Sticks And Bones Quotes & Sayings

As children we are taught, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me!" As adults we teach those same words to our own children while simultaneously we sue one another for defamation or verbal assault. Ah, the naked leading the blind. — Bryan Oftedahl

I hadn't fully realized just how powerful words could be before this. Whoever came up with the saying 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was talking out of his or her armpit. — Malorie Blackman

Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will make me cry by myself in a corner for hours. — Eric Idle

One of the things that all kids are taught by their parents is this old "sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." — William J. Clinton

Because I am eighteen I know a great many things; for example, I know that sticks and stones are indeed very effective mechanisms with which to break bones; however, a few poorly aim (or sadly, well-aimed) words can have some's metaphorical eye out and therefore one out not wave one's words about willy-nilly. — Alyssa Brugman

Sticks and stones and fists CAN break your bones, but it's the words that break your heart. — Mia Sheridan

Strange how mean words can return to ones thoughts, years after they've been callously thrown at you. They replay in your mind, spiking a sense of remembered pain. Nasty name calling can be an ugly memory that stabs unexpectedly - not unlike a nightmare where you wake up crying.
Sticks and stones, may break your bones - yet, cruel names can hurt you. — Nikki Sex

My parents said sticks and stones will break your bones but names will never hurt you. But I always felt a sense of exhilaration after a fight; it was the names that really hurt me. — Michael Franti

sticks and stones might break your bones, but cement pays homage to tradition. — Estelle Getty

..and only sticks and stones can break my bones. — Mark Haddon

It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me - such bullshit. — Lauren Oliver

After seeing the devastation on the East coast. I've concluded that Sticks and Stone might break our bones. But Mother Nature can really tear up your stuff, — Stanley Victor Paskavich

THE JOURNEY

Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again

Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.

Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens

so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.

Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that

first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.

Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out

someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.

You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving. — David Whyte

Think of music like you think of eating. There's meat and potatoes, very hearty basic comfort food that sticks to your bones and nourishes you. Then there's fluff. Chips, dessert, junk food. Stuff that won't make you healthy but you prefer because it's quick and there. — Jennifer Laurens

What is that old children's rhyme, 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me'? Anyone who says that doesn't understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It's more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time. — Laurell K. Hamilton

After having imposed itself on us like the egomaniac it is, clamouring about its own needs, foisting upon us its own sordid and perilous desires, the body's final trick is simply to absent itself. Just when you need it, just when you could use an arm or a leg, suddenly the body has other things to do. It falters, it buckles under you; it melts away as if made of snow, leaving nothing much. Two lumps of coal, an old hat, a grin made of pebbles. The bones dry sticks, easily broken. — Margaret Atwood

Sticks and stones may break my bones
When aimed with careful art,
Words can sting like anything
But silence breaks the heart — Na

The power of words to deceive is a danger far exceeding any we might encounter from physical weapons. Sticks and stones can break bones! But words can lead worlds into ruin! — Steve Bivans

People say sticks and stones may break your bones, but names can never hurt you, but that's not true. Words can hurt. They hurt me. Things were said to me that I still haven't forgotten. — Demi Lovato

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you. — Philip G. Zimbardo

Some people spend their whole lives looking for themselves, yet our self is the one thing we surely cannot lose (how like a cheap philosopher I am become, staying in this benighted place). From the moment we are conceived it is the pattern in our blood and our bones are printed through with it like sticks of seaside rock. Nora, on the other hand, says that she's surprised anyone knows who they are, considering that every cell and molecule in our bodies has been replaced many times over since we were born. — Kate Atkinson

I'd rather have names to hurt me, than my bones broken with sticks and stones. — Anthony Liccione

Sticks and stones may break bones, but the Gat will kill you quicker. — The Notorious B.I.G.

