A Stone Quotes

Anger is as a stone cast into a wasp's nest. ~ Pope Paul VI

I'm not that squeamish, Mr. Stone."
"Ethan," he said. "I'm naked. I'm in a tub. You're wearing my nightshirt. You've already slept in my bed. I think you should call me Ethan. ~ Jo Goodman

The ocean crashes to the shore, And comes to us with a mighty roar.
And stones can threaten our path, To trip our progress with their wrath.
But you can pass this test of life, And turn to fun the daunting strife.
So pick a stone and toss it free, To skip across the raging sea.
And laugh out loud as it leaves your hand, I'll show you how...my little man. ~ Jer Jorgenson

But Hood was not yet done with her. He swung her up again, spun and once more hammered her onto the stone. 'I have had,' the Jaghut roared, and into the air she went again, and down once more, 'enough' - with a sob the crushed, broken body was yanked from the ground again - 'of- 'your- justice! ~ Steven Erikson

There are dead thoughts and there are living thoughts. A dead thought has been compared to a stone which one may plant in the soil. Nothing will come out. A living thought is like a seed. In the process of thinking, an answer without a question is devoid of life. It may enter the mind; it will not penetrate the soul. It may become a part of one's knowledge; it will not come forth as a creative force. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

I went outside, tripping over slabs of sunshine the size of towns. The sun was like a crowd of people, it was a party, it was music. The sun was blaring through the walls of houses and beating down the steps. The sun was drumming time into the stone. The sun was rhythming the day. ~ Jeanette Winterson

Riding horseback along a country lane I saw wild roses in bloom, against an old stone wall. The expensive, improved varieties in my garden have lost something. Sophistication always does. ~ James Webb Young

And this I know: all these things that now, while we are still in the war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

Poetry

Poetry,
How did you find your way to me?
My mother does not know Albanian well,
She writes letters like Aragon, without commas and periods,
My father roamed the seas in his youth,
But you have come,
Walking down the pavement of my quiet city of stone,
And knocked timidly at the door of my three-storey house,
At Number 16.

There are many things I have loved and hated in life,
For many a problem I have been an 'open city',
But anyway...
Like a young man returning home late at night,
Exhausted and broken by his nocturnal wanderings,
Here too am I, returning to you,
Worn out after another escapade.

And you,
Not holding my infidelity against me,
Stroke my hair tenderly,
My last stop,
Poetry. ~ Ismail Kadare

A doctor, a logician and a marine biologist had also just arrived, flown in at phenomenal expense from Maximegalon to try to reason with the lead singer who had locked himself in the bathroom with a bottle of pills and was refusing to come out till it could be proved conclusively to him that he wasn't a fish. The bass player was busy machine-gunning his bedroom and the drummer was nowhere on board.
Frantic inquiries led to the discovery that he was standing on a beach on Santraginus V over a hundred light years away where, he claimed, he had been happy for over half an hour now and had found a small stone that would be his friend. ~ Douglas Adams

Sly Stone doesn't make good albums: only good records. His style is so infinite and revolves around so many crucial aspects that it has only come together perfectly on a handful of his singles. ~ Jon Landau

Isn't it strange how one child can be so lucky, when not a stone's throw away another child's life has taken quite the opposite direction? ~ Helen Laycock

Your ability to see failure as a necessary stepping stone directly correlates with your ability to dream bigger and dream better. ~ Mark Batterson

A second red-orange spearhead leaps straight at O'Shaughnessy. The whole world seems to stand still. Then the gun behind it crashes, and there's a cataclysm of pain all over him, and a shock goes through him as if he ran head-on into a stone wall.
A voice from the car says blurredly, while the ground rushes up to meet him, 'Finish him up, you guys! I'm getting so I don't trust their looks no more, no matter how stiff they act!' ("Jane Brown's Body") ~ Cornell Woolrich

Recently I have been working in the country, where, carving in the open air, I find sculpture more natural than in a London studio, but it needs bigger dimensions. A large piece of stone or wood placed almost anywhere at random in a field, orchard, or garden, immediately looks right and inspiring. ~ Henry Moore

