Horseshoe Quotes & Sayings

I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same fifty percent rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't ... Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe ... same as the voodoo lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles. It's all the same ... so just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself ... — George Carlin

I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. — Bram Stoker

Bless you, my boy. Have a horseshoe." "Thank you, sir. What should I do with it?" "Throw it." "Away?" "At that peg there. Then pick it up and throw it at this — Joseph Heller

Remember: "For want of a nail, the horseshoe was lost, for want of a horseshoe, the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the battle was lost, for want of a battle, the war was lost." This parable should be the mantra of everyone who thinks her or his vote doesn't count. — Gloria Steinem

Narrative should flow as flows the brook down through the hills and the leafy woodlands ... a brook that never goes straight for a minute, but goes and goes briskly, sometimes ungrammatically, and sometimes fetching a horseshoe of ¾ of a mile around and at the end of the circuit flowing within a yard of the path that it traversed an hour before; but always going and always following at least one law, always loyal to that law, the law of narrative, which has no law. Nothing to do but make the trip; the how of it is not important, so that the trip is made. — Mark Twain

The skilled artisan uses the same iron to make a horseshoe
As he does for a polished mirror for the King. — Idries Shah

Just build a classic horseshoe of wood and plaster, and fill it with statuary and curtains, then sit back and savor the beautifully blended results. — Michael A. Walsh

Many authors write like amateur blacksmiths making their first horseshoe; the clank of the anvil, the stench of the scorched leather apron, the sparks and the cursing are palpable, and this appeals to those who rank "sincerity" very high. Nabokov is more like a master swordsmith making a fine blade; nothing is amiss, nothing is too much, there is no fuss, and the finished product must be handled with great care, or it will cut you badly. — Robertson Davies

Of course I don't believe in it [pointing to horseshoe on his office wall]. But I understand that it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not. — Niels Bohr

To hear Chip talk you'd think every Nebraskan male knows how to put a horseshoe on a mule. They know how to bring forth grain from dirt, or what a combine harvester is. They get what happens to that brought-forth grain, the steps before the Cheerios. The women knit long underwear and are adept at fruit canning. — Lydia Millet

Younger girls stand with their moms alongside countless girls our age in matching outfits - blazers and horseshoe necklaces and ballet flats. — Emery Lord

A farmer travelling with his load Picked up a horseshoe on the road, And nailed if fast to his barn door, That luck might down upon him pour; That every blessing known in life Might crown his homestead and his wife, And never any kind of harm Descend upon his growing farm. — James Thomas Fields

I pick up the last of my three horseshoes. I concentrate, make certain that my aim is perfect, bring my arm back ever so slightly, and toss the horseshoe. — Karen Pokras Toz

I've tried to move [the sidhe-seers] during times of peace and quiet and had the luck of a broken mirror nailed beneath an upside-down horseshoe with a ladder nearby that a black cat just walked under. — Karen Marie Moning

Shaped like an enormous horseshoe, the Louvre was the longest building in Europe, stretching farther than three Eiffel Towers laid end to end. — Dan Brown

And the Bastard grant us ... in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. — Lois McMaster Bujold

The way my face is without a jaw, my throat just ends in sort of a hole with my tongue hanging out. Around the hole, the skin is all scar tissue: dark red lumps and shiny the way you'd look if you got the cherry pie in a pie eating contest. If I let my tongue hang down, you can see the roof of my mouth, pink and smooth as the inside of a crab's back, and hanging down around the roof is the white vertebrae horseshoe of the upper teeth I have left. — Chuck Palahniuk

Other musicians are basically personalities who want to make a name for themselves. All I do is sing old songs in the best way I can. What else is there to know? If you were a blacksmith, what would people need to know about you other than whether you can make a good horseshoe? — Leon Redbone

A visitor to Niels Bohr's country cottage, noticing a horseshoe hanging on the wall, teasing the eminent scientist about this ancient superstition. Can it be true that you, of all people, believe it will bring you luck?'
'Of course not,' replied Bohr, 'but I understand it brings you luck whether you believe it or not.' — Niels Bohr

Happy art thou, as if every day thou hadst picked up a horseshoe. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Information is the currency of the Internet. As a medium, the Internet is brilliantly efficient at shifting information from the hands of those who have it into the hands of those who do not. Often, as in the case of term life insurance prices, the information existed but in a woefully scattered way. (In such instances, the Internet acts like a gigantic horseshoe magnet waved over an endless sea of haystacks, plucking the needle out of each one.) The Internet has accomplished what even the most fervent consumer advocates usually cannot: it has vastly shrunk the gap between the experts and the public. — Steven D. Levitt

A physicist visits a colleague and notices a horseshoe hanging on the wall above the entrance. 'Do you really believe that a horseshoe brings luck?' he asks. 'No,' replies the colleague, 'but I've been told that it works even if you don't believe in it.' — Niels Bohr

The examiners call their children their little Line 40s. That's of course where you enter your CCDC from Form 2441 on the 1040. Some of the children were playing Collections. Near the horseshoe courts. Some of the older children. Liens on the toys, a jeopardy assessment and seizure of some of the smaller childrens' plates; there was some of the usual crying. — David Foster Wallace

