"Two-edged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... languid way that makes no impression—make them know it. If you have not enough of the Holy Ghost for this, go to your closet till you have, and then come and drive the Word home to their conscience as a two-edged sword, dividing asunder ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... 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, vol. i. p. 59), than the polygamy of the Hebrews, the falsehoods ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... his right trousers leg, and drew from his Wellington boot a two-edged, pointed thing almost long enough to merit the name of rapier. He tossed it in the air, let it spin six or seven times end over end, caught it deftly by the point, and returned ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... said Cedric, leaning 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. ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... 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
... 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, ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... 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, ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... for silence, that he might the better face him who did the unlawful act. Casting his eye down as the soldier prodded him on the leg, the fisherman saw something that changed the shout on his lips to a curse. The next instant, as if it had been hurled from the heavens, the keen, two-edged blade of a fishing knife had lodged its point in the heart of the Roman. While the dying cries of the spearman yet moved the multitude to frenzied curiosity, Jael the fisherman, the High Priest and Jesus of Nazareth, each according to his own way, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... 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 a wedge. [39] The Roman ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... 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
... dragged into the open place. Here it enters the standing grain, cutting off its heads with the utmost accuracy as it moves. Forks beneath prepare the way, and a rapid vibratory motion of a great number of two-edged knives effect the object. The stalks of the grain can be cut as low or as high as one pleases, but it is usually thought best to take only the heads. Afterward the standing straw is burned, or ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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: ...
— Angels & Ministers • Laurence Housman
... consisted of tripe, shovelled to him on a pitchfork, and stout mixed with inferior rum, of which he gets through about a horse-pailful a day. His chief recreation being a "Demon's War Dance," in which he will, if one be handy, hack a clothes-horse to pieces with his "baloo," or two-edged chopper-axe, he might be found an agreeable inmate by an aged and invalid couple, who would relish a little unusual after-dinner excitement, as a means of passing away a quiet evening or two. Applicants anxious to secure the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... you will fascinate him with it; but you must give me that voice; I will have the best you possess in return for my precious potion! I have to mingle my own blood with it so as to make it as sharp as a two-edged sword.' ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... she had done at Lot. The resemblance between the two faces faded a little as they confronted each other. A virile quality in the boy's anger made the difference of sex more apparent. He looked at her, holding his wrath, as it were, like a two-edged sword which must smite some one. "If I thought you cared about that man that has jilted you—and I've heard the talk about it," said he, "I'd feel ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... to say nothing of the welfare of the nation, labour unions must purge themselves of all anarchistic and destructive elements. Force is a two-edged sword, and the force of this nation when once its sense of justice and right is outraged and its temper is aroused, will be found to be infinitely superior to any particular class, whether it be capital or whether it be labour. Organised labour ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... 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
... hand is wielded A keen, two-edged brand That, flashing like the lightning, Smites swift ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... 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
... 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 sword.' That image is the poetic embodiment ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... endeavouring to bring this badly-constructed account of his 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
... of national productions, it can equally raise its own credit by looking after the reduction of the national debt, and thus improving its financial position. But payment of debts is, in times of high political tension, a two-edged sword, if it is carried out at the cost of necessary outlays. The gain in respect of credit on the one side of the account may very easily be lost again on the other. Even from the financial aspect it is a bad fault to economize in outlay ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... Quasimodo, threw her across his saddle, and at the moment when the terrible hunchback, recovering from his surprise, rushed upon him to regain his prey, fifteen or sixteen archers, who followed their captain closely, made their appearance, with their two-edged swords in their fists. It was a squad of the king's police, which was making the rounds, by order of Messire Robert d'Estouteville, guard ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Never, never did I expect that a tale [so] strange would come to my ears, or that sufferings thus horrible to witness and horrible to endure, outrages, terrors with their two-edged goad, would chill my spirit. Alas! alas! O Fate! Fate! I shudder as I behold the condition ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... broad, brown, upturned throat there 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 ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 sword" (Heb. 4:12). ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... had no sooner recovered from the shock than out I burst with a yell of rage and charged him again. For, you will hardly believe it, sirs, by some strange chance I had carried away his weapon, firmly grasped in my hands. It was a heavy two-edged dagger, sharp as a needle, and while I grasped the hilt I felt the strength and fury of a thousand fighting-men in me. As I advanced he retreated before me, until, seizing the topmost boughs of a great thorny bush, he swung his body to one side and wrenched ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... witch; 'and it is not a little that I ask. Yours is the loveliest voice in the 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, ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... up on your roof, and to send me flavors of myself done up nicely into little packages labelled deceitfully "love"? It is lucky that this time you have come across a woman who has played the game before, and can meet you point by point. But I am too weary to argue with a man who carries two-edged words, flattery on one side and sneers on the reverse. Mark this one thing, nevertheless: if I should decide to sell myself advantageously next season I should be infinitely better than you,—for ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... sympathy 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 ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... And, 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 ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... 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 constrained, ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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? ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... ridges, and the air is thick with formless groaning. Now for days you get no hint of the neighboring ranges until the snows begin to lighten and some shouldering peak lifts through a rent. Mornings after the heavy snows are steely blue, two-edged with cold, divinely fresh and still, and these are times to go up to the pine borders. There you may find floundering in the unstable drifts "tainted wethers" of the wild sheep, faint from age and hunger; ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... 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 were ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... covered with rings, a diamond blazing in his headdress, was sitting cross-legged on a dais. Behind him, against the wall, was an image of Ganessa, made of solid gold, with diamonds for eyes, and blazing with jewels. At one side was his hookah, at the other a two-edged sword and an unsheathed dagger. Below the dais on either hand two fierce-visaged Marathas stood, their heads and shoulders covered with a helmet, their bodies cased in a quilted vest, each holding a straight two-edged sword. Between Angria and the idol two fan bearers lightly swept the air above ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... complication touched him too nearly, hurt and bewildered him too bitterly, for cool consideration. He only saw that which had been his pride converted into a reproach, a two-edged sword barring the way to marriage: and in the bitterness of his heart he found it hard to forgive his parents—mainly his father—for putting him in so cruel a position, with no word of warning to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... wild and explosive oath. He knew this man was playing on his vanity, jealousy, and hatred for some purpose not yet apparent, but he found it impossible to close his mind to the whisperings of the plotter. He welcomed the spur of Steelman's two-edged tongue because he wanted to have his ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... the more patent side of public affairs; 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... secured by a brass buckle; to one side of which was attached a sort of scrip, and to the other a ram's horn, accoutred with a mouthpiece, for the purpose of blowing. In the same belt was stuck one of those long, broad, sharp-pointed, and two-edged knives, with a buck's-horn handle, which were fabricated in the neighbourhood, and bore even at this early period the name of a Sheffield whittle. The man had no covering upon his head, which was only defended by his own thick hair, matted and ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... 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, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... increased gentleness of her tone he seemed to find a more easy expression for his pent-up feeling. "It's come upon me in a very cutting way, truly as the prophets said like a two-edged sword, and at the time too when I was inquiring of the Lord concerning—" He stopped here, and she felt that his manner grew more confidential, but he did not look at her, his eyes sought the ground—"concerning ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... 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
... controversy has forced them again on men's 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 of religion. Writers on all sides have begun to be sensible that ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... ten minutes it loomed up before him, a mass of deeper black in the blackness. No white vision floated on the broken battlements this night, as Sir Norman looked wistfully up at them; but neither was there any ungainly dwarf, with two-edged sword, guarding the ruined entrance; and Sir Norman passed unmolested in. He sought the spiral staircase which La Masque had spoken of, and, passing carefully from one ancient chamber to another, stumbling over piles of rubbish and stones ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... which the church had so 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 ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... diligence, therefore to enter into that rest [the heavenly rest], that no one may fall, after the same example of disobedience. [4:12]For the word of God is living, and effective, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and reaching even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrows, and distinguishes thoughts and intentions of mind; [4:13]and there is nothing which is not manifest in his sight; ...
