Axe Man Quotes & Sayings

I knew a man who, in the age of chain-saws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was a healthier and a saner man than I am. I shall let his memory trouble my thoughts. — Wendell Berry

The axe is the healthiest implement that man ever handled, and is especially so for habitual writers and other sedentary workers, whose shoulders it throws back, expanding their chests, and opening their lungs. If every youth and man, from fifteen to fifty years old, could wield an axe two hours per day, dyspepsia would vanish from the earth, and rheumatism become decidedly scarce. I am a poor chopper, yet the axe is my doctor and delight. Its used gives the mind just enough occupation to prevents its falling into revery or absorbing trains of thought, while every muscle in the body receives sufficient, yet not exhausting, exercise. — Horace Greeley

The chief tragic event of the old man's life, so far as I could judge, was his mishap with a certain goose, which lived and died some twenty or forty years ago: a goose of most promising figure, but which, at table, proved so inveterately tough, that the carving-knife would make no impression on its carcase, and it could only be divided with an axe and handsaw. — Anonymous

Prayer by its nature is communion and union of man with God; by its action it is the reconciliation of man with God, the mother and daughter of tears, a bridge for crossing temptations, a wall of protection from afflictions, a crushing of conflicts, boundless activity, the spring of virtues, the source of spiritual gifts, invisible progress, food of the soul, the enlightening of the mind, an axe for despair, a demonstration of hope, release from sorrow, the wealth of monks. — Ignatius Bryanchaninov

Since the dawn of time, nearly every man (and I'd wager to guess most women) has, at his most visceral level, secretly desired for one thing - to be standing triumphantly atop a heaping pile of his slain enemies, holding a gigantic axe aloft while some unbelievably attractive member of whatever gender he's attracted to desperately clutches his leg like it's the last life raft on the HMS Titanic. — Ben Thompson

I am Myra Breckinridge whom no man will ever possess. Clad only in garter belt and one dress shield, I held off the entire elite of the Trobriand Islanders, a race who possess no words for "why" or "because." Wielding a stone axe, I broke the arms, the limbs, the balls of their finest warriors, my beauty blinding them, as it does all men, unmanning them in the way that King Kong was reduced to mere simian whimper by beauteous Fay Wray whom I resemble left three-quarter profile if the key light is no more than five feet high during the close shot. — Gore Vidal

He finds he cannot think of the dying men at all. Into his mind instead strays the picture of More on the scaffold, seen through the veil of rain: his body, already dead, folding back neatly from the impact of the axe. The cardinal when he fell had no persecutor more relentless than Thomas More. Yet, he thinks, I did not hate him. I exercised my skills to the utmost to persuade him to reconcile with the king. And I thought I would win him, I really thought I would, for he was tenacious of the world, tenacious of his person, and had a good deal to live for. In the end he was his own murderer. He wrote and wrote and he talked and talked, then suddenly at a stroke he cancelled himself. If ever a man came close to beheading himself, Thomas More was that man. — Hilary Mantel

I'm no light weight, mountain man. It'll take more than a couple of frou-frou Vermont microbrews to get me trashed." She leaned forward and bit his lip. "If you stop, I'm gonna kill you. With your own axe. — Penny Watson

A Stone Crow's axe is always sharp, and Shagga's axes are sharpest of all. Once I cut off a man's head, but he did not know it until he tried to brush his hair. Then it fell off." "Is that why you never brush yours?" The Stone Crows roared and stamped their feet, Shagga hooting loudest of all. — George R R Martin

This was not Hatch, her constant companion through the mouse hole. Nor was this the man who had methodically rescued her from a burning building. This was Hatcher, the murderer with the axe, the man who had been found covered in blood and surrounded by bodies. — Christina Henry