Egypt is a fertile valley of rich river soil, low-lying, warm, monotonous, a slow-flowing river, and beyond the limitless desert. Greece is a country of sparse fertility and keen, cold winters, all hills and mountains sharp cut in stone, where strong men must work hard to get their bread. And while Egypt submitted and suffered and turned her face toward death, Greece resisted and rejoiced and turned full-face to life. For somewhere among those steep stone mountains, in little sheltered valleys where the great hills were ramparts to defend, and men could have security for peace and happy living, something quite new came into the world: the joy of life found expression. Perhaps it was born there, among the shepherds pasturing their flocks where the wild flowers made a glory on the hillside; among the sailors on a sapphire sea washing enchanted islands purple in a luminous air. ~ Edith Hamilton

I am carved like David,
every line of my body perfectly chiseled.
Hunger is the blade that has made me smooth.
I am a statue, yet I am only air at my center.
I go to hug myself and
-poof!-
my arms go right through me
finding nothing to hold on to.
My hands meet behind my own back
in a stone handshake.
This is not what you were expecting.
I'm so cold.
I'm so sharp.
I've been cut, now I'll cut you.
Come closer.
Yes, come closer to me.
I am going to make you see what I see. ~ Madeleine George

I always carry a pistol when I go [to the New York Public Library]. Never did trust those stone lions. ~ Robert Bloch

I can't imagine that I'm supposed to get over it , like hopping a low stone wall; if Thursday was a barrier of some kind, it was made of razor wire, which I did not bound over but thrash through, leaving me in flayed pieces and on the other side of something only in a temporal sense. ~ Lionel Shriver

Clarent and Excalibur. Together. Yesterday, he had held them in his hands and watched as the two swords had fused together to create a single stone sword. Even from across the room, Dee could feel the power radiating from the object in long slow waves. ~ Michael Scott

Now days people are using "Temples" & God as a business purposes. Instead of wasting money on them donate that to some poor people they will bless you right from there heart, you only think how can a piece of stone will bless you.!! Donate to poor people atleast they won't sleep hungry .!!
Make a Change a happy world !! ~ Rohit Kumar Singh

We're going to kick butt at the competition, Tessie, and when we win I promise I'll let you bash my brother's head in with the trophy." I chuckle at his enthusiasm and shake my head. "It's not a wrestling match, Stone, it's a beauty pageant, and my trophy will most likely be a plastic tiara." "Well don't those things have sharp pointy combs? You can dig them into his eye or something." "You have a really twisted mind, you know that?" "Thank you, shortcake. ~ Blair Holden

Joe Klein is the flower of American political journalism, a sharp raconteur who shows traces of the gonzo style that was in vogue when he was honing his craft at Rolling Stone back in the day. ~ Thomas Frank

The charming island of Rock Island, three miles long and half a mile wide, belongs to the United States, and the Government has turned it into a wonderful park, enhancing its natural attractions by art, and threading its fine forests with many miles of drives. Near the center of the island one catches glimpses, through the trees, of ten vast stone four-story buildings, each of which covers an acre of ground. ~ Mark Twain

There's a cure for that." Levi hugs me closer. "You need a deep dickin'. A deep, deep Stone dickin'. ~ Nova Raines

I caught you!" he beamed. "See, girls really do throw themselves at me. Hey, guys!" His voice echoed off the carved stone and marble of the empty cavernous space. "Oh, come on. I save the girl and no one's around to see it?"
"Sorry about that," I said. "But thanks."
"I don't mind. I'm a contact sport kinda guy. ~ A&E Kirk

Students and scholars of all kinds and of every age aim, as a rule, only at information, not insight. They make it a point of honour to have information about everything, every stone, plant, battle, or experiment and about all books, collectively and individually. It never occurs to them that information is merely a means to insight, but in itself is of little or no value. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

We read the Golden Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses. And then we come across another of God's teachings on morality: if a man discovers on his wedding night that his bride is not a virgin, he must stone her to death on her father's doorstep (Deuteronomy 22:13-21). ~ Sam Harris

A diamond is just another stone to one who is ignorant of its value. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

But she told me I was like water..Water can carve its way through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path. ~ Arthur Golden

The average ancient forager could turn a flint stone into a spear point within minutes. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

From far below mounted the clink and tinkle of distant masonry work, and a sudden train passed between gardens, and a heraldic butterfly volant en arrière, sable, a bend gules, traversed the stone parapet, and John Shade took a fresh card. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

The convention that there were two sides to every story eliminated the third and fourth and fifth sides. Even dividing the past two and a half million years into the "Neolithic" (the new stone age) and the "Paleolithic" (the old stone age) was reductionist. "Write this down," he said. "Dichotomies are for idiots. ~ Marilyn Johnson

She was stone cold and hard as fuck. And that's when I knew, she was a ride or die chick. The Letty to my Dom. I ~ A. Zavarelli

