Blood And Iron Quotes

“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

— Carl Sagan

“All our nourishment becomes ourselves; we eat ourselves into being ... For every bite we take contains in itself all our organs, all that is included in the whole man, all of which he is constituted ... We do not eat bone, blood vessels, ligaments, and seldom brain, heart, and entrails, nor fat, therefore bone does not make bone, nor brain make brain, but every bite contains all these. Bread is blood, but who sees it? It is fat, who sees it? ... for the master craftsman in the stomach is good. He can make iron out of brimstone: he is there daily and shapes the man according to his form.”

— Paracelsus

“See now, for a good blade, one that will not betray the man in battle, rods of hard and soft iron must be heated and braided together. Then is the blade folded over and hammered flat again, and maybe yet again, many times for the finest blades ... So the hard and soft iron are mingled without blending, before the blade is hammered up to its finished form and tempered, and ground to an edge that shall draw blood from the wind. So comes the pattern, like oil and water that mingle but do not mix. Yet it is the strength of the blade, for without the hard iron the blade would bend in battle, and without the soft iron it would break.”

— Rosemary Sutcliff

“Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.”

— Pliny The Elder

“I thought about ... our kind being killed, but I am not concerned. I have real power - no one could keep me chained, because my blood can transform iron into water. I could walk through walls if I needed, and now - now I know I can throw my mind into another's, and how easy, then, would it be to unlock any cage? We are invincible, Philip and I. Like unto God. Or the Devil.”

— Tessa Gratton

“She lives on the fumes of whiskey and the iron in the blood of her prey.”

— Hilary Mantel

“To stand against the Shadow so long as iron is hard and stone abides.
To defend the Malkieri while one drop of blood remains.
To avenge what cannot be defended.”

— Robert Jordan

“Aidan pulled away and stared intently at her. His blue eyes blazed with intensity. "Listen to me. You have every right to be scared, but I want you to believe me when I say that Noah is going to be fine. He's blessed with some strong as hell genes." Placing his hand on her belly, he smiled. "He's part Fitzgerald, and for generations, the men of my family have been known for being tough, scrappy fighters with a will of iron to survive."
"Really?" she questioned with a hiccup.
Aidan nodded. "But even more than the fighting Irish Fitzgerald blood pumping through him, he's inherited the most amazing DNA from his mother. She's the strongest person I've ever known.”

— Katie Ashley

“A strange thing happened to me as I walked away from Jane's house
I was finally thinking clearly. I could see what Charlotte meant. Jane knew how to fix people. Now that I'd talked through some of my issues, I'd blown out the dust and garbage out of my brain and I could think for once. I could smell the rain, heavy with iron. The cold woke me, but it didn't sting. My breath puffed out in front of me in a great white plume, and I laughed. It was like I was breathing ghosts. I wasn't in the land of long highways and big box stores and humid, endless summers. I was in London, a city of stone and rain and magic. I understood, for instance, why they liked red so much. The red buses, telephone booths, and postboxes were a violent shock against the grays of the sky and stone. Red was blood and beating hearts.
And I was strong.”

— Maureen Johnson

“Our Sun is a second- or third-generation star. All of the rocky and metallic material we stand on, the iron in our blood, the calcium in our teeth, the carbon in our genes were produced billions of years ago in the interior of a red giant star. We are made of star-stuff.”

— Carl Sagan

“The edges of the steel blade as Iron glamour flared around her, a maelstrom of deadly power. I saw her lips move, a name on them, perhaps mine, and felt nothing. My glamour rose up to meet hers, cold and dangerous, and our powers slammed into each other with the roar of dueling dragons.
Flashes of images, like broken mirror shards, falling to the earth. Iron and ice, clashing against each other. Rage and hate, swirling in vicious, ugly colors around us. Glamour and pain and blood.”

— Julie Kagawa

“My flesh is stone. My blood rages hot as molten iron. I have a thousand eyes. A thousand swords. And one mind.
I have heard the death-cry. Was she kin? She said as much, when first she touched me. We were upon the ground. Far from each other, and yet of a kind.
I heard her die.
And so I came to mourn her, I came to find her body, her silent tomb.
But she dies still. I do not understand. She dies still-and there are strangers. Cruel strangers. I knew them once. I know them now. I know, too, that they will not yield.
Who am I?
What am I?
But I know the answers to these questions. I believe, at last, that I do.
Strangers, you bring pain. You bring suffering. You bring to so many dreams the dust of death.
But, strangers, I am Icarium.
And I bring far worse.”

