Quotes about shell (279 quotes, page 3)

“Some years ago, the planning group at Shell surveyed 30 companies that had been in business for more than 75 years. What impressed us most was their ability to live in harmony with the business environment, to switch from a survival mode when times were turbulent to a self-development mode when the pace of change was slow. And this pattern rang a familiar bell because Shell’s history is similarly replete with switches from expansion to self-preservation and back again to growth.”

Arie de Geus (1930) Dutch businessman

Arie P. de Geus, " Planning as learning https://hbr.org/1988/03/planning-as-learning/ar/1." Harvard Business Review, March/April 1988: 70-74.

History , Business , Change , Time

“Houses, are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition. I admit, doubtfully, as exceptions, snail-shells and caravans. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting-place.”

Arthur Ransome (1884–1967) English author and journalist

Racundra's First Cruise (Chapter 1), 1923

Youth , World , Idea , Thinking

“The immigrant who comes to us from a life of oppression must be made to realize that he assumes an obligation; otherwise, he is not wanted. Either he must live with us in the light of the highest citizenship, or else society will impose upon him the very restrictions he has sought to escape by coming here. It is the wolf in sheep's clothing who has cast a slur on immigration. There are many who land here who really never get to America. They become Americanized in everything but in heart. To teach the foreigner English is a necessary step; but it is not an end in itself; it is merely one of the implements of Americanization. This may hold diners peoples together for a while, just as economic opportunity and financial reward may cover their isolation. But unless, in their living—rather than in then livelihood—they daily exercise the principles on which the Republic rests, we have among us a shell of citizenship liable to explode at the least upsetting of economic balance, rather than the vital spirit which is at the basis of American life.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Whose Country Is This? (1921)

Life , People , Exercises , Light

“Jock with his crutches beats the time;
The gunner, with his head close-bound,
Listen with puzzled, patient smile:
(Shell shocked-he cannot hear a sound).
The others join in from their beds,
And send the chorus rolling round.”

Eva Dobell (1876–1963) British poet

Unsourced, In A Soldiers' Hospital II: Gramophone Tunes

Smile , Time

“Scilla, a Sicilian painter, published in l670, a work on the fossils of Calabria, illustrated by good engravings. This was written in Latin, with great spirit and elegance, and it proves the continued ascendency of dogmas often refuted; for we find the wit and eloquence of the author chiefly directed against the obstinate incredulity of naturalists, as to the organic nature of fossil shells.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 32
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Nature

“Despite a number of near misses, I came through the war unscathed. In Tunisia a shell hit my vehicle but without harm to me, and in Sicily an exploding mine blew up my vehicle, but I was thrown clear. On the Roer River in Germany, just as I got out of my Jeep and entered a company command post, a mortar shell struck my vehicle. In the Remagen bridgehead on the Rhine a shell demolished a latrine moments after I had departed. Somehow none of the enemy shells had my number.”

William Westmoreland book A Soldier Reports

A Soldier Reports (1976)

War

“The Syrian Ba’ath Party claims to have 2.3 million members — but most of that consists of people who need membership to get a job or be promoted. Leaving aside a few thousand top cadre (mostly from the Alawite minority to which Assad belongs), the Ba’ath Party is no more than an empty shell.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Assad must (still) go" http://nypost.com/2012/12/06/assad-must-still-go/, New York Post (December 6, 2012).
New York Post

