# Hands

Hands are prehensile, multi-fingered extremities located at the end of an arm or forelimb of primates such as humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. Hands are the chief organs for physically manipulating the environment, used for both gross motor skills (such as grasping a large object) and fine motor skills (such as picking up a small pebble). The fingertips contain some of the densest areas of nerve endings on the body, are the richest source of tactile feedback, and have the greatest positioning capability of the body; thus the sense of touch is intimately associated with hands.

## Quotes

* Hand, n. A singular instrument worn at the end of a human arm and commonly thrust into somebody's pocket.
** Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
* See the sun set in the hand of the man.
** Kate Bush, in The Dreaming", on The Dreaming (1982)
* Even to the delicacy of their hand There was resemblance such as true blood wears.
** Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto IV, Stanza 45
* For through the South the custom still commands The gentleman to kiss the lady's hands.
** Lord Byron, Don Juan (1818-24), Canto V, Stanza 105
* You open your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing.
** David, Psalm 145:16
* Like a led victim, to my death I'll go, And, dying, bless the hand that gave the blow.
** John Dryden, The Spanish Friar (1681), Act II, scene 1
* Come take my hand, you should know me, I've always been in your mind You know I will be kind, I'll be guiding you Building your dream has to start now, There's no other road to take You won't make a mistake, I'll be guiding you.
** John Farrar in "Magic", from the film Xanadu (1980)
* My hands are small I know, but they're not yours, they are my own
** Jewel, Hands
* 'Twas a hand White, delicate, dimpled, warm, languid, and bland. The hand of a woman is often, in youth, Somewhat rough, somewhat red, somewhat graceless in truth; Does its beauty refine, as its pulses grow calm, Or as sorrow has crossed the life line in the palm?
** Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part I, Canto III, Stanza 18
* His red right hand.
** John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; 1674), Book II, line 174
* Without the bed her other fair hand was, On the green coverlet; whose perfect white Show'd like an April daisy on the grass, With pearly sweat, resembling dew of night.
** William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece (1594), line 393
* All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.
** William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1605), Act V, scene 1, line 57
* They may seize On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand.
** William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet (1597), Act III, scene 3, line 35
* O, that her hand, In whose comparison all whites are ink, Writing their own reproach, to whose soft seizure The cygnet's down is harsh and spirit of sense Hard as the palm of ploughman.
** William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602), Act I, scene 1, line 55
* Good is in the hands. Evil is also in the hands.
** Sumerian proverb, Collection XXII at The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, 3rd millennium BCE.
* Let your left hand turn away what your right hand attracts.
** Talmud, Sotah, 47.
* Come and hold my hand I wanna contact the living
** Robbie Williams and Guy Chambers, Feel, Escapology (18 November 2002)

### Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

    Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 349-50.
* Una mano lava l'altra, ed ambedue lavano il volto.
** One hand washeth another, both the face.
** John Florio, Vocabolario Italiano & Inglese
* His hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him
** Genesis, XVI. 12
* The voice is Jacob's voice, but the hands are the hands of Esau.
** Genesis, XXVII. 22
* Rubente dextra.
** Red right hand.
** Horace, Carmina, I, 2, 2
* We bear it calmly, though a ponderous woe, And still adore the hand that gives the blow.
** John Pomfret, Verses to his Friend under Affliction
* Puras deus non plenas adspicit manus.
** God looks at pure, not full, hands.
** Publilius Syrus, Maxims
* Dextra mihi Deus.
** My right hand is to me as a god.
** Virgil, Æneid (29-19 BC), X. 773

## See also

* Hand washing
* Handshake