Top 100 Shovel Quotes
#1. Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel sh*t from a sitting position.
Stephen King
#2. Let soldiers on manoeuvres plant trees. Give police and criminals a shovel and a thousand seedlings.
John Wright
#3. Emma McChesney was engaged in that nerve-wracking process known as getting things out of the way. When Emma McChesney aimed to get things out of the way she did not use a shovel; she used a road-drag.
Edna Ferber
#4. We don't have a monopoly. Anyone who wants to dig a well without a Hughes bit can always use a pick and shovel.
Howard Hughes
#5. The difference between an ignorant fool shoveling manure in a bullpen, and a fool with a PhD, is that the fool with the PhD can shovel more of it, faster.
Dimitris Mita
#6. You may pray to God to remove the hills on your way and fill every pothole on your path; but don't be surprised if God gives you a shovel to do so!
Israelmore Ayivor
#7. She had listened to the phone conversation and following discussion with great interest. Helen very much enjoyed climbing down into other people's lives and muddling around there with a pail and a shovel and possibly one of those old-fashioned striped bathing suits with the legs and arms.
Maggie Stiefvater
#8. In short, if you are using a shovel to dig yourself into a hole, a credit card company will be happy to give you a backhoe.
Jason G. Miller
#9. something got dug up, and whoever's responsible put the shovel in our hands and walked away laughing.
Samuel Sattin
#10. The rules also explicitly stated that carrying a shovel, standing on a rooftop while speaking on a cell phone, or holding binoculars or being out after curfew constituted hostile intent, and we were authorized to use deadly force.
Iraq Veterans Against The War
#11. Does Chester get to put a corsage on his shovel?
Anonymous
#12. Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?
Kobo Abe
#13. God is not remote from us. He is at the point of my pen, my (pick) shovel, my paint brush, my (sewing) needle - and my heart and thoughts.
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin
#14. Some of us are like a shovel brigade that follow a parade down Main Street cleaning up.
Donald T. Regan
#15. When I arrive in Los Angeles in the entertainment community, and I use implements like a shovel and a hammer, our society has distanced itself so far from working with its hands that those incredibly pedestrian skills are perceived as somehow being extraordinary.
Nick Offerman
#16. If someone says "You're not doing that right," hand him the shovel, sit and watch. That's the right way to garden.
Janet Macunovich
#17. My advice to you, Joe, is to pick up a damn shovel, clean up whatever shit you can and learn how to shut your fucking mouth while you still have all of your teeth and can breathe through your nose.
Rhea Rhodan
#18. The point was the struggle. The earth thickened here so that he would labor. The shovel felt heavy so that he could feel he was doing something. The world provided resistance, and as we struggled through, we learned our final lessons.
David Vann
#19. I try not to think of myself as a person
but a metal object, built suddenly by machines in complete darkness
something impossible to hurt with a shovel
Tao Lin
#20. Do you think Lee's all right?'
'I'm praying my ass off.'
At that moment came the happiest sight I'd ever seen. A thin hand appeared out of the shovel, made a V sign or a peace sign-it was hard to tell in the dimness-and disappeared again.
John Marsden
#21. He could hardly lift his spoon during breakfast, and then he was out on the lake, his spoon soon replaced by a shovel.
Louis Sachar
#22. If you want to survive, you must know where your shovel is.
Robin Gregory
#23. No matter who you are, you will be put abed at last with a shovel.
Austin O'Malley
#24. When I found him lying in the ditch holding a shovel, I thought he was sleeping on the job. Turns out he was being even lazier, and he was in fact dead.
Jarod Kintz
#25. I wanted to make sure you were fine ... and that he was okay, too. You didn't, like, stab the boy, did you? I mean, I totally disapprove of murdering hotties, but if you need help burying the body, you know I'll bring the shovel.
Kody Keplinger
#26. Everybody has their shit to shovel,Callahan.Everybody.Now,yours is right up front where everybody can see it.I don't envy you that.But everybody has some,whether you can see it or not.
Sarina Bowen
#27. If you have a lot of what people want and can't get, then you can supply the demand and shovel in the dough.
Lucky Luciano
#28. You want to bang something too, sonny, you can borrow my shovel!
Abigail Roux
#29. This better be shit you can handle without Merry gettin' a pissed off look, Cher. 'Cause you pissed off gives me a quiver. Merry pissed off might mean I'm in the dark with a shovel and a flashlight, coverin' a brother's ass by buryin' bodies.
Kristen Ashley
#30. She could undoubtedly get the boy to dig his own grave. With enough encouragement and a little cleavage, he wouldn't even need a shovel.
Nicole Castle
#31. When some remote ancestor of ours invented the shovel, he became a giver: He could plant a tree. And when the axe was invented, he became a taker: He could chop it down. Whoever owns land has thus assumed, whether he knows it or not, the divine functions of creating and destroying plants.
Aldo Leopold
#32. An architect doesn't go off with a shovel and dig his foundation and lay every brick. He's still an artist.
