveness to the life of the earth. This is the beginning and the end of a person's true education.

John Cowper Powys

#44. One thing I have throughout my career, it felt like I did my best to align myself with quality artists, quality work, and it is a situation of steel sharpening steel.

Common

#45. Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Abraham Lincoln

#46. As a creator of character his peculiarity is that he creates wherever his eyes rest ... With such a power at his command Dickens made his books blaze up, not by tightening the plot or sharpening the wit, but by throwing another handful of people upon the fire.

Virginia Woolf

#47. I'm a good neurosugeon. That's not a boast but a way of acknowledging the innate ability God has given to me. Beginning with determination and using my gifted hands, I went on for training and sharpening for my skills.

Benjamin Carson

#48. She was a femme fatale with creative license, and she was sharpening her pen just for me.

M.K. Williams

#49. Connor smiled sadly at me. "Go on, that's where you belong."
My fangs were already sharpening when I returned his smile. "Just don't try to pet me.

Andrea Cremer

#50. I believe it doesn't really matter where you work as long as you work. Keep sharpening your teeth.

Morgan Freeman

#51. Leaving us with Eric is like hiring a babysitter who spends his time sharpening knives.

Veronica Roth

#52. They were young; time hadn't yet rubbed at them, polishing their differences and sharpening their opinions ...

Kate Morton

#53. The mutual preference of frankness over flattery is what leads to iron sharpening iron.

Torry Martin

#54. The hard part of writing at all is sitting your ass down in a chair and writing it. There's always something better to do, like I've got an interview, sharpening the pencils, trimming the roses. There's always something better to do. Going to a writer's club?

Jerry Pournelle

#55. The broad effects which can be obtained by punishment in man and beast, are the increase of fear, the sharpening of the sense of cunning, the mastery of the desires; so it is that punishment tames man, but does not make him "better.".

Friedrich Nietzsche

#56. Fear, Katherine had once heard, acted as a stimulant sharpening the mind's ability to think.

Dan Brown

#57. In the future, when Microsoft leaves a security-flaw in their code it won't mean that somebody hacks your computer. It will mean that somebody takes control of your servant robot and it stands in your bedroom doorway sharpening a knife and watching you sleep.

Daniel H. Wilson

#58. 2.3.06.02.087: Unnecessary sharpening of pencils constitutes a waste of public resources, and will be punished as appropriate.

Jasper Fforde

#59. Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

Lao-Tzu

#60. I liked sharpening pencils and I was like, "Oh, I wonder if I could get paid to do it." And I figured it out and I did it.

David Rees

#61. Sharpening your knife is never a waste of time.

Robin Hobb

#62. We serve nature's purpose by culling the herd, and our own by sharpening our skills. We are the predatory swarm!

James Luceno

#63. During the lockout year, my focus was the basics, sharpening my moves, my fundamentals.

Brandon Jennings

#64. Training is such a vital part of preparation for a game, you really do train to play. It tops up your ability, like sharpening a carving knife. You can get away with not doing it for a while, as long as you have reached a certain standard of fitness.

Graeme Le Saux

#65. Simon looked for his friend Jace, who was kneeling by himself in the overgrown grass and sharpening a short blade against a stone. Simon assumed Jace had his reasons for this; or possibly he just knew he looked cool doing it. Possibly he and Isabelle could do a joint photo shoot for Badass Monthly.

Cassandra Clare

#66. Desire and dread lay right next to each other in his heart, each sharpening the other.

Maggie Stiefvater

#67. The choice between a Labour government and a Tory one is sharpening minds.

Lucy Powell

#68. I play around with my Japanese Garden. Since Im half way to 70 today I need to start pruning trees and sharpening plants like an old fart.

Jason Bateman

#69. For everybody in their busy lives, you need to invest in sharpening your tools, and you need to invest in longevity.

Ryan Holmes

#70. Abraham Lincoln is reputed to have said that if he had eight hours to cut down a tree, he'd spend several of these hours sharpening his ax.

Irvin D. Yalom

#71. Since learning causes our brains to grow new synapses, I like to believe that the road is sharpening my mind and lengthening my life with surprise.

Gloria Steinem

#72. I thought of Al in his dream, looking nothing like this, more like an elegant bat. Broken? Perhaps, but I had put his butterfly back together with my blood. "I never liked the movie Titanic," I said, and he grunted, his gaze sharpening on me. "They both could have gotten on that damn door.

Kim Harrison

#73. Fear's useless. Either something bad happens or it doesn't: If it doesn't, you've wasted time being afraid, and if it does, you've wasted time that you could have spent sharpening your weapons.

Sarah Rees Brennan

#74. Cicadas, buckling and unbuckling their stomach muscles, yield the sound of someone sharpening scissors. Fall field crickets, the thermometer hounds, add high-pitched tinkling chirps to the jazz, and their call quickens with warm weather, slows again with cool.

Diane Ackerman

#75. The time that I would spend revisiting my old Get Your War On strips is more profitably spent Googling myself and reading comments about how people hate my pencil-sharpening business.

David Rees

#76. If there is pain, use it as an awareness, as meditation, as a sharpening of the soul. And when pleasure is there, use it as a droning, as a forgetfulness. Both are ways to reach God. One is to remember yourself totally, and one is to forget yourself totally.

Rajneesh

#77. Bercelak's kin kept themselves busy by sharpening weapons, reading, talking, or setting things on fire with small bursts of flame.

G.A. Aiken