The poet he was escorting into Wales was a Horus-headed dud of some personal magnetism. The hair was feathered gell, the nose hooked. He stared at me and he didn't. His eyes belonged to a magician; one bored into you, right through the lens into the depths of the vitreous humor - while the other popped and wobbled in the style of Ben Turpin. He folded in on himself, profile sharp as an axe. A labrys. This man would have no problem seeing around a corner. — Iain Sinclair

I have read many definitions of what is a conservationist, and written not a few myself, but I suspect that the best one is written not with a pen, but with an axe. It is a matter of what a man thinks about while chopping, or while deciding what to chop. A conservationist is one who is humbly aware that with each stroke he is writing his signature on the face of his land. — Aldo Leopold

Dad was a man who, due to his underprivileged background perhaps, never hesitated when it came to the verbs to get or to take. He was always getting something off the ground, his act together, his hands dirty, the show on the road, someone's goat, the message, out more, on with things, lost, laid, away with murder. He was also always taking charge, the bull by the horns, back the night, something in stride, someone to the cleaners, a rain check, an axe to something, Manhattan. — Marisha Pessl

Presently I shall be introduced as 'this venerable old gentleman' and the axe will fall when they raise me to the degree of 'grand old man'. That means on our continent any one with snow-white hair who has kept out of jail till eighty. — Stephen Leacock

A man ain't a goddamn axe, choppin', hackin', bustin' every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can't chop down, because they inside. — Toni Morrison

Listen, Bob. A gun is just a tool. No better and no worse than any other tool, a shovel- or an axe or a saddle or a stove or anything. Think of it always that way. A gun is as good- and as bad- as the man who carries it. Remember that. — Jack Schaefer

Now, I stand alone on this rock, fighting the errors of this world, and establish the science of life by my works. What is my mode of warfare? With the axe of truth I strike at the root of every tree of error and hew it down, so that there shall not be one error in man showing itself in the form of disease. — Phineas Quimby

The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, etc., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live - that is, keep comfortably warm - and die in New England at last. — Henry David Thoreau

We know what the law is, Mister Po-leess-maan. The law is the land. You say, "This is my land", but you did not make the land. You did not make your sheep, you did not make the rabbits on which we live, you did not make the cows, or the horses, but you say, "These things are mine". This cannot be a truth. I make my axe, my pots, and these are mine. What I wear is mine. Some love was mine. Now it has gone. I think you are a good man, Mister Po-leess-maan but we see the turning of the times. Maybe a hundred or two hundred years ago there was in the world what people called "the wilderness", or "no man's land", or "wasteland", and we lived in such places, we are waste people. There was the troll race, the dwarf race, the human race, and I am sorry for the goblin race that we cannot run so fast. — Terry Pratchett

There now remain only a few books, which they call books of the lesser prophets; and as I have already shown that the greater are impostors, it would be cowardice to disturb the repose of the little ones. Let them sleep, then, in the arms of their nurses, the priests, and both be forgotten together.
I have now gone through the Bible, as a man would go through a wood with an axe on his shoulder, and fell trees. Here they lie; and the priests, if they can, may replant them. They may, perhaps, stick them in the ground, but they will never make them grow. — Thomas Paine

This is it." Morgan gestured to the French doors like she was modeling a prize on a game show. "Here we have door number one. Will it lead our contestant to the dog-faced man of her dreams? Or will she find an axe-wielding psychopath? Stay tuned. — Cole Gibsen

Perhaps it is no wonder that the women were first at the Cradle and last at the Cross. They had never known a man like this Man - there never has been another. A prophet and teacher who never nagged at them, never flattered or coaxed or patronized; who never made arch jokes about them, never treated them as "The women, God help us!" or "The ladies, God bless them!"; who rebuked without querulousness and praised without condescension; who took their questions and arguments seriously; who never mapped out their sphere for them, never urged them to be feminine or jeered at them for being female; who had no axe to grind and no uneasy male dignity to defend; who took them as he found them and was completely unselfconscious. There is no act, no sermon, no parable in the whole Gospel that borrows its pungency from female perversity; nobody could guess from the words and deeds of Jesus that there was anything "funny" about woman's nature. Dorothy Day, Catholic social activist and journalist — Sarah Bessey

