Human Hands Quotes

I will lay thy stones with fair colors (Isa. 54:11).

The stones from the wall said, "We come from the mountains far away, from the sides of the craggy hills. Fire and water have worked on us for ages, but made us only crags. Human hands have made us into a dwelling where the children of your immortal race are born, and suffer, and rejoice, and find rest and shelter, and learn the lessons set them by our Maker and yours. But we have passed through much to fit us for this. Gunpowder has rent our very heart; pickaxes have cleaved and broken us, it seemed to us often with out design or meaning, as we lay misshapen stones in the quarry; but gradually we were cut into blocks, and some of us were chiseled with finer instruments to a sharper edge. But we are complete now, and are in our places, and are of service.

"You are in the quarry still, and not complete, and therefore to you, as once to us, much is inexplicable. But you are destined for a higher building, and one day you will be placed in it by hands not human, a living stone in a heavenly temple."

In the still air the music lies unheard;In the rough marble beauty hides unseen;
To make the music and the beauty needs
The master's touch, the sculptor's chisel keen.
Great Master, touch us with Thy skillful hands;
Let not the music that is in us die!
Great Sculptor, hew and polish us; nor let,
Hidden and lost, thy form within us lie! ~ Mrs. Charles E. Cowman

That thought, I can't find the right words, is based not on something negative but on something positive. On the positive awareness that art is something great and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from man's soul, while much of the proficiency and technical expertise associated with art reminds me of what would be called self-righteousness in religion. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

More power than all the success slogans ever penned by human hand is the realization for every man that he has but one boss. That boss is the man - he - himself. ~ Gabriel Heatter

One must flee those places where life throbs and seek out lonely spots untouched by human hand in order to lift the magic veil of nature ~ Guido Von List

REACH, n. The radius of action of the human hand. The area within which it is possible (and customary) to gratify directly the propensity to provide. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Under reverent, patient care, the wild seed gradually relinquishes its protective husk and entrusts its reproductive life to human hands.(thus) this sacred law and covenant with Mother Earth; Respectful care brings abundance. If you take, you must give back-Return the gift. ~ Marilou Awiakta

The human hand allows the mind to reveal itself. ~ Maria Montessori

We are hungry for things that have touched human hands. ~ Faith Popcorn

He couldn't remember the last time human hands had willingly touched him.
Not true. Miranda had. She had touched him as if he were just a man.
He had lived on those moments ever since, pulled them to the fore when loneliness threatened to suck him down and drown him ~ Kristen Callihan

But this became the first plan of his life to fail. God told him - apparently with the help of human hands - to depart from his ribcage. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Salvation is a word for the divine spaciousness that comes to human beings in all the tight places where their lives are at risk, regardless of how they got there or whether they know God's name. Sometimes it comes as an extended human hand and sometimes as a bolt from the blue, but either way it opens a door in what looked for all the world like a wall. This is the way of life, and God alone knows how it works. ~ Barbara Brown Taylor

The world is by no means averse to religion. In fact, it is devoted to it with a passion. It will buy any recipe for salvation as long as that formula leaves the responsibility for cooking up salvation firmly in human hands. The world is drowning in religion. But it is scared out of its wits by any mention of the grace that takes the world home gratis. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy! ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. ~ James Madison

Strawberries were too delicate to be picked by machine. The perfectly ripe ones bruised at even too heavy a human touch. It hit her then that every strawberry she had ever eaten - every piece of fruit - had been picked by calloused human hands. Every piece of toast with jelly represented someone's knees, someone's aching back and hips, someone with a bandanna on her wrist to wipe away the sweat. Why had no one told her about this before? ~ Alison Luterman

Life itself is the real and most miraculous miracle of all. If one had never before seen a human hand and were suddenly presented for the first time with this strange and wonderful thing, what a miracle, what a magnificently shocking and inexplicable and mysterious thing it would be. ~ Christopher Fry

Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny. ~ Friedrich Schiller

One important theme of this book is that globalization and media are not abstract, unknowable, inevitable, inexorable forces of economics and technology. They are not out of the control of human hands. They have been and will be created by people. They are the result of human actions, or what academics call "human agency. ~ Jack Lule

His delight at seeing this creation of human hands was mixed with the bitterness of finally understanding that nothing like it ever would be created again. ~ Dmitry Glukhovsky

Art is something greater and higher than our own skill or knowledge or learning. That art is something which, though produced by human hands, is not wrought by hands alone, but wells up from a deeper source, from a man's soul. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand, this oldest tool with which man has dug his way from savagery, and with which he is constantly groping forward. ~ Jane Addams

Being cursed with human hands is no excuse for clumsiness! ~ Greg Rucka

Man tends to regard the order he lives in as natural. The houses he passes on his way to work seem more like rocks rising out of the earth than like products of human hands. He considers the work he does in his office or factory as essential to the har­monious functioning of the world. The clothes he wears are exactly what they should be, and he laughs at the idea that he might equally well be wearing a Roman toga or medieval armor. He respects and envies a minister of state or a bank director, and regards the possession of a considerable amount of money the main guarantee of peace and security. He cannot believe that one day a rider may appear on a street he knows well, where cats sleep and chil­dren play, and start catching passers-by with his lasso. He is accustomed to satisfying those of his physio­logical needs which are considered private as dis­creetly as possible, without realizing that such a pattern of behavior is not common to all human so­cieties. In a word, he behaves a little like Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush, bustling about in a shack poised precariously on the edge of a cliff.
His first stroll along a street littered with glass from bomb-shattered windows shakes his faith in the "naturalness" of his world. The wind scatters papers from hastily evacuated offices, papers labeled "Con­fidential" or "Top Secret" that evoke visions of safes, keys, conferences, couriers, and secretaries. Now the wind blows them through the street for anyone to read; yet no ~ Czesław Miłosz

All power in human hands is liable to be abused. ~ James Madison

The sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago ... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands. ~ Henry Ellis

Like the Bible-a document that often contradicts itself and from which one can construct sharply different arguments-theology is the product of human hands and hearts. ~ Jon Meacham

If words were nuts and bolts, people could make any bolt fit into any nut: they'd just squish the one into the other, as in some surrealistic painting where everything goes soft. Language, in human hands, becomes almost like a fluid, despite the coarse grain of its components. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

Hippopotami should not have human hands and carry torches ... men should not have the heads of crocodiles ... ~ H.P. Lovecraft

But, after men began to form general ideas, to think out types of houses, buildings, towers, &c., and to prefer certain types to others, it came about, that each man called perfect that which he saw agree with the general idea he had formed of the thing in question, and called imperfect that which he saw agree less with his own preconceived type, even though it had evidently been completed in accordance with the idea of its artificer. This seems to be the only reason for calling natural phenomena, which, indeed, are not made with human hands, perfect or imperfect: for men are wont to form general ideas of things natural, no less than of things artificial, and such ideas they hold as types, believing that Nature (who they think does nothing without an object) has them in view, and has set them as types before herself. Therefore, when they behold something in Nature, which does not wholly conform to the preconceived type which they have formed of the thing in question, they say that Nature has fallen short or has blundered, and has left her work incomplete. ~ Baruch Spinoza

TENACITY, n. A certain quality of the human hand in its relation to the coin of the realm. It attains its highest development in the hand of authority and is considered a serviceable equipment for a career in politics. ~ Ambrose Bierce

After all, Rutherford had as deep a sense of the mysteries of nature as Einstein. And the human spirit expresses itself as eloquently in the work of human hands as in the work of human minds. Rutherford was supreme as an experimenter and Einstein was supreme as a theorist, but each of them held the other in deep respect. Both of them understood that the human spirit is at its best when hands and minds are working together. ~ Freeman Dyson

No one person can fulfill all your needs. But the community can truly hold you. The community can let you experience the fact that, beyond your anguish, there are human hands that hold you and show you God's faithful love. ~ Henri Nouwen

