Shovel Quotes
More Shovel Quotes
There's a lot of intelligence in the hands. When you pick up a shovel, the hands know what to do. The same thing's true of sitting at the piano.
tom waits— In the Dallas Observer, 6 May 1999
If I had a hammer, I'd build a city on stilts so my feet would stay dry when God's wine glass tilts. If I had a shovel, I'd dig a hole in the dirt and I'll be hiding when his drunken stupor lands upon earth
— "Tugboat Complex" from the album Labor Days. Archived at "The Original Hip-Hop (Rap) Lyrics Archive," Accessed May 22, 2014.
Trudeau valued performance above image. He Knew he could give me a shovel if there was a mess to clean up, and he kept moving me from one mess to another.
jean chrétien— Chapter One, At Laurier's Desk, p. 16
We make war and revolution at the same time. Militiamen are fighting for the conquest of the land, the factories, bread, and culture … the pickaxe and the shovel are as important as the rifle. Comrades, we will win the war!
buenaventura durruti— Interview (3 October 1936), as quoted in Durruti in the Spanish Revolution (1996) by Abel Paz, as translated by Chuck W. Morse (2007), p. 536
You don't fight a war with words, but with fortifications. The pickaxe and the shovel are as important at the rifle. I can't say it often enough.
buenaventura durruti— Interview (3 October 1936), as quoted in Durruti in the Spanish Revolution (1996) by Abel Paz, as translated by Chuck W. Morse (2007), p. 537
Sure the shovel and tongsTo each other belongs.
samuel lover— Widow Machree, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
To make a bank was a great plot of state;Invent a shovel, and be a magistrate.
Andrew Marvell— The Character of Holland (c. 1653).
Richard Strauss on Schoenberg, written by Schoenberg himself: "Dear Sir, I regret that I am unable to accept your invitation to write something for Richard Strauss's fiftieth birthday. In a letter to Frau Mahler (in connection with Mahler Memorial Fund) Herr Strauss wrote about me as follows: "The only person who can help poor Schoenberg now is a psychiatrist ...". "I think he'd do better to shovel snow instead of scribbling on music-paper..."
arnold schoenberg— Schoenberg, letter to an unknown correspondent, Berlin, 22 April 1914.
The rule, acknowledged or not, seems to be that if we have great power we must use it. We would use a steam shovel to pick up a dime. We have experts who can prove there is no other way to do it.
wendell berry— "The Loss of the Future"
Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree and there will be one.
aldo leopold— “December: Pines above the Snow”, p. 81
The mind is like the stomach. It is not how much you put into it that counts, but how much it digests if you try to feed it with a shovel you get bad results.
albert jay nock— Harper's Magazine Vol. 154 (1927), p. 730
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. shovel them under and let me work I am the grass; I cover all.
Carl Sandburg— 1918 Cornhuskers,'Grass'.
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. shovel them under and let me work I am the grass; I cover all.
— Carl Sandburg, "Grass" (1918).
And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. shovel them under and let me work. ** * I am the grass. Let me work.
Carl Sandburg— Carl Sandburg, Grass.
The cure for this ill is not to sit still, Or frowst with a book by the fire; But to take a large hoe and a shovel also, And dig till you gently perspire.
— 1902 Just So Stories,'How the Camel Got His Hump'.