— Steven Erikson

“The heavy infantry stood. The heavy infantry held the trench. Even as they died, they backed not a single step. The Nah'ruk clawed for purchase on the blood-soaked mud of the berm. Iron chewed into them. Halberds slammed down, rebounded from shields. Reptilian bodies reeled back, blocking the advance of rear ranks. Arrows and quarrels poured into the foe from positions behind the trench.
And from above, Locqui Wyval descended by the score, in a frenzy, to tear and rend the helmed heads of the lizard warriors. Others quickly closed to do battle with their kin, and the sky rained blood.”

— Steven Erikson

“On his first hand he wore rings of stone,
Iron, Amber, Wood and Bone.
There were rings unseen on his second hand,
One blood in a flowing band,
One was air all whisper thin,
And the ring of ice had a flaw within.
Full faintly shone the ring of flame,
And the final ring was without name.”

— Patrick Rothfuss

“Ailer is no man to a prisoner - he is a living door, a barrier of flesh and blood adding strength to restraints of oak and iron.”

— Alexandre Dumas

“WE ARE MADE OF STARDUST, THE SCIENTISTS SAY-THE iron in our blood, the calcium in our bones, and the chlorine in our skin forged in the furnaces of ancient stars whose explosions scattered the elements across the galaxy. From the ashes grew new stars, and around one of them, a system of planets and asteroids and moons. A cluster of dust coalesced to form the earth, and life emerged from the detritus of eight-billion-year-old deaths.”

— Rachel Held Evans

“He words we did not shout, the tears unshed, the curse we swallowed,
the phrase we shortened, the love we killed, turned into magnetic iron ore,
into tourmaline, into pyrite agate, blood congealed into cinnabar, blood calcinated, leadened into galena,
oxidized, aluminized, sulphated, calcinated,
the mineral glow of dead meteors and exhausted suns in the forest of dead trees
and dead desires.”

— Anaïs Nin

“There - the chandelier, choked with dust and webs. A single rivulet of red had trickled from the ceiling, down the central column, and out along a curving crystal arm. At its lowest point, a new pendant of blood was slowly building.
'It - it can't do that,' I stammered. 'We're inside the iron.'
'Move out of the way!' Lockwood pushed me back just as the drop fell, spattering on the floor in the center of the circle. We were all standing almost atop the iron chains. 'We've made it too big,' he said. 'The power of the iron doesn't extend into the very center. It's weak there, and this Visitor's strong enough to overcome it.'
'Adjust the chains inward-' George began.
'If we make the circle smaller,' Lockwood said, 'we'll be squeezed in a tiny space. It's scarcely midnight; we've seven hours till dawn and this thing's just gotten started. No, we've got to break out”

— Jonathan Stroud

“I gently pressed on the back of my head, wondering how bad the gash was. Beneath the crusted patch of blood, there was still a sizable lump. It was ironic that a housekeeper armed only with an iron pot had nearly done in the Assassin of Venda.
How the Rahtan would laugh at that.
The name dug into me with a surprising sting-and longing. Rahtan. It brought back the familiar, the feeling of pride, the one place in my entire life where I had felt like I belonged. Now I was in a kingdom that didn't want me and in a cottage where I wasn't welcome. I didn't want to be here either, but I couldn't leave. I wondered about Griz and Eben. Surely Griz was healed and they were on their way by now. They were the closest thing I had to family-a family of poisonous vipers. The thought made me grin.”

— Mary E. Pearson

“We are made out of stardust. The iron in the hemoglobin molecules in the blood in your right hand came from a star that blew up 8 billion years ago. The iron in your left hand came from another star.”

— Jill Tarter

“The toxic effect of carbon monoxide on man has nothing to do with inhibition of cellular respiration by carbon monoxide but is based on the reaction of carbon monoxide with blood iron.”

— Otto Heinrich Warburg

“Not by speeches and votes of the majority, are the great questions of the time decided - that was the error of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood.”

— Otto Von Bismarck

“Nothing he had brought to it of his nearest comparison, Raby with its thatch'd and benevolent romance of serfdom, had at all prepar'd him for the iron Criminality of the Cape,
the publick Executions and Whippings, the open'd flesh, the welling blood, the beefy contented faces of those whites ... Yet is Dixon certain, as certain as the lightness he feels now, lightness premonitory of Flying, that far worse happen'd here, to these poor People, as the blood flew and the Children cried,
that at the end no one understood what they said as they died.”

— Thomas Pynchon

“Hallelujah might be putting itself on the map, but that mark would be made in blood, as well as iron.”

— Devon Monk

“THIS TORTURE
Why should we tell you our love stories
when you spill them together like blood in the dirt?
Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor,
or a fire we can't see,
but how does saying that
push us through the top of the head into
the light above the head?
Love is not
an iron pot, so this boiling energy
won't help.
Soul, heart, self.
Beyond and within those
is one saying,
How long before I'm free of this torture!”

— Rumi

“Here the scent of fake roses was underscored with the bright iron reek of blood.”