My father's body lies in a stone tomb high on a hill. People walk by, pause, think their own thoughts about him and move on, back to their own lives. I can never move on. He is everywhere. ~ Patti Davis

Cheat propped his elbows on his knees and gazed up at Kestrel. He scrutinized her: the long, loosely clasped hands, the folds of her dress. Kestrel's clothes had mysteriously appeared in the suite's wardrobe, probably while she had slept, and she was glad. The dueling ensemble had served well enough, but wearing a dress fit for society made Kestrel feel ready for different kinds of battle.
"Where is Arin?" Cheat said.
"In the mountains."
"Doing what?"
"I don't know. I imagine that, since the Valorian reinforcements will come through the mountain pass, he is analyzing its values and drawbacks as a battleground."
Cheat gave her a gleeful smirk. "Does it bother you, being a traitor?"
"I don't see how I am."
"You just confirmed that the reinforcements will come through the pass. Thank you."
"It's hardly worth thanking me," she said. "Almost every useful ship in the empire has been sent east, which means there is no other way into the city. Anyone with brains could figure that out, which is why Arin is in the mountains, and you are here."
A flush began to build under Cheat's skin. He said, "My feet are dusty."
Kestrel had no idea how to respond to that.
"Wash them," he said.
"What?"
He took off his boots, stretched out his legs, and leaned back against the bench.
Kestrel, who had been quite still, became stone.
"It's Herrani custom for the lady of the house to wash the feet of special guests," said Cheat.< ~ Marie Rutkoski

And I came home
 Like a stone 
And I fell heavy into your arms
 These days of darkness
 which we've known
Will blow away with this new sun

 And I'll kneel down
wait for now
 And I'll kneel down 
know my ground 

And I will wait I will wait for you 
And I will wait I will wait for you ~ Mumford And Sons

Five years ago I was a four-stone apology - today I am two separate gorillas. ~ Vivian Stanshall

I believe that as the universe empties into nothingness, past and future will smack together in the last swirl around the drain. I believe this is how Thomas Stone materialized in my life. If that's not the explanation, then I must invoke a disinterested God who leaves us to our own devices, neither causing nor preventing tornadoes or pestilence, but a God who will now and then stick his thumb on the spinning wheel so that a father who put a continent between himself and his sons should find himself in the same room as one of them. ~ Abraham Verghese

I have no beginning nor an end,
I have no mother nor a friend.
Seldom do I give you warning or fear,
but when you think of me, you shall shed a tear.
So fair and just I'm known,
Like the wind and air that you cannot own,
On and on I shall continue,
When your heart hardens to a stone ~ Weina Dai Randel

God grant that by my persevering labours I may bring a little stone to the frail and ill-assured edifice of our knowledge of those deep mysteries of Life and Death where all our intellects have so lamentably failed. ~ Louis Pasteur

Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul. The change in the wizard's voice was astounding. Suddenly it became menacing, powerful, harsh as stone. A shadow seemed to pass over the high sun, and the porch for a moment grew dark. All trembled, and the Elves stopped their ears. 'Never before has any voice dared to utter words of that tongue in Imladris, Gandalf the Grey,' said Elrond, as the shadow passed and the company breathed once more. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The days passed.
Viveca waited. Waited and slept. Every morning when she woke up, she felt a little brighter. She felt stronger, and when she caught her reflection in the mirror, she looked younger. And the hands of the clock kept on moving backwards, and in the end Viveca began to suspect what was happening in this house of stone:
Time was moving backwards! ~ Johan Theorin

The new Episcopalian and Catholic liturgies include a segment called "passing the peace." Many things can go wrong here. I know of one congregation in New York which fired its priest because he insisted on their passing the peace- which involves nothing more than shaking hands with your neighbors in the pew. The men and women of this small congregation had limits to their endurance; passing the peace was beyond their limits. They could not endure shaking hands with people to whom they bore lifelong grudges. They fired the priest and found a new one sympathetic to their needs" Anne Dillard- Teaching a Stone to Talk- An Expedition to the Pole ~ Anne Dillard

Pop culture. Nobody does bullshit better than us. Right? China took over manufacturing. And the Middle East has us on fossil fuels. That's just geography and politics. We're a nation of whacko immigrants. Scavengers and con men. We crossed the ocean on faith, stole some land and stone-cold made up a whole country out of nothing but balls and bullshit. Superhero comics got invented by crazy genius Jews who showed up and revamped the refugee experience into a Man of Steel sent from Krypton with a secret identity. ~ Damon Suede

His months of teaching experience were now a lost age of youth and innocence. He could no longer sit in his office at Fort McNair, look out over the elm trees and the golf course, and encompass the world within "neat, geometric patterns" that fit within equally precise lectures. Policy planning was a very different responsibility, but explaining just how was "like trying to describe the mysteries of love to a person who has never experienced it."

There was, however, an analogy that might help. "I have a largish farm in Pennsylvania."...it had 235 acres, on each of which things were happening. Weekends, in theory, were days of rest. But farms defied theory:

Here a bridge is collapsing. No sooner do you start to repair it than a neighbor comes to complain about a hedge row which you haven't kept up half a mile away on the other side of the farm. At that very moment your daughter arrives to tell you that someone left the gate to the hog pasture open and the hogs are out. On the way to the hog pasture, you discover that the beagle hound is happily liquidating one of the children's pet kittens. In burying the kitten you look up and notice a whole section of the barn roof has been blown off and needs instant repair. Somebody shouts from the bathroom window that the pump has stopped working, and there's no water in the house. At that moment, a truck arrives with five tons of stone for the lane. And as you stand there hopelessly, wondering which of these crises ~ John Lewis Gaddis

You know, when most girls say they want a big rock, they don't mean, you know, literally a big rock."
"Very amusing, my sarcastic friend. It's not a rock, precisely. All Shadowhunters have a witchlight rune-stone. ~ Cassandra Clare

There's a flame of magic inside every stone & every flower, every bird that sings & every frog that croaks. There's magic in the trees & the hills & the river & the rocks, in the sea & the stars & the wind, a deep, wild magic that's as old as the world itself. It's in you too, my darling girl, and in me, and in every living creature, be it ever so small. Even the dirt I'm sweeping up now is stardust. In fact, all of us are made from the stuff of stars. ~ Kate Forsyth

No, we never did go back anywhere. Not to Heidelberg, not to Hamelin, not to Verona, not to Mont Majour - not so much as to Carcassonne itself. We talked of it, of course, but I guess Florence got all she wanted out of one look at a place. She had the seeing eye. I haven't, unfortunately, so that the world is full of places to which I want to return - towns with the blinding white sun upon them; stone pines against the blue of the sky; corners of gables, all carved and painted with stags and scarlet flowers and crow-stepped gables with the little saint at the top; and grey and pink palazzi and walled towns a mile or so back from the sea, on the Mediterranean, between Leghorn and Naples. ~ Ford Madox Ford

Then I went in and shot the televisor, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little, but myself always going back, going back, hoping and waiting ~ Ray Bradbury

They sat like this for a long, long time. Until the air grew cold and the stone tiles icy, and until Dan's body protested with stiffness and increasing aches. Sitting, in silence, just holding, and unable to make sence, when the only thing that made sense was the touch. ~ Aleksandr Voinov

They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing - oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a creek stink rising from the deep pool under the willow tree where a wheat sack of new kittens had been drowned, and their tiny terrible struggling had shot like an electric current through the confusion of muddy water and up the arm of the person who had tied the stone around the mouth of the sack and thrust it into the water; and the culprit had not been able to brush away the current; it penetrated her body and made her heart beat with fear and pity. I was the culprit. ~ Janet Frame

I want to win a Grammy. I want to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. I want to be a musical guest on 'Saturday Night Live.' And I want to play arenas and have tons of people watching me. ~ Cheyenne Kimball

As he rowed the launch toward Wensan's ship, which was Herrani-made and studded with Valorian cannon, Arin remembered the exhaustion of that work, but also how it had corded his muscles until the ache in his arms became stone. He was grateful to the Valorians for having made him strong. If he was strong enough, he might live through this night. If he lived, he could reclaim the shreds of who he had been, and explain himself to Kestrel in a way she would understand.
She sat silent next to him in the launch. The other Herrani at the oars watched as she lifted her bound hands to tug at the black cloth covering her hair. It was an awkard business. It was also necessary, since a new twist in the plan called for Kestrel to be seen and recognized.
The Herrani watched her struggle. They watched Arin drop an oar in its lock to offer a hand. She flinched hard enough that her shifted weight shook the boat It was only a slight tremor along wood, but they all felt it.
Shame ate into his gut.
Kestrel pulled the cloth from her head. Even though clouds swelled in the sky, swallowing the moon and deepening the dark around them, Kestrel's hair and pale skin seemed to glow. It looked like she was lit from within.
It wasn't something Arin could bear to see. He returned to the oars and rowed.
Arin knew, far better than any of the ten Herrani in the launch, that Kestrel could be devious. That he shouldn't trust her plan any more than he should have fallen for her ploy ~ Marie Rutkoski