Sol LeWitt
#33. My next-door neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration.
Gary Johnson
#34. Mace leaned on his shovel and did a passable imitation. "'I think we'd rather not.' Very good, guv'nor. I'll remember that next time."
"Divigation was nice. Where'd you get that one?"
"He swallowed a ****ing dictionary," Corporal Nettle said proudly.
Ian McEwan
#35. Frank tried to look like he was wrestling with his conscience, although he couldn't have found his conscience without a shovel and an exhumation order.
John Connolly
#36. Francis, I need to borrow your car. Bring gloves."
He laughed hysterically over the line. "why? Are you trying to hide evidence?" I didn't bother laughing with him.
"Shit" Francis cursed. "Please don't tell me I need to bring a shovel.
Amber Kell
#37. Students, eh? Love 'em or hate 'em, you can't hit them with a shovel!
Terry Pratchett
#38. Listen, punk. To me you're nothin' but dogshit, you understand? And a lot of things can happen to dogshit. It can be scraped up with a shovel off the ground. It can dry up and blow away in the wind. Or it can be stepped on and squashed. So take my advice and be careful where the dog shits ya!
Clint Eastwood
#39. Some of us need to put down the megaphone and just grab a shovel. Little less talk and a lot more action.
Brad Lomenick
#40. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than a shovel.
Mark Twain
#41. she clutched her purse and was completely composed, gracefully accepting people's sympathies, but when they started to shovel the dirt over old dick's coffin she began to weep, and her grief was strong enough to chase the sparrows from the trees.
Alice Hoffman
#42. Soetsu Yanagi, in the "Unknown Craftsman", writes, "Man is most free when his tools are proportionate to his needs." For example, for optimal productivity, a carpenter needs woodworking tools and an environment conducive to his work, not a steam shovel or army tank.
Jeff Davidson
#43. There's a lot of intelligence in the hands.When you pick up a shovel, the hands know what to do. The same thing's true of sitting at the piano.
Tom Waits
#44. Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and - like rye shaken together in a shovel - the guests who had been scattered about in different rooms came together and crowded in the large drawing-room by the door of the ballroom.
Leo Tolstoy
#45. Our earliest evidence of government, in the ruins of Babylon and Egypt, shows nothing but ziggurats and pyramids of wasted taxpayer money, the TARP funds and shovel-ready stimulus programs of their day.
P. J. O'Rourke
#46. Baby, your nothing but too much trouble. Gotta bury this love and bury the shovel.
Clay Walker
#47. She's my best friend. I'm pretty sure if I committed murder, she'd grab a shovel instead of judging me.
Vi Keeland
#48. When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.
Jackson Pollock
#49. I'm not against thinking; I'm only against thinking that thinking on its own will get you out of a hole. Shovel also needed.
Scott Westerfeld
#50. Mother, are you there? I love you. I never meant to hit you over the head with that shovel.
Eminem
#51. I think Michigan keeps you sane and on an even keel through the ups and downs. In Michigan, I do fireworks, shovel snow and live life.
Jeff Daniels
#52. Hey, so I told my hoe yesterday that ...
Aww, he talks to his shovel. How cute.
Zechariah Barrett
#53. That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not, "I want to write about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and - boop! shovel. "Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body."
George Saunders
#54. Each line she etched into the metal was another life cut off, another heart stopped at the slice of this very blade.
A hundred lives to cover up the pain of the very first. A hundred more to shovel away the hurt into a place that was dark and deep.
Sasha Alsberg
#55. Sometimes it ain't the drunk or the sinner who needs a shovel across the rear, it's the ones who could quote you chapter and verse about grace, but don't hand it out.
Lisa Wingate
#57. Nobody wants to hear that you will try your best. It is the wrong thing to say. It is like saying 'I probably won't hit you with a shovel.' Suddenly everyone is afraid you will do the opposite.
Lemony Snicket
#58. The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.
Wendell Berry
#59. All my life, she gave to me a shovel and said, Fill these holes inside of me, Pari.
Khaled Hosseini
#60. Oh that I had the opportunity to rethink so many of my decisions, for the pitfalls into which I have so frequently fallen were often dug with the shovel of those very decisions.
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#61. Maybe the reason we like stories so much is because they deliver wish fulfillment. Maybe we sit in the dark and shovel sugar into our mouths because in so many stories everything is made right, and we secretly long for that ourselves.
Donald Miller
#62. If I find a cow turd on my front steps, I'm not satisfied knowing that I'll be mentally prepared to find some future cow turd. I want to shovel that turd onto my garden and hope the cow returns every week so I never have to buy fertilizer again.*
Scott Adams
#63. Just when you think you've hit rock bottom, someone will hand you a shovel.
Jill Shalvis
#64. I prefer the Chinese restaurants that have the silverware on the table when you arrive, because there's nothing more humiliating than starting with chopsticks and having to turn to the waiter and being like, Uh, yeah, hi, uh, I'm too white. Do you have a shovel back there?
