"Two-edged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... saw it; and it was not his fault that his world was a small one. Fate was answerable for that. So far as he went, Thackeray did his work admirably, portraying the few virtues and the many shams of his set with candor and sincerity. Though he used satire freely (and satire is a two-edged weapon), his object was never malicious or vindictive but corrective; he aimed to win or drive men to virtue by exposing ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... heart that truly loves? And now thou liest there, breathing out thy life, In impious deed of death, In this fell spider's web! Yes woe is me! woe, woe! Woe for this couch of thine unhonorable! Slain by a subtle death With sword two-edged, which her right hand ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... the medicine restored, gives signs, As I have taught, of its mortality. So surely will a fact of truth make head 'Gainst errors' theories all, and so shut off All refuge from the adversary, and rout Error by two-edged confutation. ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... asked—Was it the act of a benevolent Deity to entrust this terribly two-edged weapon of liberty to our unskilful hands, in which it was bound to work so vast an amount of injury? And this opens up the larger and more general question, Must we, in view of the facts of life, surrender the ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the junction of this forest path and the main road the hill men fell in behind like ghosts. They were brown, medium-sized men, dressed in cotton trousers and blouses. They were without shoes or hats and were armed with a medley of weapons, from modern rifles to the big, two-edged sword with which their ancestors fought. Save under the leadership of the priest, they were said not to be good fighters, but with him to spur them on they became veritable demons, hurling themselves upon the enemy with a recklessness only possible to religious fanatics. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... he becomes, as in his prophetic office he approaches the subject of his own kingly judgment. His eyes pierce these hypocrites, and they quail before him. As his witnessing approaches its close, he draws the two-edged sword from its sheath and holds it before the time over the naked heads of his enemies, if so be they may even yet fear and sin not. For his own holy purposes he lays aside for a moment his gentleness, and appears as the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... America, each had his private individual spite; while they found in its peculiar phraseology a mine of fun. Patriots rejoiced that one vigilant thinker dared stand guard over our national honor, with the two-edged sword of satire in his hand. Men in authority, at whom the shafts of its scathing rebukes were leveled, writhed on their cushions of state, while, in sheer deference to his originality and humor, they laughed with the crowd ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the whites threaten to become ungovernable tyrants and the blacks criminals and hypocrites? Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors; to-day it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. And how natural this is! The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence. Political defence is becoming less and less available, and economic defence is still only ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... pruning-knife is, Christ tells us in the next verse. "Ye are clean through the word which I have spoken to you." As He says later, "Sanctify them through Thy truth; Thy word is truth." "The word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit." What heart-searching words Christ had spoken to His disciples on love and humility, on being the least, and, like Himself, the servant of all, on denying ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... opinion forced them to consent to his restitution, had tacked to the amnesty a clause as cowardly as it was unconstitutional, and declared his incompetence to sit in the parliament of his country. Burke on the contrary fought the whig fight with a two-edged weapon: he was a great writer; as an orator he was transcendent. In a dearth of that public talent for the possession of which the whigs have generally been distinguished, Burke came forward and established them alike ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the divine Principle of healing or of trying to sus- tain the human body until the divine Mind is ready to take the case. Divinity is always 458:15 ready. Semper paratus is Truth's motto. Having seen so much suffering from quackery, the author desires to keep it out of Christian Science. The two-edged sword 458:18 of Truth must turn in every direction to ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... Could I lose her? Could I let her go? But I had. I glanced at the clock. It was now one. She had not returned. By this time she had passed from me to another. The pain, the acute pain of it, of this thought seemed to divide my brain like a two-edged sword. ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... time of the fight; he spake like a dragon: and on the other side, what sighs and groans burst from Christian's heart. I never saw him all the while give so much as one pleasant look, till he perceived he had wounded Apollyon with his two-edged sword; then, indeed, he did smile, and look upward; but it was the dreadfulest ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... perhaps Terence knew that some women were of such a temper as to gossip on the way, though an affair of life or death requires their haste." Colman thus takes him to task for this observation: "This two-edged reflection, glancing at once on Terence and the ladies, is, I think, very ill-founded. The delay of Mysis, on seeing the emotion of Pamphilus, is very natural; and her artful endeavors to interest Pamphilus on behalf of her mistress, ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... one inch apart, fixed on each side the blade, and you have an idea of the Saw-fish. This strange Shark is said to be as strong as it is fierce. It kills its prey by tearing them open with side blows from its sharp, two-edged saw. Its big mouth is fitted with a great many ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith
... surprised, then, at all, at what is said against Abolitionists by the North, for they are wielding a two-edged sword, which even here, cuts through the cords of caste, on the one side, and the bonds of interest on the other. They are only sharing the fate of other reformers, abused and reviled whilst they ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... two-edged sword with very little handle. It takes an exceedingly clever President to strengthen himself by its exercise. When a man is running for President the twenty men in every town who expect to be made postmaster are for him heart and soul. Only one can get the office, and the nineteen who ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... leaning upon a two-edged sword, with a death's head upon his cap, another upon his badge, and a third upon his breast? Is he not the famous Bianchetti, a condottiere employed by the people, as the condottieri once were by the kings ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... delightful sayings encouraged her to be extravagant. She thought that perhaps he would find her ankles worth a moment—if she took pains with them. Anyhow, he was worth dressing for. James never noticed anything—or if he did, his ambiguity was two-edged. "Extraordinary hat," he might say, and drop his eyeglass, which always gave an air of finality to comments of the sort. But her shopping done, for Lancelot's sake, life stretched before her a grey waste. She went back to tea, to a novel, to a ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... be careful! Knowledge is a two-edged sword, and it is apt to side with pride. Remember what was the last temptation of the serpent to Eve: "Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... obtains in these elections, the more difficult it will be for the Reaction to carry out exceptional laws [referring to Bismarck's legislation practically outlawing the Socialists], and the more this miserable weapon will become for them a two-edged sword. Certainly it will come to that [anti-Socialist legislation] in the end, for no one in possession of his five senses believes that, when universal suffrage sends a Social-Democratic majority ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... mucronated^; spindle shaped, needle shaped; spiked, spiky, ensiform^, peaked, salient; cusped, cuspidate, cuspidated^; cornute^, cornuted^, cornicultate^; prickly; spiny, spinous^, spicular; thorny, bristling, muricated^, pectinated^, studded, thistly, briary^; craggy &c (rough) 256; snaggy, digitated^, two-edged, fusiform [Micro.]; dentiform^, denticulated; toothed; odontoid^; starlike; stellated^, stelliform^; sagittate^, sagittiform^; arrowheaded^; arrowy^, barbed, spurred. acinaciform; apiculate^, apiculated^; aristate^, awned, awny^, bearded, calamiform^, cone-shaped, coniform^, crestate^, echinate^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... period of Charles I., and others, halberds with a crescent on one side, like those which were used in the days of Henry VII. And I then noticed that a whole multitude of soldiers were lying asleep on the ground, armed with two-edged swords and bows and arrows. And their clothes seemed unfamiliar and brighter than the clothes which Chinese ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... as said before—in the next place—It is written, that there shall be a two-edged sword in the hand of the saints. But the saints have but two swords—Was there a sword or shield found among ten thousand in Israel? Then let Israel use his fists, say I, the preacher! For this man hath shed blood, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... nightgowns and their little red cowls, rubbing their eyes, cowering with cold and fright, and making an awful uproar, crying on me to come down and not be killed. The voice of Benjie especially pierced through and through my heart, like a two-edged sword, and I could on no manner of account suffer myself to bear it any longer, as I jealoused the bairn would have gone into convulsion fits if I had not heeded him; so, making a sign to them to be quiet, I came my ways down, taking hold of one in ilka hand, which must have been a fatherly ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... are past and done, with much to regret and much to be thankful for. You trained good servants that way—but did you make good men and women? Some think so, and I among them; but such training is two-edged, and while I feel sure that the girls and lads were the better for the discipline, I cannot believe that the masters and mistresses were. They nursed arrogance; out of them came the tyrants and gang-drivers of the eighteenth century, Act of Settlement, the Enclosure ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... war horn slung over his shoulder was of ivory; the sword that hung by his side had a golden hilt and a two-edged 5 blade inlaid with a cross of gold that glittered like the lightning of heaven. His shoes, from the knee to the tip of the toe, were embossed with gold worth three hundred cattle; and his ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... in a two-edged way, for another arrow darted by him with a buzz like that of an angry hornet, at the same time that a yell arose, for he saw the man at whom he had fired trying to scramble up from the earth and falling ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... battle-clouds. And ever, through the clamour of the strife, I heard the ceaseless wailing of a child, And the sobbing, sobbing, sobbing, endless Sobbing of a reft and broken woman. "Shall it be Peace or War?" A two-edged sword Could cut no sharper than the gentle voice Of Him who bowed with sorrow at the sight Of man destroying man for sake of gain. I waited, breathless, for the warrior's word. But no word came. His heart was with ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... Child of Kings, I will do my best. Only blame us not if the end of this matter is other than these advisers of yours expect. Prophecies are two-edged swords to play with, and I do not believe that a race of fighting men like the Fung will fly and leave you triumphant just because a stone image is shattered, if that can be done in the time and with the ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... said another neighbor, a sort of two-edged woman, who dwelt over across the swamp and whose scolding voice could be heard ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... intense interest. He saw that Le Gardeur was a two-edged weapon just as likely to cut his friends as his enemies, unless skilfully held in hand, and blinded as to when ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... distinguished from all other books by its power over the human conscience. The apostle says: "The word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," Heb. 4:12; and this declaration is confirmed by the experience of ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... armoured by the tradition of a culture demanded by leadership; inspired by ideas, but always the same ideas; owning no master, but in servitude to her own custom of leading, she had a mind, formidable as the two-edged swords wielded by her ancestors the Fitz-Harolds, at Agincourt or Poitiers—a mind which had ever instinctively rejected that inner knowledge of herself or of the selves of others; produced by those foolish practices of introspection, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... two-edged policy of this crafty monarch, foreign nations were crippled in the number of their subjects, and his own were greatly multiplied. He particularly petted these renegado strangers. But alas for the deep-laid schemes of ambitious princes, and alas for the vanity of glory. As the foreign-born ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... significant of the present state of things when men are free to write as they do of the women of their own nation. Every word of censure flung against them is two-edged, and wounds those who condemn as much as those who are condemned; for surely it need hardly be said that men hold nothing so dear as the honor of their women, and that no one living would willingly lower the repute of his mother ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... companion was James Garth,—the only one among them all who enjoyed the situation. Quita herself found a perverse satisfaction, unworthy of her best moments, in thus emphasising her indifference to her husband's presence; ignoring, with characteristic heedlessness, the fact that a two-edged weapon is an ill thing to handle: and Lenox, accepting her unspoken intimation au pied de la lettre, steeled himself to half-cynical, ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... all. He must use the Word of the Lord as a sword. "The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and of spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." How will the hearers like that? The preacher must not ask that, he must ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... Christ is the power of God unto salvation." The words of Christ, "they are spirit and they are life." If sinners, whether young or old, are to be reclaimed for Christ, it must be through that Word which "is quick"—i.e., full of life—"and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword." ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding
... in the hand of Divine Omnipotence, a two-edged sword. It wounds the rebellious, it sanctifies him who is ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... help, and surely any peril is more courageously faced when they can say to themselves, 'He put us here.' The sheep has no claws to wound with nor teeth to tear with, but the defenceless Christian has a defence, and in his very weaponlessness wields the sharpest two-edged sword. 'Force from force must ever flow.' Resistance is a mistake. The victorious antagonist of savage enmity is patient meekness. 'Sufferance is the badge of all' true servants of Jesus. Wherever ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... Omnipotence. Parallel is chap. xlix. 2, where Christ says: "And He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword," equivalent to: He has endowed me with His Omnipotence, so that my word also exercises destructive effect, just as His. In Rev. i. 16, it is said of Christ: "And out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword,"—to designate the destructive power of His word borne by Omnipotence, the omnipotent punitive power of Christ against enemies, both internal and external. An instance of the manner in which Christ smites by the word of His mouth is offered by Acts v. 3 (where, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... that were true, Ross could be the first to suffer in playing a waiting game. Well, air was not the only thing he could cut off from here, though it had been the first and most important to his mind. Ross hesitated. Two-edged weapons cut in both directions. But he had to force a countermove from them. He pulled another switch. The control cabin, the whole of the ship, was ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... souls that mock at life Aweary of their cankered hearts, Weary of sleep and weary of strife, Weary of markets and of arts,— Helve them a song of life, Two-edged with joyous life, Tempered trusty with life, Proud pointed with wild life, Plunge it as lightning plunges, Stab ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... Farther in it got darker, not even a fleck of moonlight shone. Then she came to the shrine; she knelt down before it and prayed; there came no answer. Then she uncovered her breast; with a sharp two-edged stone that lay there she wounded it. The drops dripped slowly down on to the stone, and a voice ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... attractions that a man may have for a woman—the subtle drawing of the lodestone for the passive iron—had come into her life. Doubly sweet it was to her intense, young virgin soul, in that it first revealed the dawning of that two-edged bliss which makes a heaven or a hell of earth—of earth, which owes its ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... perpetuity of Slavery? And shall we treat with the Confederate authorities on this basis? No; while we will gladly treat with States and people desiring to return to the Union, with Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet brandishing over our heads the two-edged sword of Slavery and disunion, we will, in the emphatic words of General Jackson, "negotiate only from the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... "Keen intelligence is two-edged," Master once remarked in reference to Kumar's brilliant mind. "It may be used constructively or destructively like a knife, either to cut the boil of ignorance, or to decapitate one's self. Intelligence ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... very Gospel itself the sword. We may recall as a parallel, and possibly a copy of our text, the great words of the Epistle to the Hebrews which speak of the word of God as 'living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.' And we cannot forget the magnificent symbolism of the Book of Revelation which saw in the midst of the candlestick one like unto a Son of Man, and 'out of His mouth proceeded a sharp, two-edged ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... cuspidated[obs3]; cornute[obs3], cornuted[obs3], cornicultate[obs3]; prickly; spiny, spinous[obs3], spicular; thorny, bristling, muricated[obs3], pectinated[obs3], studded, thistly, briary[obs3]; craggy &c. (rough) 256; snaggy, digitated[obs3], two-edged, fusiform[Microb]; dentiform[obs3], denticulated; toothed; odontoid[obs3]; starlike; stellated[obs3], stelliform[obs3]; sagittate[obs3], sagittiform[obs3]; arrowheaded[obs3]; arrowy[obs3], barbed, spurred. acinaciform; apiculate[obs3], apiculated[obs3]; aristate[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... fierce-looking Malays, bringing bananas, cocoa-nuts, and pineapples, which they bartered for biscuits, a handkerchief, and two small axes. Several other interviews took place with islanders, armed with the kriss, and short two-edged iron pikes, who were ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... salary or any prospects of worldly emoluments, unknown, unheralded, those humble but heroic men began, in dead earnest, their grand life-work. Their mission and commission was to conquer that savage tribe of fierce, prairie warriors, by the two-edged sword of the spirit of the living God and to mold them aright, by the power of the Gospel of His Son. And God was with them as they took up their weapons (not carnal but spiritual) in this ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... whole generation. Of the small minority who know him as the founder of the English school of historical sceptics, how many have heard of his multifarious literary and political works, or his shrewd, genial, two-edged, criticisms on public and social life? It seems too probable that our grandchildren will retain nothing of his save the characteristic saying, that 'life would be very tolerable but for its pleasures;' ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... mortals bend their will, How soon they find fit instruments of ill! Just then, Clarissa drew with tempting grace A two-edged weapon from her shining case: So ladies in romance assist their knight, Present the spear, and arm him for the fight, 130 He takes the gift with reverence, and extends The little engine on his fingers' ends: This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, As o'er ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... nearer, he thrust his right hand into the bosom of his cassock, and drew out a long broad two-edged dagger, or stiletto; and as he unsheathed it, "Ready!" he muttered to himself, "ready for ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... This two-edged insatiable sword was drawn: great multitudes signed with enthusiasm, and they who would not sign were, of course, persecuted. As they said, "it looked not like a thing approved of God, which was begun and ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... suffered at the time of our Lord's Passion. Ambrose (in Luc. 2:35) says that the sword signifies "Mary's prudence which took note of the heavenly mystery. For the word of God is living and effectual, and more piercing than any two-edged ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... rock that Moses struck, she burst forth in a surprising torrent. Without making others merry, she was eternally merry. Without ever feeling the agony of thirst, she instilled thirst. A thousand broken-hearted women might have looked on her as an avenging sword, if the sword hadn't been two-edged. She had a motto, a creed, a philosophy, packed into four words: "Be ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... quoting prices to a man who has just bought. The temptation is always to name a very low rate, perhaps even to go below your lowest selling price, for the purpose of making the man feel that you would have been a better man to buy from, but this is a two-edged sword, and I have not cared to handle it. I concluded it would pay here to ...
