Sword Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Unlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it never achieved, Islam unashamedly came with a sword.

Steven Runciman

Masema. That had been his name. He'd earned his sword on his fifteenth birthday. His father had been so proud. It's over, then, he thought, unable to keep his eyes open. He closed them, falling as if through an endless void. Did I do well, Father, or did I fail?

Peace with God means warfare with the enemies of God. Christ made clear that allegiance to Him meant a sword of division (Matt. 10:34-36). In a sinful world, some warfare is inescapable. A man must therefore pick his enemies: God or sinful man? If a man is at peace with sinful men, he is at war with God. Peace in one sector means warfare in another. God alone, however, can give inner peace now, and, finally, world peace through His sovereign law (Micah 4:2).

Rousas John Rushdoony

When the news you don't want to hear is looming before you like Everest, two things can happen. Tragedy can run you through like a sword, or it can become your backbone. Either you fall apart and sob, or you say, 'Right. What's next?

When facing the realm of life and death in the form of an enemy's sword, one must be firmly settled in mind and body, and not at all intimidated; without providing your opponent the slightest opening, control his mind in a flash and move where you will — straight, diagonally, or in any other appropriate direction.

Morihei Ueshiba

My first impression of the man as of steel was consolidated and enhanced. He told us, amongst other things, of the work he had in hand. Three great books were partially done. The translation of the Arabian Nights, the metrical translation of Camoens, and the Book of the Sword. These were all works of vast magnitude and requiring endless research. But he lived to complete them all.

On a later meeting of Richard Francis Burton

The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation.

A guy in Greek armor drew his sword and charged, but slipped in a puddle of pina colada.

True believing Christians are sheep among wolves.... They employ neither worldly sword nor war, since with them killing is absolutely renounced.

We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.

Over us human beings there hangs an awful sword of justice.

Halldór Laxness

Let his sword break and his shield shatter, Sansa thought coldly as she shoved out through the doors, let his courage fail him and every man desert him.

George R. R. Martin

Man for the field and woman for the hearth:
Man for the sword and for the needle she:
Man with the head and woman with the heart:
Man to command and woman to obey;
All else confusion.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Not many details are given but my guess is that some Middle Eastern political leader will be wounded with a sword blow to the head (maybe even beheaded? - have they done a head transplant or reattachment yet?) and will come back to life. The world will wonder at him and follow him. He will set up an image of himself in the new Jewish temple and order everyone to worship it.

But remember, boy, that a kind act can sometimes be as powerful as a sword.

Advertisers are the interpreters of our dreams — Joseph interpreting for Pharaoh. Like the movies, they infect the routine futility of our days with purposeful adventure. Their weapons are our weaknesses: fear, ambition, illness, pride, selfishness, desire, ignorance. And these weapons must be kept as bright as a sword.

Maybe I'll keep you. Abbot chuckled and prodded Artemis's back with his sword. It'd be nice to have a pet human around. I could teach you tricks. I have a trick for you, said Artemis, and he fired a single blast from the gun.

For [the Virgin] Mary there were many struggles ahead as she lived out the consequences of the 'yes' she had given to the Lord. Simeon prophesied that a sword would pierce her heart. When Jesus was twelve she experienced every parent's worst nightmare when for three days the child was missing. And after his public ministry she suffered the agony of witnessing his crucifixion and death. Throughout her trials she remained faithful to her promise, sustained by the Spirit of fortitude. And she was generously rewarded.

Pope Benedict XVI

But now, coming to your shameless assertion that ministers of the altar should be allowed to marry, I consider it superfluous to unsheathe the sword of my own words against you, since we see the armed forces of the whole Church and the massed array of all the holy Fathers ready to resist you. And where so great a host of heavenly troops opposes you, one can only wonder that your novel and rash attempt at doctrine does not submit when confronted by such authority.

I have been a course, I have been an eagle.
I have been a coracle in the seas:
I have been compliant in the banquet.
I have been a drop in a shower;
I have been a sword in the grasp of the hand
I have been a shield in battle.
I have been a string in a harp,
Disguised for nine years,
in water, in foam.
I have been sponge in the fire,
I have been wood in the covert

The sun is simple. A sword is simple. A storm is simple. Behind everything simple is a huge tail of complicated.

Terry Pratchett

A dreadful rumor reached us from the West. We heard that Rome was besieged, that the citizens were buying their safety with gold, and that when they had been thus despoiled they were again beleaguered, so as to lose not only their substance but their lives.... The speaker's voice failed and sobs interrupted his utterance. The city which had taken the whole world was itself taken; nay, it fell by famine before it fell by the sword, and there were but few to be found to be made prisoner.

Remember, Mr Sharpe, an officer's eyes are more valuable than his sword!

Bernard Cornwell

In certain areas of my life, I actively seek out solitude. Especially for someone in my line of work, solitude is, more or less, an inevitable circumstance. Sometimes, however, this sense of isolation, like acid spilling out of a bottle, can unconsciously eat away at a person's heart and dissolve it. You could see it, too, as a kind of double-edged sword. It protects me, but at the same time steadily cuts away at me from the inside.

Haruki Murakami

He who enlists a man's mind wields a power even greater than the sword or the scepter.

Robert Heilbroner