Single Handed Quotes & Sayings

It was on the steamer carrying him through the Golden Gate that he happened to reach down into the hole in the lining of the right pocket of his overcoat and discover the envelope that his brother had solemnly handed to him almost a month before. It contained a single piece of paper, which Thomas had hastily stuffed into it that morning as they all were leaving the house together for the last time, by way or in lieu of expressing the feelings of love, fear, and hopefulness that his brother's escape inspired. It was the drawing of Harry Houdini, taking a calm cup of tea in the middle of the sky, that Thimas had made in his notebook during his abortive career as a librettist. Josef studied it, feeling as he sailed toward freedom as if he weighed nothing at all, as if every precious burden had been lifted from him. — Michael Chabon

I am an ordinary woman who did extraordinary things. The first to qualify as a ground engineer. The first to fly to Australia single-handed. A million people lined the streets of London when I came home. I waved to them from an open-topped car like the queen, the queen of the air. — Kate Lord Brown

Very few people know loyalty anymore." "Do you?" I asked, needing for my own piece of mind to know. "Did I maybe start flirting with Shelly when I was still dating Meg in high school? Yeah, I did. I was sixteen and stupid as fuck. But I grew up. I watched countless families get torn apart by infidelity. I have had to comfort dozens of crying women in my office when I handed them the pictures they paid me to take. And I've gotten to witness the awful thing that happens when they stop crying." "What's that?" "They make up their minds to never let themselves get hurt like that again. See, cheating doesn't just screw up that one relationship, it tends to screw up every single one later because the person gets bitter or scared or distrusting. It's a sad fucking thing to see. And it's not something I am ever willing to do to a woman." He paused and I let those words sink in. — Jessica Gadziala

Blair had never been able to develop strong relationships at the White House, and I think the final straw was his single-handed attempt to negotiate an agreement with the French intelligence services limiting activities in each other's country. The idea had zero support anywhere in the administration and, frankly, was considered kind of bizarre. — Robert M. Gates

I originated a remark many years ago that I think has been copied more than any little thing that Ive every said, and I used it in the FOLLIES of 1922. I said America has a unique record. We never lost a war and we never won a conference in our lives. I believe that we could without any degree of egotism, single-handed lick any nation in the world. But we cant confer with Costa Rica and come home with our shirts on. — Will Rogers

Over-optimism - in that she thinks men are better than they are, she doesn't really understand them and is generous about it. Over-confidence - in that she thinks she can do more than an individual actually can. She thinks she can run a railroad (or the world) single-handed, she can make people do what she wants or needs, what is right, by the sheer force of her own talent; not by forcing them, of course, not by enslaving them and giving orders - but by the sheer over-abundance of her own energy; she will show them how, she can teach them and persuade them, she is so able that they'll catch it from her. — Ayn Rand

Romney had tried to explain his reasoning to this chorus of confidants, but they were still urging him not to shut the door. They contended that even if he didn't want to launch a formal campaign right now, it would be a mistake to take himself entirely out of the running. They laid out a vivid, detailed scenario in which a fractured Republican Party - divided by a wide field of niche presidential candidates - fails to unite behind a single nominee in 2016, and ends up with a chaotic, historic floor fight at the national convention. Facing a televised descent into disarray, the GOP delegates would naturally turn to Romney - the fully vetted, steady-handed Republican statesman - for salvation. Your party might still need you, Mitt's loyalists insisted. The country might still need you! — McKay Coppins

I shall never forget my admiration for that German pilot, who single handed, fought seven of us for ten minutes. I saw him go into a fairly steep dive and so I continued to watch, and then saw the triplane hit the ground and disappear into a thousand fragments, for it seemed to me that it literally went into powder. — James McCudden

So," sneered Fudge, recovering himself, "you intend to take on Dawlish, Shacklebolt, Dolores, and myself single-handed, do you, Dumbledore?"
"Merlin's beard, no," said Dumbledore, smiling. "Not unless you are foolish enough to force me to."
"He will not be single-handed!" said Professor McGonagall loudly, plunging her hand inside her robes.
"Oh yes he will, Minerva!" said Dumbledore sharply. "Hogwarts needs you! — J.K. Rowling