— The New Testament • Various
... 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 ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... attempt 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 ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... again seen in the streets faces which called up strange and terrible recollections of the days when the saints, with the high praises of God in their mouths, and a two-edged sword in their hands, had bound kings with chains, and nobles with links of iron. Then were again heard voices which had shouted "Privilege" by the coach of Charles the First in the time of his tyranny, and had called for "justice" in Westminister ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... words and they entered his soul like a two-edged sword. All the fun of the incident was gone, and all the cruelty, the unkindness, the wickedness, loomed large and larger. With his intense nature, subject to the most violent reactions, the effect was ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... is a grand beauty; and 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
... good gloves, I expect." The memory of such 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 weekly paper full of photographs ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... her sweetest voice, "will fall on the surface 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 that ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... 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 the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... order that he may become that Path itself for the salvation of the race. But there is the other side; knowledge is knowledge irrespective of the use to which it may be put. The sword of knowledge is two-edged, as remarked above, and may be put to good or evil use, according to the selfishness or unselfishness ...
— Simon Magus • George Robert Stow Mead
... we may see that which is to be. For thus will I declare my saying, and it shall surely come to pass. If he shall string the bow and Apollo grant him renown, I will clothe him in a mantle and a doublet, goodly raiment, and I will give him a sharp javelin to defend him against dogs and men, and a two-edged sword and sandals to bind beneath his feet, and I will send him whithersoever his heart ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... which he believes to be of a purely intellectual nature, and direct them unconsciously with much more power than he generally imagines. Such influences act chiefly on individuals disposed to sentimentality. In love, these individuals resemble two-edged swords; the intensity of their emotional reactions and sentiments drives them from one extreme to another, from foolish happiness to despair or fury. The situation becomes still more grave when such storms burst among impulsive persons of weak will and limited intelligence. Under such circumstances ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... levees of the Countess de Soissons, but never before had she been accorded so distinguished a reception. She was tolerated in the salons of Paris on account of her high birth and connections; added to which she had a tongue in her mouth like a two-edged sword, which flew hither and thither about the reputations of those who slighted or forgot ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... to our profane kiss, but, as if my words had been an invocation, there rose before me the vision of the Apocalypse in all its terrible majesty. I beheld Him who is indeed the First and the Last, and, with the two-edged sword that proceeded from his mouth, he pierced my soul, full of evil, of wickedness, and ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... A THRUST WITH A TWO-EDGED WEAPON.—We rather incline to the opinion that the 'complainant below' is infringing the law which forbids the use of concealed weapons; that are not the less to be guarded against, certainly, when as in the present case they cut both ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... confused. The lawyer's eloquence overpowered him. He felt guilty. Josephine saw his simplicity, and made a cut with a woman's two-edged sword. "Sir," said she coolly, "do you not see it is an affair of money? This is his way of saying, Pay me handsomely for so unusual ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... hearts, when he saw it 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 ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... did, what 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 did smile, and look upward; but 'twas the dreadfulest sight ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... or two-edged sword is a formidable weapon, used among the tribes to the north of Adelaide, exclusively for war; another weapon, common among the same tribes, is the katta, a round chisel-pointed stick, about three feet long, and used principally in pitched ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... and strife of life. My old spirit revived, and my momentary weakness fled. There was another to think of than myself, and that was Harold. Under a master-hand I would be harmless; but to this man I would be as a two-edged sword in the hand of a novice—gashing his fingers at every turn, and eventually stabbing ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... little cock-a-doodle 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 moral ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... said the voice of Leou inwardly, "the position you have chosen is a desperate one, and we of the Upper Air who are well disposed towards you find the path of assistance fringed with two-edged swords." ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... whether our 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... starred with frost, The world is bitter cold to-night, The moon is cruel and the wind Is like a two-edged sword to smite. ...
— Helen of Troy and Other Poems • Sara Teasdale
... generous ardour press'd, In arms terrific their huge limbs they dress'd. A two-edged falchion Thrasymed the brave, And ample buckler, to Tydides gave: Then in a leathern helm he cased his head, Short of its crest, and with no plume o'erspread: (Such as by youths unused to arms are worn:) No spoils enrich it, and no studs adorn. Next him ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... already got 300 spears and as many cutlasses, though I had, even before, only half a score two-edged swords: and these long flat blades are not forged with us. But I think the cutlasses can be struck more vigorously into the enemies' bodies, and so we shall use them. And at need we shall have bludgeons—for ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... existence, dumb And blind and stark as though the snows made 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 for ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... this to Gamba, who heard with a two-edged smile. "Yes," was his comment, "he fears me enough to want to see ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... feet of our measure; and axes heavy and long-shafted; and bills with great and broad heads; and some few, but not many of the kindred were bowmen, and every freeman was girt with a sword; but of the swords some were long and two-edged, some short and heavy, cutting on one edge, and these were of the kind which they and our forefathers long after called 'sax.' ...