People

“Defiling their shadows, infidels, accursed of Allah, with fingernails that are foot-long daggers, with mouths agape like cauldrons full of teeth on the boil, with eyes all fire, shaitans possessed of Iblis, clanking into their wars all linked, like slaves, with iron chains. Murad Bey, the huge, the single-blowed ox-beheader, saw without too much surprise mild-looking pale men dressed in blue, holding guns, drawn up in squares six deep as though in some massed dance depictive of orchard walls. At the corners of the squares were heavy giins and gunners. There did not seem to be many horsemen. Murad said a prayer within, raised his scimitar to heaven and yelled a fierce and holy word. The word was taken up, many thousandfold, and in a kind of gloved thunder the Mamelukes threw themselves on to the infidel right and nearly broke it. But the squares healed themselves at once, and the cavalry of the faithful crashed in three avenging prongs along the fire-spitting avenues between the walls. A great gun uttered earthquake language at them from within a square, and, rearing and cursing the curses of the archangels of Islam on to the uncircumcized, they wheeled and swung towards their protective village of Embabeh. There they encountered certain of the blue-clad infidel horde on the flat roofs of the houses, coughing musket-fire at them. But then disaster sang along their lines from the rear as shell after shell crunched and the Mamelukes roared in panic and burden to the screams of their terrified mounts, to whose ears these noises were new. Their rear dissolving, their retreat cut off, most sought the only way, that of the river. They plunged in, horseless, seeking to swim across to join the inactive horde of Ibrahim, waiting for. action that could now never come. Murad Bey, with such of his horsemen as were left, yelped off inland to Gizeh.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

Men , War , Faith , Way

“The Panama Papers opened yet another window on the global system of financial corruption, showing how political leaders and businesses use shell companies in secrecy havens like the British Virgin Islands and many US states to evade taxes and hide corruption and other crimes. Yet the system of corruption depends on another factor beyond secrecy, one that is perhaps even more important: impunity. Impunity means that the rich and powerful escape from punishment even when their malfeasance is in full view.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

"The age of impunity," The Boston Globe, May 13, 2016 http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/05/12/the-age-impunity/LHBxamqFENCs3W6lvWnCIJ/story.html

Business , Dependency

“When the sergeant had finally got his rounds on target and I had commended to him a thorough review of the mortar manual, I climbed down the ladder and into the courtyard just in time to rendezvous with a small German shell which exploded a few yards away, raising a cloud of dust and sending me rolling with a small fragment lodged in the sitzplatz. When I opened my eyes, there was my bug-eyed sergeant hanging out the window of the belfry calling to his radio operator, "Joe, I think the Krauts got the old man in the tail."”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

That is how I got my Purple Heart.
Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 94

Thinking , Time , Heart

“History is a set of nested resonances with each epoch being shorter than the one that preceded it. This event horizon is like a series of ghost horizons, and once you enter into history, you enter into the outer shell of the temporal field of the attractor or the concrescence.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Approaching Timewave Zero Magical Blend Magazine (November 1994) http://www.mindroots.com/universe/timewavezero.htm

History

“Instead of speeding up growth, colonial activities such as mining and cash-crop farming speeded up the decay of “traditional” African life. In many parts of the continent, vital aspects of culture were adversely affected, nothing better was substituted, and only a lifeless shell was left.”

Walter Rodney book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa

Source: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972), p. 366.

Life , Parting , Speed

“Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

Sand and Foam (1926)

“As some of us noted before Saddam Hussein’s 2003 fall, banning the Ba’ath as such was a mistake – for, in a sense, the Ba’ath had also been a victim of Saddam’s savage rule. The Ba’ath, modeled on European fascist parties, was never a democratic movement. Yet, before Saddam turned it into an empty shell to be filled with his personality cult, it had been a genuine political movement, representing a significant segment of Iraqi opinion. It had started as a predominantly Shiite party seeking to downplay sectarianism by promoting pan-Arab ideas. Saddam turned it into a sectarian party, first dominated by the Arab Sunni minority and eventually by his Tikriti clan. The wisest course would’ve been to let those Ba’athists who had been purged, imprisoned and exiled under Saddam to reclaim their party and rebuild it with full respect for Iraq’s new democratic and pluralist political system. Those Ba’athists who committed crimes were known to all and could’ve been blacklisted and tried as individuals. The blanket ban suddenly transformed some 1.4 million civil servants, including tens of thousands of teachers and medical doctors and some half a million military personnel, into pariahs simply because they’d been nominal Ba’ath members. Yet most had joined simply to protect their careers under a brutal regime.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Iraq: Reconciling with the Ba'ath" http://nypost.com/2008/01/16/iraq-reconciling-with-the-baath/, New York Post (January 16, 2008).
New York Post

Idea , Sense , Teachers , Personality

“Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

Love , Truth , Faith , Way

“Shells with lip, or tooth, or bleeding gum,
Tell-tale shells, and shells that whisper 'Come',
Shells that stammer, blush, and yet are dumb – "
"O let me hear!”

