Quotes & Sayings About Bait

Good manners forced her to say, somewhat grudgingly, "Your boots are very nice."
He grinned and regarded his footwear, which, though old, appeared very well-made. "Yes, they are, aren't they?"
"If a bit scuffed," she added.
"I shall polish them tomorrow," he promised, his somewhat superior look telling her that he refused to rise to her bait.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "That was uncalled for. Compliments should be freely given, without restrictions or qualifications. — Julia Quinn

Okay, let's recap.
So I lost a few good things, but wait;
There's other fish in the sea.
And my heart's still here: the bait.
It has a few cracks
And a couple of shark bites,
But it's alright.
A bleeding heart is never one to wait in the water for long.
I wonder what my next catch will be.. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

This wretched Inn, where we scarce stay to bait,
We call our Dwelling-Place:
We call one Step a Race:
But angels in their full enlightened state,
Angels, who Live, and know what 'tis to Be,
Who all the nonsense of our language see
Who speak things, and our words, their ill-drawn pictures, scorn,
When we, by a foolish figure, say,
Behold an old man dead! then they
Speak properly, and cry, Behold a man-child born! — Abraham Cowley

Hey, the bait is here. Get in Quebecers, get in the lobster trap, and then we'll close the door. And you'll have a referendum no matter what, — Philippe Couillard

Whiskey grunted. By his count, he and Patrick had six days to go before he hauled the kid out by his ear on field work and let Fly Bait plan the destruction of all testosterone-based land mammals on general principal. — Amy Lane

We are assailed by the temptation of the love of money. If you wish to acquire riches ? they are the bait of the fishers hook ? by greed, by trafficking, by violence, by ruse or by excessive manual work that deprives you of leisure for the service of God ? in a word by any other means ? if you have desired to pile up gold or silver, remember what the Gospel says, 'Fool! They will snatch your soul away during the night! Who will get your hoard' (cf. Lk. 12:20)? Again, 'He piles up money without knowing to whom it will go' (Ps. 39:6). — Pachomius The Great

Had I guns (as I had goods) to work my Christian harm.

I had run him up from the quarter deck to trade with his own yard-arm;

I had nailed his ears to my capstan-head, and ripped them off with a saw,

And soused them in the bilgewater, and served them to him raw;

I had flung him blind in a rudderless boat to rot in the rocking dark,

I had towed him aft of his own craft, a bait for his brother shark;

I had lapped him round with cocoa husk, and drenched him with the oil,

And lashed him fast to his own mast to blaze above my spoil;

I had stripped his hide for my hammock-side, and tasseled his beard in the mesh,

And spitted his crew on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh. — Rudyard Kipling

We've got a name for sushi in Georgia ... bait — Blake Clark

Hell, we're all bullet bait sooner or later. Doubt it makes much difference. You make it to sixteen, you're a goddamn legend. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Sea fleas," Frank said. "They're everywhere, very wee, practically invisible. They love our bait. If you fell overboard and weren't picked up until the next day, those sea fleas would eat you right up, and your skeleton would sink to the bottom!" Cody lifted me up and hung me over the side. "Want to try it?" he said. "Not funny, Cody," I said. I didn't much like the idea of sea fleas nibbling me down to my bones. — Sharon Creech

When if or chance or hunger's powerful sway Directs the roving trout this fatal way, He greedily sucks in the twining bait, And tugs and nibbles the fallacious meat. Now, happy fisherman; now twitch the line! How thy rod bends! behold, the prize is thine! — John Gay

To test. Would weightlessness put them off their game? It did. The turtles moved "slowly and insecurely" and did not attack a piece of bait placed directly in front of them. Then again, the water in which they swam was repeatedly floating up out of the jar and forming an "ovoid cupola." Who could eat? Von Beckh quickly moved on from turtles to Argentinean pilots. Under the section heading "Experiments with Human Subjects" - a heading that, were I a doctor previously employed by Nazi Germany, I might have rephrased - von Beckh reports on the efforts of the pilots to mark X's inside small boxes during regular and weightless flight. During weightlessness, many of the letters strayed from the boxes, indicating that pilots might experience difficulties maneuvering their planes and doing crossword puzzles during air battles. The following year, von Beckh was recruited by the Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Holloman Air Force — Mary Roach

