“
It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me - such bullshit.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts...
”
”
Robert Fulghum
“
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts
”
”
Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)
“
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Chinese throwing stars get you a dozen stitches.
”
”
Jim Butcher (Dead Beat (The Dresden Files, #7))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.
”
”
Stephen Fry (Moab Is My Washpot (Memoir, #1))
“
Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but if you want to hurt someone...way down deep, use words.
”
”
Charles Martin (The Mountain Between Us)
“
I hadn't fully realized just how powerful words could be before this. Whoever came up with the saying 'sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me' was talking out of his or her armpit.
”
”
Malorie Blackman (Noughts & Crosses (Noughts & Crosses, #1))
“
Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can break hearts.
”
”
Tim Minchin
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I might be a vampire so I don't give a shit. I'll heal
”
”
Gena Showalter (Lord of the Vampires (Royal House of Shadows, #1))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me. Bones mend and become actually stronger in the very place they were broken and where they have knitted up; mental wounds can grind and ooze for decades and be re-opened by the quietest whisper.
”
”
Stephen Fry (Moab Is My Washpot (Memoir, #1))
“
People who say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” don’t understand how words can be stones, hard and sharp-edged and dangerous and capable of doing so much more harm than anything physical.
”
”
Seanan McGuire (Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys, #1))
“
Machines and relatives get most of the yelling. But never trees. As for people, well, the Solomon islanders may have a point. Yelling at living thing does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.
”
”
Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)
“
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will break our spirit.
”
”
James Howe (The Misfits (The Misfits, #1))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but your words...they'll destroy my soul.
”
”
Cassandra Giovanni (Love Exactly)
“
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but watch out for those damn words.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones,but words will never hurt me.
”
”
Madeleine Urban (Sticks & Stones (Cut & Run, #2))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me - such bullshit.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones’, as they say in the Middle Worlds, but with the right words you can build a world and make yourself the king of it.
”
”
Joanne Harris (The Gospel of Loki (Loki, #1))
“
Sticks and stones and small caliber bullets may break my bones... Words will never, et cetera.
”
”
Jim Butcher (White Night (The Dresden Files, #9))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can also hurt me.
Stones and sticks break only skin, while words are ghosts that haunt me.
Slant and curved the word-swords fall, it pierces and sticks inside me.
Bats and bricks may ache through bones, but words can mortify me.
Pain from words has left its' scar, on mind and hear that's tender.
Cuts and bruises have not healed, it's words that I remember.
”
”
Ruby Redfort
“
Stick and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
“
Colin thought about the dork mantra: sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie.
”
”
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words from stupid Russian kidnappers can never hurt me.
”
”
Ally Carter (Not If I Save You First)
“
Maddie shrugged at that. She actually looked like she might start chanting, Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words from stupid Russian kidnappers can never hurt me.
”
”
Ally Carter (Not If I Save You First)
“
Strange how mean words can return to ones thoughts, years after they’ve been callously thrown at you. They replay in your mind, spiking a sense of remembered pain. Nasty name calling can be an ugly memory that stabs unexpectedly—not unlike a nightmare where you wake up crying.
Sticks and stones, may break your bones—yet, cruel names can hurt you.
”
”
Nikki Sex (Abuse (Abuse, #1))
“
Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts … . — Robert Fulghum
”
”
Patricia Evans (The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond)
“
I always disliked the expression sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. It is one of the least useful ways of understanding one another, or how words work.
”
”
Eley Williams (The Liar's Dictionary)
“
Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me.” This is a lie. What we say matters. The unkind things we communicate can soil the best of relationships; even with the deepest of regrets…what lingers is a stain of hurt that may fade but will never truly go away. The wounding words we say are like feathers released in a harsh wind, once said; we will never get them back. ~Jason Versey
”
”
Jason Versey (A Walk with Prudence)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me', said some idiot who,
1. Didn't realize HOW much words hurt
2. Wasn't so smart
”
”
Oreo Queen
“
Grown-ups and children are not readily encouraged to unearth the power of words. Adults are repeatedly assured a picture is worth a thousand of them, while the playground response to almost any verbal taunt is 'sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.'
