Hand Tool Quotes & Sayings

It's a truth universally accepted that a single woman without romantic or professional prospects must be in want of a husband." Stella sneered, paraphrasing an ironic Jane Austen quote.
"Come one, Stells." David tried to console her. They sat across from each other in Riley's kitchen, each with a cup of coffee that was quickly going from lukewarm to cold. "You don't honestly believe you don't have prospects."
She just shrugged. "I guess part of me thought it was always going to be me with you. But as I see, fairy tale's over."
David reached a hand between them and held tight to hers. "I'm sorry."
She pulled her hand away, praying she could keep boundaries. "You did everything right. I'm a moronic tool."
"No, you're not. You're an amazing person-"
"Blah blah blah." Stella interrupted. "You don't have to try to sell me on myself. I might be broken, but I know what I am. — Rebekah Martin

A visual image in the hand of an artist is merely a tool to trigger a mental image. — Roy H. Williams

By mastering both aspects of our being we remember not only how to think, but what to think. What I'm clear about now is that the mind is a tool, a mechanism, and the soul provides the fuel for that machine. The less fuel you use, the more inefficiently the engine will operate. On the other hand, if your soul fills your mind with spiritual energy, you will be Mind-Full - and the workings of this engine can produce miracles. — Neale Donald Walsch

Like Lono's sword, he was both a symbol and a lethal tool; like the bayonet, his sole purpose was to be buried in the foeman's intestines; like all of his prior imagined reincarnations, his sole purpose was, like some macabre butterfly, to metamorphose into a killing machine, and die with sword in hand. — Christopher S.M. Lyon

A tool is usually more simple than a machine; it is generally used with the hand, whilst a machine is frequently moved by animal or steam power. — Charles Babbage

It is the question that is also asked by modern political theory: Can politics accept truth as a structural category? Or must truth, as something unattainable, be relegated to the subjective sphere, its place taken by an attempt to build peace and justice using whatever instruments are available to power? By relying on truth, does not politics, in view of the impossibility of attaining consensus on truth, make itself a tool of particular traditions that in reality are merely forms of holding on to power?
And yet, on the other hand, what happens when truth counts for nothing? What kind of justice is then possible? Must there not be common criteria that guarantee real justice for all - criteria that are independent of the arbitrariness of changing opinions and powerful lobbies? Is it not true that the great dictatorships were fed by the power of the ideological lie and that only truth was capable of bringing freedom? — Pope Benedict XVI

Suspense was an excellent tool for keeping powerful people off balance. It gave one bargaining power. — Robin Hobb

Ronan's smile was sharp and hooked as one of the creature's claws. "'A sword is never a killer; it is a tool in the killer's hand'."
"I can't believe Noah didn't stick around to help."
"Sure you can. Never trust the dead. — Maggie Stiefvater

We need to crush the Invisible Hand. The economy isn't a natural phenomenon. It is just a tool or a mean, that should be dedicated to one only goal; the pursuit of global prosperity. — Jean Ziegler

Perhaps nothing is so fraught with significance as the human hand, this oldest tool with which man has dug his way from savagery, and with which he is constantly groping forward. — Jane Addams

Is that you, Geordie?" he asked, not turning around. He was dressed in shirt and breeches, and had a small tool of some kind in his hand, with which he was doing something to the innards of the press. "Took ye long enough. Did ye get the - " "It isn't Geordie," I said. My voice was higher than usual. "It's me," I said. — Diana Gabaldon

My father is the most genial Midwestern guy imaginable, but for him, disaster lurks around every corner - financial ruin, squandered health, pyramid schemes, airbags failing to deploy - so he tends to use fear as a parenting tool to try to goad his daughters into being more prepared.When he retired, he reached new levels of preparedness, so his car contained bottled water, hand wipes, a roadside emergency kit with flares, books on tape, a coin dispenser, and two hand towels to use as makeshift bibs so he and my mother could drive and eat without making a mess. — Jancee Dunn

Back in 2008, unable to come to terms with its many creditors, Vallejo had declared bankruptcy. Eighty percent of the city's budget - and the lion's share of the claims that had thrown it into bankruptcy - were wrapped up in the pay and benefits of public safety workers. Relations between the police and the firefighters, on the one hand, and the citizens, on the other, were at historic lows. The public safety workers thought that the city was out to screw them on their contracts; the citizenry thought that the public safety workers were using fear as a tool to extort money from them. The local joke was that "P.D." stands for "Pay or Die." The city council meetings had become exercises in outrage: at one, a citizen arrived and tossed a severed pig's head onto the floor. — Michael Lewis