Sometimes the planning and the work is not the most difficult aspect of an endeavor; it's the waiting - waiting to see if the preparation, the implementation, and the bait, will land a catch - waiting, that time in between the effort and the result, the source of so much hope, frustration, doubt, anxiety, and perhaps, disenchantment. It can try those with even the firmest resolve. — Paul J. Bartusiak

The moth unwitting rushes on the fire, Through ignorance the fish devours the bait, We men know well the foes that lie in wait, Yet cannot shun the meshes of desire. — Bhartrhari

Try novelties for salesman's bait, For novelty wins everyone. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Fishing is a sport invented by insects and you are the bait. — P. J. O'Rourke

It's great when you can bait and switch people - and I don't mean that in a negative way, I mean that in truth. If we were advertising this movie as a very serious indictment about the hunt for war criminals, and it's a very dark drama, it would probably get great reviews, but people would stay away from it because no one wants to be lectured. — Richard Shepard

There's a bait and switch going on here because the critics want the textbooks to question whether evolution occurred. And of course they don't because scientists don't question whether evolution occurred. — Eugenie Scott

Better shun the bait, than struggle in the snare. — John Dryden

Tom is trying to tag a banshee? By himself? Go for it, coffin bait. — Kim Harrison

Which of these tasty morsels do you think is the special bait?'

Sam pointed at the bull's head. 'Go big or go home?'

'She said to the homeless kid. — Rick Riordan

O, Men's vows are women's traitors! All good seeming, By thy revolt, O husband, shall be thought Put on for villainy, not born where't grows, But worn a bait for ladies. — William Shakespeare

Intelligence without wisdom is like a hook without bait. — Matshona Dhliwayo

To get a perfect husband takes a wait That's just the way things are; and you shall find That virtuous patience is the only bait To land one handsome, wealthy, brave, and kind. And what a sweeter pause has ever been? To sleep a century of peaceful dreams, And then, to better dreams, awake again! Such wait is joy, however long it seems. A long delay brings even greater bliss; The greatest bliss must suffer long delays. The god of marriage oaths has promised this: The love that comes most slowly, longest stays. This moral's hard to hear, because it's true. To even utter it is hard to do. — Charles Perrault

There's nothing like fishing to pass the time and to incline toward a sort of magnificent stupidity in which nothing matters but tackle, bait, sunlight and the strike. — Faith Baldwin

Fame is vanity's bait. — Toba Beta

Plato divinely calls pleasure the bait of evil, inasmuch as men are caught by it as fish by a hook. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Baby's fishing for a dream, fishing near and far. His line a silver moonbeam is, his bait a silver star. — Alice Riley

It was necessary to bait the hook to suit the fish. — Dale Carnegie

Ginny, listen ... I can't be involved with you anymore. We've got to stop seeing each other. We can't be together."
"It's for some stupid noble reason isn't it?"
"It's been like ... like something out of someone else's life these last few weeks with you. But I can't ... we can't ... I've got to do things alone now. Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He's already used you as bait once, and that was just because you were my best friend's sister. Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up. He'll know, he'll find out. He'll try and get me through you."
"What if I don't care?"
"I care. How do you think I'd feel if this was your funeral ... and it was my fault ... — J.K. Rowling

Diclofenac, cow aspirin, given to cattle as a muscle relaxant, to ease pain and increase the production of milk, works - worked - like nerve gas on white-backed vultures. Each chemically relaxed, milk-producing cow or buffalo that died became poisoned vulture bait. — Arundhati Roy

Pleasure, like a kind of bait, is thrown before everything which is really bad, and easily allures greedy souls to the hook of perdition. — Epictetus