I don't beg so much as command to differ.
”
”
Inga Muscio (Cunt: A Declaration of Independence)
“
Whoever said ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’ clearly hasn’t been on the receiving end of people who spend the vast majority of their time using hateful words.
”
”
Matt Shaw (The 8th)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
”
”
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
“
Sticks and Stones may break my bones,
but whips and chains excite me.
So throw me down, tie me up,
and show me how you like me.
”
”
Skye Eagleday (Dark Passions (Dark Romance Boxed Set))
“
Sticks and stones may break bones, but words dig and dig and dig deep into your heart until the hurt resonates, and your heart fails to remember the reason it beats in the first place.
”
”
Jay McLean (Lucas (Preston Brothers, #1))
“
Whoever came up with the saying ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me’ was talking out of his or her armpit.
”
”
Malorie Blackman (Noughts & Crosses (Noughts & Crosses, #1))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.' Yeah, well, whoever wrote that was a friggin' idiot.
”
”
Marley Gibson (The Awakening (Ghost Huntress, #1))
“
sticks and stones may break my bones but words can do permanent damage
”
”
Chuck D. (Public Enemy)
“
What is that old children’s rhyme, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’? Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It’s more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time.
”
”
Laurell K. Hamilton (A Shiver of Light (Merry Gentry, #9))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will make you go into a corner by myself and cry for hours.
”
”
Eric Idle
“
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but I will surely kill you.
”
”
Kate Sweeney (Away From the Dawn (Dawn, #1))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will break my soul.
”
”
Kathryn Lopez
“
Colin thought about the dork mantra:
sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie. This, right here, was the true abdominal snowman: it felt like something freezing in his stomach.
"I love you so much and I just want you to love me like I love you," he said as softly as he could. "You don't need a girlfriend, Colin. You need a robot who says nothing but 'I love you.
”
”
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
“
Unkindness is a serial killer.
Death in the flesh sometimes seems like a less excruciating way to succumb than the slow and steady venom unleashed by mean-spirited, cruel words and actions that poison you over time. I guess that’s why I can’t stand the old children’s rhyme: sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. Every time I hear it, I think to myself: that’s a lie. You can dodge a rock, but you can’t unhear a word. You can’t undo the intentional damage that some words have on your mind, body, and spirit.
Especially a word like ugly.
”
”
Tarana Burke (Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words are merely the smallest element of language capable of containing meaning in isolation and as such can never directly produce the four thousand Newtons force per square centimeter required to break bones.
”
”
Vsauce
“
The saying “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” couldn't be further from the truth. Broken bones heal; words can stick with you for a lifetime.
”
”
Madison Beer (The Half of It: A Memoir)
“
Sticks and stones may break bones, but words can shatter souls. Choose carefully the words you say to others. Choose wisely the words you say to yourself. Words have a way of becoming truths we believe about ourselves. And what we believe, we become.
”
”
L.R. Knost
“
Stick and stones may break your bones and words can kill you too
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Lullaby)
“
is a broken man an outlaw?"
"More or less." Brienne answered.
Septon Meribald disagreed. "More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.
"Then they get a taste of battle.
"For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe.
"They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.
"If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chicken's, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world...
"And the man breaks.
"He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them...but he should pity them as well
”
”
George R.R. Martin
“
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts. . . .
”
”
Robert Fulghum (All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten)
“
sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. What a dirty lie.
”
”
John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but hollow points expand on impact. -T-shirt
”
”
Lani Lynn Vale (Bang Switch (Code 11-KPD SWAT, #3))
“
Whoever said Sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you was an idiot.
”
”
Valerie Burns (Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder (Baker Street Mystery #1))
“
My stomach gets that hollowed-out feeling. It’s amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me—such bullshit.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
Abuse is exploitation of trust and exploitation of authority and I was lucky enough never to suffer from that or from any violation or cruelty, real or imagined.
It is a cliché that most clichés are true, but then like most clichés, that cliché is untrue.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.