— The House of the Wolfings - A Tale of the House of the Wolfings and All the Kindreds of the Mark Written in Prose and in Verse • William Morris
... 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
... Here was the opportunity for an equally personal retort, which would show an audience, for the most part neither of a mind nor of a mood to follow closely argued reasonings, that personalities were not argument, and that ridicule is a two-edged weapon. As he spoke these words Huxley turned to Sir Benjamin Brodie, who was sitting next him, and whispered: "The Lord hath delivered him ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... 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 ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... most 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. ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... to mischief 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 she bends ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... 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. ...
— The Man-eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures • J. H. Patterson
... 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 to fully estimate ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... 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 self, and taking the cross, and losing ...
— The Ministry of Intercession - A Plea for More Prayer • Andrew Murray
... 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 ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... the centre of an intensely curious throng. Congratulation, commendation of a two-edged sort, questions and ejaculations, flew round him like hail. Then there fell a sudden silence as the Princess, leaning heavily on her cane, approached the piano through a little lane respectfully opened for her ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... vanquished, and he falls into the hands of the enemy, he is put to death: for, as he has been known to foment their quarrels, it is thought dangerous to let him survive, and no ransom can save him, though all other prisoners may be redeemed. We have fire-arms, bows and arrows, broad two-edged swords and javelins: we have shields also which cover a man from head to foot. All are taught the use of these weapons; even our women are warriors, and march boldly out to fight along with the men. Our whole district is a kind of militia: on a certain signal given, ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... student's duel 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 ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... 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
... tell him) how that, on another occasion, Dick was out after grislies with a hunter, who had somehow allowed himself to be caught by a bear, and would have been torn in pieces had not Dick come up with his great two-edged sword—having fired off his rifle without effect—and, with one mighty sweep at the monster's neck, cut right through its jugular vein, and all its other veins, down to the very marrow of its backbone; in fact, killed it at ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... war-tax, by gripping inter-provincial commerce by the throat and rudely controlling it by the barrier-system, was suddenly disclosed as a new and excellent way of making felt the menaced sovereignty of the Manchus; and though the system was plainly a two-edged weapon, the first edge to cut was the Imperial edge; that is largely why for several decades after the Taipings China ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... It was to the Paleolithic stage that the earliest men belonged whose relics are found in Europe. They had learned to knock off two-edged flakes from flint pebbles, and to work them into simple weapons. The great discovery had been made that fire could be kindled and made use of, as the charcoal and the stones discolored by heat of their ancient hearths attest. Caves ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... no matter what sacrifices of character, of friendship, of good training, they have to make, they will reach the goal of their endeavor, and drive every one else into a corner. The power of eloquence and persuasion is mightier than any two-edged sword, and cuts down enemies like the sickle before the harvest. Go never so determined to remain unconvinced by certain talkers, and, before their eloquence ceases, you are enemies to yourselves, and wonder you never thought their ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... and imperialism of our present society. It is the call to the absolute in man, to a clear issue with evil. It would not cry peace, peace, when there is no peace. It would be living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of both joints and marrow, quick to discern the thoughts and intents of ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... pains to help them get things straight; while they often insisted on emphasizing sensational aspects, and even put words in his mouth which he never uttered. But the truth is, he valued the high-class newspapers, though regarding even them as a two-edged sword, since their praiseworthy efforts are so vitiated by ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... creep on earth have the power of 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
... deferred pay was thus a two-edged one. If it hurt the sailor, it also cut the fingers of those who employed it against him. So exigent were the needs of the service, he could "run" with impunity. For if he ran whilst his pay was in arrears, he did so with the full knowledge that, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... head. She did not care to even conjecture. It was a subject that cut her heart like a two-edged sword, for, try as she would, she could ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... hold my peace," reiterated the strange and unnatural voice; "is this a time to speak of peace, when the earth quakes, and the mountains are rent, and the rivers are changed into blood, and the two-edged sword is drawn from the sheath to drink gore as if it were water, and devour flesh as the ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... which he found himself, the room evidently of Captain Kerissen, and darted to an arsenal of weapons that glinted against the inlaid panels. Wrenching down the shortest scabbard he jerked out a most villainous looking two-edged knife and gripping this piratical weapon he bounded out the door, fled through the dim hall to his right, rounded a corner, to the right again, hearing the sounds of pursuit louder and louder now behind him, shot through a vast ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... 