— A Man of Samples • Wm. H. Maher
... forward his hand upon his sword, a curse between his white teeth and a line of light from between his half-closed lids like the flashing of a two-edged sword. "What—'sdeath?" And ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... rendered still greater services, both to the state and to my friends. The value of a word, once passed, is estimated according to the worth of the man who gives it. So long as it is in his own keeping, it is of the purest, finest gold; when his wish to keep it has passed away, it is a two-edged sword. With that word, therefore, he defends himself as with an honorable weapon, considering that, when he disregards his word, he endangers his life and incurs an amount of risk far greater than that which his adversary is likely to derive of profit. In such a case, monsieur, he appeals ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there were some elements of truth and excellence, and even of grandeur, in the religion and civilization of the republics of Greece and Rome; and it is reprehensible, because it is a one-sided and unjust procedure, in so far as it withholds part of the truth. This species of argument is a two-edged sword which cuts both ways. The prevalence of murder, and slavery, and treachery, and polygamy, in Greece and Rome, is no more a proof that "the religions of the pagan nations were destructive of morality" (Watson, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... out of their wild eyes. But, in course of time, they got accustomed to honest labour, and had sense enough to feel that there was more true enjoyment in living at peace, and doing good to one's neighbour, than in striking at him with a two-edged sword. It may not be too much to hope that the rest of mankind will by and by grow as wise and peaceable as these five earth-begrimed warriors, who sprang from the ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... wrote with his finger on the ground, imagined he was writing down his individual sins, and was in terror lest his neighbour should come to know them.—And wasn't he gentle even with those to whom he was sharper than a two-edged sword! and oh how gentle to her he would cover from their rudeness and wrong! LET THE SINLESS THROW! And the sinners went out, and she followed—to sin no more. No reproaches, you see! No stirring up of the ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... KISSLEBURGH, city editor of the Troy Times, who, up to the present time, if this coot knows herself, hain't bin into the hiway robbin' bizziness, not by a long shot. But, my friends and feller citizens, old VAN is sharper that a two-edged gimlet. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 26, September 24, 1870 • Various
... their quarry with a two-edged sword; one edge is what they say, the other what they leave unsaid; and both edges are often keen. What they say generally has a foundation of truth with a superstructure of gilded staff. You must knock over the staff and examine the foundations to see if they are laid up in good cement mortar ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... varied in length from ten "hands" to five. There was also a small single-edged sword** carried by women and fastened inside the robe. The value attached to the sword is attested by numerous appellations given to blades of special quality. In later times the two-edged sword virtually fell out of use, being replaced by ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... their own selfish ends. There, in those hands, its fate will lie—perhaps for a generation to come. And it is only by faith in the common people, not in their politicians, that I dare look forward and hope that the instrument— blunt and one-sided though it be now—may yet become mighty and two-edged and sharp, a sword in the hand of a giant—of one whose balances are those of justice, not of power. But I shan't see it, Tumulty; it won't be in my day. If America had come in, I should! That was the keystone of my policy: that gone, my policy has failed. That was ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... the girdle of linen which she wore, and the young man Prince Haemon stood with his arms about her dead body, embracing it. And when the king saw him, he cried to him to come forth; but the prince glared fiercely upon him and answered him not a word, but drew his two-edged sword. Then the king, thinking that his son was minded in his madness to slay him, leapt back, but the prince drove the sword into his own heart and fell forward on the earth, still holding the dead maiden in his arms. And when they brought the tidings of these ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... Ranald seemed to the eyes of men to be still a hale old warrior, ruling constitutionally—that is, with a wholesome fear of being outlawed or murdered if he misbehaved—over the Danes in Waterford; with five hundred fair-haired warriors at his back, two-edged axe on shoulder and two-edged sword on thigh. His ships drove a thriving trade with France and Spain in Irish fish, butter, honey, and furs. His workmen coined money in the old round tower of Dundory, built by his predecessor and namesake about the year 1003, which stands as Reginald's tower ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... if it were possible, a slave Bible. If these heaven-blinded negro enlighteners persist in their pernicious plan of making Christians of their cattle, something of the sort must be done, or they will infallibly cut their own throats with this two-edged sword of truth, to which they should in no wise have laid their hand, and would not, doubtless, but that it is now thrust at them so threateningly that they have no choice. Again and again, how much I ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... screaming into the vast spaces beyond the mountain top, and returning, met the opposing forces from the canyon and instantly became a whirlwind. It cut like myriads of teeth; it struck two-edged with the swish, slash of a sword; and it lifted the advancing cloud in a mighty swirl, bellied it as though it had been a gigantic sail, and shook from its folds a deluge of hailstones followed by snow. Through it all a grotesque ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... numbered,' by the hairs meaning the smallest and slightest phantasy or thought. And in harmony herewith is the teaching of blessed Paul, 'For the word of God,' saith he, 'is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and laid bare ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... establish his kingship, injured him on this occasion. An idealist that is to say, not distinguishing the spirit from the substance, Jesus, whose words, to use the image of the Apocalypse, were as a two-edged sword, never completely satisfied the powers of earth. If we may believe John, he avowed his royalty, but uttered at the same time this profound sentence: "My kingdom is not of this world." He explained the nature of his kingdom, declaring that it consisted ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... in fine pontifical robes, with a rule six feet long in his right hand; with this he was to measure off God's holy city. In his left hand he had a two-edged sword. Underneath his pontifical robe he had a rich olive broadcloth cloak, lined and faced with silk and velvet; besides, he wore a brown frock coat, with several stars on each breast, with a splendid gold star on the left. His belt was of white cloth, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... wounds inflicted by the jaguar's blunt claws and teeth are terrible and dangerous. There are Indians in South America who are said to hunt the jaguar in the following manner. They wrap a sheepskin round the left arm and in the right hand hold a sharp two-edged knife. Then they beat up the jaguar and set dogs at him. He gets up on his hind legs like a bear, and attacks one of the Indians. The man puts out his left arm for him to bite, and at the same time runs his knife into ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... his hand whipping out from under his coat and upward, the lamp rays from the house running down the keen two-edged steel, "if ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... costumes. Over this compact mass of human heads, one could see the scaffold which was covered with new broadcloth. On the elevation stood the executioner, a German, with broad shoulders, dressed in a red kubrak and on his head a cowl of the same color; he carried a heavy two-edged sword; with him were two of his assistants with naked arms and ropes at their girdles. There were also a block and a coffin covered with broadcloth. In Panna Maryia's tower, the bells were ringing, filling the town with metallic sounds and scaring the flocks of doves and jackdaws. ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... legislation as a member, with a seat in Senate or Assembly, than as some unassigned John Smith, who, with a handful of bribes and a heart full of cheap intrigue, must do his work from the corridor. A legislative seat was a two-edged sword to cut both ways. You could trade with it, using it as a bribe, bartering vote for vote; that was one edge. Or you could threaten with it, promising nay for nay, and thus compel some member to save your ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... imitative speech. Therefore will I praise thee, and hymn forever thy power. Thee the wide heaven, which surrounds the earth, obeys; Following where thou wilt, willingly obeying thy law. Thou holdest at thy service, in thy mighty hands, The two-edged, flaming, immortal thunderbolt, Before whose flash all nature trembles. Thou rulest in the common reason, which goes through all, And appears mingled in all things, great or small, Which, filling all nature, is king of all existences. Nor without thee, O Deity, does anything happen in the world, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... numb All sense within it, and all conscience cold, That hangs round hearts of less imperial mould Like a snake feeding till their doomsday come. O heart fast bound of frozen poison, be All nature's as all true men's hearts to thee, A two-edged sword of judgment; hope be far And fear at hand for pilot oversea With death for compass and despair for star, And the white foam a shroud ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... would have much annoyed; but I dislike to leave him. I trust he is not worse, but his complaint is still weakness. It is not right to anticipate evil, and to be always looking forward in an apprehensive spirit; but I think grief is a two-edged sword—it cuts both ways: the memory of one loss is the anticipation of another. Take moderate exercise and be careful, dear Nell, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... poured forth from the Spirit Cuts like a two-edged sword; And hypocrites now are most sorely tormented Because they're condemned by ...
