Iron John Quotes & Sayings

A twitch at the controls could swerve the cat', but the driver's hands could not twitch because the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow got into the driver's hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him - goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his perception, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was, he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was nothing. If the young thrusting plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He — John Steinbeck

We can all live with doubts. It's the knowing that breaks us.

Iron House — John Hart

Along the iron veins that traverse the frame of our country, beat and flow the fiery pulses of its exertion, hotter and faster every hour. All vitality is concentrated through those throbbing arteries into the central cities; the country is passed over like a green sea by narrow bridges, and we are thrown back in continually closer crowds on the city gates. — John Ruskin

Unfortunately, the mysterious gold does not come from the moon, but from the pocket of a blacksmith, or a nail-smith, or a cartwright, or a farrier, or a laborer, or a shipwright; in a word, from John Q. Citizen, who gives it now without receiving a grain more of iron than when he was paying ten francs. Thus, we can see at a glance that this very much alters the state of the case; for it is very evident that Mr. Protectionist's profit is compensated by John Q. Citizen's loss, and all that Mr. Protectionist can do with the pot of gold, for the encouragement of national labor, John Q. Citizen might have done himself. The stone has only been thrown upon one part of the lake, because the law has prevented it from being thrown upon another. — Frederic Bastiat

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing
Such notes as warbled to the string,
Drew Iron tears down Pluto's cheek,
And made Hell grant what Love did seek. — John Milton

The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself, then the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land. — John Steinbeck

I read about a John Shelby of Thackham, England, who in 1672 was thrown from his horse into a thicket where he found an iron pot containing more than five hundred gold coins. According to the treasure trove laws of England, all hidden or lost property belonged to the Crown. However, Shelby refused to give the gold to the king's officers, and he was arrested, tried for treason, and beheaded. This was probably a favorite story of the IRS. — Nelson DeMille

If the self-discipline of the free cannot match the iron discipline of the mailed fist, in economic, political, scientific, and all the other kinds of struggles, as well as the military, then the peril to freedom will continue to rise. — John F. Kennedy

Geology does better in reclothing dry bones and revealing lost creations, than in tracing veins of lead and beds of iron; astronomy better in opening to us the houses of heaven than in teaching navigation; surgery better in investigating organiation than in setting limbs; only it is ordained that, for our encouragement, every step we make in science adds something to its practical applicabilities. — John Ruskin

But suddenly he comprehended why her face haunted him, why he felt this terrible need to see her again: it was to possess her, to melt into her, to burn, to burn, to burn to ashes on that body and in those eyes. To postpone such a desire for a week, a month, a year, several years even, that can be done. But for eternity is when the iron bites. — John Fowles

Jesus will rule planet earth with a rod of iron, and of His kingdom there shall be no end (Isaiah 9:7; Luke 1:33). — John Hagee

The pilot of the Galilean lake; Two massy keys he bore, of metals twain (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). — John Milton

He is a strange, resolute, repulsive, iron-willed, inexorable old man, [possessing] a firey nature and a cold temper, and a cooler head--a volcano beneath a covering of snow. — William A. Phillips

Do you know that i paid two dollars for [Doxocology] thirty-three years ago? Everything was wrong with him, hoofs like flapjacks, a hock so thick and short and straight there seems no joint at all. he's hammerheaded and swaybacked. He has a pinched chest and a big behind. He has an iron mouth and he still fights the upper. with a saddle he feels as thought you were riding a sled over a gravel pit. He can't trot and he stumbles over his feet when he walks. I have never in thirty-three years fond one good thing about him. He even has an ugly disposition. He is selfish and quarrelsome and mean and disobedient. to this day I don't dare walk behind him because he will surely take a kick at me. when I feed him mush he tries to bite my hand. And I love him. — John Steinbeck

"Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it ... have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind". — John Wesley

I'd say that the whole 'sitting on the Iron Throne' experience is intended to be a novelty for people who don't have that many encounters with thrones in their day to day lives. — John Bradley-West

Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way ... What we can't do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent. — John Cage

Now comes the reign of iron. — John Ericsson

All of us in the Senate live in an iron lung-the iron lung of politics, and it is no easy task to emerge from that rarified atmosphere in order to breathe the same fresh air our constituents breathe. — John F. Kennedy

In days of yore, the poet's pen From wing of bird was plunder'd, Perhaps of goose, but now and then, From Jove's own eagle sunder'd. But now, metallic pens disclose Alone the poet's numbers; In iron inspiration glows, Or with the poet slumbers. — John Adams

Around about now, young John Owen comes out of the shack lugging my old musket from the War. At six years of age, our youngest boy already knew his business. Not a word, just brings the shooting iron somewhat closer so's he don't waste powder, then hoists her up, set to haul back on the trigger. I believe his plan was to shoot this feller, get the story later. — Peter Matthiessen

In a regime of Free Trade and free economic intercourse it would be of little consequence that iron lay on one side of a political frontier, and labor, coal, and blast furnaces on the other. But as it is, men have devised ways to impoverish themselves and one another; and prefer collective animosities to individual happiness. — John Maynard Keynes

The writer of Proverbs observed that sharp people sharpen one another, just as iron sharpens iron. If you want to be a sharp thinker, be around sharp people. — John C. Maxwell

Hate is of all things the mightiest divider, nay, is division itself. To couple hatred, therefore, though wedlock try all her golden links, and borrow to tier aid all the iron manacles and fetters of law, it does but seek to twist a rope of sand. — John Milton

After a while you'll think no thought the others do not think. You'll know no word the others can't say. And you'll do things because the others do them. You'll feel the danger in any difference whatever-a danger to the crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men ... Once in a while there is a man who won't do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They'll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can't finally give in, they'll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside
neither part of themselves, nor yet free ... They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can't allow a question to weaken it. — John Steinbeck

The storm front towered above them and the wind was cool on their sweating faces. They slumped bleary-eyed in their saddles and looked at one another. Shrouded in the black thunderheads the distant lightning glowed mutely like welding seen through foundry smoke. As if repairs were under way at some flawed place in the iron dark of the world. — Cormac McCarthy

We must beat the iron while it is hot, but we may polish it at leisure. — John Dryden

Arbitrary distinctions ... have always been the instruments of arbitrary power, the means of lulling and ensnaring men into their own servitude. For whenever we leave principles and clear positive laws, and wander after constructions, one construction or consequence is piled upon another until we get an immense distance from fact and truth and nature, lost in the wild regions of imagination and possibility, where arbitrary power sits upon her brazen throne and governs with an iron sceptre.' -said by John Adams, in Those Who Love, p. 166 — Irving Stone

A brief hush fell over the table when the guy from the bar approached. After he finished depositing their drinks in the center of the table, Lynn jumped on the opportunity to flirt, winking and smiling prettily at him. "Thanks, cowboy."
"Cowboy?" Reaching for her appletini, Piper laughed.
Lynn shrugged. "When I picture him in my bed, I see a Stetson and a saddle."
Something well-known among their group, ever since she watched John Travolta in Urban Cowboy, she was on a mission to secure herself her very own cowboy.
"I bet you see a branding iron too," Jules snickered.
Lynn's thoughtful gaze trailed after him as the bartender returned to making drinks. — J.C. Valentine

thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel; which is very easily done with a bar of iron; and, when it is done, the pieces can never be put together again: so that by the metaphor is signified the easy and irreparable ruin of the wicked; see Isa 30:14. The word signifies that they should be so crumbled into dust, that they should be scattered about as with the wind; which, so far as it relates to the Jews, was fulfilled in their destruction by the Romans, and will have its accomplishment in the antichristian nations at the latter day; see Rev 2:26. — John Gill

Holy Sonnets: Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?"