Like the lotus flower, business blooms in the mud, and in the dark of night. The lotus is an amazing creation of God, because for all of its beauty, it is the sum total of work performed in a mess. It is also a creation that has the ability to create seeds in its habitat for a very long time without help from human hands. The lotus has the ability to survive beyond the mercurial nature of weather (storms, frost). The lotus is one strong, powerful, and resilient flower that blossoms in a substance (mud) that none of us would want to touch. ~ Robin Caldwell

Hold out your hands to feel the luxury of sunbeams. Press the soft blossoms against your cheek, and finger their graces of form, their delicate mutability of shape, their pliancy and freshness. Expose your face to the aerial floods that sweep the heavens, 'inhale great draughts of space,' wonder, wonder at the wind's unwearied activity. Pile note on note the infinite music that flows increasingly to your soul from the tactual sonorities of a thousand branches and tumbling waters. How can the world be shriveled when this most profound, emotional sense, touch, is faithful to its service? I am sure that if a fairy bade me choose between the sense of sight and that of touch, I would not part with the warm, endearing contact of human hands… ~ Helen Keller

If you believe that science provides not basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, there for, life itself doesn't have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge. Yet the paradox is that scientific methodology is the product of human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth. We build scientific theories to organize and manipulate the world, to reduce phenomena into manageable units. Science is based on reproducibility and manufactured objectivity. As strong as that makes its ability to generate claims about matter and energy, it also makes scientific knowledge inapplicable to the existential, visceral nature or human life, which is unique and subjective and unpredictable. Science may provide the most useful may to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue. ~ Paul Kalanithi

Now it's time to make the masts and booms out of toothpicks, then tie very fine wire around the ends of the toothpicks to act as hinges. This is also very easy, unless you have human hands, then it will be unbelievably fucking exasperating because everything you're working with is fucking miniscule and dumb. ~ Colin Nissan

I'm looking for a God that isn't designed by human hands because He's infinitely out of arm's reach. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

To be wary of science is not to fear progress, or to be ignorant, or to fear the unknown. To be wary of science is to be skeptical about whether or not innovation belongs in human hands. No matter how intelligent a scientist may indeed be, like every human being who has ever lived, the promise of power coupled with one's own biases, prejudices and partiality will undoubtedly taint the end result. Science will always be used to push a certain agenda or to benefit specific people. To believe otherwise is naive. ~ Rebecca McNutt

The computer on the desk of the student in school knows no history. It is not like a book, worn at the edges by human hands. No little child has written a note in it, long ago. It will not be passed down to the children of the children who use it. Its "meaning" is that there is no enduring meaning. ~ Anthony M. Esolen

That the gods die from time to time is due to man's sudden discovery that they do not mean anything, that they are made by human hands, useless idols of wood and stone. ~ C. G. Jung

On the one hand poetry is useless. It can't change the world materially. On the other hand it is a basic part of human existence. It came into the world when humans did. It's what makes human beings human. ~ Bei Dao

His skin was furred like that of a horse. Snakes danced and hissed from his head, their thin bodies acting as his hair. Two long fangs protruded over his bottom lip. He had human hands, but his feet were hooves. Muscle was stacked upon muscle on his torso, and his nipples were pierced by two large silver rings. Metal chains circled his neck, wrists and ankles, and those chains kept him tethered to the pillars. "Who are you?" Strider demanded. No need to ask what the thing was. Ugly as shit covered it. He ~ Gena Showalter

After many months of writing, it occured to me that it might be possible to photograph, in the flesh, what I was attempting to capture in words. I bought a Rolleiflex camera and began to take pictures of objects or structures that were used and abused by human hands ~ Wright Morris

Once you put human life in human hands, you have started on a slippery slope that knows no boundaries. ~ Leon Kass

Nearly everyone underestimates how powerful the touch of another person's hand can be. The need to be touched is something so primal, so fundamentally a part of our existence as human beings that its true impact upon us can be difficult to put into words. That power doesn't necessarily have anything to do with sex, either. From the time we are infants, we learn to associate the touch of a human hand with safety, with comfort, with love. ~ Jim Butcher