The obvious question is, what are the "conditions to which presumably we are genetically adapted"? As it turns out, what Donaldson assumed in 1919 is still the conventional wisdom today: our genes were effectively shaped by the two and a half million years during which our ancestors lived as hunters and gatherers prior to the introduction of agriculture twelve thousand years ago. This is a period of time known as the Paleolithic era or, less technically, as the Stone Age, because it begins with the development of the first stone tools. It constitutes more than 99.5 percent of human history - more than a hundred thousand generations of humanity living as hunter-gatherers, compared with the six hundred succeeding generations of farmers or the ten generations that have lived in the industrial age.
It's not controversial to say that the agricultural period - the last .5 percent of the history of our species - has had little significant effect on our genetic makeup. What is significant is what we ate during the two and a half million years that preceded agriculture - the Paleolithic era. The question can never be answered definitively, because this era, after all, preceded human record-keeping. The best we can do is what nutritional anthropologists began doing in the mid-1980s - use modern-day hunter-gatherer societies as surrogates for our Stone Age ancestors. ~ Gary Taubes

Even a stone is not the same as any other stone.
There is no shape to anything except the shape it has.
Every name we give ourselves is wrong.
Our dreams are more true than our waking. ~ Naomi Alderman

I'm erased. I'm gone. I'm nothing. And then the world is free to flow into me like water into an empty bowl ... . And ... I see. I hear. But not with eyes and ears. I'm not outside my world anymore, and I'm not really inside it either. The thing is, there's no difference between me and the universe. The boundary is gone. I am it and it is me. I am a stone, a cactus thorn. I am rain. I like that most of all, being rain. ~ Jerry Spinelli

Jerusalem above is a city whose builder and maker is God. Every grace, yea, every degree of grace, is a stone in that building, the topstone whereof is laid in glory, where saints shall more plainly see, how God was not only Founder to begin, but Benefactor also to finish the same. The glory of the work shall not be crumbled and piece-mealed out, some to God and some to the creature, but all entirely paid in to God, and he acknowledged all in all. ~ William Gurnall

Standing there, chisel and mallet in hand, gazing at the statue that was his vision in stone, was a moment when Richard could savor the supreme achievement of having his creation exist exactly as he had originally conceived it. For this singular moment in time, it was complete, and it was his alone. ~ Terry Goodkind

Pirate and Osbie Feel are leaning on their roof-ledge, a magnificent sunset across and up the winding river, the imperial serpant, crowds of factories, flats, parks, smoky spires and gables, incandescent sky casting downward across the miles of deep streets and roofs cluttering and sinuous river Thames a drastic strain of burnt orange, to remind a visitor of his mortal transience here, to seal or empty all the doors and windows in sight to his eyes that look only for a bit of company, a word or two in the street before he goes up to the soap-heavy smell of the rented room and the squares of coral sunset on the floor-boards - an antique light, self-absorbed, fuel consumed in the metered winter holocaust, the more distant shapes among the threads or sheets of smoke now perfect ash ruins of themselves, nearer windows, struck a moment by the sun, not reflecting at all but containing the same destroying light, this intense fading in which there is no promise of return, light that rusts the government cars at the curbsides, varnishes the last faces hurrying past the shops in the cold as if a vast siren had finally sounded, light that makes chilled untraveled canals of many streets, and that fills with the starlings of London, converging by millions to hazy stone pedestals, to emptying squares and a great collective sleep. They flow in rings, concentric rings on the radar screens. The operators call them 'angels. ~ Thomas Pynchon

If you really truly want to know, I've thought if I was ever free someday, I might discover I've held my tears so long that I can't cry anymore, that I'm a dry stone and nothing can ever be wrung from me. ~ Dean Koontz

But the boy protected Yorda from the shadows-that-walk-alone. He took her hand, defended her, swung his thin arm, and fought with his tiny frame, driving them back. If the shades dragged her into their realm, she would once again become a prisoner, and the boy would turn to stone, a sad adornment in the castle. Yorda knew this. But the boy did not
even as he did not know that Yorda was the property of the queen of the castle
and he protected her. ~ Miyuki Miyabe

