"Two-edged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is a slippery dame, and hath a two-edged sword in her hand. We may have enough of justice in our character as rebels to give us a surfeit of it. I would fain overtake these robbers that we may relieve them of their spolia opima, together with any other wealth which they may have unlawfully ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with these remarkable figures before her, no longer wondered at the slight esteem in which the Marquise held Lucien's good looks. And when conversation began, when intellects so keen, so subtle, were revealed in two-edged words with more meaning and depth in them than Anais de Bargeton heard in a month of talk at Angouleme; and, most of all, when Canalis uttered a sonorous phrase, summing up a materialistic epoch, and gilding it with poetry—then Anais felt all the truth of Chatelet's dictum of the previous evening. ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... affirms then it will be what I believe." This dynamic conception of the sexual impulse, as a force that, under natural conditions, may be trusted to build up a new morality, obviously belongs to an indefinitely remote future. It is a force whose blade is two-edged, for while it strikes at unselfishness it also strikes at selfishness, and at present we cannot easily conceive a time when "there is no self"; we should be more disposed to regard it as a time when there is much humbug. ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... 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, and by man shall his blood be shed. Now behold an ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... have been lost long ago. I asked Benri about this matter, and he says that formerly Ainos fought with spears and knives as well as with bows and arrows, but that Yoshitsune, their hero god, forbade war for ever, and since then the two-edged spear, with a shaft nine feet long, has only been used in ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... pause when he caught sight of her, the sacrifice he had offered her so simply with the eloquent glance of a murdered beast came to her mind; by the same blow the shame of the Elder, of the favorite child, was confounded with the other's downfall, a two-edged maternal sorrow, which tore her heart whichever way she turned. Yes, yes, it was for her sake that he had forborne to speak. But she would not accept such a sacrifice. He must return at once and explain ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... with steel rings, hung loosely—yet, owing to its weight, closely—on his shoulders. This was gathered in at the waist by a broad leathern belt, studded with silver ornaments, from which hung a short dagger. A cross belt of somewhat similar make hung from his right shoulder, and supported a two-edged sword of immense weight, which was quite as strong, though not nearly so long, as that which he had forged for Glumm. It was intended for a single-handed weapon, though men of smaller size might have been ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... a case of a very small area, and consequently of very few individuals in comparison with those on the land or in pure fresh-water; and hence less development (odious word!) than on land or fresh-water. But here comes in your two-edged sword! I should like much to see any paper on plants of brackish water or on the edge of the sea; but I suppose such ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... as white wool, white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire: and His feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace; and His voice was as the voice of many waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars; and out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword; and His countenance was as the sun ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... than a two-edged sword; to noble natures like his, it strikes home to the heart. Ralph Wilson, you are an old man standing on the very verge of the grave. You accused my son of theft, and declared on your word of honour as a Christian that you saw ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie
... talked with him, he replied that he didn't believe one-twelfth part of the Bible, but I kept on quoting Scripture, feeling that if the man didn't believe, God could do what He chose with His word, and make it quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword. The man kept saying that he did not believe what the Bible said, and I kept on quoting passage after passage of Scripture, and the man, who, two hours before, had entered the hall an infidel, went out of it a converted ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." {34a} The same distinction is marked in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "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." {34b} It is thus that we understand the contrast which S. Paul enforces between things of the spirit and things of the soul. "The natural man,"—i.e., ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... 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 weekly paper ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... sergeant, eager to protect his love from ill-usage, would have followed, but he was confronted by Benito, who now stood in the doorway, black and menacing, with a great two-edged Albacete knife ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... and still more insipid wisdom at all times and seasons. He is a creature utterly devoid of shame. He is like Milton's angels, in one respect at least: you may thrust him through and through with the two-edged sword of your satire, and at the end he shall be as intact and integral as at the beginning. Am ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... such bits of driftwood as had floated to her chair, during the 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, ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... the future. We see pictures in the daily papers of what people were doing yesterday and what they looked like, but in the Bible we have portraits true to life not only of what we are outwardly, but of the thoughts of our hearts. "The Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword: it can discern the secret thoughts and purposes of the heart." [Footnote: Heb. iv. 12.] We hear a great deal about the X-rays which show what is going on inside the body, but this is nothing compared to ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... labour unaware of who is their Leader, and not dependent upon His help, nor trusting in His strength—would take to heart this vision of my text, and see beside them the 'man with the drawn sword in his hand,' the Christ with the 'sharp two-edged sword going out of his mouth,' by whom, and by whom alone, the world's evil can ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... once more—you assert your prerogative royally, my handsome cousin. From whom did you inherit that two-edged tongue of yours, Inez, I wonder? Your Castilian mother, surely; the women of our house were never shrews. And even you, my dear, may go a little too far. Will you drop vituperation and explain? How have I been traitor and coward? It is ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... after their conversion. Their chief dependence was in infantry, which they formed into wedge-like columns, and so, clashing their shields and singing hymns to Odin, they advanced against their enemies. Different divisions were differently armed; some with a short two-edged sword and a heavy battle-axe; others with the sling, the javelin, and the bow. The shield was long and light, commonly of wood and leather, but for the chiefs, ornamented with brass, with silver, and even with gold. Locking the shields together formed a rampart which ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... 