Thomas Sturge Moore (1870–1944) British playwright, poet and artist

"A Duet", line 5; from The Sea is Kind (London: Grant Richards, 1914) p. 78.

“There is an inside and an outside to every form. When they are in special accord, as for instance a nut in its shell or a child in the womb, or in the structure of shells or crystals, or when one senses the architecture of bones in the human figure, then I am most drawn to the effect of light. Every shadow cast by the sun from an ever-varying angle reveals the harmony of the inside to outside. Light gives full play to our tactile perceptions through the experience of our eyes, and the vitality of forms is revealed by the interplay between space and volume”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

Extract from Barbara Hepworth: Carvings and Drawings, (from Chapter 1: The excitement of discovering the nature of carving, 1903-1930), with an introduction by Herbert Read, London, 1952
1947 - 1960

Sense , Light , Sun

“We were huddled in the prow of our assault craft. German shells landed in the water, but you didn't hear any noise -- just white geysers of water going up alongside. Other small ships were swamped, and several of the tanks that accompanied us foundered. There were quite a few helmets floating around in the water nearby, which increased our apprehension. The Germans were firing from the ridge. I saw the first Americans killed by rifle fire crossing the inundated area. We knew Americans could get wounded, but we didn't know that they could actually expire. We thought that was only going to happen to the enemy. It was rather a sobering sight.”

Larry LeSueur (1909–2003) American journalist

Adam Bernstein. (2003, February 7). Newsman Larry LeSueur Dies: [FINAL Edition]. The Washington Post, p. B.06. Retrieved June 21, 2011, from ProQuest National Newspapers Premier. (Document ID: 284067491), as told by LeSueur to the Washington Post in 1984.

Water

“The concrete shell of this stove would surely crack if its strength were not reinforced with steel rod, wire fabric, or barbed wire. The latter is our choice. We laid continuous strands of barbed wire between the rows of slip form masonry. The thermal expansion rate of concrete is the same as steel up to a temperature comparable to boiling water… Beyond that, steel expands at a faster rate than concrete. At a temperature of about 500 degrees F., the bond between the concrete and steel is destroyed… The type of aggregate in the mix is primarily responsible for this kind of failure.”

Ken Kern American writer

p, 125
Ken Kern's Masonry Stove (1983)

Failure , Water

“What makes the Hohokam noteworthy is the development of irrigation works. The earliest… dates from some 2,000 years ago. …They built dams that redirected the flow of water into irrigation canals, some of them… extending for more than twenty-five miles. …They built flat-topped pyramids and ball courts, where they used rubber balls imported from Central America. The Hohokam may also have been the first to use the technique of etching with acid in their remarkable designs on marine shells.”

Peter Farb (1929–1980) American academic and writer

Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)

Water

“Even an ordinary broken chord is made to disclose rare beauties; we are reminded of the fairies' hazelnuts in which diamonds were concealed but you could break the shell only if your hands were blessed.”

Neville Cardus (1888–1975) English writer

Of Rachmaninoff's playing; Manchester Guardian (1939)

Beauty

“I went home and stayed at Green Meadows. A couple of days later we all went up to Boston and the aircraft landed. I'll never forget it. My dad got out of the aircraft and he really looked super; he was fifty-nine years old at the time. WIth him in the aircaft were a couple of division commanders, including John W. O'Daniel, who had lost his son in the Normandy invasion and who later became my commanding general at the Infantry School at Fort Benning when I went through the basic officers course in 1946. Also aboard was Leon Johnson [USAF], who had been awarded the Medal of Honor for the Ploesti Raid, followed by eight or nine noncoms, not one of whom was wearing less than a Silver Star. All of this was followed by a ticker-tape parade through Boston. That evening my father spoke at the Shell on the Esplanade in Boston. We came home that night quite late and the next morning he came upstairs and woke me up and said we were going for breakfast. I ate breakfast with him and then I got on a train and went back to West Point. It was the last time I ever saw him.”