Her hand was small and had shape, not the usual bony garden tool you see on women nowadays. — Raymond Chandler

Shh." I squeeze his hand. His palm feels clammy. "We have to keep it down, okay? We don't want my dad coming in."
He grits his teeth against more shivers. "Always knew I'd end up in your bed ... and hear you say those words one day." He manages a smirk.
Jeb snarls. "Unbelievable. Even when he's at death's door he's a tool." He arranges a pillow beneath Morpheus's neck. "Why don't you keep your mouth shut while we help you."
Morpheus laughs weakly, his skin flashing with blue light. "What say Alyssa"
his breath rattles
"give my mouth something else to do? — A.G. Howard

We find only one tool, neither created nor invented, but perfect: the hand of man. — Julio Ramon Ribeyro

You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves ... .On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make him a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. — John Ruskin

I studied him the way I studied all the people in my life, noticing the changes of his mood, the times when the edge of his patience came into view, even small physical details like the sickle-shaped scar on the top of his right forearm and the small flourish he made with his hand whenever he set down a tool, as if he was brushing bad air away from it. — Roland Merullo

Clearly, here is a man who adheres to a widely held theory of attacking the branches of evil. 1. Speak from an ivory tower but rarely take a cutting tool in hand, unless when advising others. 2. Lecture at length, inspire others to unselfish acts of civil disobedience or quiet resistance, but rarely perform such acts yourself. 3. Become a widely-heralded critic of the state from within a respected state institution. — Douglas Herman

Devotion is a tool to dissolve yourself into nothingness and become the very hand of the Divine. — Jaggi Vasudev

Once you have the psychedelic tool in hand then some real choices have to be made. — Terence McKenna

Boxing is not brutal, it's an art - God has gifted me with incredible handspeed as a tool to be used - what else am I supposed to do but fight? There ain't no hand-racing competitions. — Roy Jones Jr.

Another one is cleaning up tool that have been used and not put away and are cluttering up the place. This is a good one because one of the first warning signs of impatience is frustration at not being able to lay your hand on the tool you need right away. If you just stop and put tools away neatly you will both find the tool and also scale down your impatience without wasting time or endangering the work. — Robert M. Pirsig

On the other hand, Teatime's corkscrew of a mind was exactly the tool to deal with something like this. And if he didn't ... well, that was hardly Downey's fault, was it? — Terry Pratchett

Films are made the same today, as they've ever been made, in certain respects. The scriptwriting, the pre-production, the storyboarding, and the designing are all the same. The technique of animation has changed, in the sense that rather than drawing it by hand, we use a computer as a tool. The computer has become a pencil to draw or paint the images that we see in a film. — Rob Minkoff

An hour later, thoroughly appalled with the state of the cabin now that she had given it a thorough assessment, Camilla sailed into the shed. She was armed with a long list.
"You need supplies."
"Hand me that damn wrench."
She picked up the tool and considered herself beyond civilized for not simply bashing him over the head with it. "Your home is an abomination. I'll require cleaning supplies - preferably industrial strength. And if you want a decent meal, I'll need some food to stock the kitchen. You have to go into town."
He battled the bolt into submission, shoved the switch on. And got nothing but a wheezy chuckle out of the generator. "I don't have time to go into town."
"If you want food for your belly and clean sheets on which to sleep, you'll make time. — Nora Roberts

I brought out the most powerful tool I had in my arsenal. "If you resist," I said into Reyes's ear, "I'll be forced to Taser you."
He looked at what I had in my hand. "That's a phone."
"I have an app. You'll probably experience nerve damage. Slight memory loss. — Darynda Jones

Dealing with adversity is like preparing for surgery. By putting our faith in what the doctor has said, we believe we will be better off if we have the surgery. But that does not make it any less painful. By submitting to the hand of a surgeon, we are saying that our ultimate goal is health, even at the cost of pain. Adversity is the same way. It is a means to an end. It is God's tool for the advancement of our spiritual lives. — Charles Stanley

One understands then why woman has no sexual parts, properly speaking. It is because she is herself a sexual part - a sexual part of man, to cumbersome for him to carry around permanently and therefore deposited outside himself for most of the time and taken up when needed. Moreover the quality that distinguishes man from animals is this very power of equipping himself at any moment with an instrument, tool or arm that he needs, but that he can get rid of straight away, whereas the lobster has to drag his two pincers about with him everywhere. And just as mans hand is a sort of grappling hook that enables him to grasp a hammer, sword or fountain pen according to his needs, so his sex is the sort of grappling hook of the sexual parts rather than the sexual part itslef. — Michel Tournier