Jim Gaffigan
#65. What's up?' he said, like the church was always burning down and I always called him on a school night, telling him to come over after dark and bring a shovel.
Brenna Yovanoff
#66. If you do not take it up with you in some way, I shall be under the necessity of breaking your head with this shovel
Edgar Allan Poe
#67. Some of us have great runways already built for us. If you have one, take off. But if you don't have one, realize it is your responsibility to grab a shovel and build one for yourself and for those who will follow after you.
Amelia Earhart
#68. THUD.
Thud.
Thud.
The shovel hit wood, and stuck.
V.E Schwab
#69. A stock certificate is not a tool, like a shovel, or a commodity, like a pound of cheese. What we sell a customer is not a share in a business, but a view of the Elysian Fields. A financier is a creative artist. Our function is to stimulate the imagination. We are poets!
Jean Giraudoux
#70. In New York in 1915 I bought at a hardware store a snow shovel on which I wrote in advance of the broken arm .
Marcel Duchamp
#72. students, eh, you can love them or hate them, but you're not allowed to hit them with a shovel
Terry Pratchett
#74. We are all born with an innate understanding of interpersonal equity - the idea that if you lend me your rake today, I'll respond in kind when you come to borrow my shovel tomorrow. Or nearly all of us are born with that. Psychopaths aren't.
Jeffrey Kluger
#75. The shovel is bigger than the spoon, but it can never ever do the work the spoon does. They both look similar; they both have different sizes but one more thing not to forget is that "they are important in their own roles"! Each is unique! You are unique too. Take the lead!
Israelmore Ayivor
#77. Sydney's arms were beginning to ache from lifting the shovel, but for the first time in a year, she wasn't cold. Her cheeks burned, and she was sweating through her coat, and she felt alive.
As far as she was concerned, that was the only good thing about digging up a corpse.
Victoria Schwab
#78. The reward for toil had been more toil. If you dug the best ditches, they gave you a bigger shovel.
Terry Pratchett
#79. You don't plow under the corn because the seed was planted with a neighbor's shovel.
Ken Kesey
#80. During the gold rush its a good time to be in the pick and shovel business
Mark Twain
#81. Sure the shovel and tongs To each other belongs.
Samuel Lover
#82. How do you fight against a mountain? How do you move it when you don't even have a shovel?" "Maybe you don't have to move it," Etta said, folding the gown over the lid of the trunk. "Maybe you have to climb it.
Alexandra Bracken
#83. It's nice to have money, but the first thing I did with money was buy my father a snow-blower, because my job was to shovel snow, and I wasn't there to do it any more, so I was able to buy him a blower.
Richard Gere
#84. The only man who makes money following the races is one who does it with a broom and shovel.
Elbert Hubbard
#85. When I'm at the bottom looking up, the main question may not be 'how do I get out of this hole?' In reality, the main question might be 'how do I get rid of the shovel that I used to dig it?
Craig D. Lounsbrough
#86. There are times you find yourself standing by the wayside, watching as someone struggles to dig a well with a spoon, and you wish with all your heart you had arms and a shovel.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#87. The questions that creep around at four thirty in the morning are not the kind that can be easily dismissed. You can beat them with a shovel, and they'll just keep getting back up.
Maureen Johnson
#88. In a breaker's yard you discover anything can have a new life, be reborn as part of a car or railway carriage, or a shovel blade. You take that older life and you link it to a stranger.
Michael Ondaatje
#89. If he lived by a simple code of ethics, it was not an end in itself, but a way to get something done without selling his soul or destroying his reputation. It was a tool to be wielded like a shovel or a stick of dynamite.
Neal Stephenson
#90. When President Teddy Roosevelt posed for the cameras astride a massive steam shovel during construction of the Panama Canal in 1906, it was more than a simple photo op. Though the scene was clearly staged, it symbolized a crucial moment in American history.
Alan Huffman
#91. Some men and women move mountains, even if it's one shovel full at a time.
K.R. Royal
#92. When we ask God to move a mountain, God may give us a shovel.
Shane Claiborne
#93. It [retirement] was absolutely boring. You can't go and say, 'I'm retired now. That's it!' It won't take long and you're really gone for good and someone throws the last shovel of dirt on a coffin with your name on it. That's the moment you're really retiring - when you die.
Ozzy Osbourne
#94. Deep down in their psyches, both brothers were really just waiting to get old enough to sit on a porch and bang things with a shovel (Armed & Dangerous)
Abigail Roux
#95. If you think the summer sun is too hot, just remember, at least you don't have to shovel it.
Bob Dylan
#99. My final word: don't follow your dreams ... chase them. With a stick, or a shovel, or whatever you have handy. Get that [bleep]ing dream!
Maureen Johnson
#100. When she had discovered that I hungered to learn, she commenced to shovel knowledge my way as vigorously as she spaded the cowpats into her beloved flower beds.
Geraldine Brooks
