Sinews Quotes & Sayings

If we were built, what were we built for? ... Why do we have this amazing collection of sinews, senses, and sensibilities? Were we really designed in order to recline on the couch, extending our wrists perpendicular to the floor so we can flick through the television's offerings? Were we really designed in order to shop some more so the economy can grow some more? Or were we designed to experience the great epiphanies that come from contact with each other and with the natural world? — Bill McKibben

O wretched state! O bosom black as death! O limed soul that, struggling to be free, art more engaged! Help, angels! Make assay! Bow, stubborn knees! and, heart with strings of steel, be soft as sinews of the new-born babe! — William Shakespeare

No system can long command the loyalties of men and women which does not expect of them certain measures of discipline, and particularly self-discipline. The cost in comfort may be great. The sacrifice may be real. But this very demanding reality is the substance of which comes character and strength and nobility. Permissiveness never produced greatness. Integrity, loyalty, and strength are virtues whose sinews are developed through the struggles that go on within as we practice self-discipline under the demands of divinely spoken truth. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Carl Furillo was pure ballplayer. In his prime he stood six feet tall and weighed 190 pounds and there was a fluidity to his frame you seldom see, among such sinews. His black hair was thick, and tightly curled. His face was strong and smooth. He had the look of a young indomitable centurion ... I cannot imagine Carl Furillo in his prime as anything other than a ballplayer. Right field in Brooklyn was his destiny. — Roger Kahn

Prayer is self-discipline. The effort to realize the presence and power of God stretches the sinews of the soul and hardens its muscles. To pray is to grow in grace. To tarry in the presence of the King leads to new loyalty and devotion on the part of the faithful subjects. Christian character grows in the secret-place of prayer. — Samuel Marinus Zwemer

So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funnelled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his time to the glamorous moanings of song, the effect at first on his energy and initiative of mind, if he has any, is to soften it as iron is softened in a furnace, and made workable instead of hard and unworkable: but if he persists and does not break the enchantment, the next stage is that it melts and runs, till the spirit has quite run out of him and his mental sinews (if I may so put it) are cut, and he has become what Homer calls "a feeble fighter". — Plato

To most boys with growing limbs and swelling sinews, physical activity is a natural instinct, and there is no need to drive them into the football field or the fives court: they go there because they like it, and there is no need to make games compulsory for them. — E.F. Benson

We must in imagination sweep off the drifted matter that clogs the surface of the ground; we must suppose all the covering of moss and heath and wood to be torn away from the sides of the mountains, and the green mantle that lies near their feet to be lifted up; we may then see the muscular integuments, and sinews, and bones of our mother Earth, and so judge of the part played by each of them during those old convulsive movements whereby her limbs were contorted and drawn up into their present posture. — Adam Sedgwick

A war undertaken without sufficient monies has but a wisp of force. Coins are the very sinews of battles. — Francois Rabelais

In the sinews of the dead there is no blood. — Aeschylus

We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine. — Henry David Thoreau

To write tragedy, a man must feel tragedy. To feel tragedy, a man must be aware of the world in which he lives. Not only with his mind, but with his blood and sinews. — Bertrand Russell

War begun without good provision of money beforehand for going through with it is but as a breathing of strength and blast that will quickly pass away. Coin is the sinews of war. — Francois Rabelais

Be sober, and to doubt prepense, These are the sinews of good sense. — Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet

Festivals and fasts are unhinged, traveling backward at a rate of ten days per year, attached to no season. Even Laylat ul Qadr, the holiest night in Ramadan, drifts
its precise date is unknown. The iconclasm laid down by Muhammed was absolute: you must resist attachment not only to painted images, but to natural ones. Ramadan, Muharram, the Eids; you associate no religious event with the tang of snow in the air, or spring thaw, or the advent of summer. God permeates these things
as the saying goes, Allah is beautiful, and He loves beauty
but they are transient. Forced to concentrate on the eternal, you begin to see, or think you see, the bones and sinews of the world beneath its seasonal flesh. The sun and moon become formidable clockwork. They are transient also, but hint at the dark planes that stretch beyond the earth in every direction, full of stars and dust, toward a retreating, incomprehensible edge — G. Willow Wilson

