Old Saws Quotes & Sayings

After 9/11, we had to look at the world differently. After 9/11, we had to recognize that when we saw a threat, we must take it seriously before it comes to hurt us. In the old days we'd see a threat, and we could deal with it if we felt like it or not. But 9/11 changed it all. — George W. Bush

One time I saw an old man in a hurry and I thought, 'That makes sense.' — Demetri Martin

[The intellect of fallen man] may be compared to a buzz-saw that is sharp and shining, ready to cut the boards that come to it. Let us say that a carpenter wishes to cut fifty boards for the purpose of laying the floor of a house. He has marked his boards. He has set his saw. He begins at one end of the mark on the board. But he does not know that his seven-year-old son has tampered with the saw and changed its set. The result is that every board he saws is cut slantwise and thus unusable because too short except at the point where the saw made its first contact with the wood. As long as the set of the saw is not changed, the result will always be the same. So also whenever the teachings of Christianity are presented to the natural man, they will be cut according to the set of sinful human personality. — Cornelius Van Til

I was eleven years old when I saw a woman for the first time, and I was seized by such sudden surprise that I burst into tears. — Mia Couto

He who steals my purse steals my right to live," was the reply, "old saws to the contrary. For he steals my bread and meat and bed, and in doing so imperils my life. — Jack London

A fellow once came to me to ask for an appointment as a minister abroad. Finding he could not get that, he came down to some more modest position. Finally, he asked to be made a tide-waiter. When he saw he could not get that, he asked me for an old pair of trousers. It is sometimes well to be humble ... — Abraham Lincoln

Everything I know I learned by listening and watching. Nowadays people learn out of books instead. Doctors study what man has learned. I pray to understand what man has forgotten. — Vernon Cooper

You can't change a single word. What is tensile strength? It is that all the components are working together. I repeat: You can't change a single word. The best short stories are built on this premise. — Norman Mailer

Hey, I saw this old British movie, all the people spoke so different, you could hardly understand them. But everyone here speaks American as good as you and me. What's with that? — Max Barry

Passion isn't a path through the woods. Passion is the woods. It's the deepest, wildest part of the forest; the grove where the fairies still dance and obscene old vipers snooze in the boughs. Everybody but the most dried up and dysfunctional is drawn to the grove and enchanted by its mysteries, but then they just can't wait to call in the chain saws and bulldozers and replace it with a family-style restaurant or a new S and L. That's the payoff, I guess. Safety. Security. Certainty. Yes, indeed. Well, remember this, pussy latte: we're not involved in a 'relationship,' you and I, we're involved in a collision. Collisions don't much lend themselves to secure futures ... — Tom Robbins

"There is no disputing about tastes," says the old saw. In my experience there is little else. — Robertson Davies

Growing up, I was obsessed with Michael Jackson. I saw him at Wembley when I was 7 years old, it was my first proper show. He was like a god to me. — Matthew Healy

The old saw about old dogs and new tricks only applies to certain people. — Daniel Pinkwater

It came to that" the first time you sentenced a man to death that you knew to be innocent. — Abby Mann

The first time I ever saw him play, Tre Cool was wearing a tutu and an old-womans swimming cap. — Billie Joe Armstrong

Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought. — Stephen King

I was seven years old the first time I saw Michael Jackson. That changed everything. — Robin Thicke

Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies. — John Hodgman

A trite popular saying, or proverb. (Figurative and colloquial.) So called because it makes its way into a wooden head. Following are examples of old saws fitted with new teeth. — Ambrose Bierce

I felt like a new man; but I was disappointed with the photographic documentation because I still saw always the old self. — Arnulf Rainer

Mom is always saying I'm a smart kid, but that I just don't apply myself. — Jeff Kinney

O all you host of heaven!O Earth! waht else?
And shall i couple hell? O Fie! Hold, hold, my heart
And you, my sinews, grow not instant old,
But bear me stiffly up. Remember thee?
Ay, thou poor ghost, while memmory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter; yes, by heaven! — William Shakespeare

My background is that I've spent a lot of time marketing entertainment. One of the old saws in package goods is you can take something that is popular and you can make it more popular. But if you take something less popular, you can't automatically market it into the same success as something that's already popular. — Fred Seibert

I saw Hamlet Prince of Denmark played; but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age. — John Evelyn

No matter who you were in sixteenth-century Europe, you could be sure of two things: you would be lucky to reach fifty years of age, and you could expect a life of discomfort and pain. Old age tires the body by thirty-five, Erasmus lamented, but half the population did not live beyond the age of twenty. There were doctors and there was medicine, but there does not seem to have been a great deal of healing. Anyone who could afford to seek a doctor's aid did so eagerly, but the doctor was as likely to maim or kill as to cure. His potions were usually noxious and sometimes fatal - but they could not have been as terrible and traumatic as the contemporary surgical methods. The surgeon and the Inquisitor differed only in their motivation: otherwise, their batteries of knives, saws, and tongs for slicing, piercing, burning, and amputating were barely distinguishable. Without any anesthetic other than strong liquor, an operation was as bad as the torments of hell. — Philip Ball

If you'll remember, helping people was one of the two basic things Fat has been told long ago to give up; helping people and taking dope. He had stopped taking dope, but all his energy and enthusiasm were now totally channeled into saving people. Better he had kept on with the dope. — Philip K. Dick

Old saws have no teeth. — Cynthia Ozick

Fair exchange, as the old saw goes is never robbery — Iceberg Slim

I thought that young people had more problems than old people ... Then I looked around and saw that everybody who looked young had young problems and that everybody who looked old had old problems. — Andy Warhol