Quotes & Sayings About Sticks And Stones

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

and behind them came the women, and then the children with sticks and stones in their hands. There was a line of fury on the ground, slithering forth. Someone — Alice Hoffman

I'm not insane, I'm neurologically variant," she snapped back. "Sticks and stones, asshole. — Mira Grant

The sticks break, the stones crumble, The eternal altars tilt and tumble, Sanctions and tales dislimn like mist About the amazed evangelist. He stands unshook from age to youth Upon one pin-point of the truth. — Robert Louis Stevenson

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

I know not with what weapons World War Three will be fought. But I know that World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones. — Dianne Duvall

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

Geniuses were like storms or cyclones, pulling everything into their path, sticks and stones and dust. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

Today, words. Tomorrow, sticks and stones. And the day after that? — Phillip Adams

And now for the vapor-bath: on a framework of three sticks, meeting at the top, they stretch pieces of woolen cloth, taking care to get the joints as perfect as they can, and inside this little tent they put a dish with red-hot stones in it. Then they take some hemp seed, creep into the tent, and throw the seed on to the hot stones. At once it begins to smoke, giving off a vapor unsurpassed by any vapor-bath one could find in Greece. The Sythians enjoy it so much that they howl with pleasure. This is their substitute for an ordinary bath in water, which they never use. — Herodotus

..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

All snowmen look to the sky, knowing their death will be delivered by the horizon. Before dawn, their life becomes the darkest. The moment before the sun burns all.
The Snowmen go mental. Kill or be killed.
I only just escaped the violent puddles, the sticks and stones.
The broken carrot noses. — Craig Stone

Eldric wore his lazy lion's smile. He didn't mind what he was called. He was a sticks-and-stones sort of person. — Franny Billingsley

Each one of them would have gladly done the task, but all they could do now was watch and wait as sticks and stones did their best to batter Ty to his knees in those cold waves. — Madeleine Urban

Societies aren t made of sticks and stones, but of men whose individual characters, by turning the scale one way or another, determine the direction of the whole. — Plato

Sticks and stones can bruise your body for a few days, but words can scar your soul for life. — Craig Groeschel

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

32While the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man z gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. 33And those who found him gathering sticks brought him to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation. 34 a They put him in custody, because it had not been made clear what should be done to him. 35And the LORD said to Moses, b "The man shall be put to death; all the congregation shall c stone him with stones outside the camp." 36And all the congregation brought him outside the camp and stoned him to death with stones, as the LORD commanded Moses. — Anonymous

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

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

I grew up under the sticks and stones rule. I didn't put my hands on you so why should you put your hands on me or my family. — Tim Hardaway

Sticks and stones may break me, but the words you said just tore my heart in two. — Tracy Lawrence

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

We men have always fought to protect others... since the ancient times. Even though we were naked, and only had sticks and stones to defend ourselves... we still had the elderly, the young, our wives, friends, family, and homes... and to protect all of that we braved any danger, no matter what... and fought! And even among those cavemen there were useless failures! Just like how we are today! But in the end, even they gathered their courage, and fought! And, not surprisingly, being incompetent... they were killed! Even thought it was the death of an idiot... it was also... the death of a selfless hero! — Nobuyuki Fukumoto

Sticks and stones can break a man,
but words can destroy him. — Matshona Dhliwayo

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

Folk caught up in a riot aren't our cousins and sisters, our brothers and uncles. They are part of a big animal with many arms and claws, armed with stones and sticks. — Tamora Pierce

Words are really powerful. I don't believe that axiom at all - words can absolutely hurt you. Words can wound. They can do a lot of damage. I think they can do way more damage than sticks and stones. I'll take sticks and stones. — Mary-Louise Parker

Stones and sticks are thrown only at fruit-bearing trees. — Sumi

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

There's a belief that wherever your Ancestors took shape from the sticks and stones that formed them, that's home. Ancestors from the coast leave their mark, Ancestors from the mountains, from the desert, they all leave their mark on the genes. When you come home, the genes rejoice. — Kate Wilhelm

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

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

The life of a savage is beset by glowering terrors: from birth to death he lives in an animated world; where the sun and the stars, sticks, stones, and rivers are obsessed with his fate. He is busy all the time in a ritual designed to propitiate the abounding jealousies of nature. For his world is magical and capricious, the simplest thing is occult. — Walter Lippmann

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

Because that saying about sticks and stones is a pack of lies. Unkind words hurt more than anything else. You end up carrying them around in your head, wondering if they're true. Bruises fade, but self-doubt follows you forever. — Kate Lattey

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

Indeed, the best books have a use, like sticks and stones, which is above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface,not concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves a very different use to me today from what it did to his contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental value merely, proving that man is still man in the world. — Henry David Thoreau

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

Someone once said that World War Three would be fought with atomic weapons and the next war with sticks and stones. — Robert F. Kennedy

Sticks and stones build strong houses — Melody Carstairs

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

If all you have to fight with is sticks and stones,
then that's what you fight with. — Bo Demont

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

I don't need a trumpet for you to know I'm coming. I simply arrive. — Z.E. Frey

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

Let them speak as lewdly as they list of me ... as long as they do not hit me, what am I the worse? — Thomas More

the Kauravas and the Pandavas turned from demi-gods into cave men, the great war reduced to a tribal feud fought with sticks and stones. — William Dalrymple

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

When the riot controls had been put into effect, and a nervous white population was waiting, it took little to set it off. In Wichita, a few white youths drove down into the black area and simply fired off guns. This brought black people out of their houses; in rage at seeing the harassment, they hurled stones or sticks at a passing car, and the battle was on. In that particular instance the police arrested the five whites who were armed and twelve young black men who had only rocks and sticks. All were jailed. The next morning, all were released on bail, but the bail set for the five armed whites was only one-fifth the amount set for the twelve unarmed black students. — John Howard Griffin

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

Year after year. "Please don't make me go [to school]" "You have to go," Kim would say. "It's a new school, make a new start." "Sticks and stones." from Chip. Words will only kill you. — Julie Anne Peters