— Christa Faust

“But Jace", Clary said. "Valentine taught him more than just fighting. He taught him languages, and how to play the piano"
"That was Jocelyn's influence." Sebastian said her name unwillingly, as if he hated the sound of it. "She thought Valentine ought to be able to talk about books, art, music ... not just killing things. He passed that on to Jace."
A wrought iron blue gate rose to their left. Sebastian ducked under it and beckoned Clary to follow him. She didn't have to duck but went after him, her hands stuffed into her pockets. "What about you?" she asked.
He held up his hands. They were unmistakably her mother's hands - dexterous, long-fingered, meant for holding a brush or a pen. "I learned to play the instruments of war, " he said, "and paint in blood. I am not like Jace.”

— Cassandra Clare

“It is not for you to say - you Englishmen, who have conquered your freedom so long ago, that you have conveniently forgotten what blood you shed, and what extremities you proceeded to in the conquering - it is not for you to say how far the worst of all exasperations may, or may not, carry the maddened men of an enslaved nation. The iron that has entered into our souls has gone too deep for you to find it. Leave the refugee alone! Laugh at him, distrust him, open your eyes in wonder at the secret self which smolders in him, sometimes under the every-day respectability and tranquility of a man like me - sometimes under the grinding poverty, the fierce squalor, of men less lucky, less pliable, less patient than I am - but judge us not. In the time of your first Charles you might have done us justice - the long luxury of your freedom has made you incapable of doing us justice now.”

— Wilkie Collins

“I was stunned. I pulled the phone away and looked quizzically at the hole-punched speaker. Aside from the blood obligation to be my sister's maid of honor, it had never occured to me that I would get asked to be in anyone's wedding. I thought we had reached an understanding, the institution of marriage and I. Weddings are the like the triathlon of female friendship: the Shower, the Bachelorette Party, and the Main Event. It's the Iron Woman and most people never make it through. They fall off their bikes or choke on ocean water. I figured if I valued my life, I'd stay away from weddings and they'd stay away from me.”

— Sloane Crosley

“I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, never turning aside to merely inciting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards, have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution.”

— Frederick William Robertson

“With iron and blood, it seems, and from the rich depths of the earth, John Griswold has fashioned a classic American novel, its dignified intonations of our young nation's sweat and tears evocative of the indelible storytelling of Dos Passos, Frank Norris, and Upton Sinclair.”

— Bob Shacochis

“Human cruelty knows no limits and one needs immense courage and a will of iron to help others understand that animals are made of flesh and blood like us, that they suffer the same pains as us, that they deserve the same respect as us and that their continuous slaughter should not be part of human entertainment.”

— Brigitte Bardot

“The position of Prussia in Germany will not be determined by its liberalism but by its power ... Prussia must concentrate its strength and hold it for the favorable moment, which has already come and gone several times. Since the treaties of Vienna, our frontiers have been ill-designed for a healthy body politic. Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided - that was the great mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood (Eisen und Blut).”

— Otto Von Bismarck

“Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron, Shall a nation be moulded at last.”

— Algernon Charles Swinburne

“It is remarkable that Providence has given us all things for our advantage near at hand; but iron, gold, and silver, being both the instruments of blood and slaughter and the price of it, nature has hidden in the bowels of the earth.”

— Seneca The Younger

“My hold of the colonies is in the close affection which grows from common names, from kindred blood, from similar privileges, and equal protection. These are ties which, though light as air, are as strong as links of iron.”

— Edmund Burke

“Not every legend is a myth, some are flesh and blood. Some legends walk among us, but they aren't born, they're built. Legends are made from iron & sweat, mind and muscle, blood and vision and victory. Legends are champions, they grow, they win, they conquer. There's a legend behind every legacy, there's a blueprint behind every legend.”

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

“The iron from that meteorite and the iron from your blood have common origin in the core of a star.”

— Neil DeGrasse Tyson

“Brave, bold men, these are what we want. What we want is vigour in the blood, strength in the nerves, iron muscles and nerves of steel, not softening namby-pamby ideas.”

— Swami Vivekananda

“This policy cannot succeed through speeches, and shooting-matches, and songs; it can only be carried out through blood and iron.”

— Otto Von Bismarck

“The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.”

— C.S. Lewis

“(Slaughter) means blood and iron.
[Lat., Coedes videtur significare sanguinem et ferrum.]”

— Quintilian

“As for us, we were never concerned with the Kantian-priestly and vegetarian-Quaker prattle about the "sacredness of human life". We were revolutionaries in opposition, and have remained revolutionaries in power. To make the individual sacred, we must destroy the social order which crucifies him. And that problem can only be solved by blood and iron. The man who recognizes the revolutionary historic importance of the very fact of the existence of the Soviet system must also sanction the Red Terror.”

— Leon Trotsky