Argument is generally waste of time and trouble. It is better to present one’s opinion and leave it to stick or no as it may happen. If sound, it will probably in the end stick, and the sticking is the main thing.
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Argument.Samuel(novelistButler
» Samuel(novelistButler - all quotes »
We throw sticks at dogs, that's the level we have dogs at. You'd never dream of throwing one for a cat. We throw sticks for dogs, and dogs go, "Oh, he's dropped his stick! I better go and get that. [mimes chasing after the stick] Saw you dropped your stick there, thought I'd bring it back. And you – hang on! [mimes giving the stick back and follows it with eyes as it's thrown again] Did you see me just bring that back? And then you … you dropped it again? This is very weird. I don't know what's going on here. [mimes bringing the stick back again] Now, hang on to it this time, I don't want to piss about all the time. You think I enjoy this? There you … don't f**king throw it!" That's why the third time, when they come back, they won't give it to you. They go, [through clenched teeth] "No … I won't let you take it!"
Eddie Izzard
Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far." If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.
Theodore Roosevelt
He paused and stood up, looking at the shadows under the trees. His voice was lower when he spoke again.
"But we'll leave part of the kill for …"
He knelt down again and was busy with his knife. The boys crowded round him. He spoke over his shoulder to Roger.
"Sharpen a stick at both ends."
Presently he stood up, holding the dripping sow's head in his hands.
"Where's that stick?"
"Here."
"Ram one end in the earth. Oh — it's rock. Jam it in that crack. There."
Jack held the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick which pierced through into the mouth. He stood back and the head hung there, a little blood dribbling down the stick."
Instinctively the boys drew back too; and the forest was very still. They listened, and the loudest noise was the buzzing of the flies over the spilled guts."William Golding
You have a walking stick. Suppose it could walk by itself, and that it chose to walk away from you. [...] It would no longer be a walking stick at all, only a stick that walked.
Gene Wolfe
I have laid the stick that connects people together. Now it is up to you, your generation and the generations to come, to build upon that stick a bridge that will ensure the free sharing of information and teaching between the two peoples until the day we become united again as a single people, as we were once before; before men separated us with their imaginary political boundaries of today's Polynesia and Micronesia.
Mau Piailug
Butler, Samuel (novelist, 1835-1902)
Butler, Samuel (poet
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