The statesman shears the sheep; the politician skins them. Votes: 6
The hands of every clock are shears, trimming us away scrap by scrap, and every time piece with a digital readout blinks us towards implosion. Votes: 6
Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them. Votes: 6
But I don't feel sad about it. Because Mother is dead. And because Mr. Shears isn't around anymore. So I would be feeling sad about something that isn't real and doesn't exist. And that would be stupid. Votes: 6
Spring, / you are a pinking shears: you cut / fresh edges on the world. Votes: 4
I am not kind, I cut people off as with shears and I drop them like nettles. Votes: 4
A good shepherd shears his flock, not flays them. [Lat., Boni pastoris est tondere pecus non deglubere.] Votes: 4
The finished product is not finished when the actor is. The work is completed by a pair of shears. Votes: 4
And sing to those that hold the vital shears; And turn the adamantine spindle round, On which the fate of gods and men is wound. Votes: 4
Men can't be trusted with pruning shears any more than they can be trusted with the grocery money in a delicatessen . . . They are like boys with new pocket knives who will not stop whittling. Votes: 4
(That last infirmity of noble mind) To scorn delights, and live laborious days; But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, And think to burst out into sudden blaze, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears And slits the thin-spun life. Votes: 4
We're left with so little to go on. Only the present is full enough to seem complete, and even that is an optical illusion. The moment is bleeding off the page. We live on the precipice of our perceptions. At the edge of every living instant, the world shears away like a cliff of ice into the sea of what is forgotten. Votes: 4
It resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated, often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them. Votes: 2