Fisherman deceives the fish with bait; this action makes the fisherman dishonest! For a fisherman to be honest, he must not put any bait to his fishhook! He who dares to be ideally honest, let him know how hard it is to be such an honest! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Don't bait the cougars. — Rachel Caine

Taint no use to sit and whine 'Cause the fish ain't on your line; Bait your hook an' keep on tryin', Keep a-goin'! — Frank Lebby Stanton

You know what they call a sociopath with a conscience?"
It sounded like the setup to a joke so Elle took the bait. "No, what do they call a sociopath with a conscience?"
"They call her 'Mistress'. — Tiffany Reisz

Don't be sucked in by the su-superior, don't swallow the culture bait, don't drink, don't drink and get beerier and beerier, do learn to discriminate. — D.H. Lawrence

A tiny smile played over his lips as he glanced down at my hand. "Do you mean to win me over with feminine wiles? I must admit it is a more diverting notion than your usual method of screaming at me like a fishwife."
I did not rise to the bait. I simply looked at him. "Please."
He caught his breath, a slow smile warming his features. "My god, you are trying to seduce me."
"I am not." I said primly. "I am merely trying to get your attention."
He bent swiftly and kissed me hard, pulling back so suddenly I nearly toppled over. "I believe I have already made it quite clear you have my attention. — Deanna Raybourn

Yet never once in his life had he experienced the unshakable certainty that he and he alone had arrived at a decision. He always had the sense that fate had forced him to decide things to suit its own convenience. On occasion, after the momentary satisfaction of having decided something of his own free will, he would see that things had been decided beforehand by an external power cleverly camouflaged as free will, mere bait thrown in his path to lure him into behaving as he was mean to. The only things that he had decided for himself with complete independence were the kind of trivial matters which, on closer inspection, revealed themselves to require no decision making at all. — Haruki Murakami

The finer the bait, the shorter the wait! — Frank Gorshin

When the fisherman bait the hooks, through them into the sea and sits looking at horizon, do not think he is doing nothing. He and all his senses are fully tensed. His eyes monitors the line, his ears picks the slightest sound of the rod, his heart beats in harmony with the waves and his mind plans further than you think — Sameh Elsayed

The escaped mouse ever feeles the taste of the bait.
[The escaped mouse ever feels the taste of the bait.] — George Herbert

Worldly wealth is the Devil's bait; and those whose minds feed upon riches recede, in general, from real happiness, in proportion as their stores increase, as the moon, when she is fullest, is farthest from the sun. — Robert Burton

I had noticed, even then, that there were certain women whom other women instinctively disliked, and that these women invariably had more bait in the water than the women who disliked them. — Pete Dexter

Addressing the moral failings of black people while ignoring the centuries-old failings of their governments amounts to a bait and switch. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Beauty is the bait which with delight allures man to enlarge his kind. — Socrates

No need to flatter me, Miss Price. I believe your bait worked. I'm hooked. Line and sinker. — Fisher Amelie

Mr. Camphor could see that he (Freddie) was thinking, because he shut his eyes and put on a fiercely determined look. But when presently he opened his eyes, he shook his head. "No good," he said. "Thinking's like fishing. You bait your hook and throw it in the water, but if there aren't any fish around, you naturally can't catch anything. There isn't an idea around anywhere right now. I'll try again later. — Walter R. Brooks

To write, therefore, is the way of someone who uses the word as bait; the word fishes for something that is not a word. When that non-word takes the bait, something has been written. Once the space between the lines has been fished, the word can be discarded with relief. But here the analogy ends: the non-word upon taking the bait , has assimilated it. Salvation, then, is to read 'absent-minded'. — Clarice Lispector

He's like the kid they use down in Louisiana as alligator bait. They tie him to the end of a rope and he walks out into the swamp. All the kid can do is hope they jerk the rope back in time. — Michael Levine

A beggar who goes fishing may use a worm which has feasted on a king as his bait. And the fisherman may eat the fish caught with that bait. What does this tells us? Well, it tells us that a king may progress through the guts of a pauper. — John Marsden