George S. Patton IV (1923–2004) U.S. Army general

Source: The Fighting Pattons (1997) by Brian M. Sobel, p. 33

School , Home , Star , Time

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The chambered Nautilus; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life , Art , Soul , Past

“The Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke M. D.,'… appeared in 1705, containing 'A Discourse of Earthquakes'… His treatise… is the most philosophical production of that age, in regard to the causes of former changes in the organic and inorganic kingdoms of nature. 'However trivial a thing,' he says, 'a rotten shell may appear to some, yet these monuments of nature are more certain tokens of antiquity than coins or medals, since the best of those may be counterfeited or made by art and design, as may also books, manuscripts, and inscriptions, as all the learned are now sufficiently satisfied has often been actually practised,' &c.; 'and though it must be granted that it is very difficult to read them and to raise a chronology out of them, and to state the intervals of the time wherein such or such catastrophes and mutations have happened, yet it is not impossible.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 36
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Books , Age , Art , Nature

“The organization of federal units of black soldiers, comprised of both escaped slaves and free men, was taken as an outrage. It struck a raw nerve, never far off in the southern psyche. Fear of a slave insurrection. The prospect of African American men in blue uniforms was taken as an extreme provocation, so much so that it was proposed in the Confederate congress, and endorsed by General Beauregard, the hero of Fort Sumter, that all Federals captured, black or white, should be summarily executed. This proposal was never adopted, but the Confederate congress did eventually pass, in May 1863, a proclamation instructing President Jefferson Davis to exercise 'full and ample retaliation' against the north for arming black soldiers. Finally, there was simple revenge. The Union army's shelling of Fredericksburg several months before had been a particular sore point, that festered for months as the Confederate army went into winter quarters nearby. One officer, determined to fix the destruction there in his mind's eye, made a special visit to that town one last time before setting out on the road north into Maryland and Pennsylvania.”

Jefferson Davis (1808–1889) President of the Confederate States of America

Andy Hall, "We have received provocation enough..." http://deadconfederates.com/2013/07/01/we-have-received-provocation-enough/ (1 July 2013), Dead Confederates: A Civil War Era Blog.

Men , Fear , Exercises , Revenge

“Sometimes I look at the battered exteriors of apartment buildings in New York and think how these sorry shells have housed such a long procession of styles. The money! The effort! One tenant mirrors everything, the next panels the walls, the third lines them with mylar, the fourth turns to toile de Jouy, the fifth to pegboard or handblocked rice paper. The expensive if often shoddy interiors installed only to be dismantled, the exterior left untouched as it turns yet another shade sootier — this transience seems a fitting emblem for the way we stay up-to-date without ever changing.”

Edmund White (1940) American novelist and LGBT essayist

New York City (p. 260).
States of Desire: Travels in Gay America (1980)

Money , Way , Thinking , Effort

“What was the shell doing,
on the shore? An ear endlessly
drinking?
What? Sound? Silence?
Which came first?
Listen.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Questions"
Later Poems (1983)

Drink , Silence

“To help us to understand three-dimensional spaces, two-dimensional analogies may be very useful… A two-dimensional space of zero curvature is a plane, say a sheet of paper. The two-dimensional space of positive curvature is a convex surface, such as the shell of an egg. It is bent away from the plane towards the same side in all directions. The curvature of the egg, however, is not constant: it is strongest at the small end. The surface of constant positive curvature is the sphere… The two-dimensional space of negative curvature is a surface that is convex in some directions and concave in others, such as the surface of a saddle or the middle part of an hour glass. Of these two-dimensional surfaces we can form a mental picture because we can view them from outside… But… a being… unable to leave the surface… could only decide of which kind his surface was by studying the properties of geometrical figures drawn on it. …On the sheet of paper the sum of the three angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles, on the egg, or the sphere, it is larger, on the saddle it is smaller. …The spaces of zero and negative curvature are infinite, that of positive curvature is finite. …the inhabitant of the two-dimensional surface could determine its curvature if he were able to study very large triangles or very long straight lines. If the curvature were so minute that the sum of the angles of the largest triangle that he could measure would… differ… by an amount too small to be appreciable… then he would be unable to determine the curvature, unless he had some means of communicating with somebody living in the third dimension…. our case with reference to three-dimensional space is exactly similar. …we must study very large triangles and rays of light coming from very great distances. Thus the decision must necessarily depend on astronomical observations.”