Bones mend and become actually stronger in the very place they were broken and where they have knitted up; mental wounds can grind and ooze for decades and be re-opened by the quietest whisper.
”
”
Stephen Fry (Moab Is My Washpot (Memoir, #1))
“
What is that old children's rhyme, 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me'? Anyone who says that doesn't understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It's more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time."~Sholto, from A Shiver of Light
”
”
Laurell K. Hamilton
“
Once you understand that you are the thinker of your own thoughts, and that your mind doesn‘t produce ‘reality’, it produces ‘thoughts’, you won’t be as affected by what you think. You’ll see your thinking as something that you are doing – an ability you have that brings your experience of life – rather than as the source of reality. Do you remember the old saying ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me’? Thoughts could be substituted for words. Your thoughts can’t hurt or depress you once you understand that they are just thoughts. When you start to view your own thinking in this more impersonal way (in other words, looking at your thinking instead of being caught in it), you will find yourself becoming free of depression. Your thinking goes on and on, and it will continue to do so for as long as you live. But when you step back from your thinking and simply observe that you are doing it, your mind becomes free, and you open the door to experience.
”
”
Richard Carlson (Stop Thinking, Start Living: Discover Lifelong Happiness)
“
There is an important message here about the power of words, labels, rhetoric, and stereotyped labeling, to be used for good or evil. We need to refashion the childhood rhyme “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me,” to alter the last phrase to “but bad names can kill me, and good ones can comfort me.
”
”
Philip G. Zimbardo (The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil)
“
Sticks & stones may break your bones & hurtful words can destroy more than you know!
”
”
Timothy Pina
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but grenades and air strikes will silence Allah's throne.
”
”
Mingo Kane (Scars of the Prophet: A Novel of War and Romance)
“
The old saying goes, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Yet, my own negative self-talk is certain to make my words both sticks and stones.
”
”
Craig D. Lounsbrough
“
Sticks and stones may break your bones, and words – can cut your insides.
”
”
Jen Pollock Michel (Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition and the Life of Faith)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words have the power to destroy me
”
”
Ellie Messe
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but ‘no’ can never hurt me!
”
”
Richard Fenton (Go for No! Yes is the Destination, No is How You Get There)
“
Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will never hurt. Lies. Words hurt. The words we remember. Well, the hurt feeling the words caused stays with us forever.
”
”
Jill Telford
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but if you want to hurt someone…way down deep, use words.
”
”
Charles Martin (The Mountain Between Us)
“
Whoever had come up with the chant “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” had been an idiot.
”
”
Nevada Barr (Deep South (Anna Pigeon, #8))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me—such bullshit.
”
”
Lauren Oliver (Delirium (Delirium, #1))
“
Yelling at living things does tend to kill the spirit in them. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts … . — Robert Fulghum Most
”
”
Patricia Evans (The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize It and How to Respond)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me, especially when I do not understand them.
”
”
C.S. Forester (Mr. Midshipman Hornblower)
“
The nursery rhyme “sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” is a lie that every five-year-old knows in their deep waters. Words hurt, because they are one of the only socially acceptable ways we can attack each other.
”
”
Kory Stamper (Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries)
“
As children we are taught, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me!" As adults we teach those same words to our own children while simultaneously we sue one another for defamation or verbal assault. Ah, the naked leading the blind.
”
”
Bryan Oftedahl
“
We must stay conscious of our words. We’ve all heard that little phrase when we were kids. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.” Well, I call BULLSHIT! As cute as that is and as much as I wish it were true, it’s not. Words are powerful, they can hurt or they can heal.
”
”
Rachel D. Greenwell (How To Wear A Crown: A Practical Guide To Knowing Your Worth)
“
May sticks and stones break your bones,
And serpents stop your heart.
A spell to poison, requiring fangs & fury
”
”
Alix E. Harrow (The Once and Future Witches)
“
Stick and stones may break my bones, but verbal abuse is trauma that lasts forever.
”
”
Heidi Hutchinson (Key Change (Common Threads, #3))
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’? Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It’s more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time.