In day-to-day commerce, television is not so much interested in the business of communications as in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers. People are the merchandise, not the shows. The shows are merely the bait. — Les Brown

Remind yourself, in whatever way is personally meaningful, that it is not in your best interest to reinforce thoughts and feelings of unworthiness. Even if you've already taken the bait and feel the familiar pull of self-denigration, marshal your intelligence, courage, and humor in order to turn the tide. Ask yourself: Do I want to strengthen what I'm feeling now? Do I want to cut myself off from my basic goodness? Remind yourself that your fundamental nature is unconditionally open and free. — Pema Chodron

I close the door and click the lock. My stomach sinks. I know I'm in for the fight of my life.
She is bait. If ever I've seen bait, she is it. — Tara Brown

I could be held back just by being needed. Please try not to need me. That's the worst bait of all to a lonely man. — John Steinbeck

Yes, words were superior; they maintained a superior control; they touched without your touching; they were at once the bait, the hook, the line, the pole, and the water in between. — William H Gass

Hope is the bait a fish takes which leads to its demise. We hunger for it and do not see what lurks behind. — L.K. Evans

Some gifts are baits! Watch out! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Wondering where the Mokians get all those shark teeth? Well it involves using children who read the last pages of books first as bait. — Brandon Sanderson

Peacock bass like to hide at ambush points, away from the strong canal currents. If you fish early and know those peacock hangouts, you will have little or no trouble catching peacocks on lures and live bait. — Mark Hall

When I was a child, my father used to take me for walks, often along a river or by the sea. We would pass people fishing, perhaps reeling in their lines with struggling fish hooked at the end of them. Once I saw a man take a small fish out of a bucket and impale it, still wriggling, on an empty hook to use as bait. — Peter Singer

There's no "winning" when it comes to dealing with Internet trolls. Conventional wisdom says, "Don't engage. It's what they want." Is it? Are you sure our silence isn't what they want? Are you sure they care what we do at all? From where I'm sitting, if I respond, I'm a sucker for taking the bait. If I don't respond, I'm a punching bag. I'm the idiot daughter of an embarrassed dead guy. On the record. Forever. — Lindy West

Modesty is the only sure bait when you angle for praise. — Lord Chesterfield

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain. — Mark Twain

You could lose the ones you loved in the blink of an eye - and he was willing to bet, when it happened, you weren't thinking about all the reasons that could have kept you apart. You thought of all the reasons that kept you together.
And, no doubt, how you wished you'd had more time. Even if you'd had centuries ...
When you were young, you thought time was a burden, something to be discharged as fast as possible so you could be grown-up. But it was such a bait-n-switch - when you were an adult, you came to realize that minutes and hours were the single most precious thing you had.
No one got forever. And it was a fucking crime to waste what you were given. — J.R. Ward

Women; the supreme masters of the bait and switch.
D'Artagnan Bloodhawke — D'Artagnan Bloodhawke

The profound difference that divides the human race is a question of bait - whether to fish with worms or not ... — Virginia Woolf

The bait is the means to get the fish where you want it, catch the fish and you forget the bait. The snare is the means to get the rabbit where you want it, catch the rabbit and forget the snare. Words are the means to get the idea where you want it, catch on to the idea and you forget about the words. Where shall I find a man who forgets about words, and have a word with him? — Zhuangzi

If you are a fish charging at bait, then it usually doesn't end well. — Amish Tripathi

Shouldn't you be at your posts?" Jayden stepped up.
Logan nodded.
"Just talking about ... girl stuff," Tristan said.
"Mascara," Blake said.
"What?" Tristan said.
"Leaving." Logan shoved the boys.
Jayden leaned in. "There's something the others wish to remain secret. But I think having the knowledge would be beneficial. You're - "
"Bait." I didn't bother to hide my grin.
"Precisely, but don't be alarmed because - " He jerked back. "You know?"
"I do."
Jayden stared blankly, then patted my head. "Excellent. — A&E Kirk