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 arising during the banquet, there ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 that God was in all things whatever, annihilating their ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... powers that were, against which, with the characteristic precocity of Young 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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. For the more strenuous were their efforts to increase the tobacco ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... cloth of the tent, on the spot where he happens to be, and just large enough to admit him. He glides through like a phantom, without making the least grain of sand creak beneath his tread. He is perfectly naked, and all his body is rubbed over with oil; a two-edged knife is suspended from his neck. He will squat down close to your couch, and, with incredible coolness and dexterity, will gather up the sheet in very little folds, so as to occupy the least surface possible; then, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 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 ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... 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 gall, ...
— New Thought Pastels • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... sword, broke o'er the Bishop's calmness. It was quick and powerful; it seemed to divide asunder soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. And before that two-edged blade could sheathe itself again, swiftly the ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... 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 of the vision ...
— The Prodigal Returns • Lilian Staveley
... peaked, salient; cusped, cuspidate, 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. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the red steed was waving the enormous, two-edged sword over his hair bristling with the swiftness of his course. He was young, but the fierce scowl and the scornful mouth gave him a look of implacable ferocity. His garments, blown open by the motion of his wild race, disclosed the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... not altogether easy under these circumstances. An army is a two-edged weapon. It may cut the employer as well as the thing that it is employed upon. It is made up of flesh and blood, and of English flesh and blood too. It may not always be willing to move, or to strike when moved. The Boroughmongers see that their titles ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... purely theological 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 of ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... gleaming out of their wild eyes. But, in course of time, they got accustomed to honest labor, and had sense enough to feel that there was more true enjoyment in living at peace, and doing good to one's neighbor, 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 ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the man whose wife only a moment before had pressed her lips close to his; and as the eyes of the two met, there came over him a desire to tell the other what had happened, that he might see him writhe with the sting of the two-edged thing with which he was playing. Then he saw that even that would not hurt St. Pierre, for the chief of the Boulains, standing there with the big lump over his eye, had caught sight of the things on the table ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... 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 stripped off the bark. Meanwhile Calypso ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... Human reason 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 Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the interesting 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 ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... 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 did smile, and look upward; but it was the dreadfulest fight that ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... with Catholicism on the religious side, and his alienation from its intellectual method, which makes Newman's apologetic such a two-edged weapon. In attempting to defend Catholicism, he has gone far to explain it. To the historian, there is no great mystery about the growth and success of the Western Catholic Church. Christianity was already a syncretistic religion in the second century. Like the other forms of worship ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... 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 ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan
... Originally this god, who was believed to have discovered the use of iron, seems to have been brought to Commagene by a tribe of blacksmiths, the Chalybes, who had come from the north.[23] He was represented standing on a steer and holding in his hand a two-edged ax, an ancient symbol venerated in Crete during the Mycenean age and found also at Labranda in Caria and all over Asia Minor.[24] The ax symbolized the god's mastery over the lightning which splits asunder the trees of the forest amidst the din of ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... thoughts, and has made us see that, whether they are accepted or denied, it is idle to ignore them. They mean too much to be evaded. Like all powerful arguments they cut two ways, and of all powerful arguments they are the most clearly two-edged. However we may limit their range, some will remain which we must face; which, according to what is settled about them, either that they are true or not true, will entirely change all that we think ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... extremity has no opposite land, but is washed by a wide and open sea. Livy, the most eloquent of ancient, and Fabius Rusticus, of modern writers, have likened the figure of Britain to an oblong target, or a two-edged axe. [38] And this is in reality its appearance, exclusive of Caledonia; whence it has been popularly attributed to the whole island. But that tract of country, irregularly stretching out to an immense length towards the furthest shore, is gradually contracted in form of ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... And seeing me, those sons of Diti, wearing various kinds of attire and ornament and accoutred in mail, flew at me with a mighty rush. And those foremost of the Danavas, of exceeding prowess, in wrath attacked me with arrows and bhallas and clubs and two-edged swords, and tomaras. Thereat, O king, resorting to my strength of lore, I resisted that great volley of weapons by a mighty shower of shafts; and also confounded them in conflict by ranging around in my car. And being bewildered, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... 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 means which we possess. Meanwhile, I ask that you should ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... the best customer of the very nations forbidden to deal with her, this very absurd decree was a two-edged sword, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... 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. ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Miss Ocky tried to center her thoughts on her book, lifting her head to listen now and again as she paused in her reading to cut pages with her two-edged souvenir of Teheran. The conversation in the study appeared to be flowing along smoothly. She could not catch any words, nor did she try to; a shrewd listener can glean a good deal merely by interpreting the vocal tones of the different speakers. Her ear told her ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... of victory," Holmes answered, with a bitter smile. "And yet it may be premature to abandon the case. After all, important fresh evidence is a two-edged thing, and may possibly cut in a very different direction to that which Lestrade imagines. Take your breakfast, Watson, and we will go out together and see what we can do. I feel as if I shall need your company and your ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... faithful Abraham. They that are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham (Gal 3:7-9). So then the seed being now spiritual, the rule must needs be spiritual also, viz. The word of faith and holiness. This is the gospel concision knife, sharper than any two-edged sword; and that by which New Testament saints are circumcised in heart, ears, and lips. 'For in Christ Jesus,' [is] no outward and circumstantial thing, but the new creature; none are subjects of the visible kingdom of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 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 a bow, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... character of Jesus displays 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 powers of hatred. The passionate love of ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... not goad me 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. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... 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, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... An interesting two-edged boomerang illustration of this was given by an unscrupulous whiskey trader. While travelling across country he ran short of provisions but fortunately came to a Chipewyan lodge. At first its owner had no meat to spare, but when he found that the visitor had a flask of whiskey he offered for ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... nightingale! (From whose wild lips, thou knowest, that wail was thrown) For round about her have the great gods cast A wing-borne body, and clothed her close and fast With a sweet life that hath no part in moan. But me, for me (how hadst thou heart to hear?) Remains a sundering with the two-edged spear. ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Plays, how each that looked on while Jesus 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 fiery snakes! Only don't do it again.—I don't think she ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... 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 did smile ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... what might antecedently have been expected of a volume writ by many men at many different eras, yet all superintended by one master mind; of a volume meant for every age, and nation, and country, and tongue, and people; of a volume which, as a two-edged sword, wounds the good man's heart with deep conviction, and cuts down "the hoary head of him who goeth on still ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Constitution may be summarized in a phrase: it transfixed State Sovereignty with a two-edged sword, one edge of which was inscribed "National Supremacy," and the other "Private Rights." Yet State Sovereignty, ever reanimated by the democratic impulse of the times, remained a serpent which was scotched but not killed. To be sure, this dangerous enemy to national unity had failed ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... and filled, and wounded with the sweetness of divine contemplation, the comfort of angelic visitation, and the sword of the love of God: "For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing even unto the separation of the body and the spirit," wherewith the saint was wounded, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... from this continued irritation, with the resulting inflammation, and sometimes from change of structure of the kidney by fatty degeneration, comes the failure to perform its proper function. Then, with this two-edged sword of disaster, the urea, which becomes a poisonous element, and should be removed, is retained in the system, while the albumen, which is essential to healthy blood, is filtered away through ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... girdle. His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword; and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... on one side a hand holding a balance in equilibris; on the other a two-edged sword, with five stars around the point, and the ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... 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 to the Reichstag, the ruling ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... 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 ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... two-edged thrust, for Trix was decidedly an old girl, and Tom was generally regarded as a hapless victim. Trix turned red; but before she could load and fire again, Emma Davenport, who labored under the delusion that this sort of skirmishing was ill-natured, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... I grasped the two-edged blade The recreant to cut away; Three times by Fear my hand was stayed And palsied Terror said me nay That which I might have done before 'Twas now impossible to do; For, cold with Fear, the wretch withdrew Into a thousand-wrinkled mare, And shrank in shame before my gaze Nor would ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... 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 Lion of the tribe of Judah. The last days of the Mediator's ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... "The "two-edged sword of wit," as that faculty has been termed, was wielded by O'Leary in the more serious circumstances of life, as well as in its playful hours. An instance where the painful exercise of this was happily spared, occurred at one of ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... mortals bend their mind, 105 How soon fit instruments of ill they find! 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; 110 He takes the gift with rev'rence, and extends The little engine on his fingers' ends; This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, As o'er the fragrant steams ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... the young men with whom they are brought in contact, realise their responsibility in all they say and do? Do they ever reflect that the beauty and charm which they possess are weapons with which God has endowed them,—weapons which may have more power in the battle of life than a two-edged sword? Laugh and be merry—enjoy the sunshine of your youth; it is a sin to see a young thing sad; but never, never, as you value your womanhood, speak a slighting or irreverent word against God's great laws of righteousness, ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... a powerful appeal to local prejudice, Douglas doubtless knew he was handling a two-edged sword; but we shall see that he little appreciated the skill with which his antagonist would wield the weapon he was placing in his hands. At their second joint meeting, at Freeport, also in northern Illinois, Lincoln, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... 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 are in the minority; but they are neither angry nor ...