”
”
Laurell K. Hamilton (A Shiver of Light (Merry Gentry, #9))
“
What is that old children’s rhyme, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’? Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It’s more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time.”
― A Shiver of Light
”
”
Laurell K. Hamilton
“
People who say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” don’t understand how words can be stones, hard and sharp-edged and dangerous and capable of doing so much more harm than anything physical. If someone chucks a real stone at you on the playground, it leaves a bruise. Bruises heal. Bruises get people in trouble, too; bruises end with detentions for the rock-throwers, with disapproving parents ushered into private offices for serious conversations about bullying and bad behavior. Words almost never end that way. Words can be whispered bullet-quick when no one’s looking, and words don’t leave blood or bruises behind. Words disappear without a trace. That’s what makes them so powerful. That’s what makes them so important. That’s what makes them hurt so much.
”
”
Seanan McGuire (Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys, #1))
“
While these young Muslims and young feminists may superficially seem to have little in common, they were indistinguishable from each other in demanding bans and apologies for what they considered offensive, dangerous ideas. Both groups agreed that my advice that 'sticks and stones might break your bones, but words will never hurt me' was an outdated misunderstanding of the fundamental damage that words can inflict on vulnerable individuals.
”
”
Claire Fox (‘I Find That Offensive!’)
“
Eddie: What has four wheels and flies?
Blaine: (disapproving) THE TOWN GARBAGE WAGON, AS I HAVE ALREADY SAID. ARE YOU SO STUPID OR INATTENTIVE THAT YOU DO NOT REMEMBER? IT WAS THE FIRST RIDDLE YOU ASKED ME.
Eddie: (in his mind) Yes. And what we all missed--because we were fixated on stumping you with some brain-buster out of Roland's past or Jake's book--is that the contest almost ended right there. (to Blaine) You didn't like that one, did you, Blaine?
Blaine: (agreeably) I FOUND IT EXCEEDINGLY STUPID. PERHAPS THAT'S WHY YOU ASKED IT AGAIN. LIKE CALLS TO LIKE, EDDIE OF NEW YORK, IS IT NOT SO?
Eddie: (smiling and shaking his finger) Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Or, as we used to say back in the neighborhood, 'You can rank me to the dogs and back, but I'll never lose the hard-on I use to fuck your mother.'
Jake: Hurry up! If you can do something, DO IT!
Eddie: It doesn't like silly questions. It doesn't like silly games. And we KNEW that. We knew it from Charlie the Choo-Choo. How stupid can you get? Hell, THAT was the book with the answers, not Riddle-De-Dum, but we never saw it. (to Blaine) Blaine: when is a door not a door?
Blaine: (clicking his tongue) WHEN IT'S AJAR, OF COURSE. WOULD YOU DIE WITH SUCH STUPID RIDDLES IN YOUR MOUTH?
”
”
Stephen King (Wizard and Glass (The Dark Tower, #4))
“
Game of Thrones - Feast for Crows.
“Ser? My lady?" said Podrick. "Is a broken man an outlaw?"
"More or less," Brienne answered.
Septon Meribald disagreed. "More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.
"Then they get a taste of battle.
"For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe.
"They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.
"If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world . . .
"And the man breaks.
"He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them . . . but he should pity them as well.
”
”
G R R Martin
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but my past does not define me.
”
”
Rachael Brownell (Sticks & Stones)
“
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but I can heal from that. Words can kill, when they break your will, and words you can't take back. - The Malwatch
”
”
Scaylen Renvac
“
Who says sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me? A guy who has never been hit with a dictionary!
”
”
Smiley Beagle (You Laugh You Lose Challenge: 300 Jokes for Kids that are Funny, Silly, and Interactive Fun the Whole Family Will Love - With Illustrations ... for Kids)
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Death in the flesh sometimes seems like a less excruciating way to succumb than the slow and steady venom unleashed by mean-spirited, cruel words and actions that poison you over time. I guess that’s why I can’t stand the old children’s rhyme: sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.
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Tarana Burke (Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement)
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Smart kids get put on a pedestal by parents and teachers alike, and the rest of the class gathers around the base of it throwing rocks, trying to knock them down. People who say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” don’t understand how words can be stones, hard and sharp-edged and dangerous and capable of doing so much more harm than anything physical.