When Heaven is going to give a great responsibility to someone, it first makes his mind endure suffering. It makes his sinews and bones experience toil, and his body to suffer hunger. It inflicts him with poverty and knocks down everything he tries to build. In this way Heaven stimulates his mind, stabilizes his temper, and develops his weak points. - The Book of Mencius (Chinese, 300 BC) — Timothy Keller

And as I walked, I believed myself to be an Adam setting foot in a new Eden, sinless and wild-eyed, my sinews still stiff with creation. — Lauren Groff

Endless money forms the sinews of war. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbit's foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbit's foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by the wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there. — Ernest Hemingway,

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. — Izaak Walton

Everyone was always hungry. The poorer you were, the hungrier you were, and with the hunger came weakness and irritability. It became difficult to think clearly and you needed to think clearly to work out how to survive the next day, how to get food. You were sure you could still work if you could find work, and you could look for it if only you could eat. But how were you going to get food, for yourself, for your children, for your wife or husband, for your parents? There were simply too many people within those walls for the calories that were let in. How were you to get food when there just wasn't enough of it? What were you going to have to do? With hunger of this severity came fatigue, a weakness that transcended tiredness and permeated your sinews and bones. As your limbs got ever lighter, they felt progressively heavier with each new day. — Elliot Perlman

He was a man's man, despite his vocation; after all, he studied American history. A litany of red-blooded patriots, fighting savages and redcoats alike, taming the wilderness, proving their worth with bulging sinews and roaring guns. — Jordan L. Hawk

Wealth is the sinews of affairs. — Wilfred Bion

It is a kind and wise arrangement of Providence that weaves our sorrows into the elements of character and that all the disappointments, and conflicts, and afflictions of life may, if rightly used, become the means of improvement, and create in us the sinews of strength ... the dross is left in the crucible, the baser metals are transmuted, and the character is enriched with gold. — William Morley Punshon

Shall I show you the sinews of a philosopher? What sinews are those? - A will undisappointed; evils avoided; powers daily exercised; careful resolutions; unerring decisions. — Epictetus

If it were said that without such bones and sinews and all the rest of them I should not be able to do what I think is right, it would be true; but to say that it is because of them that I do what I am doing, and not through choice of what is best - although my actions are controlled by Mind - would be a very lax and inaccurate form of expression. — Socrates

It's kind of a language I've developed over time that's basically breaking up the face into components and planes. Inside each plane, I draw gradation marks, and when planes come together, they form sinews, a hairlike weave that's like a landscape of the face. — Toyin Odutola

The sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers; for gold alone will not procure good soldiers, but good soldiers will always procure gold. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Bow, stubborn knees, and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the new-born babe.
All many be well. — William Shakespeare

He had to keep busy; he had to keep moving so that the sinews connected behind his eyes did not slip loose and spin his eyes to the interior of his skull where the scenes waited for him. — Leslie Marmon Silko

The sinews of war are five - men, money, materials, maintenance (food) and morale. — Ernest Hemingway,

Anger is one of the sinews of the soul. — Thomas Fuller

I stand in the presence
of the destroyed god:
a rubble of tendons,
knuckles and raw sinews.
Knowing that the work is mine
how can I love you? — Margaret Atwood

So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage. So limp of body that their purple dresses appear no more indicative of housing nerves and sinews than when they hang suspended from their hooks. — Mervyn Peake

Her eyes were misting over, her heart was talking on her lips. To need everything when everything is finished. She no longer knew whether she was sad or whether it was hunger. To live like that, head bent forward, chin resting down near her breasts, without muscles, without sinews, without vertebrae.
She smiled a martyr's smile for her own benefit: for her wretchedness was also a tenderness, and resignation is not the same as oblivion. — Violette Leduc

Libyans have to work together for a new Libya. They should keep in place the sinews of security. — Andrew Mitchell