Willem de Sitter (1872–1934) Dutch cosmologist

Kosmos (1932)

Communication , Understanding , Decision , Study

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.”

Khalil Gibran book The Prophet

The Prophet (1923)

Pain , Understanding , Sun , Heart

“I think the Canadian people have a right to know: Why, when your primary objective was to get unfettered and secure access into the American Market we didn't get it. Why you didn't put clauses in to protect our social programs in this negotiation we'll have on the definition of subsidies where the heavy weight of the American Republic will be put in against us. Why did that not happen? Why also, did we get a situation where we surrendered our Energy policy to the United States, something which they'd been trying to achieve since 1956? Why did we abandon our farmers? Why did we open our Capital Markets so that a Canadian Bank can be bought up and we don't have reciprocal rights into the American Market at all? And why did you remove any ability to control the Canadian ownership of our businesses? These are questions that Canadians deserve to have an answer to, and we have not had an opportunity in six hours to deal with them in a way that would make you come out of your shell!”

John Turner (1929) 17th Prime Minister of Canada

People , Way , Question , Business

“Writing is a long and lonesome business; back of the problems in thought and composition hover always the awful questions: Is this the page that shows the empty shell? Is it here and now that they find me out?”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The Great Crash, 1929

Introduction, Section I, p. ix
The Great Crash, 1929 (1954 and 1997 https://openlibrary.org/books/OL25728842M/The_Great_Crash_1929)

Question , Business , Problem

“When someone thinks, “I liked his last book, I’ll hope this new one is good” and shells out their hard-earned, I fervently want that person to be thrilled.”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

October 8, 2005 weblog post http://www.maxbarry.com/2005/10/08/news.html#firstreviews

Books , Hope , Thinking , Personality

“The victorious army on the right and on the left departed towards Ajmer… When the crow-faced Hindus began to sound their white shells on the backs of the elephants, you would have said that a river of pitch was flowing impetuously down the face of a mountain of blue… The army of Islam was completely victorious, and a hundred thousand grovelling Hindus swiftly departed to the fire of hell… He destroyed (at Ajmer) the pillars and foundations of the idol temples, and built in their stead mosques and colleges, and the precepts of Islam, and the customs of the law were divulged and established.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Hasan Nizami, Taj-ul-Maasir,about the conquest of Ajmer by Muhammad Ghauri in 1192: E and D, II, pp.214-15. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

Law , Mountain , Hell , Victory

“Yes, this is Europe. The Europe that did not respond to the Serb shelling of Dubrovnik. Or the three-year siege of Sarajevo. The Europe that let Bosnia die.
A new definition of Europe: the place where tragedies don't take place. Wars, genocides — that happened here once, but no longer. It's something that happens in Africa. (Or places in Europe that are not "really" Europe. That is, the Balkans.) Again, perhaps I exaggerate. But having spent a good part of three years, from 1993 to 1996, in Sarajevo, it does not seem to me like an exaggeration at all.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Why Are We In Kosovo?" inThe New York Times Magazine http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E1DA163DF931A35756C0A96F958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all (2 May 1999)

War , Parting

“Fabio Colonna deserves to be distinguished; for, although he gave way to the dogma that all fossil remains were to be referred to the Noachian deluge, he resisted the absurd theory of Stelluti, who taught that fossil wood and ammonites were mere clay, altered into such forms by sulfurous waters and subterranean heat; and he pointed out the different states of shells buried in the strata, distinguishing between, first, the mere mould or impression; secondly, the cast or nucleus; and thirdly, the remains of the shell itself. He had also the merit of being the first to point out, that some of the fossils had belonged to marine, and some to terrestrial testacea.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 31
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1

Way , Water

“There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?”

Wole Soyinka Death and the King's Horseman

Death and the King's Horseman (1975); cited from Six Plays (London: Methuen, 1984) p. 189.