— The Log School-House on the Columbia • Hezekiah Butterworth
... actions shall or shall not correspond with the good, reason cannot decide. Here the ruling part of the soul is supreme, the soul which feels, acts, and wills. To her alone, not to her two vassals, has God entrusted the two-edged sword of freewill, that gift which, as Scripture tells us, may be our salvation or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... long been held. The people were daily losing confidence in the superstitions of Romanism. The barriers of prejudice were giving way. The word of God, by which Luther tested every doctrine and every claim, was like a two-edged sword, cutting its way to the hearts of the people. Everywhere there was awakening a desire for spiritual progress. Everywhere was such a hungering and thirsting after righteousness as had not been known for ages. The eyes of the people, so long directed to human rites and earthly mediators, were ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... fangs with folds of her long fur robe, and snatching from her girdle a small two-edged axe, whirled it up for a ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... is a two-edged and dangerous sword: observe in the hands of Socrates, her most intimate and familiar friend, how many several points it has. I am thus good for nothing but to follow and suffer myself to be easily carried away with the crowd; I have not confidence ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... precincts; or retort on one who declared his liking for calf's-tail, "Extremes meet!" or (when the dish was calf's-head), "What egotism!" and yet again, "There's brotherly love for you!" Not at my Lord Carlisle's, as in Bouverie Street, would you hear Shirley Brooks ask the famous two-edged riddle which Dean Hole reminds us of—"Why is Lady Palmerston's house like Swan and Edgar's? Because it's the best house for muzzling Delane (mousseline de laine)"—Delane being then unjustly suspected of having been "nobbled" during his visits to my lady's salon, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... lizards and worms, were to invade Nutcracker's country by an underground attack, and overthrow towns and villages; locusts, bees, and cockchafers were to fall upon the enemy from the air; whilst on the ground the Rootmen themselves should assail the foe with sharp rush-lances and two-edged blades of grass. ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... nothing lawful or unlawful in my Maker's image. 'Tis something to say that, in these godless days. I've allus kept my foot on the world, the flesh, an' the Devil so tight as the best Christian in company; an' if that ban't a record for a stone, p'raps you'll tell me a better. Your two-edged tongue do make me feel sometimes as though I did ought to go right away from 'e, ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... came not to send peace on earth but a sword." Now the word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. The key of knowledge of the depravity of the heart is furnished the liquor dealer in the above interview, by the concession, "I would like to live a different life." The saloon keepers generally attribute their remaining in the business to the necessity of it in order to obtain ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... which many times she defied their arts. Continually she showed that their interrogations were irrelevant to any business before the court, or that entered into the ridiculous charges against her. General questions were proposed to her on points of casuistical divinity; two-edged questions, which not one of themselves could have answered, without, on the one side, landing himself in heresy (as then interpreted), or, on the other, in some presumptuous expression of self-esteem. ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... Province, dwell the Wa Kikuyu, who are similar to the Masai in build, but not nearly so good-looking. Like the latter, they use the spear and shield, though of a different shape; their principal weapon, however, is the bow and poisoned arrow. They also frequently carry a rudely made two-edged short sword in a sheath, which is slung round the waist by a belt of raw hide. Their front teeth are filed to a sharp point in the same manner as those of nearly all the other native tribes of East Africa, with the exception of the Masai. They live in little villages composed ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... history-making season,—and draw such pleasure from it as she could. The strain had worn upon the paralyzed body. The active mind had stretched and stretched for material until the helpless frame weakened. The sharp tongue was two-edged now, and gossip that reached Susan Jane assumed the blackest color. Her searching eyes saw through everything, and gripped ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... yelling and hideous roaring Apollyon made all the time of the fight, he spake like a Dragon; and on the other side, what sighs and groans burst from Christian's heart. I never saw him all the while give so much as one pleasant look, till he perceived he had wounded Apollyon with his two-edged sword: then indeed he ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... things God has done for him, and he cannot remember. My brothers, guard against the discontented tongue. It is a grievous sin against God, and it makes its owner and all around him wretched. Let the praises of God be in your mouth, and the two-edged sword of faith in your hand, and you will make your way through all difficulties, and triumph over all troubles. Count up God's mercies and blessings every day, and you cannot murmur. Sing the Te Deum oftener, ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton
... he had procured two sticks, somewhat thin and wobbly, yet which, by the magic of imagination, became transformed into formidable, two-edged swords, with one of which he armed me, the other he flourished above ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... never trust her voice. It was as marvellous as the eyes. It could be sweet as honey and sharp as a two-edged sword; soft as dove's down, and hard as an agate stone. Too soft and sweet to be sooth-fast! She meant her words only when they ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... ropes, And engines, framed on horrid plan, Which none but the destroyer, Man, Could, to promote his selfish views, Have head to make or heart to use, Bearing, to consecrate her tricks, In her left hand a crucifix, 'Remembrance of our dying Lord,' And in her right a two-edged sword, 1730 Having her brows, in impious sport, Adorn'd with words of high import, 'On earth peace, amongst men good will, Love bearing and forbearing still,' All wrote in the hearts' blood of those Who rather death than falsehood chose: On her breast, (where, in days of yore, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... delightful tangle of things!