I am only a pencil in the hand of God, but it is He who writes. — Mother Teresa

That a thing made by hand, the work and thought of a single craftsman, can endure much longer than its maker, through centuries in fact, can survive natural catastrophe, neglect, and even mistreatment, has always filled me with wonder. Sometimes in museums, looking at a humble piece of pottery from ancient Persia or Pompeii, or a finely wrought page from a medieval illuminated manuscript toiled over by a nameless monk, or a primitive tool with a carved handle, I am moved to tears. The unknown life of the maker is evanescent in its brevity, but the work of his or her hands and heart remains. — Susan Vreeland

I don't have a favorite cooking tool. In the kitchen, I always have my pencil and notebook in my hand. I cook more theoretically than I do practically. My job is creative, and in the kitchen, the biggest part of my creativity is theoretical. The pencil has a symbolic meaning for me. The type of person who carries a pencil around is the type of person who's open to change. Someone who walks around with a pen isn't; he's the opposite. — Ferran Adria

Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit; occidentis telum est.

A sword is never a killer; it is a tool in the killers hand. — Maggie Stiefvater

Earl, you can't walk around with a lead slug up your bottom. It's bound to affect your outlook." Tool jerked his hand away. "I'll get it took care of, I swear." "It could well be the turning point in your life," she said. "What they call an epiphany. Or at least a catharsis." He assumed those to be the surgical terms for a bullet removal, and he promised Maureen he would schedule the operation as soon as he got a break in his bodyguarding schedule. — Carl Hiaasen

The hand in the eye is the ultimate tool. — Randy Sanders

In any case, the bayonet isn't as important as it used to be. It's more usual now to go into the attack with hand-grenades and your entrenching tool. The sharpened spade is a lighter and more versatile weapon - not only can you get a man under the chin, but more to the point, you can strike a blow with a lot more force behind it. That's especially true if you can bring it down diagonally between the neck and the shoulder, because then you can split down as far as the chest. When you put a bayonet in, it can stick, and you have to give the other man a hefty kick in the guts to get it out. — Erich Maria Remarque

To be worthy of the name, an experimenter must be at once theorist and practitioner. While he must completely master the art of establishing experimental facts, which are the materials of science, he must also clearly understand the scientific principles which guide his reasoning through the varied experimental study of natural phenomena. We cannot separate these two things: head and hand. An able hand, without a head to direct it, is a blind tool; the head is powerless without its executive hand. — Claude Bernard

What is
the right tool,
the best option,
the choicest gift,
the winning hand,
the greatest relief,
the finest revenge,
the sweetest drink,
the perfect response,
the working solution,
the strongest medicine?
The correct answer is kindness. — Richelle E. Goodrich

For the benefit of kids, "chart art" pulls them away from electronic screens, both big and small. They can enjoy pencils and colors in their hands, while they create pictures that evolve on paper. "Griddles" will get their thought process going, along with problem solving, and discovery - not to mention hand-eye coordination and motor development. It's also a learning tool for numbers and letters on the printed page — Lorraine Holnback Brodek

She wished she could capture the moment and make it physical somehow, turn it into something that she could hold in her hands, or put somewhere safe like she would a book or a vase. But life wasn't like that. You didn't get to hold on to the moments that defined you or touch the things that touched you - not in the palm of your hand or with the tips of your fingers, at least. Destiny's machinations were as elusive as a sculptor's tool, swooping in, changing your contours, and then moving on to the next piece of clay. — J.R. Ward

I know you've been aching to have your hands on my staff," I said to Ascher, as Nicodemus examined the altar for himself. I held out my hand. "But I'd rather be the one fondling my tool. Wizards are weird like that."
"Wow," she said, and flashed me a grin, her face flushed, excited. "You left me nowhere to go with that one. I have nothing to add. — Jim Butcher

My faith is a tool I employ, a metaphorical context I find apt, but it is inert until placed in a hand that needs it. — Thomm Quackenbush

California nurse Jared Axen was holding a dying hospice patient's hand when he began to sing an old hymn. The woman, who didn't speak English, hadn't been responsive in days. But when Axen sang to her, she squeezed his hand, a response that soothed the woman's family. Six years later, Axen, a classically trained musician, sings to some of his patients every day. "It gives them their humanity back," he said. "Music is a common language that helps me connect with my patients." Many patients also claim to feel better and to need fewer pain medications, Axen said. "It's become a vital tool for my patients and their families. — Alexandra Robbins

I never think about genre when I work. I've written fantasy, science fiction, supernatural fiction, and am now working on a suspense novel. Genres are mostly useful as a marketing tool, and to help booksellers known where to shelve a book. — Elizabeth Hand

The word processor is a better tool than a quill pen because you can do so much more with it, but on the other hand, what you have to say and how you say it is the ultimate determination. — Walter Murch

Does Facebook behave like a tool in my hand, or a firehose designed to spew at me in accordance with other peoples' agendas? Concretely: can I write my own client to present a filtered view of the Facebook stream, or have other people do that for me? — Eric S. Raymond

The hand is the tool of tools. — Aristotle.

