Scythes Quotes

• I want to go ahead of Father Time with a scythe of my own.

  H. G. Wells

  Funny, New Year, Time

  H. G. Wells (2015). “The Rights of Man”, p.15, Penguin UK

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• The glories of our blood and state, Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate, Death lays his icy hand on kings. Scepter and crown must tumble down, And, in the dust, be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

  James Shirley

  Kings, Fate, Dust

  'The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses' (1659) act 1, sc. 3

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• A physician can sometimes parry the scythe of death, but has no power over the sand in the hourglass.

  Hester Lynch Piozzi

  Physicians, Sometimes, Sand

  Letter to Fanny Burney, 22 November (1781)

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• Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.

  Federico Fellini

  Pain, Law, Imagination

  Federico Fellini, Damian Pettigrew (2003). “I'm a born liar: a Fellini lexicon”, Harry N Abrams Inc

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• You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time: I tell you, Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm - we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish - ourselves who consume: we are the mildew, and the flame.

  John Ruskin

  Time, Flames, Teeth

  John Ruskin (2006). “A Joy for Ever, And Its Price in the Market”, p.83, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Whatever shall we do in that remote spot? Well, we will write our memoirs. Work is the scythe of time.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Time, Writing, Army

  Napoleon Bonaparte (2010). “The Corsican: The Virtual Diary of Napoleon Bonaparte”, p.370, Fireship Press

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• Let us award a just, a brilliant homage to those rare men whom nature has endowed with the precious privilege of arranging a thousand isolated facts, of making seductive theories spring from them; but let us not forget to state, that the scythe of the reaper had cut the stalks before one had thought of uniting them into sheaves!

  Francois Arago

  Nature, Spring, Cutting

  François Arago, Robert GRANT (F.R.A.S.), Baden Powell, William Henry SMYTH (Rear Admiral.) (1857). “Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men ... Translated by ... W. H. Smyth ... the Rev. Baden Powell ... and R. Grant”, p.264

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• I'll make death love me; for I will contend
  Even with his pestilent scythe.

  William Shakespeare

  William Shakespeare, James Boswell, Edmond Malone, Samuel Johnson, Mr. Theobald (Lewis) (1821). “The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare: With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators”, p.336

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• Before falling to the scythe the weeds enjoy a little breeze.

  Peter Levitt

  Weed, Fall, Littles

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• Occupation is the scythe of time.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Time, Occupation

  Napoleon Bonaparte “Napoleon's life in camp and cabinet, from the French of M. de Bourienne, Segur, Las Cases, &c. &c. &c”, Рипол Классик

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• We can't afford to waste people. We can't afford to have people think the game is over before it's begun. We've got to be saying to the Canadian people: you can't tax cut your way to a productive 21st-century economy. You can talk that talk, but it's not going to give you a productive 21st-century economy, because it will scythe apart the public goods that make prosperity possible. That's what we've got to say, and so we shall.

  Michael Ignatieff

  Cutting, Thinking, Games

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• In one was, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely this reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Light, Giving, Lovely

  Christopher Hitchens (2012). “Mortality”, p.13, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• Only the first swath cut by the scythe is difficult.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Cutting, Firsts, Difficult

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• Recreation is intended to the mind as whetting is to the scythe, to sharpen the edge of it, which otherwise would grow dull and blunt,--as good no scythe as no edge.

  Joseph Hall

  Mind, Dull, Blunt

  Joseph Hall (1839). “The Works of Joseph Hall: Latin theology with translations”, p.174

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• Some things are fairly obvious when it's a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them.

  Terry Pratchett

  Skeletons, Feet, Seven

  "Hogfather" by Terry Pratchett, Harper, (p. 47), March 2008.

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• There are times when the air that floats between mortals becomes, in its stillness and silence, as cruel as the edge of a scythe.

  Mervyn Peake

  Air, Silence, Floats

  Mervyn Peake (2008). “Titus Alone”, p.110, The Overlook Press

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• I have terrible nightmares, you know. Every night when I come home from a long day’s dying, I take off my skin and lay it nicely on my armoire. I take off my bones and hang them up on the hatstand. I set my scythe to washing on the old stove. I eat a nice supper of mouse-and-myrrh soup. Some nights I drink off a nice red wine. White does not agree with me. I lay myself down on a bed of lilies and still, I cannot sleep.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Nice, Home, Wine

  Catherynne M. Valente (2014). “The Fairyland Series”, p.175, Feiwel & Friends

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• Each moment has its sickle, emulous Of Time's enormous scythe, whose ample sweep Strikes empires from the root.

  Edward Young

  Time, Roots, Empires

  Edward Young (1768). “The Complaint: Or, Night-thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality: To which is Added, a Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job..”, p.7

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• Death lays his icy hand on kings.

  James Shirley

  Death, Kings, Hands

  'The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses' (1659) act 1, sc. 3

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• Remorseless time! fierce spirit of the glass and scythe,--what power can stay him in his silent course, or melt his iron heart with pity!

  George D. Prentice

  Time, Heart, Glasses

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• In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hourglass - all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors.

  Annie Besant

  Fashion, Art, Kings

  Annie Besant (2012). “The Theosophical Writings of Annie Besant”, p.332, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Uh, yeah, I do. The scythe was a little tricky at first, but—much like golf—turns out it’s all in the swing.

  Rachel Vincent

  Golf, Swings, Littles

  Rachel Vincent (2010). “Reaper”, p.39, Harlequin

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• Genius scorns the power of gold: it is wrong. Gold is the war-scythe on its chariot, which mows down the millions of its foes, and gives free passage to the sun-coursers with which it leaves those heavenly fields of light for the gross battlefields of earth.

  Ouida

  Money, War, Light

  Ouida (2016). “Wisdom, Wit and Pathos of Ouida”, p.52, Ouida

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• Nothing 'gainst Times scythe can make defence.

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Defence

  William Shakespeare, D. BARNSTORFF, T. J. GRAHAM (Translator.) (1862). “A Key to Shakespeare's Sonnets by D. Barnstorff. Translated from the German by T. J. Graham. [With the text.]”, p.36

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• Firstly, there no such person as Death.
  Second, Death's this tall guy with a bone face, like a skeletal monk, with a scythe and an hourglass and a big white horse and a penchant for playing chess with Scandinavians.
  Third, he doesn't exist either.

  Neil Gaiman

  Death, Horse, White

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