we had pulled a bait and switch on the National Guard and Reserves - most men and women had joined the Guard in particular expecting to go to monthly training sessions and summer training camp, and to be called up for natural disasters or a national crisis; instead, they had become an operational force, deploying for a year or more to join an active and dangerous fight and potentially deploying more than once. — Robert M. Gates

bucket on the deck behind him, bait sloshing. He — Heather Burch

Irritably, Piatt replied that "in ninety days the land would be whitened by tents." But Lincoln would not take the bait. He merely replied: "Well, we won't jump that ditch until we come to it," pausing before he added: "I must run the machine as I find it." Piatt left dinner wondering why the "strange and strangely gifted" Lincoln remained "so blind. — Harold Holzer

But I'm not to be caught with such poor bait! I'm a big fish, I am. — Maxim Gorky

Whenever I watch the beginning of Jimmy Fallon, I feel like I should sue the Roots for bait and switch. — Andy Kindler

We're all worm bait waiting to happen. It's what you do while you wait that matters. — Kinky Friedman

Finally his father looks at him. "Are you satisfied now? Are you happy with the results of your actions?"

Lev has imagined this conversation between him and his father a hundred times. In each of those mental confrontations, Lev has always been the one making accusations, not the other way around. How dare he? How dare he? Lev wants to lash out, but he refuses to take the bait. He says nothing.

"Do you have any idea what you've put this family through?" his father says. "The shame? The ridicule?"

Lev can't maintain his silence. "Then maybe you shouldn't surround yourself with people as judgmental as you. — Neal Shusterman

Well, we all have our sharks, I'm sure, and there's only one way to get them off before they hack and nibble you to death - stop feeding them; they will find other bait; you fattened them the last dozen times around - now set them out to sea. — Charles Bukowski

So, I still say Batman is way better than Superman." She looked smugly at him.
"You're crazy," he said between bites totally taking her bait. "Superman is practically immortal unless he's exposed to Kryptonite. That's the only thing that can kill him. Batman's human. He's killable."
"Killable?" She snorted. "Is that even a word, Buddha Boy? — Harper Bentley

When someone sets his affections upon the cross and the love of Christ, he crucifies the world as a dead and undesirable thing. The baits of sin lose their attraction and disappear. Fill your affections with the cross of Christ and you will find no room for sin. — John Owen

I think they (Thatcher protesters) ought to be grateful for the fact that the people who hold our (pro-Thatcher) views, and who are not mindless bigots, won't allow their behaviour to provoke us into words or behaviour which would could be seen as a breach of the peace. Hopefully, those of us who admire Margaret Thatcher are too well-mannered to fall for the bait. — Norman Tebbit

I think the bait for doing something really is always the part. — Sam Waterston

Dominic took the bait: If the President breaks the law, then the House of Representatives impeaches him and the Senate convicts him, and he's out on the street, — Tom Clancy

I'm fishing for men with a certain kind of bait, and the bait that I am offering is not a candy; it's a very specific thing that I'm offering, which is a deep gospel and a deep conversion. — Larry Norman

It must be observed that fishing with any living bait is to be condemned for the same reason as fishing with a worm: in all such instances we torture two animals at once for our amusement. — Thomas Young

The Gospel of grace must not be turned into a bait-and-switch offer. It is not one of those airline supersavers in which you read of a $59.00 fare to Orlando only to find, when you try to buy a ticket, that the six seats per flight at that price are all taken and that the trip will now cost you $199.95. Jesus must not be read as having baited us with grace only to clobber us in the end with law. For as the death and resurrection of Jesus were accomplished once and for all, so the grace that reigns by those mysteries reigns eternally - even in the thick of judgment. — Robert Farrar Capon

To many an upright poor person, it seems needless to invent a god who will wash the feet of beggars and exalt those who do not care to labor. What is this but a denial of thrift and a sickly obsession with the victim? The so-called common people are quite able to penetrate this ruse ("The good lord must indeed love the poor, since he made so many of them"). Many decent people are made uneasy by the constant injunction to give alms and to dwell among those who have lost their self-respect. They can also see the hook sticking out of the bait: abandon this useless life, leave your family, and follow the prophet who says that the world is soon to pass away. Such an injunction coupled with an implicit or explicit "or else" is repulsive to many conservatives who believe in self-reliance and personal integrity, and who distrust "charity," just as it was repulsive to the early socialists who did not think that poverty was an ideal or romantic or ennobled state. — Christopher Hitchens