—it would be the delightful task of man's thoughts to disentangle that. Already Bruno had measured the space which Bacon would fill, with room, perhaps, for Darwin also. That Deity is everywhere, like all such abstract propositions, is a two-edged force, depending for its practical effect on the mind which admits it on the peculiar perspective of that mind. To Dutch Spinosa, in the next century, faint, consumptive, with a naturally [150] faint hold on external things, the theorem ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... duty was to throw a veil over one's own heart and those of others: to suppress all doubt and inquiry, and to deaden all real life in the individual, so that the whole machine might continue its regular movements without noise or friction. But truth was a two-edged sword, sharp and shining as crystal. When the light of truth broke into the heart of man, it caused an agony as piercing as when a woman brings her child ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... have been correct and far-sighted. He believed the conferring of suffrage upon the negro, dim-visioned in the sudden light of a new liberty, to be a most dangerous experiment; he foresaw that the ballot which the North gave to them as a protection against their arrogant masters, would prove a two-edged sword with a terrible reactionary force in the hands of an untrained race just freed from mental leading-strings; he knew the difficulty to be inherent, a difficulty which the existence of slavery must necessarily ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... sometimes, when the lips are speaking fair, suddenly it will fling open the heart's door and show us where, in some secret chamber, Greed and Pride and Envy and Hate sit side by side in unblest fellowship. Verily this law of love is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... of the chiefs hastily aroused were unarmed, save for a spear there or a sword here—Thrasymedes gives to Diomede his two-edged sword, his shield, and "a helm of bull's hide, without horns or crest, that is called a skull-cap (knap-skull), and keeps the heads of strong young men." All the advanced guard were young men, as we saw in Book IX. 77. Obviously, Thrasymedes must ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... the ballot is a two-edged, nay, a many-edged sword, which may be made to cut in every direction. If wily politicians and sordid capitalists may wield it for mere party and personal greed; if oppressed wage-earners may invoke it to wring justice from legislators and extort material ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... cut with a two-edged sword. At the very time that their incomes were being diminished, they were confronted by an increase in the cost of living. Nor could they, as Lord Baltimore declared they might, alleviate these evils by industry and thrift. ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... chronology of the warrior archbishops, warriors of coat-of-mail and two-edged sword, the conquerors who, leaving the choir to the meek and humble, mounted their war-horses and thought they were not serving God unless during the year they added sundry towns and pasture lands to the goods of the Church. They arrived in the eleventh century, with Alfonso ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it, what is it, that so punishes the soul? Is it God? No. Patiently, lovingly He waits. Our pain is the difficulty of consenting to perfection: every virtue has a hammer, every perfection a long two-edged sword; and the punishment we feel is the breaking and wounding of self-will under the hammers of the virtues and the sword-thrusts ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... of thy foes, When thou, forsaken of all Greeks beside, Midst tumult of the fray, wast fleeing too! Oh that in that great fight Zeus' self had stayed My dauntless might with thunder from his heaven! Then with their two-edged swords the Trojan men Had hewn thee limb from limb, and to their dogs Had cast thy carrion! Then thou hadst not presumed To meet me, trusting in thy trickeries! Wretch, wherefore, if thou vauntest thee in might Beyond all others, hast thou set thy ships In the line's centre, ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... to Gamba, who heard with a two-edged smile. "Yes," was his comment, "he fears me enough to want to see me safe ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... A knight, riding a headless horse, and wearing chain armor, with a triangular shield flung behind his back, and a two-edged sword. ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... without his leave, and confined him closer than ever to his studies. (Well, sir, if it were not for this port I could not get out another sentence.) There used then to be sad scenes between them: my lord was a terribly passionate man, and said things sharper than a two-edged sword, as the psalms express it; and though Master Clinton was one of the mildest and best-tempered boys imaginable, yet he could not at all times curb his spirit; and, to my mind, when a man is perpetually declaring he is not your father, one may now and then be forgiven in forgetting that ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... night and wrestle with the wave, Ye two-edged winds that cut this shore and me; I warm me still with thinking of a grave That can not hold the dust's eternal part; For here across the centuries and the sea, A dead hand lies ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... next saint in the row been the Apostle Simon with his dreadful saw. It must have hurt so horribly to be sawed in two, she thought. In the dusky depths of the great chancel gleamed the white marble of the beautiful altar, guarded by St. Peter with his keys and St. Paul with his naked two-edged sword; and above the altar was the dead Christ on Calvary, with His desolate mother and the despairing Magdalene and St. ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... love in its supreme type, but it is wholly lacking in that weak-featured travesty of love which we call amiability. His hatred of sin was at times a furious rage. His lips breathed flame as well as tenderness; "Out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword." We may search literature in vain to discover any words half as terrible and scathing as the words in which Jesus described sin. The psychological explanation is that great powers of love are twin with great ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... straightway to go with whomsoever of the Achaeans that woo her in the halls is the best man, and gives most bridal gifts. But behold, as for this guest of thine, now that he has come to thy house, I will clothe him in a mantle and a doublet, goodly raiment, and I will give him a two-edged sword, and shoes for his feet, and send him on his way, whithersoever his heart and his spirit bid him go. Or, if thou wilt, hold him here in the steading and take care of him, and raiment I will send hither, and all manner of food to eat, that he be not ruinous to ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... his feet like brass glowing in the furnace, and a stream of fire issued from before him; thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. Brightness radiated from him on all sides. He fixed his eyes on me, glowing with holy indignation, while a two-edged sword proceeded out of his mouth. My sins arose before me. Conscience condemned me. I could not look up. The pains of hell gat hold upon me. In a voice unlike all I ever heard before, he said, 'Slayer of