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 Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the blade with my left hand; the two-edged steel slides through my grasp; a sharp pain in fingers and palm; and then— ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... will not some one bring a two-edged sword, with which we may undo this knot around ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... the 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, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... into the bottomless precipices, enough to make one weep with despair at his utter and absolute impotence. Nature is God, Anna, and the greatest artist of us all a pigmy. When I think of those ateliers of ours, the art jargon, the decadents with their flamboyant talk I long for a two-edged sword and a minute of Divinity. To ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... two-edged sword, that might cut too keenly on the wrong side," reflected the submarine boy. "Millard would be sure to claim that I was assaulting him. It would look like that, too, and I'd probably get a thumping from the crowd, while Millard slipped away. Then he would be warned that he was wanted, ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... reformation—who 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 be ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... 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 with the crowd at—themselves. And in sooth it was a goodly sight, the young scholar, who ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sword was of about the same length as the hooked instrument, and somewhere between that of my long-sword and my short-sword. It was straight and two-edged. In addition to the weapons I have enumerated each man carried a dagger ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in the hand of Divine Omnipotence, a two-edged sword. It wounds the rebellious, it sanctifies him ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... ensiform[obs3], 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
... Celestial Ruby speaks thus of the agent—"It is our doorkeeper, our balm, our honey, oil, urine, maydew, mother, egg, secret furnace, oven, true fire, venomous dragon, Theriac, ardent wine, Green Lion, Bird of Hermes, Goose of Hermogenes, two-edged sword in the hand of the Cherub that guards the Tree of Life.... It is our true secret vessel, and the Garden of the Sages in which our sun rises and sets. It is our Royal Mineral, our triumphant vegetable Saturnia, and the ...
— The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry • M. M. Pattison Muir
... this the son of Aetion grew, and because he had escaped this danger, the name of Kypselos was given him as a surname derived from the corn-chest. Then when Kypselos had grown to manhood and was seeking divination, a two-edged 85 answer was given him at Delphi, placing trust in which he made an attempt upon Corinth and obtained possession of it. Now the answer was ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus
... 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
... that much beautiful latent abusive talent will be developed in this way. But let all this be done with an air of great politeness, sincerity, and goodwill, at least at the commencement, for this, when evidently fictitious, is a two-edged sword of irritation. ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... expression for him—and that "her mind was full of weeds." Margaret Fuller was a natural orator, and her mind was full of many subjects in which Hawthorne could take little interest. She was a revolutionary character, a sort of female Garibaldi, who attacked old Puritan traditions with a two-edged sword; she won victories for liberalism, but left confusion behind her. Like all such characters, she made friends and enemies wherever she went. She sometimes gave offence by hasty impulsive utterances, but more frequently by keenly penetrating arguments for the various causes which ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... 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 mouths of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and looks out upon the sea, that great battle comes up before him. The Norman hosts disembark; first come the archers in short tunics, with bows as tall as themselves and quivers full of arrows; then the knights in coats of mail, with long lances and two-edged swords; Duke William steps out last from the ship, and falls foremost on both hands. His men gather about him in alarm, but he says, "See, my lords, I have taken possession of England with both my hands. It is now mine, and what ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... judges it will appear that the speaker who has time to ridicule his adversaries must be a little short of arguments. Insinuations of dishonesty and attempts to be sarcastic should be carefully avoided. These weapons are sharp but they are two-edged and are more likely to injure ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... and now they begin to realize that war is a two-edged sword, and it may be that many of the inhabitants cry for peace. I know them well, and the very impulses of their nature; and to deal with the inhabitants of that part of the South which borders on the great river, we must recognize the classes into ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... all to learn. The 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 ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... King, my King! How shall I weep, what word shall I say? Caught in the web of this spider thing, In foul death gasping thy life away! Woe's me, woe's me, for this slavish lying, The doom of craft and the lonely dying, The iron two-edged and the ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... was sent about; but 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 ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Gauls and Germans into the country. You, Calidius, have given the same untimely advice. Beware lest you repent the hour when you counselled that I should disarm or quit the neighbourhood of Rome." The two-edged suggestion contained in this last warning was too marked for the reproved men not to turn pale with dread, and slink away trembling behind ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... The blade is two-edged, widening from a sharp point to two shoulders from 3 to 4 centimeters apart, whence the edges incurve gradually and finally end in two projecting spurs 3 or 4 centimeters apart. The rod for the reception of the hilt extends from this point along ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... action.... If this is what Nature 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. Yet for the individual this conception of the constructive ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... did 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