...the Virgin of Guadalupe was not a mere Christian front for the worship of a pagan goddess. The adoration of Guadalupe represented a profound change of Aztec religious belief...The pagan Tonantzin was a dual-natured earth goddess who fed her Mexican children and devoured their corpses. She wore a necklace of human hands and hearts with a human skull hanging over her flaccid breasts, which nursed both gods and men. her idol depicts her as a monster with two streams of blood shaped like serpents flowing from her neck. Like other major deities in the Aztec pantheon, Tonantzin was both a creator and destroyer...The Christian ideals of beauty, love, and mercy associated with the Virgin of Guadalupe were never attributed to the pagan deity."
William Madsen, "Religious Syncretism", Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 6, p.378. ~ William Madsen

Yet the paradox is that scientific methodology is the product of human hands and thus cannot reach some permanent truth. We build scientific theories to organize and manipulate the world, to reduce phenomena into manageable units. Science is based on reproducibility and manufactured objectivity. As strong as that makes its ability to generate claims about matter and energy, it also makes scientific knowledge inapplicable to the existential, visceral nature of human life, which is unique and subjective and unpredictable. Science may provide the most useful way to organize empirical, reproducible data, but its power to do so is predicated on its inability to grasp the most central aspects of human life: hope, fear, love, hate, beauty, envy, honor, weakness, striving, suffering, virtue. Between ~ Paul Kalanithi

Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

When addressing religion in morphology the average person will seek religious texts and otherwise human instruments and tools to explain the Universe or their own spiritual experience. Yet human hands are not paws or clawed. Humans are not quadrupeds so texts for cats is kind of out of the question one might think. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

I believe in animal rights, and high among them is the right to the gentle stroke of a human hand. ~ Robert Breault

Jesus shouldn't have died so early and then he could have got twice as much across. They killed him and then twisted so many of the best things he said. Human hands started messing it all up and now so much of religion is hogwash. ~ Jimi Hendrix

We know of our own knowledge that we are human beings, and, as such, imperfect. But we are bathed by the communications industry in a ceaseless tide of inhuman, impossible perfection. ~ Margaret Halsey

I awake with a start, shaking the cobwebs of sleep from my mind. It's pitch-dark out, the wind howling. It takes a couple seconds to get my bearings, to realize I'm in my parents' bed, Ryder beside me, on his side, facing me. Our hands are still joined, though our fingers are slack now.
"Hey, you," he says sleepily. "That one was loud, huh?"
"What was?"
"Thunder. Rattled the windows pretty bad."
"What time is it?"
"Middle of the night, I'd say."
I could check my phone, but that would require sitting up and letting go of his hand. Right now, I don't want to do that. I'm too comfortable. "Have you gotten any sleep at all?" I ask him, my mouth dry and cottony.
"I think I drifted off for a little bit. Till…you know…the thunder started up again."
"Oh. Sorry."
"It should calm down some when the eye moves through."
"If there's still an eye by the time it gets here. The center of circulation usually starts breaking up once it goes inland." Yeah, all those hours watching the Weather Channel occasionally come in handy.
He gives my hand a gentle squeeze. "Wow, maybe you should consider studying meteorology. You know, if the whole film-school thing doesn't work out for you."
"I could double major," I shoot back.
"I bet you could."
"What are you going to study?" I ask, curious now. "I mean, besides football. You've got to major in something, don't you?"
He doesn't answer right away. I wonder what's going through hi ~ Kristi Cook

Simply because, one hand, there are the haters, The hater has power. All we can do is oppose it, or one becomes an accomplice. ~ Elie Wiesel

Dogs are in on our human silliness; lions are not. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

It is an assumption brought forth countless of times in various contexts that the world would be better, drifting slower towards the ruin, if women had the "power"; if political leadership, decision making, government and economic life was in the hands of women. I think reality, the observation material, supports the assumption. ~ Pentti Linkola

When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. But when life hands you hurricanes, you go surfing. ~ Jon Foreman

