Scalpels Quotes & Sayings

Censorship laws are blunt instruments, not sharp scalpels. Once enacted, they are easily misapplied to merely unpopular or only marginally dangerous speech. — Alan Dershowitz

I was ten when I heard the music that ended the first phase of my life and cast me hurtling into a new horizon. Drenched to the skin, I stood on Dunoon's pier peering seawards through diagonal rain, looking for the ferry that would take me home. There, on the everwet west coast of Scotland, I heard it: like sonic scalpels, the sounds of electric guitars sliced through the dreich weather. My body hairs pricked up, each one a willing receiver for the Thunder-God grooves. To my young ears, the sound of these amplified guitars was angelic (although, with hindsight, I don't suppose angels play Gibson guitars at ear-bleeding volume). A voice that suggested vocal chords of polished silver soared alongside razor-sharp overdriven riffs. I knew that I was hearing the future. — Mark Rice

Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too - ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring earth. — Marcus Aurelius

Adrenaline pumped through her body as she stopped in the cabin entryway, just a few inches from Scott. His intense expression made her nervous - he looked suspicious. Was she coming on too strong? Flirting was not her specialty. She'd always been much more comfortable using scalpels and microscopes than smiles and sauntering strides. Scott's — Kass Morgan

The voice was gentle, like a scalpel petting the short hairs of your throat. — Vernor Vinge

Vasectomy
After the steaming bodies swept
through the hungry streets of swollen cities;
after the vast pink spawning of family
poisoned the rivers and ravaged the prairies;
after the gamble of latex and
diaphragms and pills;
I invoked the white robes, gleaming blades
ready for blood, and, feeling the scourge
of Increase and Multiply, made
affirmation: Yes, deliver us from
complicity.
And after the precision of scalpels,
I woke to a landscape of sunshine where
the catbird mates for life and
maps trace out no alibis - stepped
into a morning of naked truth,
where acts mean what they really are:
the purity of loving
for the sake of love. — Philip Appleman

Truth is to be used as a scalpel, not a club. — Matt Chandler

He was ruinously beautiful in the way that knives and scalpels can be beautiful — Holly Black

I shot him daggers. Along with swords, scythes, scalpels, shivs, shanks, stilettos, and any other sharp weapon I could think of that began with an s. — A&E Kirk

Listening to Benny [Goodman] talk about the clarinet was like listening to a surgeon get hung up on a scalpel. — Artie Shaw

Forgiveness is a scalpel that removes emotional scars. — Maxwell Maltz

If it's all true, then we're in the citadel of unbelief, where nightmares are dispatched with Lysol and scalpels and chemotherapy rather than with stakes and Bibles and wild mountain thyme. — Stephen King

Touching hands are not like pharmaceuticals or scalpels. They are like flashlights in a darkened room. The medicine they administer is self-awareness. And for many of our painful conditions, this is the aid that is most urgently needed. — Deane Juhan

I've never believed in God. But I believe in Picasso. — Diego Rivera

We love those we are happy with. We do. For how else can we know we love them, or how else define loving? — Nan Fairbrother

No matter how hard life is, you are your own architecture. If you give up then there's no one that can help you, but if you want to keep building your future, then no one can stop you either. — Jaejoong

I believe we all must face the fact of death. It is both gift and curse. — Richard Lamm

God is at the tip of our scalpels, our screwdrivers, our computer terminals, our dust rags, our vacuum cleaners, our pencils and pens. He is with us in our wheelchairs, or on our hospital beds, when all we can do is sit or lie flat. When we envision Him and His purpose in what we do, then we begin to grow aware of His presence in the middle of it. We are able to engage in our inward conversation with Him as we work, naturally, without strain. He becomes our partner, our collaborator. — Sue Monk Kidd

Yes, the deficit doctors have their scalpels out all right, but they're not poised over the budget. That's as fat as ever and getting fatter. What they're ready to operate on is your wallet. — Ronald Reagan

Oh, you know me." Jean reached behind his neck, down behind the loose leather vest he wore over his simple cotton tunic. He withdrew a pair of matching hatchets, each a foot and a half in length, with leather-wrapped handles and straight black blades that narrowed like scalpels. These were balanced with balls of blackened steel, each as wide around as a silver solon. The Wicked Sisters - Jean's weapons of choice. "I never travel alone. It's always the three of us. — Scott Lynch

Doctor controlled his anger. "Tom," he said, "Tom, boy. Pull yourself together. Go back and lay cold cloths - cold as you can get them. I don't suppose you have any ice. Well, keep changing the cloths. I'll be out as fast as I can. Do you hear me? Tom, do you hear me?" He hung the receiver up and dressed. In angry weariness he opened the wall cabinet and collected scalpels and clamps, sponges and tubes of sutures, to put in his bag. He shook his gasoline pressure lantern to make sure it was full and arranged ether can and mask beside it on his bureau. His wife in boudoir cap and nightgown looked in. Dr. Tilson said, "I'm walking over to the garage. Call Will Hamilton. Tell him I want him to drive me to his father's place. If he argues tell him his sister is - dying. — John Steinbeck

Theater acting is an operation with a scalpel, movie acting is an operation with a laser — Michael Caine

Peacekeeping funds are an important and necessary part of what America does for humanity and the rest of the world. — Michael McCaul

Dead flesh and sharpened scalpels didn't bother me. I was my father's daughter, after all. My nightmares were made of darker things. — Megan Shepherd

If people don't like my style, then I can't do anything about that. I have been like that since I first entered into the game and it hasn't done me bad in the past, so I am not going to change now. — Alan Shearer

One of the most important long-term changes that arose as a result of this case was the creation of the "murder bag" for use by police. Spilsbury had been shocked to see police officers having to remove rotting flesh and body parts from the scene of the crime using their bare hands. To address this problem, a series of meetings were held between Scotland Yard and Spilsbury, which led to the development of the murder bag, which contained rubber gloves, tweezers, evidence bags, a magnifying glass, compass, ruler, and swabs. Such a bag is now an essential part of any major inquiry and may contain various items, depending on the specific department. Common modern additions include a fiberglass brush, lifting tape, powder, utility knife, scissors, a blood test, a semen test, swabs, alcohol hand spray, scalpels, and goggles — Nigel McCrery

You can't find the soul with a scalpel. — Gustave Flaubert

Some series teach us that ethnic features must be "fixed," by drastic means if necessary. Plastic surgeons with questionable ethics give insecure women of all ethnicities boob jobs, liposuction, and face-lifts on shows such as Extreme Makeover, The Swan, and Dr. 90210, ignoring medical risks and reinforcing problematic ideas about women's worth. Yet they don't make white surgical candidates feel like their cultural identity should also be on the chopping blocking - or that they'd be so much more attractive and fulfilled if only they didn't look so... Caucasian.

In contrast, TV docs' scalpels reduce or remove racial markers on patients of colour. Black women's noses and lips are made smaller. In an increasingly common procedure targeting Asian women, creases are added to Asian women's eyelids. — Jennifer L. Pozner

Following my accident, I plumped up like a freshly roasted wiener, my skin cracking to accommodate the expanding meat. The doctors, with their hungry scalpels, hastened the process with a few quick slices. The procedure is called an escharotomy, and it gives the swelling tissue the freedom to expand. It's rather like the uprising of your secret inner being, finally given license to claw through the surface. The doctors thought they had sliced me open to commence my healing but, in fact, they only release the monster- a thing of engorged flesh, suffused with juice. — Andrew Davidson

And what excuse was there for this? Nothing but the old line that parents and politicians will use before taking out their scalpels: I care about you, therefore I will upset you, I have honoured you with a vision of how you should be, therefore I will hurt you. — Alain De Botton

On the path to love, impossibilities are resolved by turning non-love into love. — Deepak Chopra

Control what people believe, and you control what they do. Who they are. The world is only the aggregate of human perception. Stories are scalpels that allow us to operate on those perceptions. — Mike Carey

An economist is a surgeon with an excellent scalpel and a rough-edged lancet, who operates beautifully on the dead and tortures the living. — Nicolas Chamfort

Several factors besides skill are more significant in professional writers than in most amateurs. One is love of the surface level of language: the sound of it; the taste of it on the tongue; what it can be made to do in virtuosic passages that exist only for their own sake, like cadenzas in baroque concerti. Writers in love with their tools are not unlike surgeons obsessed with their scalpels, or Arctic sled racers who sleep among their dogs even when they don't have to. — Alice Weaver Flaherty

He had a sense of his dignity, which was of the most exquisite nature. He could detect a design upon it when nobody else had any perception of the fact. His life was made an agony by the number of fine scalpels that he felt to be incessantly engaged in dissecting his dignity. — Charles Dickens