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Seanan McGuire (Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys, #1))
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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” This may be one of the biggest lies ever placed on children. Words do hurt. Like emptying a pillow of feathers into the wind, it’s impossible to gather them back. The great King Solomon said, a word not fitly spoken can be like stealing a person’s coat in the dead of winter or pouring vinegar into an open wound.
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Steven Sisler (The Four People Types: And what drives them)
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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. He
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Madeleine Urban (Sticks & Stones (Cut & Run, #2))
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As children we are taught, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me!" As adults we teach those same words to our own children while simultaneously we sue one another for defamation. Ah, the naked leading the blind.
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Bryan Oftedahl
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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
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Angela Brown (Black Voice: The Journal of Thought)
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Stick and stones may break your bones but harsh words can hurt as much to anyone. What comes out of your tongue can be a bleating or a curse, or for better or for worst, so think several times for what you spit out can't be recover anymore.you should not spit flame, what will hurt just keep it . Think of the consequences after the damage.
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Victoria Samio
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More elaborate toolkits are known for chimpanzees in Gabon hunting for honey. In yet another dangerous activity, these chimps raid bee nests using a five-piece toolkit, which includes a pounder (a heavy stick to break open the hive’s entrance), a perforator (a stick to perforate the ground to get to the honey chamber), an enlarger (to enlarge an opening through sideways action), a collector (a stick with a frayed end to dip into honey and slurp it off), and swabs (strips of bark to scoop up honey).21 This tool use is complicated since the tools are prepared and carried to the hive before most of the work begins, and they will need to be kept nearby until the chimp is forced to quit due to aggressive bees. Their use takes foresight and planning of sequential steps, exactly the sort of organization of activities often emphasized for our human ancestors. At one level chimpanzee tool use may seem primitive, as it is based on sticks and stones, but on another level it is extremely advanced.22 Sticks and stones are all they have in the forest, and we should keep in mind that also for the Bushmen the most ubiquitous instrument is the digging stick (a sharpened stick to break open anthills and dig up roots). The tool use of wild chimpanzees by far exceeds what was ever held possible. Chimpanzees use between fifteen
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Frans de Waal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?)
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On the playground, children used to sing the chorus "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Few things then or now have ever struck me as more false than that ludicrous chant. Words can devastate, and they can heal.
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Siri Hustvedt (A Plea for Eros: Essays)
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What is that old children’s rhyme, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’? Anyone who says that doesn’t understand the power of words. They can cut deeper than any knife, hit harder than any fist, touch parts of you that nothing physical will ever reach, and the wounds that some words leave never heal, because each time the word is thrown at you, labeled on you, you bleed afresh from it. It’s more like a whip that cuts every time, until you feel it must flay the very skin from your bones, and yet outwardly there is no wound to show the world, so they think you are not hurt, when inside part of you dies every time.” I
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Laurell K. Hamilton (A Shiver of Light (Merry Gentry, #9))
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Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." --nursery rhyme, and the first lie we learned in school
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Amy Matayo (They Call Her Dirty Sally)
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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but my mace will break you first.
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J.R. Mathews (Home Sweet Home (Jake's Magical Market #3))
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Sticks and stones may break my bones but names don't have my permission.
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Brian Spellman (We have our difference in common 2.)
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Smart kids get put on a pedestal by parents and teachers alike, and the rest of the class gathers around the base of it throwing rocks, trying to knock them down. People who say ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’ don’t understand how words can be stones, hard and sharp-edged and dangerous and capable of doing so much more harm than anything physical.
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Seanan McGuire (Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys, #1))
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Sticks and stones may break my bones, but Kelso nailed your sister.
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Full Sea Books (Hollywood’s Favorite Insults and More: The Greatest TV & Movie Insults!)
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sticks and stones may break my bones
but needles prick and poke me
they rip my fingertips to shreds
yet they’re supposed to help me
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Lizzy Seitz (I'll See You in Hell: An Open Letter to My Father and Others)