Engraved Knife Quotes

You cannot engrave on water nor wound it with a knife, which is why the river has no fear of memories.

Alice's eyes sparkled, but not with mirth; there was a sinister candescence to them, lined in more black kohl than usual. 'A knife,' she replied calmly. 'A what?' I practically yelped. 'A knife,' she repeated, unwrapping the brown paper to reveal a smooth, olive wood penknife with the intials A.K.W. engraved in a crusive font. 'I had it customised, because I am nothing if not pretentious.

I run my fingers along its rough edges a moment, remembering the day Darian and I borrowed his dad’s carving knife and engraved our initials in place.

Nothing chases away the sand or the memories engraved on the back of my eyelids. They play on a continuous loop, with smells and sound and sorrow.

Two Metro lines, two trains, two carriages, two people walking in parallel streets, two lives, couples criss-crossing without seeing each other, potential encounters, meetings which shall never take place. The imagination rewrites history. It modifies the local directory and the roll-call of those who frequent a town, a street, a house, a woman. It transfixes reflections in the mirror for all eternity. It hangs entire portrait galleries from the wall of our future memory on which magnificent strangers use a sharp knife to engrave their initials and a date.

Alice's eyes sparkled, but not with mirth; there was a sinister candescence to them, lined in more black kohl than usual. 'A knife,' she replied calmly. 'A what?' I practically yelped. 'A knife,' she repeated, unwrapping the brown paper to reveal a smooth, olive wood penknife with the intials A.K.W. engraved in a cursive font. 'I had it customised, because I am nothing if not pretentious.

The best way to hide your wealth is to give it away. If you are generous with your wealth, the money that would have disappeared sooner or later becomes an everlasting jewel, deeply engraved in the heart of the recipient.” The air I inhale enters my body and becomes part of me. The air that I exhale moves into someone else and becomes part of her. Just by looking at how the air moves, we realize we are all connected to one another, not just figuratively but also literally. “Whether we like it or not, we are all connected, and it is unthinkable to be happy all by oneself.” —HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA* The whole universe is contained in an apple wedge in a lunch box. Apple tree, sunlight, cloud, rain, earth, air, farmer’s sweat are all in it. Delivery truck, gas, market, money, cashier’s smile are all in it. Refrigerator, knife, cutting board, mother’s love are all in it. Everything in the whole universe depends on one another. Now, think about what exists in you. The whole universe is in us.

He made a motion that dismissed me. And I rose, but as I did so I took from his tray a little silver knife, all engraved, that he had been using to cut fruit with. I looked him in the eyes as I did so, and quite openly slipped it up my sleeve. King Shrewd's eyes widened, but he said not a word. Two nights later, when Chade summoned me, our lessons resumed as if there had never been a pause. He talked, I listened, I played his stone game and never made an error. He gave me an assignment, and we made small jokes together. He showed me how Slink the weasel would dance for a sausage. All was well between us again. But before I left his chambers that night, I walked to his hearth. Without a word, I placed the knife on the center of his mantel shelf. Actually, I drove it, blade first, into the wood of the shelf. Then I left without speaking of it or meeting his eyes. In fact, we never spoke of it. I believe that the knife is still there. ... I sat still until I began to wonder if I would do it. Then I lifted my eyes to a silver fruit knife driven deep into Chade's mantelpiece, and I thought I knew the answer.