And that touched off something else ... old sorrows, good friends gone down into the earth. Sometimes I picture death as a wide stone stair-case, filled with a silent procession of those being led away. ~ Sue Grafton

However complicated you think it is, everything is always more complicated than that.
There are no shortcuts. Not to understanding and not to knowledge. You can't put anyone into a box.
Listen, even a stone isn't the same as any other stone, so I don't know where you all think you get off labeling humans with simple words and thinking you know everything you need.
But most people can't live that way, even some of the time. They say: only exceptional people can cross the borders. The truth is: anyone can cross, everyone has it in them. But only exceptional people can bear to look it in the eye. ~ Naomi Alderman, The Power

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone. ~ Cormac McCarthy

The love of a dog for his master is notorious; in the agony of death he has been known to caress his master, and everyone has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator; this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life. ~ Charles Darwin

Hence it is truly said of heaven 'in heaven there is no ownership. If any there took upon him to call anything his own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell and become an evil spirit.'4 But it is also said 'To him that overcometh I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.'5 What can be more a man's own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? ~ C.S. Lewis

Nothing ends. There is matter and there is energy, and some believe these two the only things in existence. But a third exists. It infuses both matter and energy, and yet also stands alone. Let us call it potential. Only in the realm of potential can we act, to effect changes upon all existence. Indeed, it is the realm in which we live, we living things, in our stubborn battle with success and failure.

Yet the truth remains. Of the two, success and failure, only one ends the game.

Now, poet, I see the shock writ deep upon your lined face, and yet it must be clear to you, even in this moment of despair, that love was at the heart of this tale, and now we must once more settle back and take breath, steadying ourselves for what is still to come.

The warriors wallow in what they will, in all that they make of the world, which is little more than destruction and suffering. Recall the child with the stone, on her knees in the grass, a boy's crushed face beneath her? Such is the glory of the belligerent.

Revel in it, if you're of the mind to.

What comes next, my friend, is entirely another kind of glory.

What is the secret of sorcery? It is potential. Now then, on the dawn of magic's burgeoning, let us see what they make of it. ~ Steven Erikson

Joanna. Remember Joanna. Francie could never forget her. From that time on, remembering the stoning women, she hated women. She feared them for their devious ways, she mistrusted their instincts. She began to hate them for this disloyalty and their cruelty toward each other. Of all the stone-throwers, not one had dared to speak a word for the girl for fear that she would be tarred with Joanna's brush ... Most women had one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. ~ Betty Smith

I swallowed back a wave of concern as her focus jumped from my face to the indigo jewel at my chest. The blue light in the heart of the jewel glowed only faintly. A yank on the braided chain made me lurch forward and I heard Vada cry out in pain. When I looked, the vampiress was cupping her hand as if it hurt. I then understood what had happened: she had attempted to grab the enchanted gemstone and it had shocked her in the process. I flashed an accusatory glare at Vallatrece.

"Do you mean to steal from me?"

"Apparently no. It seems the stone has chosen you."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"I'm not surprised."

"Well, it's mine - that I do know. You can't take it from me. No one can."

"How many have tried?"

I refused an answer to the question. My silence was undaunting.

"Where did you get that pretty trinket anyway? Who gave it to you?"

"No one gave it to me; I found it."

Vallatrece scrunched up her face, communicating that she didn't believe me.

"And now that I have it," I continued, "I no longer require your services."

"You no longer require my services? Is that so?" Again, her cheeks dimpled with amusement at my words.

"Yes, it is so. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

You get all squeezed up inside, like the days were carved in stone. You get all wired up inside, and it's bad to be alone. You can go out, you can take a ride. And when you get out on your own,
You get all smoothed out inside. And it's good to be alone. ~ Neil Peart Face Up

Pastor Jón: God has the virtue that one can locate Him anywhere at all, in anything at all.

Embi: In a nail, for instance?

Pastor Jón, verbatim: In school debates the question was sometimes put whether God was not incapable of creating a stone so heavy that He couldn't lift it. Often I think the Almighty is like a snow bunting abandoned in all weathers. Such a bird is about the weight of a postage stamp. Yet he does not blow away when he stands in the open in a tempest. Have you ever seen the skull of a snow bunting? He wields this fragile head against the gale, with his beak to the ground, wings folded close to his sides and his tail pointing upwards; and the wind can get no hold on him, and cleaves. Even in the fiercest squalls the bird does not budge. He is becalmed. Not a single feather stirs.

Embi: How do you know the bird is the Almighty, and not the wind?

Pastor Jón: Because the winter storm is the most powerful force in Iceland, and the snow bunting is the feeblest of all God's conceptions. ~ Halldor Laxness

Traditional laws and cultural norms are flimsy mantles of power and influence. Democracy, however, when it is truly exercised, is a stone fortress that cannot be surmounted, blown asunder, or burrowed under. ~ J.R. Ward

I left Kiki in the yard, and fetched my pick and brushes.
She lifted her leg and I dislodged the stone then pulled the shedding blade through her copper hair. After a while, I removed my cloak. When I finished, clumps of horse hair clung to my sweaty clothes.
You're beautiful and I need a bath, I said to her. Pasture or stall?
Stall. Nap time.
And what about your snooze before I groomed you?
Pre nap. ~ Maria V. Snyder

I never wanted to be a model. My modelling career was nothing but a stepping stone to my acting career and that's all I ever saw it as. A pointless rock in the river that has to be stepped on in order to get to the meaningful oasis of acting. ~ Halle Berry

I don't remember much about what he said because my head was trying to deal with that one word" the future! He kept using it ... " our future" "the country's future", "a wonderful future of peace and prosperity." What does he really mean, I keep asking myself. Why does my heart go hard and tight as a stone when he says it? I look around me in the location at the men and women who went out into that wonderful future before me. What do I see? Happy and contented shareholders in this in this exciting enterprise called the Republic of South Africa? No. I see a generation of tired, defeated men and women crawling back to their miserable little pondoks at the end of a day's work for the white baas or madam. And those are the lucky ones. They've at least got work. Most of them are just sitting around wasting away their lives while they wait helplessly for a miracle to feed their families, a miracle that never comes. ~ Athol Fugard

When, after a long life, it falls out
That he takes on a form he had sought
And every word carved in stone
Grows its hoarfrost, what then? Torches
Of Dionysian choruses in the dark mountains
From when he comes. And half of the sky
With its snaky clouds. A mirror before him.
In the mirror the already severed, perishing
Thing.
~ Czeslaw Milosz

All good writing is built one good line at a time. You build a novel the same way you do a pyramid. One word, one stone at a time, underneath a full moon while the fingers bleed. ~ Kate Braverman

Honor is like the eye, which cannot suffer the least impurity without damage. It is a precious stone, the price of which is lessened by a single flaw. ~ Jacques-Benigne Bossuet

As with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone. ~ Andy Goldsworthy

Pick up a stone that feels good to you and is small enough to hold in one hand. Consider how long that stone has been around and what enormous pressure it has experienced. Draw strength from its long history. ~ Mary Anne Radmacher

Till she seemed to swoon, gradually her mind went, and she passed away, everything in her was melted down and fluid, and she lay still, become contained by him, sleeping in him as lightning sleeps in a pure, soft stone. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Yet what moved Our Blessed Lord to invective was not badness but just such self-righteousness as this…He said that the harlots and the Quislings would enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the self-righteous and the smug. Concerning all those who endowed hospitals and libraries and public works, in order to have their names graven in stone before their fellow men, He said, "Amen I say to you, they have received their reward" (Matt. 6:2). They wanted no more than human glory, and they got it. Never once is Our Blessed Lord indignant against those who are already, in the eyes of society, below the level of law and respectability. He attacked only the sham indignation of those who dwelt more on the sin than the sinner and who felt pleasantly virtuous, because they had found someone more vicious than they. He would not condemn those whom society condemned; his severe words were for those who had sinned and had not been found out…He would not add His burden of accusation to those that had already been hurled against the winebibbers and the thieves, the cheap revolutionists, the streetwalkers, and the traitors. They were everybody's target, and everybody knew that they were wrong…And the people who chose to make war against Our Lord were never those whom society had labeled as sinners. Of those who sentenced Him to death, none had ever had a record in the police court, had ever been arrested, was ever commonly known to be fallen or weak. But among his friends, who sorrowed at His deat ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Beyond this point on the river Cambridge became a kind of miniature Venice, its river water lapping up against the ancient stone of college walls, here mottled and reddened brick, there white stone. Stained, lichened, softened by water light. Here the river became a great north-south tunnel, a gothic castle from the river, flanked by locked iron gates, steps leading nowhere, labyrinths, trapdoors, landing stages where barges had unloaded their freight: crates of fine wines, flour, oats, candles, fine meats carried into the damp darkness of college cellars. ~ Rebecca Stott

He froze, becoming stone still. As the hover climbed the hill to the palace, his shoulders sank, and he returned his gaze to the window. "She's my alpha," he murmured, with a haunting sadness in his voice.
Alpha.
Cress leaned forward, propping her elbows on her knees, "Like the star?"
"What star?"
She stiffened, instantly embarrassed, and scooted back from him again. "Oh. Um. In a constellation, the brightest star is called the alpha. I thought maybe you meant that she's ... like ... your brightest star." Looking away, she knotted her hands in her lap, aware that she was blushing furiously now and this beast of a man was about to realize what an over-romantic sap she was.
But instead of sneering or laughing, Wolf sighed, "Yes," he said, his gaze climbing up to the full moon that had emerged in the blue evening sky. "Exactly like that. ~ Marissa Meyer

How should Spring bring forth a garden on hard stone? Become earth, that you may grow flowers of many colors. For you have been heart-breaking rock. Once, for the sake of experiment, be earth! ~ Rumi

Is the NAFTA a stepping stone toward the New World Order? Absolutely! ~ Kent Hovind

The real heroes are those who rebuild their lives using adversity as a stepping stone to greatness in the midst of the chaos life has thrown at them. ~ Nikki Rowe

The interplay between farmers and the elements was a poem without words, the echo which would always return to him.
The air could hold the "breeze of the rain" or the "wind of warmth" to the discerning nose.
The stone carved its memory deep into the hands that chiseled it.
Fire was life in the hearth which was the center of home.
Water introduced itself to us from its most natural source in streams and wells. ~ John O'Donohue

The snake began to unweave itself from the rug again, only this time Ender did not hesitate. He stepped on the head of the snake and crushed it under his foot. It writhed and twisted under him, and in response he twisted and ground it deeper into the stone floor. Finally it was still. Ender picked it up and shook it, until it unwove itself and the pattern in the rug was gone. Then, still dragging the snake behind him, he began to look for a way out. ~ Orson Scott Card

Twilight drops her curtain down, and pins it with a star. ~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

Turn the anger of the Almighty against the godless Turks and Barbarians who despise Christ the Lord ... In the royal city of the east, they have slain the successor of Constantine and his people, desecrated the temples of the Lord, defiled the noble church of Justinian with their Mohometan abominations. Each success, will only be a stepping stone until he has mastered all the Western Monarchs, overthrow the Christian Faith, and imposed the law of his false prophet on the whole world ~ Pope Pius II

It was like a lucky pebble kept in my pocket that got so shined up from rubbing against the denim that no one could tell it had ever been an ordinary stone. ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard

Lada made her face stone, her heart a mountain. A mountain that would never be pierced to let cold, clear water flow. "Nothing holds me here. ~ Kiersten White

You can say anything with a Post-It.
I'm not entirely sure why that is.
Maybe the friendliness of the squares makes it easier. A square is nicely compact and less intimidating than a full page.
And they come in cheerful colors. Non-white paper is kind of inherently festive.
Or maybe paper that sticks feels more important than paper that can blow away.
(Though you can move them, if you need to put them somewhere else.)
They might not be as lasting as words carved in stone, but Post-It thoughts will stay.
For awhile, at least. ~ Erin Morgenstern

In order to comprehend the beauty of a Japanese garden, it is necessary to understand - or at least to learn to understand - the beauty of stone. ~ Lafcadio Hearn

It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.
Wasn't it, after all, a kind of life?
And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human. ~ Nora Roberts

You can boil your life down to a single suitcase, if you desperately have to. Ask yourself what you really need, and it won't be what you imagine - you will easily toss aside unfinished work, and bills, and your daily calendar to make room for the pair of flannel pajamas you wear when it rains; and the stone your child gave you that is shaped like a heart; and the battered paperback you revisit every April because it was what you were reading the first time you fell in love. It turns out that what's important is not everything that you've accumulated all these years, but those few things you can carry with you. ~ Jodi Picoult

He had forgotten the sharp taste of stone dust that hung around the broken village houses, the dead skinny donkeys' smell and the dead wretched goats' smell, the broken terraces' smell and smashed olive groves' smell, the sour stench of high explosive, the heavy odour of spilled olive oil, all melding into a single smell he came to associate with human beings in trouble. ~ Richard Flanagan

At every moment, each person has the freedom to choose a different path, thereby changing the trajectory of his life. Nothing is set in stone. ~ Lauren Miller