A man with a career can have no time to waste upon his wife and friends; he has to devote it wholly to his enemies. ~ Pearl Mary Teresa Craigie

Ronan crossed his arms to wait, just looking. At Adam's fine cheekbones, his furrowed fair eyebrows, his beautiful hands, everything washed out by the furious light. He had memorized the shape of Adam's hands in particular: the way his thumb jutted awkwardly, boyishly; the roads of the prominent veins; the large knuckles that punctuated his long fingers. In dreams Ronan put them to his mouth. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

But, ancient Greece and ancient Rome - people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings back then, OK? People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

In its report issued that year, 1991, Amnesty International recorded protests against human rights abuses in over fifty countries, the protest to thirteen countries making specific reference to torture. These are the kinds of thing many of us have a vague background awareness of, without there being much publicity unless the perpetrators are some currently loathed regime, or unless some highly visible Westerner is among the victims. ~ Jonathan Glover

What ever the course of our lives, we should recieve them as the highest gift from the hand of God, in which equally reposed the power to do nothing whatever for us. Indeed, we should accept misfortune not only in thanks, but in infinite gratitude to Providence, which by such means detaches us from an excessive love for Earthly things and elevates our minds to the celestial and divine. ~ Galileo Galilei

I ignored the dark circles under her eyes, just like I ignored the clenching in my stomach that she was starting to bruise more around her hands. ~ Rachel Van Dyken

I gathered all of the Jewish mukhtars, who have contact with Arabs in different villages and asked them to whisper in the ears of some Arabs that a great Jewish reinforcement has arrived in Galile and that it is going to burn all of the villages of the Huleh. They should suggest to these Arabs, as their friends, to escape while there is still time ... The tactic reached its goal completely. The building of the police station at Halsa fell into our hands without a shot. The wide areas were cleaned ... ~ Yigal Allon

To love is human, it is also human to forgive. ~ Plautus

God strikes not with both hands, for to the sea he made heavens, and to rivers foords. ~ George Herbert

Probably Verrari," muttered the senior, who was methodically torturing a piece of ivory with a slender carving knife. He wanted it to come out like a sculpted terrace he'd seen at the Temple of Iono, alive with lovely relief and fantastical representations of drowned men taken by the Lord of the Grasping Waters. What he seemed to be producing more closely resembled a lump of white dogshit, life-size. "Sooner trust a sailing ship to a blind drunkard with no hands than a Verrari. ~ Scott Lynch

we are all born from the same celestial seed; all of us have the same father, from which the earth, the mother who feeds us, receives clear drops of rain, producing from them bright wheat and lush trees, and the human race, and the species of beasts, offering up the foods with which all bodies are nourished, to lead a sweet life and generate offspring ~ Carlo Rovelli

We need to attack the false foundation of autonomous human reasoning that leads to evolution and millions of years, and proclaim that God's revealed Word is authoritative and its history of the world is foundational to Christian morality and the gospel of Jesus Christ. ~ Ken Ham

Forgive yourself for being an imperfect human being. The goddess doesn't expect perfection, although she does expect you to try and do better. Allow yourself to be happy. Live the life you want, and follow the path of your heart. ~ Deborah Blake

Dewey believed that education has a practical function and should not be seen as a series of pointless hurdles to jump over before 'real life' begins. Education isn't a preamble to life; it's part of life, and it exists to solve practical human problems and meet human needs. ~ Gregory Bassham

I believe in a world of justice and human rights for all. A world where girls can grow up free of fear of abuse. A world where women are treated with the respect and dignity that is their right. A world where poverty is not acceptable. My dear young friends, you can make this your world. ~ Ban Ki-moon

It is essential to the sanity of mankind that each one should think the other crazy - a condition with which the cynicism of human nature so cordially complies, one could wish it were a concurrence upon a subject more noble. ~ Emily Dickinson

The arguments of M. Despine,' who is the principal representative of this conception, appear all questionable to us. The ' Despine, Psychologie naturelU, l868, i., p. 490 et seq. ; Ktude scUn-tijique sur U somnambulisme, 1880. unity, the co-ordination of these muscular contractions, their complication, their unquestionable relation with tactile, auditive, or visual impressions, the electivity, the intelligence, in a word, so constantly manifested in them, appear to us, first of all, psychological phenomena. If there is no sensation, no thought connected with it, we do not understand how an arm can keep the delicate position we give it; can distinguish the touch of our hand, obey it, and not obey the touch of other hands; can repeat outward movements which can be known only by hearing or sight, etc. All these acts are conscious, the consequences of a sensation, of a vision, of a hearing, of a preference. ~ Anonymous

When you are in my arms
I feel you like a moon
That descended into my hands ~ Jyoti Patel

I know you've been aching to have your hands on my staff," I said to Ascher, as Nicodemus examined the altar for himself. I held out my hand. "But I'd rather be the one fondling my tool. Wizards are weird like that."
"Wow," she said, and flashed me a grin, her face flushed, excited. "You left me nowhere to go with that one. I have nothing to add. ~ Jim Butcher

Hey...you okay?"
I recognized the voice-how had my dreams known his voice?-but when he crouched down next to me, I skittered away.
"Don't touch me!" I snapped.
He held up his hands to show he was harmless. "Okay, okay," he said with a smirk. "You were the one chasing me."
I glared at him. It was an impressive show of restraint on my part, when the truth was that having him physically in front of me was wreaking havoc on my body and my brain. My heart was pounding fast, and my mind played a loop of every moment we'd shared in my dreams.
I forced myself to remember he was a stranger. Quite possibly a dangerous stranger. I needed answers from him, but I also needed to stay strong.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you were hurt."
"I am hurt. I twisted my ankle."
"Maybe you shouldn't be chasing strange men through the woods, then."
"Maybe you shouldn't pretend you don't know who I am."
His eyes widened in shock for a moment. "You reme-"
Then he twitched his head briefly to the side, as if flicking away an unwanted thought, and his face relaxed. Only the clenched muscle in his jaw gave away any tension.
"You must be mistaken. I don't think we've ever met."
"Really? You look at most girls like you were caught with your hand in their purse?"
"I don't know what you're talking-"
"And then you ran away. Full speed, even though you knew I was trying to catch up with you. That's not normal. That's not how you act w ~ Hilary Duff

[About Jews] By nature we are like all other human beings, yet our people is unlike others, because our life is different, our history is different, our teacher is the Exile. ~ I.L. Peretz

Ultimately you're trying to reach across and find some other person, some other human warmth. But it is, especially in written poetry, it is inscribed in a text and the text can't do that work by itself and you as a poet can only do your best. ~ Edward Hirsch

But water doesn't care for human sorrows. It flows without slowing or quickening its pace in the darkness of the earth, where only stones will hear. ~ Emmi Itaranta

White and shining virgin of all human virtues, ark of the covenant between earth and heaven, tender and strong companion partaking of the lion and of the lamb, Prayer! Prayer will give you the key of heaven! Bold and pure as innocence, strong, like all that is single and simple, this glorious, invincible Queen rests, nevertheless, on the material world; she takes possession of it; like the sun, she clasps it in a circle of light. ~ Honore De Balzac

There's something easy about the idea that vampirism is some kind of disease- then they can't help it if they attack us, that they commit murders and atrocities, that they can only control themselves sometimes. They're sick; its not their fault. And there's something even easier about the idea of demonic invasion, something forcing our loved ones to do all manner of terrible things. Still not their fault, only now we can destroy them. But the third option, the possibility that there's something monstrous inside of us that can be unleashed, is the most disturbing of all. Maybe its just us, us with a raging hunger, us with a couple of accidental murders under our belt. Humanity, with the training wheels off the bike, careening down a steep hill. Humanity, freed from the constraints of consequence and gifted with power. Humanity, grown away from all things human. ~ Holly Black

He who knows no hardships will know no hardihood. He who faces no calamity will need no courage. Mysterious though it is, the characteristics in human nature which we love best grow in a soil with a strong mixture of troubles. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick