Sabre Quotes & Sayings

Scarlett's mind went back through the years to the still hot noon at Tara when grey smoke curled above a blue-clad body and Melanie stood at the top of the stairs with Charles' sabre in her hand. Scarlett remembered that she had thought at the time: 'How silly! Melly couldn't even heft that sword!' But now she knew that had the necessity arisen, Melanie would have charged down those stairs and killed the Yankee - or been killed herself. — Margaret Mitchell

The Americas were a great laboratory of evolutionary experimentation, a place where animals and plants unknown in Africa and Asia had evolved and thrived. But no longer. Within 2,000 years of the Sapiens' arrival, most of these unique species were gone. According to current estimates, within that short interval, North America lost thirty-four out of its forty-seven genera of large mammals. South America lost fifty out of sixty. The sabre-tooth cats, after flourishing for more than 30 million years, disappeared, and so did the giant ground sloths, the oversized lions, native American horses, native American camels, the giant rodents and the mammoths. Thousands of species of smaller mammals, reptiles, birds and even insects and parasites also became extinct (when the mammoths died out, all species of mammoth ticks followed them to oblivion). — Yuval Noah Harari

I'm sure the most favorite airplane in my career would still be the Sabre F86 cleft wing , which allowed me to be credited with 2 Russian-built Mig-15 destroyed during the Korean War. Where I was in 1953. — Buzz Aldrin

Ensign Fitzgerald had somehow managed to get himself a jewelled sabre that he was now flashing around like a shilling whore given a guinea fan. — Bernard Cornwell

In Austria an editor who can write well is valuable, but he is not likely to remain so unless he can handle a sabre with charm. — Mark Twain

Midnight Special on a sabre track movering movering,
first stop Mercy and the last Hallelujah. — Robert Hayden

Ewan McGregor and I had very similar first-time light sabre experiences. We both burned ourselves! These things are hot - they're full of batteries! — Hayden Christensen

You're son of an alpha, Cade. The most that will happen is that you get sick for a while. You have pure blood in your veins. You can take it. We'll be right here with you. — Mason Sabre

With sabre fencing, it's important to have a strong core. I do an exercise called 'the dead bug.' You sit on the round side of a Bosu ball, lean back, extend one arm and the opposite leg, then switch. — Mariel Zagunis

I was surrounded at the time by about a dozen of the enemy, whose clubs rattled upon me without mercy, and the strokes of my sabre were rendered uncertain by the energetic pushes of an attendant who thus hoped to save me. — Richard Francis Burton

The typical review makes a Teletubby look like a sabre-toothed tiger. You can economize by reading online rather than squandering $4.95, yes, but all you get is people pusillanimously Favoriting and Liking and Friending. Why is there no Hate button? Why? — Helen DeWitt

My knowledge of pain, learned with the sabre, taught me not to be afraid. And just as in dueling when you must concentrate on your enemy's cheek, so, too, in war. You cannot waste time on feinting and sidestepping. You must decide on your target and go in. — Otto Skorzeny

Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17 - , and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof. I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow - a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cover and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards: — Robert Louis Stevenson

An agile, well-trained, brave elephant, ridden by a good mahout, its trunk armed with the kind of sabre known as a qartal and covered with chain mail, while the rest of its body is protected by sheets of bark and iron, surrounded by 500 men to defend it and protect it to the rear, can fight against 6000 men on horseback. — Mas'udi

Hand-barrow - a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man, his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulder of his soiled blue coat, his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. — Robert Louis Stevenson

Artillery is more essential to cavalry than to infantry, because cavalry has no fire for its defence, but depends on the sabre. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Well, you seem to make the perfect friend, being the guru of so many kinds of catastrophes. We could teach one another." More laughter that had her grinning. "We could maybe write a book." She busted out in cackles. "Yes. A how-to manual for offing yourself." In the middle of laughter, he said, "Or The Guru's Guide to Not Giving a Damn." "Thank — Mason Sabre

I phoned the Admiral back.
'It's no use, Admiral, the French speak nothing but French.'
There was a short pause on the end of the line then his voice rattled into life like a sabre.
'They're lying, Tim!'
'What?'
'The French Navy must by law speak English, as English is the international maritime language of the sea.'
'Has anyone told the French that?'
The line went dead for a moment before he thundered, 'Yes Nelson. At the battle of Trafalgar.'
I tried to stifle an irresistibly British giggle not knowing if the Admiral was making a joke or not. I got it right. He was serious. — Tim FitzHigham

He placed the platter on the table, and as the lid was lifted and set to the side, I was told that, 100 years ago, the taxidermist's grandfather witnessed a bar fight between two sailors. One was armed with a sabre, and the other, apparently, was disarmed with one. The amputee fell on his back, and as he lay there in shock, bleeding to death, the taxidermist's grandfather looked down at the floor, at the blood-soaked fingers that may have still been twitching, and likely thought: Well, it's not like it's doing him any good. — David Sedaris

I come," replied he, "to thee, Manfred, usurper of the principality of Otranto, from the renowned and invincible Knight, the Knight of the Gigantic Sabre: in the name of his Lord, Frederic, Marquis of Vicenza, he demands the Lady Isabella, daughter of that Prince, whom thou hast basely and traitorously got into thy power, by bribing her false guardians during his absence; and he requires thee to resign the principality of Otranto, which thou hast usurped from the said Lord Frederic, the nearest of blood to the last rightful Lord, Alfonso the Good. If thou dost not instantly comply with these just demands, he defies thee to single combat to the last extremity. — Horace Walpole

That's all you get," said Alpharius, and split him in half.
Alpharius sheathed his gladius, and dragged the sabre out of his torso. He tossed it away, and walked through the liter of bodies to where Namatjira was kneeling on the deck.
"Please! My lord primarch! Please, I beg you!" Namtjira pleaded, his hands making a desperate namaste.
Alpharius drew his boltgun.
"Why?" shrieked Namatjira. "Why are you doing this?
"For the Emperor," said Alpharius, and pulled the trigger. — Dan Abnett

Detente is a readiness to resolve differences and conflicts not by force, not by threats and sabre-rattling, but by peaceful means, at the conference table. — Leonid Brezhnev

(Regarding a twenty-questions game

Did you know that the Russian composer Aram Katchaturian described his 'Sabre Dance' as no more than a button on the shirt on the body of his work? No? You're not alone. Suppose my twenty-questions answer was that metaphorical button - would that be fair? — Stephen Minkin

But I see you're not standing in a bleedin' shadow, Perks, nor have you done anything to change your bleedin' shape, you're silhouetted against the bleedin' light and your sabre's shining like a diamond in a chimney-sweep's bleedin' ear'ole! Explain!"
"It's because of the one C, sarge!" said Polly, still staring straight ahead.
"And that is?"
"Colour, sarge! I'm wearing bleedin' red and white in a bleedin' grey forest, sarge! — Terry Pratchett

Yes," she said. "People can't realize what France is like. If they did, it couldn't all go on. He didn't have a sabre cut. They blew him all to bits. — Anonymous

I am a former sabre fencer and fenced as part of the Uzbek republic team. — Alisher Usmanov