— An Appeal to the Christian Women of the South • Angelina Emily Grimke
... 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 have produced. He maintained ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... 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 white moment of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... end of the year she was addressing Hamilton in words of very fairly assumed affection, but not until she had written to Greville, with a certain haughty desperation, "If you affront me, I will make him marry me." The threat was two-edged, for Hamilton intended Greville to be his heir; but the latter probably gave little heed to a contingency he must have thought very unlikely for a man of fifty-six, who had passed his life in the world, and held Hamilton's ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... saying that you have had enough of me. Your compliments are two-edged. Good-bye for the present." And she rose, leaving Arthur ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... guard ye, young County C.! That two-edged blade is big, Sir! That Dragon's so spiky, he well might be "Some Egyptian porcupig," Sir, (As the singer of Wantley's Dragon says, In his quaint and curious story.) If this Dragon he slays, he shall win men's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, November 15, 1890 • Various
... is it passeth us by, Still in the dawn and the mist? Tall seigneur of the dawn: A two-edged sword at his thigh, A shield of gold at his wrist: Who is it hurrieth by? Qui vive! Qui vive! ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... main trouble were not enough, the poor little wife was further smitten with the two-edged mental anguish which is the experience of sensitive women whose husbands neglect them at this crisis of the maternal gethsemane. Doctor Smalley, who soon appeared after receiving Andrew's message, was not sufficiently finely strung ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... in Peg's hand flashed in the moonlight, another appearing in the hand of the Indian, and out there on their precarious footing the men stood, thrusting and parrying, with their two-edged blades, watched with breathless interest by the entire Overland party, who had rushed to the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... grow into a great, big, straight out-and-outer, with a mind like lightning and a heart like one of the sons of God. But that kind is always the worst risk. He has the weapons to get him through the fight with splendor, only they're every one two-edged, and you have to be careful with swords that cut both ways. His father was an inventor genius and there are bales of money and already it has begun to press down on him a little. Still, that may be the exact right ...
— August First • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews and Roy Irving Murray
... deep wiping out from the grounds about the house all traces of his assailants. Dr. Denslow, in examining the body, found just one deep, downward stab, entering above the upper rib and doubtless reaching the heart,—a stab made by a long, straight, sharp, two-edged blade. He had been dead evidently some hours when discovered by Cram, who had now gone to town to warn the authorities, old Brax meantime having taken upon himself the responsibility of placing a guard at the house, with orders to keep Alphonse and ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... watch on your words, my darling, For words are wonderful things; They are sweet like the bee's fresh honey— Like the bees, they have terrible stings; They can bless, like the warm, glad sunshine, And brighten a lonely life; They can cut in the strife of anger, Like an open two-edged knife. ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... 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 is rightly guided only after the mind has acknowledged the inescapability ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... whether in sickness fallen, Or by 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
... 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
... armory said that about nine inches had been broken off the point. The blade was not massive, but somewhat thin, compared with its great length; and I found that I could blandish it, using both hands, with perfect ease. It is two-edged, without any gaps, and is quite brown and lustreless with old rust, from point ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... he said, "that it cannot always be avoided." Then he spoke of the one-year volunteer system, which in his opinion is a two-edged sword. It furnishes most efficient reserve-officers,—it has that advantage, certainly. But the drawbacks ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... 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 ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... to cross the silence that lay like a two-edged sword between them, Madame had said nothing to Alden. Nor had he even mentioned Edith's name since she went away, though his face, to the loving eyes of his mother, bore its ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... the hands of priests they will become talismans, suitable to intoxicate the mind; calculated to hoodwink the people; competent to subjugate equally the sovereign as the subject; in the hands of the multitude, they will be a two-edged sword, with which they will inflict, at the same moment, the most dreadful wounds on themselves—the most serious injuries ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... 