Sticks and stones can break my bones and I have my Swiss Army Knife if they hit me and if I kill them it will be self defense and I won't go to prison. — Mark Haddon

The next moment I was chained to my chair again,
the fires were lit, the bells rang out, the litanies were sung;
my feet were scorched to a cinder,
my muscles cracked, my blood and marrow hissed, my flesh consumed like shrinking leather,
the bones of my legs hung two black withering and moveless sticks in the ascending blaze;
it ascended, caught my hair,
I was crowned with fire,
my head was a ball of molten metal, my eyes flashed and melted in their sockets;
I opened my mouth, it drank fire,
I closed it, the fire was within, ... and we burned, and burned! I was a cinder body and soul in my dream. — Charles Robert Maturin

When you're a child, grownups always tell you that "sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you". They say it as if it's a kind of spell that's going to protect you. I've never seen the logic of it. Cuts and bruises quickly disappear. You forget all about them. The psychological wounds inflicted by bullies with words go much deeper. — Susan Boyle

You're mad, you missionaries,' ejaculated Tai Haruru angrily. 'What good do you think you do, crawling out to the extremities of all the different world's ends and dying there like lizards spiked on sticks?'
Brother Balaam jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the church behind him. 'Ye'll get no civilization worth havin' in a new country unless ye lay down a few martyrs' bones for a foundation,' he said. 'They generate. Slow but sure. — Elizabeth Goudge

Whoever had come up with the chant "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" had been an idiot. — Nevada Barr

Whereas the food debris of the Neanderthals shows a wide variety of animal bones, suggesting that they took whatever they could find, archaeological remnants from Homo sapiens show that they sought out particular kinds of game and tracked animals seasonally. All of this strongly suggests that they possessed a linguistic system sufficiently sophisticated to deal with concepts such as: "Today let's kill some red deer. You take some big sticks and drive the deer out of the woods and we'll stand by the riverbank with our spears and kill them as they come down towards us." By comparison Neanderthal speech may have been something more like: "I'm hungry. Let's hunt. — Bill Bryson

'And I promise not to keep assuming that living in the sticks means you're inbred trailer trash if you'll stop supposing that I'm an asshole just because I grew up in a place big enough for traffic lights.'
A hint of a smile played at the corner of Chris's mouth. 'Can I still think you're an asshole for other reasons?' — Kim Fielding

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can break hearts. — Tim Minchin

I have no ideas, myself! Not a one! there's nothing more vulgar, more common, more disgusting than ideas! libraries are loaded with them! and every sidewalk cafe! ... the impotent are bloated with ideas! ... they dazzle youth with ideas! they play the pimp! ... and youth is ever ready, as you know, Professor, to gobble up anything, to go OOH! and AAH! by the numbers! How those pimps have an easy job of it! the passionate years of youth are spent getting a hard on and gargling ideeaas! ... philosophies, if you prefer! ... yes sir, philosophies! youth loves sham just as young dogs love those sticks, like bones, that we throw and they run after! they race forward, yipping away, wasting their time, that's the main thing! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

But I don't take any notice because I don't listen to what other people say and only sticks and stones can break my bones and I have a Swiss Army knife if they hit me. — Mark Haddon

Sticks and stones keep breaking my bones but these words, these words will kill me. — Tahereh Mafi

Grown-ups and children are not readily encouraged to unearth the power of words. Adults are repeatedly assured a picture is worth a thousand of them, while the playground response to almost any verbal taunt is 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'
I don't beg so much as command to differ. — Inga Muscio

Sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will break our spirit. — James Howe

Sticks and stones and small caliber bullets may break my bones ... Words will never, et cetera. — Jim Butcher

Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts ... — Robert Fulghum

In November, the trees are standing all sticks and bones. Without their leaves, how lovely they are, spreading their arms like dancers. They know it is time to be still. — Cynthia Rylant

Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie. — John Green

While sticks and stones break bones, words can never hurt? Manifestly untrue. Politics everywhere are holistic, interconnected, and the rhetoric of right or left can produce toxic atmospheres in which lunacy thrives. — Phillip Adams

Sticks and stones can only break bones; but words can shatter the soul — Adam Savage

Sticks and stones will break your bones, but now words can kill, too. — Chuck Palahniuk

I'm not the only kid who grew up this way. Surrounded by people who used to say that rhyme about sticks and stones. As if broken bones hurt more than the names we got called, and we got called them all. So we grew up believing no one would ever fall in love with us. That we'd be lonely forever. That we'd never meet someone to make us feel like the sun was something they built for us in their tool shed. So broken heart strings bled the blues as we tried to empty ourselves so we would feel nothing. Don't tell me that hurts less than a broken bone. — Shane Koyczan

Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel. — Philip Pullman

I'll tell you this, though. It's not true, that saying about sticks and stones; it's words that break your bones. — Merle Miller

The old saw that "sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me" does not, in fact, hold true. — Gerry Spence