Foiled Quotes & Sayings

Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire. — W. H. Auden

There is not a day but sin foils or is foiled, prevails or is prevailed upon. It will always be so while we live in this world. Sin will not spare for one day. There is no safety but in a constant warfare for those who desire deliverance from sin's perplexing rebellion. — John Owen

But God will use your mess for good. We see a perfect mess; God sees a perfect chance to train, test, and teach the future prime minister. We see a prison; God sees a kiln. We see famine; God sees the relocation of his chosen lineage. We call it Egypt; God calls it protective custody, where the sons of Jacob can escape barbaric Canaan and multiply abundantly in peace. We see Satan's tricks and ploys. God sees Satan tripped and foiled. — Max Lucado

The second thunderbolt is found Where one-horned creatures Walk the ground. Its wicked magic must be foiled Before a special game is spoiled! — Rosie Banks

In every remodelling of the present, the existing condition of things must be supplanted by a new one. Now every variety of circumstances in which men find themselves, every object which surrounds them, communicates a definite form and impress to their internal nature. This form is not such that it can change and adapt itself to any other a man may choose to receive; and the end is foiled, while the power is destroyed, when we attempt to impose upon that which is already stamped in the soul a form which disagrees with it. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

For as a city which has been once besieged and not sacked will ever after be more strong to hold out if it be assaulted by the like danger ... so those who are besieged and assaulted by their spiritual enemies will ever after more carefully arm themselves against them with the graces of God's Spirit, that they may not be overcome nor foiled by them. — George Downame

O, to bring back the great Homeric time, The simple manners and the deed sublime: When the wise Wanderer, often foiled by Fate, Through the long furrow drave the ploughshare straight. — Mortimer Collins

The reason why women effect so little and are so shallow is because their aims are low, marriage is the prize for which they strive; if foiled in that they rarely rise above disappointment. — Sarah Moore Grimke

Wrong again. I'll tell you, shall I?" The djinni fixed him with its black-eyed stare. "You knocked yourself out, like the idiot you are. The golem was approaching, doubtless planning to take the Staff and crush your head like a melon. It was foiled - "
"By your prompt action?" Nathaniel said. "If so, I'm grateful, Bartimaeus."
"Me? Save you? Please - someone I know might be listening. No. My magic is canceled out by the golem's, remember? I sat back to watch the show. In fact ... it was the girl and her friend. They saved you. Wait - don't mock! I do not lie. The boy distracted it while the girl climbed on the golem's back, tore the manuscript from its mouth, and threw it to the ground. Even as she did so, the golem seized her and the boy - incinerated them in seconds. Then its life force ebbed and it finally froze, inches from your sorry neck. — Jonathan Stroud

Look at what you've done,' Sanguine said, shaking his head with mock severity. 'You have foiled out insidious little plot. You have emerged triumphant and victorious. Curse you, do-gooders. Curse you. — Derek Landy

After Iyman Faris's foiled plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, however, most of the al-Qaeda central command had either been killed or captured, and there were no more major incidents.85 But just as the situation seemed to be improving, in March 2003, the United States, Britain, and their allies invaded Iraq, despite considerable opposition from the international community and strong protests throughout the Muslim world. The reasons for this invasion were allegations that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and had furnished support for al-Qaeda, both of which eventually proved to be groundless. — Karen Armstrong

Weakness has its hidden resources, as well as strength. There is a degree of folly and meanness which we cannot calculate upon, and by which we are as much liable to be foiled as by the greatest ability or courage. — William Hazlitt

Authorities in New York City have foiled a plot by terrorists to blow up the Holland Tunnel. There was one awkward moment when officials informed President Bush the Holland Tunnel was safe. Bush then thanked the Dutch authorities for all their help. — Jay Leno

It is enough, the now, and though it comes without anything, it gives me everything.
With it I can repopulate the world. I can bring forth new worlds in underground shelters while the bombs are dropping above; I can do it in lifeboats as the ship goes down; I can do it in prisons without the guard's permission; and O, when I do it quietly in the lobby while the conference is going on, a lot of states-men will emerge twirling their moustaches, and see the birth blood, and know they have been foiled.
Love is strong as death. — Elizabeth Smart

I am a hero. It is a trade, no more, like weaving or brewing, and like them it has its own tricks and knacks and small arts. There are ways of perceiving witches, and of knowing poison streams; there are certain weak spots that all dragons have, and certain riddles that hooded strangers tend to set you. But the true secret of being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock at the witch's door when she is away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story. Heroes know about order, about happy endings -- heroes know that some things are better than others. — Peter S. Beagle

Wit must be foiled by wit: cut a diamond with a diamond. — William Congreve

God, I am always foiled by my love of hash browns! — John Green

I go to the window, I spot a fly under the curtain, I corner it in a muslin trap and move a murderous forefinger toward it. This moment is not in the program, it's something apart, timeless, incomparable, motionless, nothing will come of it this evening or later ... Mankind is asleep ... Alone and without a future in a stagnant moment, a child is asking murder for strong sensations. Since I'm refused a man's destiny, I'll be the destiny of a fly. I don't rush matters, I'm letting it have time enough to become aware of the giant bending over it. I move my finger forward, the fly bursts, I'm foiled! Good God, I shouldn't have killed it! It was the only being in all creation that feared me; I no longer mean anything to anyone. I, the insecticide, take the victim's place and become an insect myself. I'm a fly, I've always been one. This time I've touched bottom. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Her other paramour was a student at the UASD
one of those City College types who's been in school eleven years and is always five credits shy of a degree. Students today don't mean na; but in Latin America whipped into a frenzy by the fall of Arbenz, by the stoning of Nixon, by the Guerillas of the Sierra Madre, by the endless cynical maneuverings of the Yankee Pig Dogs
in a Latin America already a year and a half into the Decade of Guerilla
a student was something else altogether, an agent for change, a quantum string in the staid Newtonian universe. Such a student was Arquimedes. He also listened to the shortwave, but not for Dodgers scores; what he risked his life for was the news leaking out of Havana, news of the future. Arquemides was, therefore, a student, the son of a Zapatero and a midwife, a tirapiedra and a quemagoma for life. Being a student wasn't a joke, not with Trujillo and Johnny Abbes scooping up everybody following the foiled Cuban Invasion of 1959. — Junot Diaz

When I myself had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance unto anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedaemonians (who before that time had held themselves invincible), never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them. — Plutarch

We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier? — Diane Ackerman

It would undoubtedly be prudent for neither of us to attempt a sexual coup on one another again from the evidence of our reactions. Most definitely any outcome of an intended purpose would bound to be foiled from lack of focus. — Scarlett Dawn

We make choices but are constantly foiled by happenstance. — Penelope Lively

Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain cradle in Pamere, A foiled circuitous wanderertill at last The longed-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea. — Matthew Arnold

Had to be here to understand, he had said. He'd meant here in Chicago; but he could also have meant here in my shoes, an older black man who still burns from a lifetime of insults, of foiled ambitions, of ambitions abandoned before they've been tried. I asked myself if I could truly understand that. I assumed, took for granted, that I could. Seeing me, these men had made the same assumption. — Barack Obama

Crisis. Attempts were made to organize a captive breeding population, but the natural objections of the population in question to being so manipulated - combined with our own innate reflexive obedience - foiled all such programs. We are conditioned to adore and obey our Creators on a personal basis, and while it is easy enough to understand the abstract need to preserve their kind as a whole, the conflict between their specific desires and the needs of the species imposed an impossible burden upon their would-be conservators. We — Charles Stross

I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious
for instance, the nuns who never take a bath without wearing a bathrobe all the time. When asked why, since no man can see them, they reply: "Oh, but you forget the good God." Apparently they conceive of the Deity add a Peeping Tom, whose omnipotence enables Him to see through bathroom walls, but who is foiled by bathrobes. — Bertrand Russell

The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch's door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a very long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story. — Peter S. Beagle

He was fine; he, that orphan that foundling that outcast; he felt himself august and strong; he looked full in the face that society from which he was banished, and into which he had so powerfully intervened; that human justice from which he had snatched its prey; all those tigers whose jaws perforce remained empty; those myrmidons, those judges, those executioners, all that royal power which he, poor, insignificant being, had foiled with the power of God. — Victor Hugo

If oceans of time
could grant
heart one simple
desire
We would be
lovers afloat
on trained trapeze
high wire
Pleasurably bound by
invisible chords
of rapture
Harnessed in mid air
embraced foiled
skilled arms of capture — Zuky Rose Leigh

When an investigator has developed a formula which gives a complete representation of the phenomena within a certain range, he may be prone to satisfaction. Would it not be wiser if he should say 'Foiled again! I can find out no more about Nature along this line.' — Arthur Eddington

If you could extend the elective franchise to all persons of color who can read the Constitution of the United States in English and write their names and to all persons of color who own real estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty dollars and pay taxes thereon, and would completely disarm the adversary. This you can do with perfect safety. And as a consequence, the radicals, who are wild upon negro franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempts to keep the Southern States from renewing their relations to the Union. — Andrew Johnson

Once I got home, I sulked for a while. All my brilliant plans foiled by thermodynamics. Damn you, Entropy! — Andy Weir

You know how it is when some great king enters a large city and dwells in one of its houses; because of his dwelling in that single house, the whole city is honored, and enemies and robbers cease to molest it. Even so is it with the King of all; He has come into our country and dwelt in one body amidst the many, and in consequence the designs of the enemy against mankind have been foiled and the corruption of death, which formerly held them in its power, has simply ceased to be. For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death. — Athanasius Of Alexandria

Simon whispered to me, "But is everything okay?"
"No," Tori said. "I kidnapped her and forced her to escape with me. I've been using her as a human shield against those guys with guns, and I was just about to strangle her and leave her body here to throw them off my trail. But then you showed up and foiled my evil plans. Lucky for you, though. You get to rescue poor little Chloe again and win her undying gratitude."
"Undying gratitude?" Simon looked at me. "Cool. Does that come with eternal servitude? If so, I like my eggs sunnyside up."
I smiled. "I'll remember that."
--
"All right, then. Emergency medical situation, take two."
He leaped to his feet, staggered, keeled over, then lifted his head weakly.
"Chloe? Is that you?" He coughed. "Do you have my insulin?"
I placed it in his outstretched hand.
"You saved my life," he said. "How can I ever repay you?"
"Undying servitude sounds good. I like my eggs scrambled. — Kelley Armstrong

James and I happened onto the scene and foiled the robber's plans. We're good at that-foiling plans,I mean. Don't you agree,Miss Ashton?"
"There seems to be very little on which we agree, Mr. Langley. — Kat Martin

No", Tori said, " I kidnapped her and forced her to escape with me. I've been using her as a human shield against those guys with guns, and I was just about to strangle her and leave her body here to throw them off my trail. But then you showed up and foiled my evil plans. Lucky for you, though. You get to rescue chloe again and win her undying grattitude. — Kelley Armstrong

*So, you're the small troublemaker who foiled Saturday's Cocigrue," said Lady Friday. Leaf, a friend of the so-called Rightful Heir , this Arthur Penhaligon. How kind of you to visit. — Garth Nix