Low down dirty ornery rotten skunk of a cussed mule-headed soldier! What's he want with my book anyway? And what kind of a way is that to write a congratulations? I am so mad I could walk clear to that fort and take him on single handed. — Nancy E. Turner

And I gave Malfoy a black eye, and Neville tried to take on Crabbe and Goyle single-handed! He's still out cold but Madam Pomfrey says he'll be all right - talk about showing Slytherin! — J.K. Rowling

On the Trans-Atlantic Single-handed Race Mr Owen Smithers has been disqualified for using both hands. — Heikki Luoma

My strength has now been reduced to the equivalent of 36 squadrons ... we should be able to carry on the war single-handed for some time if not indefinitely. — Hugh Dowding, 1st Baron Dowding

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder. You get your fill to eat, but always keep that hunger. May you never take one single breath for granted. God forbid love ever leave you empty handed. — Lee Ann Womack

If life be a war, it seemed my destiny to conduct it single-handed. — Charlotte Bronte

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument
a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself
in soli tude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Your husband had something he meant to pass on to you," Zahara said. "I just wanted to make sure that you got it." Reaching into her pocket, she handed the woman a single tattered sheet of flimsi. — Joe Schreiber

Harriet Tubman fought American slavery single handed and was a pioneer in that organized effort known as the Underground Railroad. — W.E.B. Du Bois

I showed up in L.A. with $500 and a backpack and I stayed at a shelter, so nobody handed me anything. I worked for every single thing that I have. — Jared Leto

I don't want her to be like me. Give in, go along, save her skin. That is what it comes down to. I want gallantry from her, swashbuckling, heroism, single-handed combat. Something I lack. — Margaret Atwood

Some single trees, wholly bright scarlet, seen against others of their kind still freshly green, or against evergreens, are more memorable than whole groves will be by-and-by. How beautiful, when a whole tree is like one great scarlet fruit full of ripe juices, every leaf, from lowest limb to topmost spire, all aglow, especially if you look toward the sun! What more remarkable object can there be in the landscape? Visible for miles, too fair to be believed. If such a phenomenon occurred but once, it would be handed down by tradition to posterity, and get into the mythology at last. — Henry David Thoreau

Yeah me see myself as a revolutionary, would wouldn't want no help and imma take no bribe from no one and fight it single handed with music — Bob Marley

Can I see it?"
He blinked, still scowling, "See what?"
"Your scar." His expression darkened like a sudden eclipse and I let my gaze grow cold. "You want to hear me scream? Give it your best shot. But until then, every time you take off your shirt, you may as well be handing out my business card. I shoved my blade deep inside you and loved every single inch of it. When I can't sleep at night, the memory of you screaming like a little bitch is my lullaby. And everybody knows exactly what that scar means- that you got your ass handed to you by a little girl. Again. — Rachel Vincent

William Wilberforce ... w as a great man who impacted the Western world as few others have done. Blessed with brains, charm, influence and initiative, much wealth ... he put evangelism on Britain's map as a power for social change, first by overthrowing the slave trade almost single-handed and then by generating a stream of societies for doing good and reducing evil in public life ... To forget such men is foolish. — J.I. Packer

We need to stay hydrated," Alec said, placing his weapon on the ground. He slipped off his backpack and pulled out one of his two canteens. After a long drink he handed it to Mark, who relished every drop as it slicked his parched mouth and throat. "Oh, man," he said when he finished, handing the canteen back to Alec. "That was the single best drink I've ever had in my life. That one right there." "Sayin' a lot," Alec muttered as he put the thing away and hunched into his backpack once again. "Considering all the times we've been thirsty in the last year. — James Dashner

Gertrude's remedy for her mood swings was to print up hundreds of black-bordered calling cards embossed with the single word "Woe," which she handed out gaily declaring, "Woe is me. — Ross Wetzsteon

Now, just think, to accuse me of such a crime. Think of it! I, who have for twenty-five years single- handed struggled against the invasion of the Russian Government into American money markets, and to this day stave them off. Think of it! Who, as I, have been foremost in the past for agitation and insisted to the President of the United States; as some of you must know, that our treaty with Russia must be abrogated. — Jacob Schiff

