Hands quotes
11.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside hands — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The hands of those I meet are dumbly eloquent to me. The touch of some hands is an impertinence. I have met people so empty of joy, that when I clasped their frosty finger-tips, it seemed as if I were shaking hands with a northeast storm."
"A feather in hand is better then a bird in the ayre."
"The hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor."
"Is it astonishing that, like children trying to catch smoke by closing their hands, philosophers so often see the object they would grasp fly before them?"
"On the other hand, the pleasure caused by laughter, even on the stage, is not an unadulterated enjoyment; it is not a pleasure that is exclusively esthetic or altogether disinterested. It always implies a secret or unconscious intent, if not of each one of us, at all events of society as a whole. In laughter we always find an unavowed intention to humiliate, and consequently to correct our neighbour, if not in his will, at least in his deed."
"Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists! Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to? Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands? Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me."
"As a Chelsea fan I always want the team to be in the best possible hands, as they are right now with Roberto Di Matteo."
"Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry god — and always like a god."
"Madam, you're making history, in fact, you're making me, and I wish you'd keep my hands to yourself"
"But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt comes off in our hands."
"I figure life's a gift and I don't intend on wasting it. You don't know what hand your gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you... to make each day count."
"During a heavy storm at sea a nervous woman passenger on a large liner went to the captain, seeking reassurance. "Captain," she asked tremulously, "are we in great danger?" "Don't worry, madam," he answered, "after all, we in the hands of God." "Oh," she gasped, terror written on her face, "is it as bad as that?""
"The hand that holds the money cracks the whip."
"The whole fabric of society will go to wrack if we really lay hands of reform on our rotten institutions. From top to bottom the whole system is a fraud, all of us know it, laborers and capitalists alike, and all of us are consenting parties to it."
"It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders."
"To the Looking-Glass world it was Alice that said 'I've a sceptre in hand, I've a crown on my head. Let the Looking-Glass creatures, whatever they be, Come and dine with the Red Queen, the White Queen, and me."
"Who did you pass on the road?" the King went on, holding out his hand to the Messenger for some more hay. "Nobody," said the Messenger. "Quite right," said the King; "this young lady saw him too. So of course Nobody walks slower than you." "I do my best," the Messenger said in a sullen tone. "I'm sure nobody walks much faster than I do!" "He can't do that," said the King, "or else he'd have been here first."
"Death lays his icy hand on kings."
"Not without a shudder may the human hand reach into the mysterious urn of destiny."
"God has created several doors which open onto truth. He opens them to all those who knock on them with the hand of faith."