Opposite the Half-Axe was the narrow-fronted entrance to a shop devoted to short lengths of rope and wooden poles a man and a half high. Tehol had no idea how such a specialized enterprise could survive, especially in this unravelled, truncated market, yet its door had remained open for almost six centuries, locked up each night by a short length of rope and a wooden pole. — Steven Erikson

He caught the first man in the back of the knee before they even knew he was there, and the heavy axehead split flesh and bone like rotten wood. Logs that bleed, Tyrion thought inanely as the second man came for him. Tyrion ducked under his sword, lashed out with the axe, the man reeled backward ... and Catelyn Stark stepped up behind him and opened his throat. The horseman remembered an urgent engagement elsewhere and galloped off suddenly. — George R R Martin

The man behind the check-in counter gives the impression that he has just axe-murdered the motel's owner (and family, and family pet) and is going through these procedures of hostelry so as not to arouse suspicion. — Paul Quarrington

Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are laid waste, rivers grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever ... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier. — Anton Chekhov

You're the only man I know willing to jump from the top floor of a skyscraper, naked with an axe just to get the bad guy - Selena — David Gallie

Axe was a quiet man, six foot four, with piercing blue eyes and curly hair. He was smart and the best Trivial Pursuit player I ever saw. I loved talking to him because of how much he knew. He would come out with answers that would have defied the learning of a Harvard professor. — Marcus Luttrell

He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back.
He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body.
GOOD MORNING.
Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
'Are you Death?'
IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.
'I'm going to die?'
POSSIBLY.
'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?'
OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
'What's that?'
I'M NOT SURE.
'That's very helpful. — Terry Pratchett

The forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demands for its sustenance and extends generously the products of its life activity; it affords protection to all beings, offering shade even to the axe-man who destroys it. — Gautama Buddha

How far could you trace back such a chain, he wondered, past the Harmon girl being chosen that night to bring his food, past the tree shattering a man's backbone due to a badly notched trunk, past that to an axe unsharpened because a man drank too much the night before, past that to why the man had gotten drunk in the first place? Was it something you never found the end to? Or was there no chain at all, just a moment when you did or didn't step close to a young woman and let you fingers brush a fall of blonde hair behind her ears, did or did not lean to that uncovered ear and tell her that you found her quite fetching." ~G. Pemberton (58) — Ron Rash

I might have known better, nothing is what everybody wants, the world runs on that law. Personally, if I could, I would instigate Meat-Axe Day, and out of the goodness of my heart I would whack your head off with a couple of others. Every man should be allowed one day and a hatchet just to ease his heart. — Djuna Barnes

The maester had taught him all the banners: the mailed fist of the Glovers, silver on scarlet; Lady Mormont's black bear; the hideous flayed man that went before Roose Bolton of the Dreadfort; a bull moose for the Hornwoods; a battle-axe for the Cerwyns; three sentinel trees for the Tallharts; and the fearsome sigil of House Umber, a roaring giant in shattered chains. — George R R Martin

It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters in which she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, if she had been ordered to the axe to-morrow, would she have gone to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who sent her there. — Charles Dickens

The puppet dances, He turns flips and he jigs. His painted red smile looks happy but he is screaming, for he performs on red-hot coals. His wooden feet begin to smoke. A man comes in with a shining axe. He swings it. I think he will cut off the puppet's burning feet, but instead the axe cuts all his strings. But the man with the axe falls just as swiftly as the puppet leaps away, free. — Robin Hobb

It should be a man's task, says the Imitation, 'to overcome himself, and every day to be stronger than himself.' 'In withstanding of the passions standeth very peace of heart.' 'Let us set the axe to the root, that we being purged of our passions may have a peaceable mind.' To this end there must be continual self-examination. 'If thou may not continually gather thyself together, namely sometimes do it, at least once a day, the morning or the evening. In the morning purpose, in the evening discuss the manner, what thou hast been this day, in word, work, and thought. — Marcus Aurelius

My name is Malcolm Pomerantz, and I'm an axe man, though not like those guys on that reality-TV show about loggers. — Dean Koontz

The big man glanced at the princess in chains for permission, hefting his axe suggestively. Jael expected her to nod and give him the go-ahead to serve as her executioner. Instead, she put out a hand and took the weapon from him. Her green eyes were like chips of jade in her pale, bloody countenance. This was the face of the Dread Queen.
"Kneel," she commanded, and the command had an inexorable weight.
Not only did Priest drop to his knees, so did the other men in the vicinity; two belonged to Silence. The Speaker frowned at this.
In a single swing, she took her enemy's head. The crowd roared.
And Jael fell a little in love. — Ann Aguirre

When Enrico Fermi built the first nuclear reactor, he suspended the control rods from a rope tied to a balcony railing. In case something went wrong, next to the railing was stationed a distinguished physicist with an axe. This led to the probably apocryphal story that SCRAM stands for "Safety Control Rod Axe Man. — Anonymous

Here's a man ready to chop another man's self-esteem to pieces with an axe, yet he cries out in pain when his own is pricked with a needle. — Alexandre Dumas

The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold. — Charles Dickens

But that was too simple: the idea of a man split into two by a dividing axe. Better: a man crushed into a hundred pieces of rubble, vainly trying to remember how they - he - had once fitted together. - — Julian Barnes

I may be a simple man, but I am very good with an axe. — Daniel H. Wilson

I am made of death. I am the Great Leveller. I am the storm in the High Places." The Bloody-Nine's voice, but it came from his own throat. The hall was strewn with fallen men and fallen statues, scattered with bits of both. "You." Shivers pointed his bloody axe at the last of them, cringing at the far end of the dusty hallway. "I see you there, fucker. No one gets away." He realised he was talking in Northern. The man couldn't understand a word he said. Hardly mattered, though. He reckoned he got the gist. — Joe Abercrombie

A man has a right to use a saw, an axe, a plane, separately; may he not combine their uses on the same piece of wood? He has a right to use his knife to cut his meat, a fork to hold it; may a patentee take from him the right to combine their use on the same subject? Such a law, instead of enlarging our conveniences, as was intended, would most fearfully abridge them, and crowd us by monopolies out of the use of the things we have. — Thomas Jefferson

She opens the book. Each sheet has one or two antique photographs stuck with corner tabs. The images are neither black and white nor gray, but hold that brownish gold of time and exposure to air.

"This man is your great grandfather. Look at that face, Pedro. It is a mean mean face." He's standing in front of a wood pile, holding an axe. "I think he was only a teenager there, a long time before he met my mother. But look how handsome he was. And how mean."

It's funny the way she smiles when she talks about him. Saying he's mean has a perverse joy for her, as if she can stick her tongue out at him and his hands are tied so he can't slap her for doing it. She's right, though. There's no lingering smile, no potential for mirth in the burlap of his skin. I notice snow on the ground at his feet, but he's wearing a thin, unbuttoned shirt, showing no sign of cold. — Laurie Perez

Science affects the average man and woman in two ways already. He or she benefits by its application driving a motor-car or omnibus instead of a horse-drawn vehicle, being treated for disease by a doctor or surgeon rather than a witch, and being killed with an automatic pistol or shell in place of a dagger or a battle-axe. — John B. S. Haldane

the former; "our arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me." He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry. When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done? "Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access to him, once." Mr. Lorry's countenance fell. "It is all I could do," said Carton. "To propose too much, would be to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said, nothing worse could happen to him if he were denounced. It was obviously the weakness of the position. There is no help for it. — Charles Dickens