Sword Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Alack, there lies more peril in thine eye Than twenty of their swords: look thou but sweet, And I am proof against their enmity.

William Shakespeare

They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.
They fight us by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
And they look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
Their doors are shut in the evening; And they know no songs.

G. K. Chesterton

Of Lord of the Rings:

Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron. Here is a book which will break your heart.

Their horse cavalry, of which they had twelve brigades, charged valiantly against the swarming tanks and armoured cars but could not harm them with their swords and lances.

Winston Churchill

As for us, our days of combat are over. Our swords are rust. Our guns will thunder no more. The vultures that once wheeled over our heads must be buried with their prey. Whatever of glory must be won in the council or the closet, never again in the field. I do not repine. We have shared the incommunicable experience of war; we have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Baggins. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath.

J. R. R. Tolkien

Thou fatal Waterloo.
Millions of tongues record thee, and anew Their children's lips shall echo them, and say— "Here, where the sword united nations drew,
Our countrymen were warring on that day!"
And this is much, and all which will not pass away.

He, who the sword of heaven will bear
Should be as holy as severe.

William Shakespeare

No ceremony that to great ones 'longs,
Not the king's crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal's truncheon, nor the judge's robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.

William Shakespeare

Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause.

I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken,
I saw guns and sharp swords, in the hands of young children…
And it's a hard rain's a gonna fall.

It is not proper either to have a blunt sword or to use freedom of speech ineffectually.
Neither is the sun to be taken from the world, nor freedom of speech from erudition.

Now the fair goddess, Fortune,
Fall deep in love with thee, and her great charms
Misguide thy opposers' swords!

William Shakespeare

Full bravely hast thou flesh'd Thy maiden sword.

William Shakespeare

Many evil things there are that your strong walls and bright swords do not stay.

J. R. R. Tolkien

There is a word
Which bears a sword
Can pierce an armed man.
It hurls its barbed syllables,—
At once is mute again.
But where it fell
The saved will tell
On patriotic day,
Some epauletted brother
Gave his breath away. Wherever runs the breathless sun,
Wherever roams the day,
There is its noiseless onset,
There is its victory!
Behold the keenest marksman!
The most accomplished shot!
Time's sublimest target
Is a soul forgot!

Emily Dickinson

France was built with swords. The fleur-de-lis, symbol of national unity, is only the image of a spear with three pikes.

Charles de Gaulle

Your young military men, who want to reap the harvest of laurels, don't care (I suppose) how many seeds of war are sown; but for the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce, would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; that the swords might be turned into plough-shares, the spears into pruning hooks, and, as the Scripture expresses it, "the nations learn war no more."

George Washington

It isn't given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

I have looked out
In the vast desolate night in search of him;
And when I saw gigantic shadows in
The umbrage of the walls of Eden, chequered
By the far-flashing of the cherubs' swords,
I watched for what I thought his coming: for
With fear rose longing in my heart to know
What 'twas which shook us all—but nothing came.

The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow as sharp as swords.

J. R. R. Tolkien

O Julius Caesar! thou art mighty yet!
Thy spirit walks abroad, and turns our swords
In our own proper entrails.

William Shakespeare

If fifty bands of men surrounded us/ and every sword sang for your blood,/ you could make off still with their cows and sheep.

We clothe ourselves in flame
And trade new myths for old.
The Greek gods christen us
With ghosts of comet swords;
God smiles and names us thus: "
"Arise! Run! Fly, my Lords!"

In France there are three kinds of professions: the church, the sword, and the long robe. Each hath a sovereign contempt for the other two. For example, a man who ought to be despised only for being a fool is often so because he is a lawyer.