Ian cleared his throat. "Lady Elizabeth." He reached behind him and handed her a single red rose. "A rose... for the bonniest lass who ever graced the Highlands. — Victoria Roberts

He took something out of his jacket and handed it to her. It was a long thin dagger in a leather sheath. The hilt of the dagger was set with a single red stone carved in the shape of a rose.
She shook her head. "I wouldn't even know how to use that
"
He pressed it into her hand, curling her fingers around it. "You'd learn." He dropped his voice. "It's in your blood."
She drew her hand back slowly. "All right."
"I could give you a thigh sheath to put that in," Isabelle offered. "I've got tons."
"CERTAINLY NOT," said Simon. — Cassandra Clare

To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature-could one dream of anything more? — Yuri Gagarin

Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world. — Tom Clancy

All my life long I have been sensible of the injustice constantly done to women. Since I have had to fight the world single-handed, there has not been one day I have not smarted under the wrongs I have had to bear, because I was not only a woman, but a woman doing a man's work, without any man, husband, son, brother or friend, to stand at my side, and to see some semblance of justice done me. I cannot forget, for injustice is a sixth sense, and rouses all the others. — Amelia Barr

I was in '78 recently," he announced. "I brought you this."
He handed me a single by the Beatles. I didn't recognize the title.
"Didn't they split in '70?"
"Not always. How are things? — Jasper Fforde

You beat a dozen armed men single-handed?" "Oh aye, sir," said Wee Mad Arthur slyly, "but it was nae fair, I had them outnumbered. — Terry Pratchett

Sicarius, are you ready for a hike?"
She faced him only to find he had armed himself - more so than usual. In addition to his daggers and throwing knives, he held two rifles, two pistols, two cargo belts laden with ammo pouches, and a bag of his smoke grenades.
"Or a single-handed all-out assault on the forest? — Lindsay Buroker

Let me face bare-handed a dozen highly trained and fully armed gladiators, each with a personal grudge against me, than a lawyer with a single pointed question. — Stephen Baxter

As far as I am concerned, Don Quixote is the most metal fictional character that I know. Single handed, he is trying to change the world, regardless of any personal consequences. — Christopher Lee

Woolf drew on her memories of her holidays in Cornwall for To the Lighthouse, which was conceived in part as an elegy on her parents. Her father was a vigorous walker and an Alpinist of some renown, a member of the Alpine Club and editor of the Alpine Journal from 1868 to 1872; he was the first person to climb the Schreckhorn in the Alps and he wrote on Alpine pleasures in The Playground of Europe (1871). By the time he married Julia Duckworth in 1878, however, a more sedentary Leslie Stephen was the established editor of the Cornhill Magazine, from which he later resigned to take up the editorship of the Dictionary of National Biography in 1882, the year of Woolf 's birth. Stephen laboured on this monumental Victorian enterprise until 1990, editing single-handed the first twenty-six volumes and writing well over 300 biographical entries. He also published numerous volumes of criticism, the most important of which were on eighteenth-century thought and literature. — Jane Goldman

Men of great genius, whether their work be in poetry, philosophy or art, stand in all ages like isolated heroes, keeping up single-handed a desperate struggling against the onslaught of an army of opponents. Is not this characteristic of the miserable nature of mankind? The dullness, grosness, perversity, silliness, and brutality of by far the greater part of the race are always an obstacle to the efforts of the genius, whatever be the method of his art; they so form that hostile army to which he at last has to succumb. — Arthur Schopenhauer

I sat with him for three hours and we did not exchange a single word. At the end he handed me, as he had done before, an envelope with money in it. It would have been much nicer if he had enclosed a greeting or a loving word. I would have been so pleased if he had. — Eva Braun

It is the sort of book that has to be rested on a table or a lectern; it is not easy to lift a volume one-handed, and only a basketball player would be able to hold it up and open with a single hand. With its pages spread, it is almost twenty inches wide, and the pages are a foot and half in length; stacked, the four volumes make a pile nearly ten inches high. Johnson's finished tome was stately in appearance - 'Vasta mole superbus' ('Proud in its great bulk'), as he beamingly described it in a letter to Thomas Warton.1 — Henry Hitchings