... 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 ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... That was a 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, and therefore ill-bred, spoke up in ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... rendered, by their dexterity in the use of it, formidable to their adversaries. Not a few carried at their girdles the short rapier, so celebrated in their duels and brawls, or concealed within their bosom a poniard or a two-edged knife. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... deed is this, unhappy youth? What thought O'ermaster'd thee? Where did the force of woe O'erturn thy reason? O come forth, my son, I beg thee!' But with savage eyes the youth Glared scowling at him, and without a word Plucked forth his two-edged blade. The father then Fled and escaped: but the unhappy boy, Wroth with himself, even where he stood, leant heavily Upon his sword and plunged it in his side.— And while the sense remained, his ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... 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 a thing shouldn't happen." ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... player was poised above the strings for a single vibrating moment, during which she stood in a listening attitude. Then, with the sweep of three slender fingers, the lion's scream cut the air like a two-edged sword. ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... 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 enough in my own strength ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... side a hand holding a balance in equilibris; on the other a two-edged sword, with five stars around the point, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... now a Nation, and nine States would be governed by the new laws, whether New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Rhode Island sulked unprotected in the out-skirts, or gracefully entered the league before dragged in or driven. It was a glittering and two-edged weapon for Hamilton, and he flashed it in the faces of the anti-Federalists until they were well-nigh blinded. Nevertheless, he did not for a moment underrate Clinton's great strength, and he longed desperately for good news from Virginia, believing that the entrance of that important ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... human authority but by the great Jehovah; without 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 ...
— Among the Sioux - A Story of the Twin Cities and the Two Dakotas • R. J. Creswell
... 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 rigid hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... a drawn sword of Jehovah's wrath, Two-edged and flaming, waved back to a host Of mighty shadows gathering on its path, Soon to emerge as soldiers, ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... of ghostly 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 ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... at once, my friends. You will not have far to go, seeing that He is now even among us here hearing my clumsy words; and I do hope, and trust, and pray, bringing them home to some of your hearts with that spirit and power of His, which is like a two-edged sword, piercing to the very depths of a man's heart, and showing him how ugly it is—and how noble the Lord will make it, if he will but repent and pray to Him who never cast out any that came ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... 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 ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... 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 ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... see into my heart. God knows how much I love you; if it were not so I should have ceased to strive with you before now. I know that it is in vain, that I can only beat the air, and that only that Spirit which is sharper than a two-edged sword, and pierceth even to the dividing of the bones and marrow, can ever rouse you to a sense of your great sin and fearful peril. I know it all only too well. I shall say no more about it. But ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... branches were knotted tight overhead. 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 cried, "What ...
— Dreams • Olive Schreiner
... 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 Word of ...
— The One Great Reality • Louisa Clayton
... 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 ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... were the sword and spear. The former were two-edged and on the average about 3 ft. long. The hilts were often elaborately ornamented and sometimes these weapons were of considerable value. No definite line can be drawn between the spear proper and the javelin. The spear-heads which ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... "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 the meetings of the English Catholics, during the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... 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 ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... 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 that although the sword had ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... together with his fingers. And Peter cried out and exhorted Artasires to kill the most unholy of all men. And Artabanes, seeing Gontharis leaping to his feet (for he reclined close to him), drew a two-edged dagger which hung by his thigh—a rather large one—and thrusting it into the tyrant's left side clean up to the hilt, left it there. And the tyrant none the less tried to leap up, but having received a mortal wound, he fell where he was. Ulitheus then brought his sword down upon Artasires as ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius |
