Spades Quotes

• When the land is cultivated entirely by the spade and no horses are kept, a cow is kept for every three acres of land.

  John Stuart Mill

  Horse, Land, Agriculture

  John Stuart Mill (1871). “Priciples of POlitical Economy”, p.335

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• Joel Cairo: You always have a very smooth explanation ready. Sam Spade: What do you want me to do, learn to stutter?

  Dashiell Hammett

  Cairo, Want, Smooth

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• I'm a spade, you're an ofay. Let's play.

  Louis Armstrong

  Play, Jazz

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• Great hearts can only be made by great troubles. The spade of trouble digs the reservoir of comfort deeper, and makes more room for consolation.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Heart, Comfort, Rooms

  Charles Spurgeon (2016). “Morning and Evening”, p.174, Discovery House

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• I am the queen of spades, I am the wasp that stings, I am the dark serpent. I am the invulnerable animal who passes through fire and is not burned.

  Elena Ferrante

  Queens, Dark, Animal

  Elena Ferrante (2005). “The Days of Abandonment”, p.64, Penguin

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• I call a fig a fig, a spade a spade.

  Menander

  Figs

  Unidentified fragment 545 K (K = T. Kock, "Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta", 3 vols. (Leipzig 1880/8)), as translated in ‪"Menander: The Principal Fragments"‬‎ by Francis Greenleaf Allinson, 1921.

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• All my hurts my garden spade can heal.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Hurt, Garden, Heal

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2007). “Poems”, p.157, Cosimo, Inc.

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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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• To dig one's own spade into one's own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?

  Beverley Nichols

  Life, Garden, Earth

  Beverley Nichols (2009). “Rhapsody in Green: The Garden Wit and Wisdom of Beverley Nichols”, p.17, Timber Press

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• Spade! Thou art a tool of honor in my hands. I press thee, through a yielding soil, with pride.

  William Wordsworth

  Art, Pride, Hands

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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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• It is no use asking me or anyone else how to dig... Better to go and watch a man digging, and then take a spade and try to do it.

  Gertrude Jekyll

  Men, Trying, Digging

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• Usually you talk about directors in terms of the way they choose camera lenses or a kind of light to create a certain effect. But to me the most valuable commodity for a movie to create is a feeling of life, and that's what A Hard Day's Night has in spades.

  Michael Patrick Jann

  Night, Light, Feelings

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• It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

  Oscar Wilde

  Love, Funny, Humorous

  Oscar Wilde (2015). “The Picture of Dorian Gray (Diversion Classics)”, p.212, Diversion Books

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• How about I let you floss with my jugular as well?

  Jeaniene Frost

  Wells

  Jeaniene Frost (2010). “Halfway to the Grave: A Night Huntress Novel”, p.194, Hachette UK

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• Poetry and music I have banished,
  But the stupidity
  Of root, shoot, blossom or clay
  Makes no demand.
  I bend my body to the spade
  Or grope with a dirty hand.

  William Butler Yeats

  Music, Dirty, Roots

  William Butler Yeats (1997). “The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats: Volume I: The Poems, 2nd Edition”, p.325, Simon and Schuster

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• I'll give you leave to call me anything, if you don't call me spade.

  Jonathan Swift

  Names, Giving, Call Me

  Jonathan Swift, Thomas Roscoe (1859). “The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D.: With Copious Notes and Additions and a Memoir of the Author”, p.78

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• In any case, the bayonet isn't as important as it used to be. It's more usual now to go into the attack with hand-grenades and your entrenching tool. The sharpened spade is a lighter and more versatile weapon - not only can you get a man under the chin, but more to the point, you can strike a blow with a lot more force behind it. That's especially true if you can bring it down diagonally between the neck and the shoulder, because then you can split down as far as the chest. When you put a bayonet in, it can stick, and you have to give the other man a hefty kick in the guts to get it out.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  War, Blow, Men

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• It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things.

  Oscar Wilde

  Names, Giving, Lovely

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.812, GENERAL PRESS

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• A theologian of the cross says what a thing is. In modern parlance: a theologian of the cross calls a spade a spade. One who ‘looks on all things through suffering and the cross’ is constrained to speak the truth…it will see precisely that the cross and the resurrection itself is the only answer to that problem, not erasure or neglect.

  Gerhard

  Suffering, Looks, Answers

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• It is rare that we use our thinking faculty as resolutely as an irishman his spade. To please our friends and relatives we turn out our silver ore in cartloads, while we neglect to workour mines of gold known only to ourselves far up in the Sierras, where we pulled up a bush in our mountain walk, and saw the glittering treasure. Let us return thither. Let it be the price of our freedom to make that known.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Thinking, Gold, Mountain

  Henry David Thoreau, David Gross (2007). “The Price of Freedom: Political Philosophy from Thoreau's Journals”, p.4, David M Gross

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• I looked at the cards in my hand, the queen of hearts nestled between the king of clubs and the king of spades. No wonder she was smiling.

  Megan Hart

  Queens, Kings, Heart

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• You plant a garden one flower at a time. ... You write a book one word at a time, clean a closet one shelf at a time, run a marathon one step at a time. If you feel defeated by some large task, get your spade and dig the first hole.

  Jeanne Marie Laskas

  Running, Perseverance, Determination

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• Come my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Gentleman, Dying

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 5, sc. 1, l. [32]

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• When I go into the garden with a spade and dig a bed I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Health, Garden

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1166, Delphi Classics

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