my Son, despiser of my grace, what hast thou done? Thou hast set at nought ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... senate, and the capitals of the East. Insolent with royal favor, the blues affected to strike terror by a peculiar and Barbaric dress, the long hair of the Huns, their close sleeves and ample garments, a lofty step, and a sonorous voice. In the day they concealed their two-edged poniards, but in the night they boldly assembled in arms, and in numerous bands, prepared for every act of violence and rapine. Their adversaries of the green faction, or even inoffensive citizens, were stripped ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... guests, and the danger arising from the feuds into which they were divided, few of the feasters wore any defensive armour, except the light goat-skin buckler, which hung behind each man's seat. On the other hand, they were well provided with offensive weapons; for the broad, sharp, short, two-edged sword was another legacy of the Romans. Most added a wood-knife or poniard; and there were store of javelins, darts, bows, and arrows, pikes, halberds, Danish axes, and Welsh hooks and bills; so, in case of ill-blood ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... of strong, cold, selfish life as the sunlight falls on a torpid winter world; there, where the trees are bare, and the ground frozen, till it rings to the step like iron, and the water is solid, and the air is sharp as a two-edged knife ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... head of the bed, on a little column, hung a trophy of arms, consisting of a visored helmet, a twofold buckler made of four bulls' hides and covered with plates of brass and tin, a two-edged sword, and several ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... discontented with the handiwork of Creation. Why should a cruel, two-edged torture be invented for, and inflicted on, an inoffensive person like M'riar? There didn't seem any sense in it. "If only," said he to his inner soul, "they'd a-let me be God A'mighty for five minutes at the first go-off, I'd a-seen to it no such ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... is indeed Almanzor whom you see, But he no longer is your enemy. You were ungrateful, but your foes were more; What your injustice lost you, theirs restore. Make profit of my vengeance while you may, My two-edged sword can cut the other way.— I am your fortune, but am swift like her, And turn my hairy front if you defer: That hour, when you deliberate, is too late; I point you the ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... long, straight, two-edged sword. The word is of Italian origin and first came into use in the sixteenth century. In an adaptation of a thirteenth-century Chanson it is out of ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... if her heart was not in that prayer she put up just now, she is a grand actress also. This is a beastly trade of ours, hunting down and trapping the unwary. Sometimes I feel no better than a sleuth-hound, and that girl's eyes went through and through me a while ago like a two-edged dirk." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Ransford into the tightest of corners, solely that, in order to win Mary Bewery, he might have the credit of pulling him out again. That, he felt certain, he could do—if he could make a net in which to enclose Ransford he could also invent a two-edged sword which would cut every mesh of that net into fragments. That would be—child's play—mere statecraft—elementary diplomacy. But first—to get Ransford fairly bottled up—that was the thing! He determined to lose no more time—and he was thinking of ...
— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher
... greatly astonished when they learned that the Bwana kubwa not only would not kill the elephant, but that they were to pluck at once as many melons from the bread-fruit trees, as many acacia pods, and as much of all kinds of weeds as they were able. Gebhr's two-edged Sudanese sword was of great use to Kali at this labor, and were it not for that the work would not have proceeded so easily. Nell, however, did not want to wait for its completion and when the first melon fell from the tree she ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... fit enough to rid me of an inconvenient brother!" muttered the younger brother between his teeth, and tearing his hunting knife rapidly from his belt, he plunged the two-edged steel into his brother's breast. A terrible cry at the same time rang through the forest, and the murderer fled ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... lies open on her lap, and scarcely winking those blue eyes of hers, that are as solemn as if they belonged to the Judges of Israel. If a child is raised in a carpenter's shop, with all manner of sharp, dangerous often two-edged tools scattered around in every direction, who wonders that the little fingers are prematurely gashed and scarred? You and Douglass imagine she is dreaming about the number of elves that dance on the greensward on moonlight ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... most questions of social morality, the feelings of women are more pure and right than those of men. But they have a thousand ingenious methods of making known their contempt and detestation of the cowardly scoundrel that would raise his hand against one of their sex, and every method cuts like a two-edged sword. I have known, and do at this moment know, many men who have endured the contempt and hatred of their fellow-men with the most stoical indifference—they went on hated and despised to the grave, but they made money at every step, and they cared for nothing ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... into the old ones, and he defends them with his oratory as well as he is able; for all his confidence depends upon his tongue more than his brain or heart, and if that fail the others surrender immediately; for though David says it is a two-edged sword, a wooden dagger is a better weapon to fight with. His judgment is like a nice balance that will turn with the twentieth part of a grain, but a little using renders it false, and it is not so good for use as one that will not ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... question. The Jew finds himself in religious antagonism to the State, which acknowledges Christianity as its basis. This State is theologian ex professo. Here criticism is criticism of theology, is two-edged criticism, criticism of Christian and criticism of Jewish theology. But however critical we may be, we cannot get out ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... the vigour of youth, with locks "bushy, and black as a raven." The eyes of the risen SAVIOUR are described as "a flame of fire," but His bride sees them "like doves beside the water brooks." In Revelation "His voice is as the voice of many waters . . . and out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword." To the bride, His lips are as lilies, dropping liquid myrrh, and His mouth most sweet. The countenance of the risen SAVIOUR was "as the sun shineth in his strength," and the effect of the vision on John—"when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead"—was not unlike the effect of the ...