Are you Mr. Bronson? We've come to teach you your manners.” Zachary flashed a grin at Holly. “I didn't realize when we struck our bargain that I was getting two of you.” Cautiously Rose reached up for her mother's gloved hand. “Is this where we're going to live, Mama? Is there a room for me?” Zachary sat on his haunches and stared into the little girl's face with a smile. “I believe a room right next to your mother's has been prepared for you,” he told her. His gaze fell to the mass of sparkling objects in Rose's hands. “What is that, Miss Rose?” “My button string.” The child let some of the length fall to the ground, displaying a line of carefully strung buttons… picture buttons etched with flowers, fruit or butterflies, ones made of molded black glass and a few of painted enamel and paper. “This one is my perfume button,” Rose said proudly, fingering a large one with velvet backing. She lifted it to her nose and inhaled deeply. “Mama puts her perfume on it for me, to make it smell nice.” As Rose extended it toward him, Zachary ducked his head and detected a faint flowery fragrance that he recognized instantly. “Yes,” he said softly, glancing up at Lady Holly's blushing face. “That smells just like your mama.” “Rose,” Holly said, clearly perturbed, “come with me—ladies do not remain talking on the drive-” “I don't have any buttons like that,” Rose told Zachary, ignoring her mother's words as she stared at one of the large solid gold buttons that adorned his coat. Gazing in the direction of the child's dainty finger, Zachary saw that a miniature hunting landscape was engraved on the surface of his top button. He had never looked closely enough to notice before. “Allow me the honor of adding to your collection, Miss Rose,” he said, reaching inside his coat to extract a small silver folding knife. Deftly he cut the threads holding the button to his coat and handed the object to the excited little girl. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Bronson,” Rose exclaimed. “Thank you!

Indeed, it was perhaps the most iconic scene from any novel of its day, immortalised in engravings and artworks from the period and later. Werther, as Geothe’s narrator, describes the moment of desire in the first person: "I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old, were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand and was cutting slices for the little ones all around, in proportion to their age and appetite. She performed her task in a graceful and affec-tionate manner; each claimant awaiting his turn with outstretched hands, and boisterously shouting his thanks. Some of them ran away at once, to enjoy their evening meal; whilst others, of a gentler disposition, retired to the courtyard to see the strangers, and to survey the carriage in which their Charlotte was to drive away." The focus here is not on Lotte herself, of whom we learn only that she is ‘a lady of middle height, with a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white’. Instead, for Werther what is important is what Barthes would call ‘the arrangements of objects’: Lotte’s relation to the children, the rye loaf, and the knife, all appear as scene-setting props which make desire possible. Lotte emerges from amidst these objects and Werther is ‘initiated’ as ‘the scene’ (described by Werther as the ‘most charming spectacle’) ‘consecrates the object [he is] going to love.’ It is that scene, that arrangement of objects, which makes desire – even love – possible. The technologies of our space, place and time set the scene for love to appear – make the emergence of desire possible. We don’t fall in love with an object in isolation but with how it appears in a curate scene determined by a variety of technologies. The Tinder profile card could hardly be a more perfect example from today.

We don’t think about saving money very often. When we finally do think about it, our thoughts rarely lead us to save more. To test the extent that the design of digital wallets could influence behavior, Dan and his colleagues conducted a large-scale experiment with thousands of customers of a mobile money-saving system in Kenya. Some participants received two text messages every week: one at the start of the week to remind them to save and another one at the end of the week with a summary of their savings. Other participants got slightly different text reminders: It was framed like it came from their kid, asking them to save for “our future.” Four other groups were bribed (formally known as “financially incentivized”) for saving. The first of these groups got a 10 percent bonus for the first 100 shillings that they saved. The second group got a 20 percent bonus for the first 100 shillings that they saved. The third and fourth groups got the same 10 percent and 20 percent bonuses for the first 100 shillings that they saved, but they got it together with loss aversion. (In these conditions, the researchers placed the full amount of the match—10 or 20 shillings—into their account at the beginning of the week. The participants were told that they would get the match based on how much they saved, and that the amount of the match that they did not save would be taken out of their account. Financially, this loss aversion approach was the same as the regular end-of-the-week match, but the idea was that experiencing money leaving their account would be painful and would get the participants to increase their savings.) A final set of participants received those same text messages plus a golden-colored coin with the numbers 1–24 engraved on it, to indicate the 24 weeks that the plan lasted. These participants were asked to place the coin somewhere visible in their home and scratch with a knife the number for that week to indicate if they saved or not.2 At the end of six months, the treatment that performed spectacularly better than every other was—drumroll please!—the coin. Every other treatment increased savings a bit, but those who received the coin saved about twice as much as those who only received text messages. You might think the winner would have been the 20 percent bonus or maybe the 20 percent bonus with loss aversion—and this is in fact what most people predict would be the most effective way to get people to save—but you’d be wrong.