There, in the horseshoe drive, Kelly, gullible and mortal Kelly, awaits an explanation from a bedraggled immortal. The Minotaur accepts this temporary blessing for all it is worth. There are few things that he knows, these among them: that is is inevitable, even necessary, for a creature half man and half bull to walk the face of the earth; that in the numbing span of eternity even the most monstrous among us needs love; that the minutiae of life sometimes defer to folly; that even in the most tedious unending life there comes, occasionally, hope. One simply has to wait and be ready. — Steven Sherrill

Somebody once asked Niels Bohr why he had a horseshoe hanging above the front door of his house. Surely you, a world famous physicist, can't really believe that hanging a horseshoe above your door brings you luck? Of course not, Bohr replied, but I have been reliably informed that it will bring me luck whether I believe in it or not. — Arthur Koestler

It was twenty-five minutes past nine when he got to the corner of Seventh and Spring, where the Metropole was. It was an old hotel that had once been exclusive and was now steering a shaky course between a receivership and a bad name at Headquarters. It had too much oily dark wood paneling, too many chipped gilt mirrors. Too much smoke hung below its low beamed lobby ceiling and too many grifters bummed around in its worn leather rockers. The blonde who looked after the big horseshoe cigar counter wasn't young any more and her eyes were cynical from standing off cheap dates. (Nevada Gas) — Raymond Chandler

If anything is horrible, if there is a reality that surpasses our worst dreams, it is this: to live, to see the sun, to be in full possession of manly vigor, to have health and joy, to laugh heartily, to rush toward a glory that lures you on, to feel lungs that breathe, a heart that beats, a mind that thinks, to speak, to hope, to love; to have mother, wife, children, to have sunlight, and suddenly, in less time than it takes to cry out, to plunge into an abyss, to fall, to roll, to crush, to be crushed, to see the heads of grain, the flowers, the leaves, the branches, unable to catch hold of anything, to feel your sword useless, men under you, horses over you, to struggle in vain, your bones broken by some kick in the darkness, to feel a heel gouging your eyes out of their sockets, raging at the horseshoe between your teeth, to stifle, to howl, to twist, to be under all this, and to say, 'Just then I was a living man! — Victor Hugo

It's so fun to do theater, because as opposed to television, you just keep doing it again and again and again - every night. Sometimes it lands beautifully, and sometimes it lands just beside of it. It's like throwing a horseshoe. It's great fun. — Missi Pyle

I would put How Green Was My Valley in the same class as Uncle Tom's Cabin: a work that leaves an ineradicable "scratch on the mind," to borrow Harold Isaacs's useful phrase. There was another element as well. At a certain point, on some springy-turfed Welsh hillside far above the scenes of alienation and exploitation that lay below, young Huw contrived to part with his irksome virginity. Richard Llewellyn handled this transition with very slightly too much quasi-poetic euphemism, his crucial error being (to my fevered imagining) the idea that the inflamed heat of young manhood could be assuaged only by the relative "coolness" of a feminine interior. One had had a vague hope that the ardency would be appeased by an even greater heat, rather than sizzled like a red-hot horseshoe dipped in water, but at this stage I would have been willing to settle for anything that offered incandescence in either direction. — Christopher Hitchens

There is a unique bond between the land and the people in the Crescent City. Everyone here came from somewhere else, the muddy brown current of life prying them loose from their homeland and sweeping them downstream, bumping and scraping, until they got caught by the horseshoe bend that is New Orleans. Not so much as a single pebble 'came' from New Orleans, any more than any of the people did. Every grain of sand, every rock, every drip of brown mud, and every single person walking, living and loving in the city is a refugee from somewhere else. But they made something unique, the people and the land, when they came together in that cohesive, magnetic, magical spot; this sediment of society made something that is not French, not Spanish, and incontrovertibly not American. — James Caskey

Josie examined the booklet, candelabra on the cover, a program. Brahms, and then Psalm 16, Psalm 32, Bach. A prayer, the Mourner's Kaddish, in the flamelike Hebrew, followed by an English pronunciation, a translation. At least she would not clap in the wrong part. She remembered that night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Michael so handsome in his iridescent thrift-store suit and green silk tie, she in her Lana Turner black lace and spike heels. How they peered down from their seats in the top balcony at the horseshoe of musicians with their stands and instruments. When the music stopped, Michael caught hold of her hand. Lacing his fingers in hers, he tenderly bit her knuckles. She would have been the only one applauding. — Janet Fitch

The smell of grease in the Horseshoe Diner was strong, like the residuals of every meal that had ever been cooked over its open griddle. I lingered in a corner booth near the window, speaking to my wife Ava on the cell phone. With as much free time as a corpse, I pondered past mistakes, but I kept the call short before she asked too many questions and revived the dying thoughts in my mind. A man was a sharp and useful tool, I thought, as long as he never paused to consider it. — Christopher Klim

My friends all tell me I was born with a horseshoe up my butt. — Michael Trucco

I would not be too surprised to see a flying horse; I would consider it as a gift of the evolution; but I would be very surprised if it had horseshoe sounds! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Filled with a new sense of purpose, I downed half my coffee at one draught. It was good, strong stuff, the kind that Louis L'Amour used to say could float a horseshoe. Nobody ever drank weak coffee in his books. It was probably why they were so anxious to shoot people at high noon. — Kevin Hearne

Brightport looked so small: a cluster of low buildings, all huddled around a tiny horseshoe-shaped bay, a lighthouse at one — Liz Kessler