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 ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... weapon to which belongs the name of claymore (claidh mhor)? Is it the two-handed sword, or the basket-hilted two-edged sword now bearing the appellation? Is the latter kind of sword peculiar to Scotland? They are frequently to be met with in this part of the country. One was found a few years since plunged up ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... question by 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. Next came a wretched Dominican, that pressed her with an objection, which, if applied ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... are barbed with threatenings of retribution. Like some avenging goddess, law comes down amongst men, terrible in her purity, awful in her beauty, with a hard light in her clear grey eyes—in the one hand the tables of stone, bearing the commandments which we have broken, and in the other a sharp two-edged sword. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... on the evidence of a number of surgeons, who declared that both the wounds which the deceased had received had been given behind. One of these was below the left arm, and a slight one; the other was quite through the body, and both evidently inflicted with the same weapon, a two-edged sword, of the same dimensions as that worn ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... Science is incomplete without a chapter on Religion. But the question remains, whether the name of God should enter into the other chapters, and His being and authority into the very foundations of the science. I do not mean the metaphysical foundations; for Metaphysics are like a two-edged sword, that cleaves down to the very marrow of things, and must therefore reveal and discover God. But Morality, like Mathematics, takes certain metaphysical foundations for granted, without enquiring into them. On these foundations we rear the walls, so to speak, of the science of Ethics without ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... 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
... Apollyon made all the time of the fight; he spake like a Dragon: and on the other side, what sighs and groans brast 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 'twas the dreadfullest sight that ever ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... fence. The kind creature then produced a sword without a scabbard; this sword was found by Huw Morris on the mountain—it belonged to one of Oliver's officers who was killed there. I took the sword, which was a thin two-edged one, and seemed to be made of very good steel; it put me in mind of the blades which I had seen at Toledo—the guard was very slight like those of all rapiers, and the hilt the common old-fashioned English officer's hilt—there ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... is not a dangerous affair, though it is often far more serious than is commonly supposed. The weapon used is a long, light rapier, square at the point, two-edged and sharpened like a razor down the whole length of the front, and to about nine inches from the point at the back. The hilt is a roomy basket of iron, though in some Universities a bell-hilted sword is used, and in that case the guard is similar to the first position in sabre fencing ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... 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 ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... of the skins was finished he was set to work with some of the old men making lances. These were formidable weapons, at least twelve feet long, an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, ending in a two-edged blade made of flint, elk horn or bone, and five or six inches in length. The wood, constituting the body of the lance, had to be scraped down with great care, and the prisoner toiled ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... 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
... been carefully provided. The Duke's suite dined in another wing of the palace; the choir of minstrels, who held the passage between them, had mail under their cassocks, and two-edged swords made for thrusting. They were fifty strong. Every page-in-waiting in the hall and long cool passages was a "Centaur" armed to the teeth. Don Cesare, it seems, had walked into a steel trap at last. Do you wonder that Amilcare could afford a ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... with all the irresistible infinite 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 ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... one emblazonry—the divinity and 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 Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... this marvellous-looking warrior 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to Him of man—He would manifest a knowledge of human nature to which that of a Shakspeare would be purblind and dull; a knowledge of which the Scripture nobly says that "The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, 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;" so that all "things are naked and opened unto the eyes of ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a court and to sit as a chamber are two distinct things. This double function constitutes supreme power. The Long Parliament, which began in November 1640, felt the revolutionary necessity for this two-edged sword. So it declared that, as House of Lords, it possessed judicial as well as ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... it will, no doubt, descend to you. If you can enjoy it in peace, well and good! If you find you cannot, take my advice, my boy, and leave it to your deadliest enemy. I am sorry to give you such a two-edged thing, but I can't say what turn things are going to take. Kindly sign the paper where Mr. Fordham ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... It has also an aesthetic element and doesn't look like a meat saw, which can't be said of Mr. Jones's saw that seduced Dr. Morris from church. For heavy and steady work I much prefer a carpenter's sharp hand saw. A two-edged saw is an abomination devised by conscienceless manufacturers for the seduction of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various |
