Sticks And Stones Quotes

Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel. ~ Philip Pullman

Sticks and stones may break me, but the words you said just tore my heart in two. ~ Tracy Lawrence

As children we are taught, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me!" As adults we teach those same words to our own children while simultaneously we sue one another for defamation or verbal assault. Ah, the naked leading the blind. ~ Bryan Oftedahl

..and only sticks and stones can break my bones. ~ Mark Haddon

Harsh words can cause more wounds than sticks and stones. ~ Dada J.P. Vaswani

Grown-ups and children are not readily encouraged to unearth the power of words. Adults are repeatedly assured a picture is worth a thousand of them, while the playground response to almost any verbal taunt is 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'
I don't beg so much as command to differ. ~ Inga Muscio

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will make me cry by myself in a corner for hours. ~ Eric Idle

I'm not insane, I'm neurologically variant," she snapped back. "Sticks and stones, asshole. ~ Mira Grant

the Kauravas and the Pandavas turned from demi-gods into cave men, the great war reduced to a tribal feud fought with sticks and stones. ~ William Dalrymple

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Someone once said that World War Three would be fought with atomic weapons and the next war with sticks and stones. ~ Robert F. Kennedy

Strange how mean words can return to ones thoughts, years after they've been callously thrown at you. They replay in your mind, spiking a sense of remembered pain. Nasty name calling can be an ugly memory that stabs unexpectedly - not unlike a nightmare where you wake up crying.
Sticks and stones, may break your bones - yet, cruel names can hurt you. ~ Nikki Sex

The power of words to deceive is a danger far exceeding any we might encounter from physical weapons. Sticks and stones can break bones! But words can lead worlds into ruin! ~ Steve Bivans

My wife has made up Ty's old bedroom for you," he told him in a low voice as Ty and Mara argued over the merits of the couch cushions versus the rocks out back.
"Oh Christ." Zane laughed, falling back in his chair. "He won't let me forget this. Losing his bed to me."
"Well," Earl said with a sigh, "it's either that or fight his mama over it." He sat and watched Ty and Mara for a moment, sipping at his coffee contentedly. "Ain't none of us ever won that fight," he told Zane flatly.
"Me and Zane'll just bunk together," Ty was arguing.
Mara laughed at him. "You two boys won't fit in a double bed any more than I'll still fit in my wedding dress," she scoffed.

[...]

"Good morning, Zane dear, how did you sleep?" Mara asked as she came up to him and pressed a glass of orange juice into his hands.
"Ah, okay," Zane hedged, taking the glass out of self-defense. "I don't do too well sleeping in strange places lately, but…."
"Well, Ty's bed is about as strange a place as you can get," Deuce offered under his breath. He followed it with a muffled grunt as Ty kicked him under the table. ~ Abigail Roux

Maddie shrugged at that. She actually looked like she might start chanting, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words from stupid Russian kidnappers can never hurt me. ~ Ally Carter

One of the things that all kids are taught by their parents is this old "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." ~ William J. Clinton

Sticks and stones keep breaking my bones but these words, these words will kill me. ~ Tahereh Mafi

I grew up under the sticks and stones rule. I didn't put my hands on you so why should you put your hands on me or my family. ~ Tim Hardaway

What is that old children's rhyme, 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me'? Anyone who says that doesn't understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It's more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

At our next session, the shrink calls this metaphor psychological warfare. You must rise above it, she says. They're just words being said many miles away.

That phrase about sticks and stones and bones.

But my bones are very brittle. And I am lactose intolerant. ~ Weike Wang

The old saw that "sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me" does not, in fact, hold true. ~ Gerry Spence

People say sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can never hurt you, but that's not true. Words can hurt. They hurt me. Things were said to me that I still haven't forgotten. ~ Demi Lovato

Sticks and stones can bruise your body for a few days, but words can scar your soul for life. ~ Craig Groeschel

I'll tell you this, though. It's not true, that saying about sticks and stones; it's words that break your bones. ~ Merle Miller

Abuse is exploitation of trust and exploitation of authority and I was lucky enough never to suffer from that or from any violation or cruelty, real or imagined.
It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.
Bones mend and become actually stronger in the very place they were broken and where they have knitted up; mental wounds can grind and ooze for decades and be re-opened by the quietest whisper. ~ Stephen Fry

But I don't take any notice because I don't listen to what other people say and only sticks and stones can break my bones and I have a Swiss Army knife if they hit me. ~ Mark Haddon

Sticks and stones may break bones, but the Gat will kill you quicker. ~ The Notorious B.I.G.

If all you have to fight with is sticks and stones,
then that's what you fight with. ~ Bo Demont

Each one of them would have gladly done the task, but all they could do now was watch and wait as sticks and stones did their best to batter Ty to his knees in those cold waves. ~ Madeleine Urban

Sticks and stones and small caliber bullets may break my bones ... Words will never, et cetera. ~ Jim Butcher

Geniuses were like storms or cyclones, pulling everything into their path, sticks and stones and dust. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Taking away men's weapons will be not bring peace. They'll fight with sticks and stones, and tooth and nail. Mapidéré's is a peace supported only by fear, as secure as a nest built on a rotten branch. ~ Ken Liu

Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie. ~ John Green

Sticks and stones and fists CAN break your bones, but it's the words that break your heart. ~ Mia Sheridan

Year after year. "Please don't make me go [to school]" "You have to go," Kim would say. "It's a new school, make a new start." "Sticks and stones." from Chip. Words will only kill you. ~ Julie Anne Peters

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will break our spirit. ~ James Howe

Throw your stick and stones, throw your bombs and your blows, but you're not gonna break my soul. ~ Katy Perry

Sticks and stones can break my bones and I have my Swiss Army Knife if they hit me and if I kill them it will be self defense and I won't go to prison. ~ Mark Haddon

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can break hearts. ~ Tim Minchin

If someone calls me stupid, I have to actually believe I'm stupid in order for it to affect me. ~ Rachel D. Greenwell

Societies aren t made of sticks and stones, but of men whose individual characters, by turning the scale one way or another, determine the direction of the whole. ~ Plato

There's a belief that wherever your Ancestors took shape from the sticks and stones that formed them, that's home. Ancestors from the coast leave their mark, Ancestors from the mountains, from the desert, they all leave their mark on the genes. When you come home, the genes rejoice. ~ Kate Wilhelm

SELF-TALK
Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can cause me no harm. I cannot let myself become unhappy upon facing criticism. ~ Sirshree

Because I am eighteen I know a great many things; for example, I know that sticks and stones are indeed very effective mechanisms with which to break bones; however, a few poorly aim (or sadly, well-aimed) words can have some's metaphorical eye out and therefore one out not wave one's words about willy-nilly. ~ Alyssa Brugman

Today, words. Tomorrow, sticks and stones. And the day after that? ~ Phillip Adams

Sticks and stones build strong houses ~ Melody Carstairs

and behind them came the women, and then the children with sticks and stones in their hands. There was a line of fury on the ground, slithering forth. Someone ~ Alice Hoffman

My parents said sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you. But I always felt a sense of exhilaration after a fight; it was the names that really hurt me. ~ Michael Franti

Sticks and stones can only break bones; but words can shatter the soul ~ Adam Savage

When you're a child, grownups always tell you that "sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you". They say it as if it's a kind of spell that's going to protect you. I've never seen the logic of it. Cuts and bruises quickly disappear. You forget all about them. The psychological wounds inflicted by bullies with words go much deeper. ~ Susan Boyle

I think kids abandon stories all the time. They start stories and get frustrated or get a different, better idea. I think that it is more worthwhile to stick with a story and revise it and try to finish it than abandon ship. Revisions, for any writer, are the name of the game. ~ Gail Carson Levine

Breath (from the book Blue Bridge)

Whispering to myself
With every step I take,
Trying out names, for I know
There is something yet to be called …..

I know it, something up ahead
Just around the bend
Or over the rise –
A bird taking to the sky
From the edge of a jagged cliff –
A bird floating outwards
In silence ……. A silence
Waiting for a footstep
To crunch on stones,
For a voice to fling upward
Through sharp sunlight
With a name…… calling
Before the bird could call
Before the bird called.

Oh the bird was there alright
And sure it took flight
When it heard me approach
But it broke my heart
With a mighty croak!

So I'm sitting here playing
With a purple flower
Slender stem, no leaves
Purple fizz –

And it's quiet again.
I am still
I am nothing
And the hill
Is a long, long slope
Down, down, down to the sea
Far below.

I could roll
I could run
I could scream
But I am nothing.

A cool wind blows
And the light is naked and nameless
And the rocks are faces of angels
And the bird in the sky wheels
And cries to forget the earth
And its ancient bones –
Oh, sensual pain –
Wings…. Wings…. Wings,
Singing wings.

If only I could begin
To describe the emptiness
Which fills me to the brim
With n ~ Jay Woodman

You stick your finger in the water and you pull it out, and that is how much of a hole you leave when you're gone. ~ Louis L'Amour

Multicolored stones and paintings, walkways, and theaters are useless in a city unless it also contains wisdom and law. Such things are the subject of wisdom and law, not equivalent to them. ~ Apollonius Of Tyana

Fragment"

What is poetry? Is it a mosaic
Of coloured stones which curiously are wrought
Into a pattern? Rather glass that's taught
By patient labor any hue to take
And glowing with a sumptuous splendor, make
Beauty a thing of awe; where sunbeams caught,
Transmuted fall in sheafs of rainbows fraught
With storied meaning for religion's sake. ~ Amy Lowell

Underneath this little stone
Lies Robert Earl of Huntington;
No other archer was so good -
And people called him Robin Hood.
Such outlaws as he and his men
Will England never see again. ~ Roger Lancelyn Green

Popularity isn't the end-all, be-all. What matters far more is that you stick to your principles, that you stand up and you live a life of integrity. ~ Ted Cruz

Very once in a while, maybe twice a year, I dream of blood. It tastes like copper pennies on your tongue. It's hot, hotter than you expect, and very wet at first, but it clots even as it fills your mouth. It sticks in your throat but you swallow it down, you can feel it stringy and dark in the back of your throat but you force it down so you can have some more, another mouthful, and another. I know it so well now. The dryness of it, the clots in your teeth. The need. ~ David Wellington

The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses ... Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching howling bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure. ~ Max Hastings

Chasing is in police DNA memory, like Labradors running after sticks," said Serge. "They probably don't even know why they do it. They just put the lights on and go, and a while later the partner who isn't behind the wheel says, 'Why are we stopping?' 'Something inside just told me to because there's a really cool crash up ahead. It's weird; I can't explain it. ~ Tim Dorsey

Then the Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down.
"That is the way," he said.
"But there are no stairs."
"You must throw yourself in. There is no other way. ~ George MacDonald

With the stick in my right hand, the throttle in my left, and the rudder beneath my feet, I can savor that essence from which life is made. ~ Stephen Coonts

A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone. ~ Cormac McCarthy

I have my granddad's record collection, which I treasure, and my father's - Rolling Stones to Sidney Bechet. ~ Alaina Huffman

All that is sweet, delightful, and amiable in this world, in the serenity of the air, the fineness of seasons, the joy of light, the melody of sounds, the beauty of colors, the fragrancy of smells, the splendor of precious stones, is nothing else but Heaven breaking through the veil of this world. ~ William Law

There is a homely old adage which runs: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

That wind. I see it's blowing now. Furtive but commanding, it has dictated every move we've ever made. My mother felt it, and so do I - even here, even now - as it sweeps us like leaves into his backseat corner, dancing us to shreds against the stones. V'la l'bon vent, v'a l'joli vent. I though we'd silenced it for good. But the smallest thing can wake the wind@ a word, a sign, even a death. There's no such thing as a trivial thing. Everything costs; it all adds up until finally the balance shifts and we're gone again, back on the road, telling ourselves - well maybe next time ~ Joanne Harris

If, on thinking this, I look up to see if reality can quench my thirst, I see inexpressive facades, inexpressive faces, inexpressive gestures. Stones, bodies, ideas - all dead. All movements are one great standstill. Nothing means anything to me, not because it's unfamiliar but because I don't know what it is. The world has slipped away. And in the bottom of my soul - as the only reality of this moment - there's an intense and invisible grief, a sadness like the sound of someone crying in a dark room. ~ Fernando Pessoa

No matter how entertaining, diverse, concise, or detailed, a writing craft book is, it's not going to work magic on you, it's not going to suddenly make you a brilliant writer simply by reading it. You need to use what you read and learn in your own writing. Because that's when you have those AHA moments. That's when it really sticks. ~ Jessica Bell

But, you know, the Stones were my opening act in the Sixties. I loved those British guys, the way they just stood there and shook their hair. ~ Ronnie Spector

For many people it is depressing even to move house. A lost fragment of life always remains. To move to another town, settle in a foreign country, is for everyone a major decision. But, to be suddenly driven forth, within twenty-four hours, from one's home, one's work, the reward of years of steady industry. To become a helpless prey of help. To be sent defenceless out to Asiatic highroads, with several thousand miles of dust, stones, and morass before one. To know that one will never again find a decently human habitation, never again sit down to a proper table. Yet this is all nothing. To be more shackled than any convict. To be counted as outside the law, a vagabond, whom anyone has the right to kill unpunished. ~ Franz Werfel

The basis, the corner-stone of this Government, was the perfect equality of the free, sovereign, and independent States which made it. ~ Robert Toombs

This is the thing about great literature. It reads like truth and sticks to you forever and lets you know that you are not alone. ~ Arlaina Tibensky

There's something about being in the country that makes you stick out like a sore thumb ? you're an anomaly. But in London there's always someone wilder and woollier. ~ Cornelia Parker

What he realised, and more clearly as time went on, was that money-worship has been elevated into a religion. Perhaps it is the only real religion-the only felt religion-that is left to us. Money is what God used to be. Good and evil have no meaning any longer except failure and success. Hence the profoundly significant phrase, to make good. The decalogue has been reduced to two commandments. One for the employers-the elect, the money priesthood as it were- 'Thou shalt make money'; the other for the employed- the slaves and underlings'- 'Thou shalt not lose thy job.' It was about this time that he came across The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and read about the starving carpenter who pawns everything but sticks to his aspidistra. The aspidistra became a sort of symbol for Gordon after that. The aspidistra, the flower of England! It ought to be on our coat of arms instead of the lion and the unicorn. There will be no revolution in England while there are aspidistras in the windows. ~ George Orwell

I'm in a state of learning, and I don't have any set-in-stone ideas about what shows or even what eras I want to pursue. ~ Dick Latvala

I would have touched it like a child But knew my finger could but have touched Cold stone and water. I grew wild, Even accusing heaven because It had set down among its laws: Nothing that we love over-much Is ponderable to our touch. ~ William Butler Yeats

Therefore I tell my sorrows to the stones;
Who, though they cannot answer my distress,
Yet in some sort they are better than the tribunes,
For that they will not intercept my tale:
When I do weep, they humbly at my feet
Receive my tears and seem to weep with me;
And, were they but attired in grave weeds,
Rome could afford no tribune like to these. ~ William Shakespeare

Commonly, people believe that defeat is characterized by a general bustle and a feverish rush. Bustle and rush are the signs of victory, not of defeat. Victory is a thing of action. It is a house in the act of being built. Every participant in victory sweats and puffs, carrying the stones for the building of the house. But defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom. And above all of futility. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction. Ingenuity is at work.
But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: This is beautiful. That is Architecture. Art enters in. ~ Le Corbusier

In June 1972, I went with friends to see the Rolling Stones at the Los Angeles Forum. After the concert, as we crossed through the parking lot, a guy in a brown Mercedes stopped in the middle of the street and got out. He came up to me and asked if I had ever modeled. ~ Rene Russo

I get it! Something painful happens and that hate flares within and sticks around. Hate keeps the pain; forgiveness let's it go. Hate breeds poison, forgiveness breeds peace. When you chain yourself to hate, you chain yourself to pain. ~ Tony Curl

The thing I care about is my weight - I'm as fanatical about it as a member of Girls Aloud. I weigh myself every morning. I know exactly what I want to be - 82kg - and I try to stick to it. ~ Tony Parsons

By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
but music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
and his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music. ~ William Shakespeare

Odd how a few sticks of furniture hung around like that. It made her feel better to see them. They would unpack, deploy the furniture, use it until it became invisible. Habit would once again cloak the naked reality of the world. And thank God for that. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

I went to the Garden of Love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A Chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut,
And 'Thou shalt not' writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be:
And Priests in black gowns, were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars, my joys & desires.

- The Garden of Love ~ William Blake

There is the same difference between talent and genius that there is between a stone mason and a sculptor ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Tell me what happens if I throw this with all my power. (Savitar)
(Acheron frowned until he saw an image in his head. It was the stone traveling through the air…it sped until it hit a man in his shoulder, wounding him. No, not any man. A soldier. His arm now lame, the stone's wound forced him to become a beggar…Eight score people would then die because the soldier could no longer protect them in battles that wouldn't even be fought for years to come. But one of those people who died…)
It goes on and on and on. One tiny decision: Do I throw the rock or do I drop it? And a thousand lives are changed by one innocuous decision. (Savitar)
(He let the rock fall to the ground. Now it was harmless again and history wrote itself forward the way it was supposed to.)
You and I are cursed to understand how the tiniest decision made by every being can go onward to affect the rest of the universe. And if I stop something as simple as a rock throw, it could cause catastrophic consequences. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I mean I know it's cold out here and not everybody has a sleeping bag. But when you grit your teeth and stick it out until dawn! ~ Suzanne Collins

I have laid the stick that connects people together. Now it is up to you, your generation and the generations to come, to build upon that stick a bridge that will ensure the free sharing of information and teaching between the two peoples until the day we become united again as a single people, as we were once before; before men separated us with their imaginary political boundaries of today's Polynesia and Micronesia. ~ Mau Piailug

Meltwater (from the book Blue Bridge)

Up here. A face
Loses its lines

I look to see
The colour of your eyes …
They have turned
To water.

I lean forward
To catch
The scent of your hair –
All I smell is heather.

I touch your hand
And all I feel is earth and stones.
There is nothing left
But the hillside's breast

Your flesh and bones
Have vanished. ~ Jay Woodman