The two of them carefully stepped around the crime scene, picking up Nick's arms, legs and organs, and brought them back to his head. They placed his extremities into position, and then pieced in the gorier bits, assembling a gruesome jigsaw puzzle. In a few moments, most of Nick's body was in place.
The healing process took about twenty minutes. Elphaba and John stood spellbound as they watched a bloody collection of body parts reintegrate into a human form.
As Nick's sinews, nerves, and muscle knit back into place, the gaping wound in Esperto's body also closed, completing a few minutes before Nick's healing. The panther form quickly shrank back to housecat just as Nick sat up. Esperto jumped in his lap and licked the remnants of blood off his face.
"Thank you Esperto," Nick said. He looked at Elphaba and John. "Well, that could have gone better. — Abramelin Keldor

Defeats and failures are great developers of character. They have made the giants of our race by giving Titanic muscles, brawny sinews, and far-reaching intellects. — Orison Swett Marden

Revenge ... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion. — Jeremy Taylor

It is a quintessential example of the whirling kinetics that drive a Keaton film, in which not just the medium but the human body- the permutations of the sinews, the shock of the limbs -seems infinitely elastic, an unruly instument to be wilded with a cheeky kind of grace. — Edward McPherson

A man's life will not come again, once it has slipped through his teeth. And no power on earth can bring it back. This is the mortal law. Then no longer will his bones be held together by wet sinews. Then no longer the soul flutter in his mouth. But by Death's blazing light, he is ground out and spent. — Paul Pope

She heard the echoes of Ian's screams in her head. Beth pressed her forehead to his hands, her heart wrenching. Ian's hands were large, sinews hard under his kid-leather gloves. Yes, he was strong. In the Tuileres Gardens, it had taken both Mac and Curry to pull him away from Fellows. That didn't mean others could try to tear at that strength, try to defeat him. The doctors in the horrible asylum had done it, and now Fellows was trying to.
I'm falling in love with you, she wanted to say into their clasped hands. Do you mind awfully? — Jennifer Ashley

Shakespeare's felicity is so often taught
it is easy to overlook how taut
the sinews in his neck must
have been when he grasped his pen, or the musk
that exuded from the fat of his chin
below a somewhat chthonic grin
life wrestled death on his desk when he composed. — B.J. Ward

There are believers who by God's grace, have climbed the mountains of full assurance and near communion, their place is with the eagle in his eyrie, high aloft; they are like the strong mountaineer, who has trodden the virgin snow, who has breathed the fresh, free air of the Alpine regions, and therefore his sinews are braced, and his limbs are vigorous; these are they who do great exploits, being mighty men, men of renown. — Charles Spurgeon

Good infantry is without doubt the sinews of an army; but if it has to fight a long time against very superior artillery, it will become demoralized and will be destroyed. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it, genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies. — Lord Chesterfield

I feel my sinews slackened with the fright, and a cold sweat trills down all over my limbs, as if I were dissolving into water. — John Dryden

Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty. The — Harriet Beecher Stowe

Worldly ease is a great foe to faith; it loosens the joints of holy valour, and snaps the sinews of sacred courage. The balloon never rises until the cords are cut; affliction doth this sharp service for believing souls. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

As if one killed by calculation! A person kills only from an impulse that springs from his blood and sinews, from the vestiges of ancient struggles, from the need to live and the joy of being strong. — Emile Zola

Lifting up his hand to her, he said, Here, madam, take the hand, or rather, as I may say, the executioner of all earthy miscreants-take, I say, that hand which never woman touched before; no, not even she herself who has entire possession of my whole body; nor do I hold it up to you that you may kiss it, but that you may observe the contexture of the sinews, the ligament of the muscles, and the largeness and dilation of the veins; whence you may conclude how strong that arm must be to which such a hand is joined. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

They spell-caught the sounds of cat paws, the breath of fish, the spittle of birds, the hairs of a woman's beard, and the roots of a mountain, and spun them around the sinews of a bear. That made a bond that looked as fine as a ribbon of silk, but, since it was made of things not in this world, it was so strong nothing in the world could break it. — Ingri D'Aulaire

There is no murky pit of hell awaiting anyone ... Mind cannot arise alone without body, or apart from sinews and blood ... You must admit, therefore, that when then body has perished, there is an end also of the spirit diffused through it. It is surely crazy to couple a mortal object with an eternal... — Titus Lucretius Carus

O painter skilled in anatomy, beware lest the undue prominence of the bones, sinews and muscles cause you to become a wooden painter from the desire to make your nude figures reveal all. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Somebody Within this world are the great oceans, And on those oceans the dark smudge Of continents and the green islands With towns and cities, their stone sinews Taut under the soft plumage Of dust and smoke. And in those cities Are streets full of people of many colours, Laughing, sighing, whistling tunes Of times and places that are not now. And one I saw a moment ago, Who tried to keep on his poor hearth Of bone the fire from going out; Who tried to grow to the full stature His shadow attained on the hard wall. And his hands were clenched and his feet sore; His mind ached and his brow was charted With care, and fear formed in his veins. Yet he looked up and smiled, as he passed. 1970 — R.S. Thomas

Education of youth is not a bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a teacher; but will require sinews almost equal to those which Homer gave to Ulysses. — John Milton

Be aware of negativity but do not let it take root in the sinews of your creative spirit. — Bryant McGill

The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money. — Samuel Butler

Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I would be a pauper, intellectually and spiritually. — James A. Michener

The convention is the voice, the bone and the sinews of a political party-and sometimes it even nominates an Abraham Lincoln. — Fletcher Knebel

I do ride contend against the advantages of distrust. In the world we live in, it is but too necessary. Some of old called it the very sinews of discretion. — Edmund Burke

And death shall have no dominion.
Under the windings of the sea
They lying long shall not die windily;
Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack;
And death shall have no dominion. — Dylan Thomas

You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews. — Catherynne M Valente

[B]ut it is only what happens, when they die, to all mortals.
The sinews no longer hold the flesh and the bones together,
and once the spirit has let the white bones, all the rest
of the body is made subject to the fire's strong fury,
but the soul flitters out like a dream and flies away. — Homer

Give fear no hold on you. Keep sinews loose and senses open, ready at every instant to flow with the rush of action. — Poul Anderson

When Heaven is about to confer a great office on a man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil ; it exposes his body to hunger, and subjects him to extreme poverty ; it confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies. — Mencius

I am the Maker of all things. By my word were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of my mouth. I spread out the northern skies over empty space; I suspend the earth over nothing. I clothe you with skin and flesh and knit you together with bones and sinews. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster. — Zhang Yun

The sinews of war are infinite money. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

He who first called money the sinews of the state seems to have said this with special reference to war. — Plutarch

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

I could have lived like that. For a long time. People do it. Like a piece of cardboard, walking around tall and flat in the world, without nerve endings, sinews stiff enough to keep any weakness they're holding safely twined up. It keeps the good things from getting in, too. But you barely register emptiness when you only have two dimensions. People do it, keep their constriction mostly intact; except for the moments when they don't. — Mac McClelland

Then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. — William Shakespeare

Her bones were of bronze and her sinews of the ancient elms, and her eyes were like the sky, wide and daring. — Kahlil Gibran

Habit with it's iron sinews, clasps us and leads us day by day. — Alphonse De Lamartine

I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plow for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o'-clock-in-the-morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. — Henry David Thoreau

asked Kemp. "Three or four hours - the cat. The bones and sinews and the fat were the last to go, and the tips of the coloured hairs. And, as I say, the back part of the eye, tough, iridescent — H.G.Wells

The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life ... These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it. — Evelyn Waugh

He edged closer to his father's bones and sinews. Penny slipped an arm around him and he lay close against the lank thigh. His father was the core of safety. His father swam the swift creek to fetch back his wounded dog. The clearing was safe, and his father fought for it, and for his own. A sense of snugness came over him and he dropped asleep. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Money is the sinews of love, as of war. — George Farquhar

Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions. America, too, will have to strain its energies, crack its sinews, and all but break its heart, as the rest of us have had to do, in thousand-fold wrestle with the Pythons, and mud-demons, before it can become a babitation for the gods. — Thomas Carlyle

Here grew willows and alders, their trunks twisted like giants' sinews. Around them bark lichen bloomed blue-white in the darkness. It felt like a good place, where there was old magic. — Duncan Harper

He looked down at his hands - resting on his knees - flexing the fingers, the veins and sinews standing out clearly amidst the scars. Killer's hands, I thought, knowing they could choke the life from me in a few seconds. — Anthony Ryan

For the [innate] general principles enter into our thoughts, of which they form the soul and the connection. They are as necessary thereto as the muscles and sinews are for walking, although we do not at all think of them. — Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom. — Buddha

The bodies of men, munition, and money may justly be called the sinews of war. — Walter Raleigh

The challenge for those of us who care about our faith and about a hurting world is to tell stories which will carry the words of grace and hope in their bones and sinews and not wear them like fancy dress. — Katherine Paterson

I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn'd. — William Cowper

My God, my God, thou art a direct God, may I not say a literal God, a God that wouldst be understood literally and according to the plain sense of all thou sayest, but thou art also (Lord, I intend it to thy glory, and let no profane misinterpreter abuse it to thy dimunition), thou art a figurative, a metaphorical God too, a God in whose words there is such a height of figures, such voyages, such peregrinations to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such extensions, such spreadings, such curtains of allegories, such third heavens of hyperboles, so harmonious elocutions, so retired and so reserved expressions, so commanding persuasions, so persuading commandments, such sinews even in thy milk, and such things in thy words, as all profane authors seem of the seed of the serpent that creeps, thou art the Dove that flies.

(Donne, Devotions 1624, as quoted in Fish, How to Write a Sentence p 142) — Stanley Fish

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart. — Honore De Balzac

They say that "Time assuages" -
Time never did assuage -
An actual suffering strengthens
As Sinews do, with age -
Time is a Test of Trouble -
But not a Remedy -
If such it prove, it prove too
There was no Malady — Emily Dickinson

The joys of marriage are the heaven on earth, Life's paradise, great princess, the soul's quiet, Sinews of concord, earthly immortality, Eternity of pleasures. — John Ford

Modern education too often covers the fingers with rings, and at the same time cuts the sinews at the wrist. — John Sterling

Tom isn't one of the men whose legs trailed by a hank of sinews, or whose guts cascaded from their casing like slithering eels. Nor were his lungs turned to glue or his brains to stodge by the gas. But he's scarred all the same having to live in the same skin as the man who did the things that needed to be done back then. He carries that other shadow, which is cast inward. — M.L. Stedman

Taxes are the sinews of the state. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favor'd rage. — William Shakespeare

This late dissension grown betwixt the peers
Burns under feigned ashes of forg'd love,
And will at last break out into a flame:
As festered members rot but by degree,
Till bones and flesh and sinews fall away,
So will this base and envious discord breed. — William Shakespeare

When we consider the weak and nerveless periods of some literary men, who perchance in feet and inches come up to the standard oftheir race, and are not deficient in girth also, we are amazed at the immense sacrifice of thews and sinews. What! these proportions, these bones,
and this their work! Hands which could have felled an ox have hewed this fragile matter which would not have tasked a lady's fingers! Can this be a stalwart man's work, who has a marrow in his back and a tendon Achilles in his heel? — Henry David Thoreau

The weak sinews become strong by their conflict with difficulties. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Our hearts gain from the weight of fear what the athlete's limbs gain from the weight of dumbbells, but only if like the athlete we do not carry that weight all day but learn to set it down before the stress of exertion begins to crush the sinews it was meant to build. — Agona Apell

There is the solution which I respectfully offer to you in this Address to which I have given the title "The Sinews of Peace." — Winston Churchill