— Union And Communion - or Thoughts on the Song of Solomon • J. Hudson Taylor
... to anger with the two-edged sword of your tongue, Hannah! You are unjust, because you are utterly mistaken in your premises! I did leave that check of which I speak! And I wish to know what became of it, that it was not used for the support and education of Ishmael. Listen, now, and I will bring the whole circumstance ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... themselves in their terrible arms. To Diomede, Thrasymedes, firm in war, gave his two-edged sword, because his own was left at the ships, and a shield. Upon his head he placed his bull's-hide helmet, coneless, crestless, which is called cataityx,[348] and protects the heads of blooming youths. And Meriones gave ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... witnesses for us and against us, to sum up the evidence, and set forth the evidence for us and the evidence against us. And our judge will be the Son of Man, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing through the very joints and marrow, and discerning the secret intents of the heart; neither is anything hid from Him, for all things are naked and open in the sight of Him with ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... he exclaimed, jumping up with fury, "understand, Signor Inglese, that Croppo is not to be trifled with. I have a summary way of treating disrespect," and he drew a long and exceedingly sharp-looking two-edged knife. ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... not give up working for God, and sit down in despair, because she was thus tried. One day, just before leaving for a great West-End Meeting, in which God made her words as a sharp two-edged sword, she wrote this ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... any rate the value of a symbol or a metaphor. The idea which it materialises, the historical events of which it is a sign, may well arrest attention. A sword concealed in the crucifix—what emblem brings more forcibly to mind than this that two-edged glaive of persecution which Dominic unsheathed to mow down the populations of Provence and to make Spain destitute of men? Looking upon the crucifix of Crema, we may seem to see pestilence-stricken multitudes of Moors and Jews dying on the coasts of Africa ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... dishonourable career to a close pondered these for some moments after twice glancing through the matter in the printed leaves, and then, finding the faculties of speech and movement restored to him, procured a two-edged knife of distinguished brilliance and went forth to call upon the one ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... difficulty by severity, he made everything worse. We were in every respect unfortunately situated. Captain, officers, and crew, entirely unfitted for one another; and every circumstance and event was like a two-edged sword, and cut both ways. The length of the voyage, which made us dissatisfied, made the captain, at the same time, feel the necessity of order and strict discipline; and the nature of the country, which caused us to feel that we ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... far-seeing recommended a more unbending policy of extermination. Among these, one in particular, a statesman bearing an illustrious name of two-edged import, distinguished himself by the liberal broad-mindedness of his opinions, and for the time he even did not flinch from making himself excessively unpopular by the wide and sweeping variety of his censure. "We are confessedly a barbarian nation," fearlessly ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... a gem, or a stone, or a song, Or a flame, or a two-edged sword; Or a rose in bloom, or a sweet perfume, Or a drop of ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... the eastern wave was just silvered by the dim light, Calypso roused Odysseus, and equipped him for the task of the day. First she gave him a weighty two-edged axe, well balanced on its haft of olive-wood, and an adze, freshly ground; then she showed him where the tall trees grew, and bade him fall to work with the axe. Twenty great trees fell beneath his sturdy strokes, and he trimmed the trunks with the axe, and ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... has never cured and never will cure tuberculosis. It will either prevent or retard recovery. It is like a two-edged weapon; on one side it poisons the system, and on the other it ruins the stomach and thus prevents this organ from properly digesting the necessary food."—S. A. KNOPF, M. D., New York, Honorary Vice-President of the ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... the courts, waiting for the chance of defending some poor devil who's been wrongfully accused—there aren't enough of them, for one thing. On the other hand, you can't walk down Regent Street, brandishing a two-edged sword and hunting ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... power for the healing of the sick and the improvement of the weather are, when well directed and efficacious, wholly beneficial. But ghostly power is a two-edged weapon which can work evil as well as good to mankind. In fact it can serve the purpose of witchcraft. The commonest application of this pernicious art is one which is very familiar to witches and sorcerers in many parts of ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... roaring Apollyon made all the time of the fight: he spake like a dragon; and, on the other side, what sighs and groans burst from Christian's heart. I never saw him all the while give so much as one pleasant look, till he perceived that he had wounded Apollyon with his two-edged sword; then indeed he did smile and look upward! but it was the dreadfullest ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... world, and you trust to that, I dare say, to charm your love. But you must give it to me. For my costly drink I claim the best thing you possess. I shall give you my own blood, so that my draught may be as sharp as a two-edged sword.' 'But if you take my voice from me, what have I left?' asked the little mermaid, piteously. 'Your loveliness, your graceful movements, your speaking eyes. Those are enough to win a man's heart. Well, is your courage gone? Stretch out your little tongue, that I ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... not frozen up; the cold here is dreadful. I do not remember such a series of North-Pole days. England might really have taken a slide up into the Arctic Zone; the sky looks like ice; the earth is frozen; the wind is as keen as a two-edged blade. We have all had severe colds and coughs in consequence of the weather. Poor Anne has suffered greatly from asthma, but is now, we are glad to say, rather better. She had two nights last week when her cough and difficulty of breathing were painful ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... behold! is before us, inviting to little ones; yet are they a wondrous depth, O my God, a wondrous depth! It is awful to look therein; an awfulness of honor, and a trembling of love. The enemies thereof I hate vehemently; O that thou wouldst slay them with thy two-edged sword, that they might no longer be enemies to it: for so do I love to have them slain unto themselves, that ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... dwell on their address in the use of fire-arms and of their two-edged daggers. Armed only with the latter weapon, they were often known, during their long and heroic struggle for independence, to leap their horses over the Muscovite bayonets, stab the soldiers, and break up and put to flight their serried battalions. When surrounded in their forts or ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... projected the white haft of a knife driven blade-deep into his body. Giant as he was, the man must have gone down like a pole-axed ox before that terrific blow. Beside his right hand a most formidable horn-handled, two-edged dagger lay upon the floor, and near it a black ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scoff at the calm way in which our enemies have appropriated the services of the Almighty, but all the same it shows a dangerous temper. People who believe they have formed this alliance have always been difficult to beat. You remember Macaulay's Puritan, with his "Bible in one hand and a two-edged sword in the other." The sword has given place to a Mauser now, but I am not sure that we are likely to benefit much by the change. As to the Bible, it is still very much in evidence. Not a single kit but contained one; usually the family one in old brown leather. Now ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... not haste? will not some one bring a two-edged sword, with which we may undo this ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... brilliant future is in store for you. You are a genius such as Germany has not seen heretofore, for you are a political genius, and you may just as well confess that Germany greatly lacks politicians who are able to wield their pen like a pointed two-edged sword, to strike fatal blows in all directions and obtain victories. Germany has already fixed her eyes upon you, and even in England your name is held in great esteem since you published your excellent translation of Burke's work on the French Revolution. The political pamphlets you have ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach |
