On The Head Of A Pin Quotes & Sayings

Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have known all along that it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek. — Tom Robbins

A pin has a head, but has no hair — Christina Rossetti

He registered the empty room a split second before she dropped on him from the storage shelf above the bathroom door, nearly knocking him off his feet.
"Hey. Stop that." He tried to twist to get hold of her, but his temple caught her sharp elbow and he saw stars. He staggered toward the bed and flipped her down at last, but she managed to hook her leg behind his neck and he ended up on the boom somehow, with her sittinbg on his chest.
Her wild, shoulder-length waves framed cheeks pink from effort, her chest heaving as she leaned forward to pin his hands next to his head on each side. She ended up with her fine breasts inches from his lips.
He could have subdued her in two moves, but he liked her on top of him. — Dana Marton

I grabbed Sabine's shoulder. If you stick me again, I'm going to make your head my personal pin cushion. — Andrea Cremer

It is a cliche that human beings are fascinated by size
mountain peaks, high buildings, and whales. We are also amazed by miniatures
a flea on a mouse, a flea on a trapeze, the Last Supper carved on the head of a pin. — Rosamond Purcell

The complete novelist would come into the world with a catalog of qualities like this. He would own the concentration of a Trappist monk, the organizational ability of a Prussian field marshal, the insight into human relations of a Viennese psychologist, the discipline of a man who prints the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin, the exquisite sense of timing of an Olympic gymnast, and by the way, a natural instinct and flair for exceptional use of language. — Leon Uris

woman's mouth opened and she brandished the rolling pin over her head like a Highland warrior. "PERVERRRRRRRT!" she screamed, and then she ran at him, clubbing him wherever she could reach. Edward — Cynthia Hand

Do you understand?" the figure beside the first speaker demanded. Its voice, unlike that of its companion, was light and breathy - the voice of an excited girl. Every inch of its head had been tattooed with an intricate grid, and at every intersection of horizontal and vertical axes a jeweled pin driven through to the bone. Its tongue was similarly decorated. "Do you even know who we are?" it asked. — Clive Barker

True, you're not a slave. You're worse off than that by a long, long way. You're a predatory beast shut up in a cage of which the bars aren't fixed, solid objects you can gnaw at or in despair batter against with your head until you get punch-drunk and stop worrying. No, those bars are the competing members of your own species, at least as cunning as you on average, forever shifting around so you can't pin them down, liable to get in your way without the least warning, disorienting your personal environment until you want to grab a gun or an axe and turn mucker. — John Brunner

You can see it on the Internet: There's an argument going on continually about, 'What is folk music?' And I don't really want to get involved in that. It's an endless argument, a 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' kind of argument. — Roger McGuinn

Writing a short story is like painting a picture on the head of a pin. And just getting everything to fit is - sometimes seems impossible. Writing a novel, though, is - has its own challenges of scope. And I think of that as painting a mural, where the challenge is that if you are close enough to work on it, you're too close to see the whole thing. — Rebecca Makkai

He holds the elevator door open with one enormous hand and leans out to look at the weather. Then he swings those dark blue eyes to mine, his brow beginning to crease. The familiar bubble forms in my head. I wish he was my friend. I burst it with a pin. "I'll give you a ride," he forces out. "Ugh, no way," I say over my shoulder and run. — Sally Thorne

I would want the British reader to feel that religion in America isn't an absurd thing - a sign of a pin head athwart a gigantic body. — Simon Schama

She had what the Victorians would call a finely shaped head. You could imagine the skull quite easily.
I'd know her head anywhere.
And what's inside it. I think of that, too: her mind. Her brain, all those coils, and her thoughts shuttling through those coils like fast, frantic centipedes. Like a child, I picture opening her skull, unspooling her brain and sifting through it, trying to catch and pin down her thoughts. What are you thinking, Amy? — Gillian Flynn

He knew what his plans were. He knew they balanced, like a million angels, on the head of a pin. Chance, circumstance, and determination held them together. — Cassandra Clare

Finally I went and found my hat and skewered it on my head with a four-inch hat pin. I wore the hat because I knew my mother never visited without one. The pin I thought would be a comfort in case of emergency. — Megan Whalen Turner

The recorder consisted of a biochip smaller than the head of a pin implanted into the hippocampus and nanosensors embedded throughout the body. Normally, the system lay dormant. But as soon as it detected severe deviations from the norm in various brain activity parameters - indicative of the stress caused by imminent death or great danger - the black-box would automatically contact the police and record the short-term memory in the hippocampus via molecular scanning. In the event of death, about one to two minutes of memories preceding the cessation of brain activity could be decrypted from the black box. — Bao Shu

When I lift my head, my eyes meet hers and in them, whether she would ever admit it or not, is desire. Lots of hot, sweaty, pin-me-up-against-the-wall desire. — M. Leighton

And she has a thousand virtues and not one acknowledged sin, But she is the sort of person you could liken to a pin. And she pricks you, and she sticks you, in a way that can't be said, When you seek for what has hurt you, why, you cannot find the head. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In the Name of Allah the Merciful, the Compassionate, Who manifests Himself through everything, the revelation of a clear knowing to whomsoever He wishes, peace be upon you, my son. This praise belongs to Allah Who manifests Himself on the head of a pin to whom He wishes, so that one testifies that He is not, and another testifies that there is none other than He. But the witnessing in the denying of Him is not rejected, and the witnessing in the affirming of Him is not praised. — Mansur Al-Hallaj

You could write all the IDEAS of all the movies, my own included, on the head of a pin. — Orson Welles

But at night we began dreaming of Man's perfect world without humanity (57) — Walter Mosley

It is not, truly speaking, the labour that is divided; but the men: divided into mere segments of men - broken into small fragments and crumbs of life, so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin or the head of a nail. — John Ruskin

It is sad that while science moves ahead in exciting new areas of research, fine-tuning our knowledge of how life originated and evolved, creationists remain mired in medieval debates about angels on the head of a pin and animals in the belly of an Ark. — Michael Shermer

The art of spreading rumors may be compared to the art of pin-making. There is usually some truth, which I call the wire; as this passes from hand to hand, one gives it a polish, another a point, others make and put on the head, and at last the pin is completed. — John Newton

Send anyone claiming that their RPG activity is an art form my way, and I'll gladly stick a pin in their head and deflate it just to have the satisfaction of the popping sound that makes.
One might play a game artfully, but that makes neither the game nor its play art. — Gary Gygax

Human reason is a pin dancing on the head of an angel, so small is it in comparison to the Divine vastness that encircles us. — Margaret Atwood

He ain't a Coot not really," said Bill. "He ain't got a head on him no better'n a squashed frog. I see him all right but he don't know nothing. Fishing he were on the gravel reach."
"Catching anything?" asked Pete, who, detective or no detective, was still a fisherman.
"Perch," said Bill.
"Oh, never mind the fish," said Dorothea. "Had any boats been cast off?"
"He tell me to keep my shadow off the water," said Bill. "So I creep up and give him one of my sandwiches and when I ask if any boats been cast off, why Tommy he say 'How do you know?' "
"Go on. Go on," said Dorothea, reaching out for one of the little black paper flags all ready on its pin.
"I say I don't know but I want to know and Tommy he say it weren't his fault and I say when were it and what boat and Tommy he said it were his Dad's row-boat and he give it Tommy to tie up and Tommy he tie it to a stick what broke and he have to go in swimming to catch it. — Arthur Ransome

A pin has as much head as some authors and a good deal more point. — George Dennison Prentice

ANGELS You might see an angel anytime and anywhere. Of course you have to open your eyes to a kind of second level, but it's not really hard. The whole business of what's reality and what isn't has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don't care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty. For myself, but not for other people. That's a place you just can't get into, not entirely anyway, other people's heads. I'll just leave you with this. I don't care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It's enough to know that for some people they exist, and that they dance. — Mary Oliver

In the context of the English language, there were many more important words than "in." There were fancy words, historic words, words that meant life or death. There were multi-syllabic tongue-twisters that required a sort out before speaking, and mission-critical pivotals that started wars or ended wars ... and even poetic nonsensicals that were like a symphony as they left the lips. Generally speaking, "in" did not play with the big boys. In fact, it barely had much of a definition at all, and, in the course of its working life, was usually nothing but a bridge, a conduit for the heavy lifters in any given sentence. There was, however, one context in which that humble little two-letter, one-syllable jobbie was a BFD. Love. The difference between someone "loving" somebody versus being "in love" was a curb to the Grand Canyon. The head of a pin to the entire Midwest. An exhale to a hurricane. — J.R. Ward

Each year thousands of embryos, no bigger than the head of a pin, are created in the process of in vitro fertilization, with the support of Congress, by the way. — Lois Capps

Ean seems like the 'not here to make friends' type, but I don't think anyone could go through this without getting close to someone. It's too hard. As difficult as it is for me, I know it's just as bad for you all."

"We definitely get the better end of the deal though," he said, winking at my reflection.

I tilted my head. "I don't know about that. The more I think about it, the sadder I get about having to send all but one of you away. I'll miss having you here."

"Have you considered a harem?" he said, deadpan.

I bent over in laughter and was rewarded with a pin stabbing my waist. "Ow!"

"Sorry! I shouldn't joke when there are needles around. — Kiera Cass

You wish they understood, as you do, that there is no escape and never was, that from the moment two cells combined to become one they were doomed. You wish they understood that there is joy in this fact, greater joy and love in just this one last moment than they experienced in the entirety of their lives. Because even in this last moment there is still Everything, whole galaxies and eons, the sum total of every experience across time, shrunk to the head of a pin, theirs for the asking, right here, right now. And so anything, anything, anything is possible. — Ron Currie Jr.

We will be one step down from the Creator," she said, her olive-hued face tightening into an expression that she considered dramatic. "Imagining a world and then making it. — Walter Mosley

Your people have lost the vision and vitality of your ancestors (73). — Walter Mosley

How do you feel?" Phantom asked him as he set his cup aside to pin him with a frown.
Christian leaned his head to the right to stretch one of the sore muscles in his neck. "Fit to ride."
Phantom scoffed. "Interesting, since you look as if you're only fit to fall over."
-Phantom & Christian — Kinley MacGregor

There's some instinctive attraction that draws you, as a writer, to your subject. And the attraction usually has to do with some primal personal thing that, of course, you have no idea about. In the end, the piece always comes down to the one or two sentences you struggle over. The sentences where you try to say explicitly what it is that the two of you, subject and writer, have in common. Those are the sentences that you just bang your head against the wall over until you get them right. It's very hard to make that distillation but that is actually what your job is. Without trying to pin the person like a butterfly to the wall, to sum it up. If I can do that, then I feel satisfied. To give the subject a reality in the form of a sentence that is like a piece of rock crystal or a prism. — Judith Thurman

My stories wrap around me like a cozy quilt, and sometimes I long to pull that quilt over my head and pin the blanket shut, allowing me to immerse myself in the world vivid in my mind. — Nancy Moser

So I thought. Are you happy?"
"What's that?"
"Don't you know yet? But who really knows what it is? Dancing on the head of a pin, maybe. — Erich Maria Remarque

He felt the
way he imagined an angel must feel during its celebrated dance on the head of
a pin whilst being counted by philosophers. — Douglas Adams

It is certain that there may be extraordinary mental activity with an extremely small absolute mass of nervous matter: thus the wonderfully diversified instincts, mental powers, and affections of ants are notorious, yet their cerebral ganglia are not so large as the quarter of a small pin's head. Under this point of view, the brain of an ant is one of the most marvelous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of a man. — Charles Darwin

There were place cards at the head table, which was one long, rectangular thing that would have everyone facing the reception room. I sat at the one marked Chritine Russell. Randy say to my left, with Denise to his right. To my right read Chris Pin. Who ... ?
"You've got to be kidding me," I said aloud. Why didn't I just shoot myself and get it over with?
"Justina, we meet again." Bones appeared and took his seat next to me as I vaulted out of my chair. "Wouldn't want to be rude, but I believe your table is over there. — Jeaniene Frost

I honestly believe that everything I know about the writing of non-fiction (or writing) could be engraved on the head of a pin with a garden hoe ... — M.F.K. Fisher

My skin burns under Maven's gaze, with the memory of one stolen kiss. It was him who saved me from Evangeline. Cal who saved me from escaping and bringing more pain upon myself. Cal who saved me from conscription. I've been too busy trying to save others to notice how much Cal saves me. How much he loves me.
Suddenly it's very hard to breathe.
Maven shakes his head. "He will always choose you."
Farley scoffs. "You want me to pin my entire operation, the entire revolution, on some teenaged love story? I can't believe this."
Across the table, a strange look crosses Kilorn's face. When Farley turns to him, looking for some kind of support, she fines none.
"I can," he whispers, his eyes never leaving my face. — Victoria Aveyard

Oh, fuck the paperwork. The words come from nowhere and on instinct I grab her and push her against the wall. Clasping both her hands, I pin them above her head so she can't touch me, and once she's secure, I twist my other hand in her hair while my lips seek and find hers. — E.L. James

Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels dance on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins. — Joan Didion

God's genius is as wide as the cosmos, while by comparison our intelligence can find room on the head of a pin. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I think it's some kind of meeting of energies that causes what we see, and that part of those energies emanate from our lifeforces, our minds. — Walter Mosley

Our probie kicked the door in before we gave the okay. We don't think he's going to make it on the task force, Cap. He's too much of a hot-head."

Oh, fuck that. There was no way that they were going to pin this on him. Syn growled and took several determined steps toward Day before God was there, blocking his path.


"You might want to think about your next move very carefully. Especially if it involves touching him." God's voice lowered to a frightening timbre. — A.E. Via

Three hundred pages of cotton-soft parchment, bound up with a green ribbon. Her writing gushed in watery ripples over the pages, penmanship that called to mind the maddest intricate Belgian lace. Wrought on a pin's head but stretching for miles if unraveled. — Lyndsay Faye

As people, other people, living in a house who ... borrow things?"
Mrs. May laid down her work. "What do you think?" she asked.
"I don't know," Kate said, pulling hard at her shoe button. "There can't be. And yet"-she raised her head-"and yet sometimes I think there must be."
"Why do you think there must be?" asked Mrs. May.
"Because of all the things that disappear. Safety pins, for instance. Factories go on making safety pins, and every day people go on buying safety pins and yet, somehow, there never is a safety pin just when you want one. Where are they all? Now, at this minute? Where do they go to? Take needles," she went on. "All the needles my mother ever bought-there must be hundreds-can't just be lying about this house."
"Not lying about the house, no," agreed Mrs. May.
"And all the other things we keep on buying. Again and again and again. Like pencils and match boxes and sealing-wax and hairpins and drawing pins and thimbles- — Mary Norton