Quotes & Sayings About Smiting

A king should first gain the confidence of the foe and when he has gained it should spring on him like a wolf. The foe should be struck down so effectively that he may never agin raise his head. The foe should be slain by the arts of conciliation, expenditure of money, creating disunion among his allies or by employment of force. Indeed every means in the king's power should be used to destroy the foe. The king should never strike in ignorance but having slain his foe should never indulge in sorrow. The king should speak with soft words before he smites and even as he is smiting. Grieve for the victim after he is down. — Meera Uberoi

A great nation is not saved by wars, it is saved by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks. — William James

If we all got what we deserved we'd all be dead. And yet somehow God refrains from smiting us. Whatever you ought to have done then, dying won't undo it now. — Rosamund Hodge

Lord of the golden tongue and smiting eyes; Great out of season and untimely wise: A man whose virtue, genius, grandeur, worth, Wrought deadlier ill than ages can undo. — William Watson

Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel's song, which had lost its way and come on Earth, and sang on undyingly, smiting the hearts of men with sweetest wounds, and putting for the while an angel's nature into us. — Frederick William Faber

A lover masculine so disappointed can speak and urge explanation, a lover feminine can say nothing; if she did, the result would be shame and anguish, inward remorse for self-treachery. Nature would brand such demonstration as a rebellion against her instincts, and would vindictively repay it afterwards by the thunderbolt of self-contempt smiting suddenly in secret. — Charlotte Bronte

Belief sloshes around in the firmament like lumps of clay spiralling into a potter's wheel. That's how gods get created, for example. They clearly must be created by their own believers, because a brief resume of the lives of most gods suggests that their origins certainly couldn't be divine. They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies. — Terry Pratchett

Keep out of this," Lucian said. "I'm not smiting anybody."
"You're showing mercy." Catch-a-Tick nodded. "That's heroic, too. But not as good as smiting. — Lloyd Alexander

Life creeps slowly upward ... When some forgotten inventor of the older world smote his rival or enemy with a branch of wood and found that it was good and thereafter made a practice of smiting rivals and enemies with branches of wood, then, and on that day, artificiality may be said to have begun. Then, and on that day, was begun a revolution destined to change the history of life. Then, and on that day, was laid the cornerstone of that most tremendous of artifices, CIVILIZATION! — Jack London

O faithless ignoramus, denier of Heaven Sitting smugly upon a disbelieving bottom O blatant person who disregards the scriptures Standing confidently in a puddle of sin There shall be smiting with lightning And blood-soaked retribution And heads kicked about like footballs And much worse upon your wretched person When Golden Abaster returns with judgment for you And salvation in the form of flowers for the rest of us Rodya — Rachel Hartman

Which God is the forgiving one, exactly? Old Testament, where He got His rocks off by smiting? Or New Testament, once Our Heavenly Father got Prozac? — Thomm Quackenbush

Now, as Crowley would be the first to protest, most demons weren't deep down evil. In the great cosmic game they felt they occupied the same position as tax inspectors - doing an unpopular job, maybe, but essential to the overall operation of the whole thing. If it came to that, some angels weren't paragons of virtue; Crowley had met one or two who, when it came to righteously smiting the ungodly, smote a good deal harder than was strictly necessary. On the whole, everyone had a job to do, and just did it. And on the other hand, you got people like Ligur and Hastur, who took such a dark delight in unpleasantness you might even have mistaken them for human. — Terry Pratchett

This was especially true in some millennialist sects that filled their literature with paintings of Armageddon. Pictures of terrified people running away from some formless fiery doom that burned their world down behind them, while smug worshipers - of the correct religion, of course - watched from safety as God got with the smiting. — James S.A. Corey

The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration. — Thomas B. Macaulay

I will go to the saints first. Already there is plenty in Bacon's Corner for them to be upset about, plenty to divide them. I will keep them busy censuring and smiting each other, and then their hearts will be far from praying." He — Frank E. Peretti

We see his smile of love even when others see nothing but the black hand of death smiting our best beloved. — Charles Spurgeon

Time has laid his hand
Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,
But as a harper lays his open palm
Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you're handing out plagues of darkness, locusts, hail, boils, flies, lice, frogs, and cattle murrain, and turning the Nile to blood and smiting the firstborn, give me a pass. And tell me when it's over. — P. J. O'Rourke

Believe me," he continued, "I want nothing more than to smite her out of existence.But I can't.Not until I have concrete evidence."
Smiting sounded good to me,but, as much as I hated it,I knew he was right. "Man,politics suck," I muttered. — Rachel Hawkins

Is that a nautilus?" he asked. "Close, but no. It's an ammonite." "An ammonite? What's an ammonite? Sounds like an Old Testament people overdue for smiting." "Ammonites are not a biblical people," she replied in a tone of strained forbearance. "But they have been smited." "Smote — Tessa Dare

That's how it will be, except that in reality, both today and later, one will stand there with a palpable body and a real head, a real forehead, that is, for smiting on with one's hand. — Franz Kafka

We are being at once wisely aware of our own frivolity if we avoid hitting and whacking and prefer 'striking' and 'smiting'; talk and chat and prefer 'speech' and 'discourse'; well-bred, brilliant, or polite noblemen (visions of snobbery columns in the Press, and fat men on the Riviera) and prefer the 'worthy, brave and courteous men' of long ago. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The al-Qaida cell broken up near Buffalo, N.Y., contains some citizens who also found themselves in Afghanistan, training for the Great All-Around Satan Smiting. Treason? Oh, of course not. They were on a religious pilgrimage and got lost. Happens all the time. I knew a kid who went to Lutheran Bible Camp and turned up six years later in a Christian Identity compound with a shaved head and a Hitler mustache. — James Lileks

Worship Me Like the Goddess I Am or There Will Be Some Serious Smiting.
Jubilee — Simon R. Green

Smiting enemies has always been so admired that, unlike medicine or archaeology, it entitled its successful practitioners to become kings, emperors, and presidents ... — Barbara Holland

In one was, I suppose, I have been "in denial" for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light. But for precisely this reason, I can't see myself smiting my brow with shock or hear myself whining about how it's all so unfair: I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me. — Christopher Hitchens