I'm great as bait! All the vampires want to eat me! — Jeaniene Frost

Since I am a loyal American, I am not supposed to tell you why this has taken place, but then it is not usual for us to examine why anything happens; we simply accuse others of motiveless malignity. "We are good," G.W. proclaims, "They are evil," which wraps that one up in a neat package. Later, Bush himself put, as it were, the bow on the package in an address to a joint session of Congress where he shared with them - as well as with the rest of us somewhere over the Beltway - his profound knowledge of Islam's wiles and ways: "They hate what they see right here in this Chamber." I suspect a million Americans nodded sadly in front of their TV sets. "Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms, our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." At this plangent moment what American's gorge did not rise like a Florida chad to the bait? — Gore Vidal

Shane said, "Don't worry. I'll protect you."
Claire hit him in the shoulder. "I don't need you to protect me."
"Then why am I going first?"
"So you can take the first punch while I throw the second?"
"So I'm bait? Ouch. You've been in Morganville way too long, girl. — Rachel Caine

Start back," Gared urged as the woods began to grow dark around them. "The wildlings are dead." "Do the dead frighten you?" Ser Waymar Royce asked with just the hint of a smile. Gared did not rise to the bait. He was an old man, past fifty, and he had seen the lordlings come and go. "Dead is dead," he said. "We have no business with the dead." "Are they dead?" Royce asked — George R R Martin

Jay Wexler is my kind of writer
a weird one, and a wry one, and one who isnt afraid to act silly in a sort of bait-and-switch that, to the readers surprise, moves him as much as it makes him laugh. Like all the best comedians, Wexler is clearly nursing a heart that the world broke a long time ago. Ed Tuttle is a book that cant decide what it wants to be when it grows up, but as with most cases of arrested development, theres something very serious going on behind all the antics. Plus, there are pictures. — Ron Currie Jr.

The only clothes Amanda has are the ones on her back. (Kyrian)
From what I saw, she had no clothes whatsoever on her back. Her front neither. (Nick)
One day, Gaitor bait ... (Kyrian)
Note to self- be nice to woman, keep mouth shut. (Nick) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

But always when I was without a book, my soul would at once become disturbed, and my thoughts wandered. As I read, I began to call them together again and, as it were, laid a bait for my soul — Teresa Of Avila

Hope is such a bait, it covers any hook. — Oliver Goldsmith

The bait's got a theory; the bait's finding a practice, working it out; the bait's going to write it down and she don't have to use words, she'll make signs, in blood, she's good at bleeding, boys, the vein's open, boys, the bait's got plenty, each month more and more without dying for a certain long period of her life, she can lose it or use it, she works in broad strokes, she makes big gestures, big signs; oh and honey there's so much bait around that there's going to be a bloodbath in the old town tonight, when the new art gets its start. — Andrea Dworkin

When I was a young girl salmon fishing with my father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State I used to lean out over the water and try to look past my own face, past the reflection of the boat, past the sun and darkness, down to where the fish were surely swimming. I made up charm songs and word-hopes to tempt the fish, to cause them to mean biting my hook. I believed they would do it if I asked them well and patiently and with the right hope. I am writing my poems like this. I have used the fabric and the people of my life as the bait. — Tess Gallagher

The fish once caught, new bait will hardly bite. — Edmund Spenser

There be also many wicked men that have the comeliness of a beautiful countenance, and it seemeth that nature hath so shaped them because they may be the readier to deceive, and that this amiable look were like a bait that covereth the hook. — Thomas Hoby

Survival strategy. If you're not careful, this place will eat you alive, and Kaylee's like bait for the beasts. — Rachel Vincent