Before I was married, I didn't consider my failure to manage even basic hand tools a feminist inadequacy. I thought it had more to do with being Jewish. The Jews I knew growing up didn't do 'do-it-yourself.' When my father needed to hammer something he generally used his shoe, and the only real tool he owned was a pair of needle-nose pliers. — Ayelet Waldman

Every child has a dream, to pursue the dream is in every child's hand to make it a reality. One's invention is another's tool ... — Samuel Morse

I feel that the act of writing, in and of itself, is a tool towards probing that which you wouldn't without that pen in your hand. It's a strange, almost neurological phenomenon, and the words seem to generate more words - but only when you're writing. You can't do it in your head. — Paul Auster

There is a deep gap between our thinking about statistics and our thinking about individual cases. Statistical results with a causal interpretation have a stronger effect on our thinking than noncausal information. But even compelling causal statistics will not change long-held beliefs or beliefs rooted in personal experience. On the other hand, surprising individual cases have a powerful impact and are a more effective tool for teaching psychology because the incongruity must be resolved and embedded in a causal story. — Daniel Kahneman

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer's hand. — Seneca.

The airplane was a complicated system encompassing many components, but to a skilled pilot it still had the intimate quality of a hand tool. The love that lays the swale in rows is also the love that parts the clouds for the stick-and-rudder man. — Nicholas Carr

There is something in such laws that takes the breath away. They are not discoveries or inventions of the human mind, but exist independently of us. In a moment of clarity, one can at most discover that they are there and take them into account. Long before there were people on the earth, crystals were already growing in the earth's crust. On one day or another, a human being first came across such a sparkling morsel of regularity lying on the ground or hit one with his stone tool and it broke off and fell at his feet, and he picked it up and regarded it in his open hand, and he was amazed. — M.C. Escher

It is the old experience that a rude instrument in the hand of a master craftsman will achieve more than the finest tool wielded by the uninspired journeyman. — Karl Pearson

If we are pack, then conquest is our sustenance, sister.
He plunged his hand into the coywolv's frame. With a wet tearing, the heart came out, glistening and full of blood, veins and arteries torn. The muscle of life. Tool held it out to her. "Our enemies give us strength." Blood ran from his fist. Mahlia saw the challenge in the half-man's eye.
She limped over to the battle-scarred monster and held out her hand. The heart was surprisingly heavy as Tool poured it into her palm. She lifted the muscle to her lips and bit deep.
Blood ran down her chin. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Everything is a tool - a boot, a sled, a dog - and a hand, an arm, even a man! If it breaks down you throw it away and you march on! It's brutal, yes! And it's ugly. But anything else is sentiment and it will kill you. — Ted Tally

Burns immediately left the class, and going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end. This ominous tool she presented to Miss Scatcherd with a respectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs. Not a tear rose to Burns' eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression. "Hardened girl!" exclaimed Miss Scatcherd; "nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits: carry the rod away." Burns obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek. — Charlotte Bronte

Thorne blinked at her, then down at the sewage he could barely make out in the darkness. "Don't you have some tool in that fancy hand of yours that can get us across?"
Cinder glared, light-headed from her body's instinctively short breaths. "Oh, wow, how could I have forgotten about my grappling hook? — Marissa Meyer

In Jiu Jitsu, we often fall into the trap of simply trying a technique "harder," rather than recognizing that it is a poorly chosen tool for the task at hand. — Chris Matakas

A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind. — Henry Ward Beecher

What can be more soul shaking than peering through a 100-inch telescope at a distant galaxy, holding a 100-million-year-old fossil or a 500,000-year-old stone tool in one's hand, standing before the immense chasm of space and time that is the Grand Canyon, or listening to a scientist who gazed upon the face of the universe's creation and did not blink? — Michael Shermer

[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel
back in 1980, before I was online
I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.' — Robert Anton Wilson

When I came from horizontal vertical straight all old stuff then suddenly I go also again in curved lines. And there I submit to changes in the intensity of my hand leading a tool, you see. — Josef Albers