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
Despair behind, and death before doth cast
Such terror, and my feebled flesh doth waste
By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
Only thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one hour I can myself sustain;
Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart. — John Donne

Along the road. He heard the iron tires of the cart grinding on the road. He turned and looked after it, and on the slope he saw old Samuel against the sky, his white hair shining with starlight. — John Steinbeck

I fear yet this iron yoke of outward conformity hath left a slavish print upon our necks: the ghost of a linnen decency yet haunts us. — John Milton

And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crumbled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses. — John Steinbeck

All the boys were grown up and done for by this time; so it is scarcely worth while saying anything more about them. You may see the twins and Nibs and Curly any day going to an office, each carrying a little bag and an umbrella. Michael is an engine driver. Slightly married a lady of title, and so he became a lord. You see that judge in a wig coming out at the iron door? That used to be Tootles. The bearded man who doesn't know any story to tell his children was once John. — J.M. Barrie

He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion.
A thick round wall of glass. — John Fowles

Life is not a symbol, is not one riddle and one failure to guess it, is not to inhabit one face alone or to be given up after one losing throw of the dice; but is to be, however inadequately, emptily, hopelessly into the city's iron heart, endured. And out again, upon the unplumb'd, salt, estranging sea. — John Fowles

With the advance of feudalism came the growth of iron armor, until, at last, a fighting-man resembled an armadillo. — John Boyle O'Reilly

Being a student of Wuxia literature, I was aware 'Crouching Tiger' was book four in the 'Crane Iron Pentalogy.' — John Fusco

[Dessie's] shop was a unique institution in Salinas. It was a woman's world. Here all the rules, and the fears that created the iron rules, went down. The door was closed to men. It was a sanctuary where women could be themselves- smelly, wanton, mystic, conceited, truthful, and interested. The whalebone corsets came off at Dessie's, the sacred corsets that moulded and warped woman-flesh into goddess-flesh. At Dessie's they were women who went to the toilet and overate and scratched and farted. And from this freedom came laughter, roars of laughter. — John Steinbeck

Teddy was reminded of Paterson, but that polyglot population had appeared healthier, more hopeful, the American mood more fertile then in its promises, and the streets of Silk City with their little yards holding a fuchsia bush or a blue-robed plaster statue of the Virgin more livable than these stacked, stinking, ill-lit dens. He had been a part of the population then, a schoolboy immersed in its details of competition and expectation and childish collusion and hierarchy, alive in its struggle and too absorbed to judge or pity, whereas now he came upon it from outside, from above, as an agent of power and ownership, an enforcer and avenger, the representative of the system which squeezed the lowly by the same iron laws whereby it generation profits for the lucky and strong. — John Updike

Now comes the reign of iron - and cased sloops are to take the place of wooden ships. — John Adolphus Bernard Dahlgren

With iron and blood, it seems, and from the rich depths of the earth, John Griswold has fashioned a classic American novel, its dignified intonations of our young nation's sweat and tears evocative of the indelible storytelling of Dos Passos, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair. — Bob Shacochis

An earth hard as iron lay locked beneath a sky whose mottled clouds spit snow like ashes sucked up a chimney and then dispersed with the smoke. — John Updike

I am now a man of despair, rejected, abandoned, shut up in this iron cage from which there is no escape. — John Bunyan

The sword - the first, for a time the only force: the force of iron. — John Lothrop Motley

I have a date,' he explained. 'This is an emergency.' He paused to catch his breath. 'Do you know' - breath - 'how to iron?' I walked over to the pink shirt. It was wrinkled like an old woman who'd spent her youth sunbathing. If only the Colonel didn't ball up his every belonging and stuff it into random dresser drawers. 'I think you just turn it on and press it against the shirt, right?' I said. 'I don't know. I didn't even know we had an iron.' 'We don't. It's Takumi's. But Takumi doesn't know how to iron, either. And when I asked Alaska, she started yelling, "You're not going to impose the patriarchal paradigm on me." Oh God, I need to smoke. I need to smoke, but I can't reek when I see Sara's parents. Okay, screw it. We're going to smoke in the bathroom with the shower on. The shower has steam. Steam gets rid of wrinkles, right? — John Green

You can learn from anybody if you just know the right questions. The Bible says, "Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out" (Prov. 20:5 KJV). In other words, you can learn from anybody if you just learn to draw out his or her knowledge. And how do you do it? You draw it out by asking questions. We all know things that others don't, and others know things of which we are ignorant. That's why the Bible says, "Iron sharpens iron" (Prov. 27:17). — John Piper

See what perils do environ those who meddle with hot iron. — John Galsworthy

We used to rehearse and that's where the roots of Dream Theater formed. Y'know, we used to play cover songs and jam to [Iron] Maiden and stuff but we were writing songs and it was this metal, loud style and we'd constantly get knocks on our door, because the rehearsal rooms were right next door to each other, and these jazz guys would be like, "Can you guys turn it down a little?" — John Petrucci

We were lucky to get Sam Jackson and Jeremy Irons and John McTiernan back. Long movie and hard movie to make and difficult for me because instead of working, my biggest concern was not repeating things I had done it in the previous films. And it rang notes in my head of episodic TV. A sequel is not a new movie; it's a chapter in a movie that you have already seen. Thank god Sam was there and thank god Jeremy was there. Again, it went outside the template of that series of films but it did well and made a ton of dough and the third chapter of a lot of sequels is always the one that falls down. — Bruce Willis

If the October days were a cordial like the sub-acids of fruit, these are a tonic like the wine of iron. Drink deep or be careful how you taste this December vintage. The first sip may chill, but a full draught warms and invigorates. — John Burroughs

It is not the weariness of mortality, but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration. Alas! we shall do nothing that way but lose some pounds of our own weight. — John Ruskin

I ate no butcher's meat, lived chiefly on fruits, vegetables, and fish, and never drank a glass of spirits or wine until my wedding day. To this I attribute my continual good health, endurance, and an iron constitution. — John James Audubon

As Robert Bly laments in Iron John, Some women want a passive man if they want a man at all; the church wants a tamed man - they are called priests; the university wants a domesticated man - they are called tenure-track people; the corporation wants a ... sanitized, hairless, shallow man. — John Eldredge

An academical system without the personal influence of teachers on pupils, is an arctic winter; it will create an icebound, petrified, cast-iron University, and nothing else. — John Henry Newman

Reversion to the mean is the iron rule of the financial markets. — John C. Bogle

When the iron is hot, strike. — John Heywood

As soon as Jesus sits on his throne he's gonna rule the world with a rod of iron. That means he's gonna make the ACLU do what he wants them to. That means you're not gonna have to ask if you can pray in public school. We will live by the law of God and no other law. — John Hagee

Montrose decided then and there that a full library, one made of old-fashioned paper books with bindings, the kind that cannot be electronically re-edited by anonymous lines of hidden code, was just as much a necessity for a free man as a shooting iron or a printing press. — John C. Wright

A hot iron, though blunt, will pierce sooner than a cold one, though sharper. — John Flavel

Yet each country had items that the other needed. The Arridi had reserves of red gold and iron in their deserts that the Toscans required to finance and equip their large armies. Even more important, Toscans had become inordinately fond of kafay, the rich coffee grown by the Arridi. — John Flanagan

The one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness. — John Steinbeck

Hill tops like hot iron glitter bright in the sun,
And the rivers we're eying burn to gold as they run;
Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air;
Whoever looks round sees Eternity there. — John Clare

Liza hated alcoholic liquors with an iron zeal. Dribking alcohol in any form she regarded as a crime against a properly outraged diety. Not only would she not touch it herself, but she resisted its enjoyment by anyone else. The result naturally was that her husband Samuel and all her children had a good lusty love for a drink. — John Steinbeck

Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. — John Steinbeck