Life , World , Home , Soul

“The Scorpio period of the year (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) is the time when the life force withdraws from all outer forms in nature and is concentrated in the seed. It is striking that the cultural symbol for this time of the year in the United States is the Halloween pumpkin with its insides removed, leaving only an empty shell with a blankly staring face. In fact, the jack-o-lantern is a symbol of death, a symbolic skull with the glimmering remains of the departed life force represented by the candle within it. Traditionally, the Halloween feast (the Eve of All Saints Day) was a time when the dead came back to life and when human beings in the physical body could most immediately contact departed spirits of all kinds, as well as their own patron saints. It is significant that children are allowed at this time to wander out at night, past their usual bed time, and that they are not supposed to go from house to house begging for food until the Sun (the symbol of physical life) has completely set!”

Stephen Arroyo (1946) American astrologer, astrological writer

Astrology Karma & Transformation: The Inner Dimensions of the Birth Chart (1992, ISBN: 0-916360-54-7)

Life , Death , Children , Food

“He demonstrated that many fossil teeth found in Tuscany belonged to a species of shark; and he dissected, for the purpose of comparison, one of these fish recently taken from the Mediterranean. That the remains of shells and marine animals found petrified were not of animal origin was still a favorite dogma of many, who were unwilling to believe that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings long before many of the mountains were formed.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 31
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: The most remarkable work of that period was published by Steno... The treatise bears the quaint title of 'De Solido intra Solidum contento naturaliter (1669,)' by which the author intended to express 'On Gems, Crystals, and organic Petrifactions enclosed within solid Rocks.'... Steno had compared the fossil shells with their recent analogues, and traced the various gradations from the state of mere calcification, when their natural gluten only was lost, to the perfect substitution of stony matter. He demonstrated that many fossil teeth found in Tuscany belonged to a species of shark; and he dissected, for the purpose of comparison, one of these fish recently taken from the Mediterranean. That the remains of shells and marine animals found petrified were not of animal origin was still a favorite dogma of many, who were unwilling to believe that the earth could have been inhabited by living beings long before many of the mountains were formed.

Mountain , Fish , Animals

“Well? I hope the people in the United States are sitting, enjoying this game. Because, they will never see a World Cup semi-final like this. For the rest of their lives. I am shell-shocked!”

Steve McManaman (1972) English footballer

2010s, 2014 FIFA World Cup, Brazil v. Germany (2014)

People , World , Hope , Game

“It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.”

Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937) New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist

Discussing the result of an experiment where about 1 out of 8000 alpha particles were scattered backwards when fired at a thin sheet of metal foil, which led to the discovery of the atomic nucleus, as quoted in Rutherford and the Nature of the Atom (1964) by E. N. da C. Andrade, p. 111, and in Nobel Laureates in chemistry, 1901-1992 http://books.google.com/books?id=jEy67gEvIuMC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA57#v=onepage&q&f=false by Laylin K. James, p. 57
Context: It was quite the most incredible event that has ever happened to me in my life. It was almost as incredible as if you fired a 15-inch shell at a piece of tissue paper and it came back and hit you.

“We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.”

Maya Angelou book A Brave and Startling Truth

A Brave and Startling Truth (1995)

Love , Life , Courage , Loneliness

“If I hadn't been lying in a hole I'd dug with my hands and helmet, that shell would probably have finished me off. The hole was only six or eight inches deep, but that makes an awful lot of difference, and it looked like a canyon.”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

Letter to his brother Jeff from Guadalcanal (28 January 1943); p. 25
To Reach Eternity (1989)
Context: I wasn't hit very badly — a piece of shrapnel went thru my helmet and cut a nice little hole in the back of my head. It didn't fracture the skull and is healed up nicely now. I don't know what happened to my helmet; the shell landed close to me and when I came to, the helmet was gone. The concussion together with the fragment that hit me must have broken the chinstrap and torn it off my head. It also blew my glasses off my face. I never saw them again, either, but I imagine they are smashed to hell. If I hadn't been lying in a hole I'd dug with my hands and helmet, that shell would probably have finished me off. The hole was only six or eight inches deep, but that makes an awful lot of difference, and it looked like a canyon.

Lying

“They are the possessed men who do much of the running of the world, and theirs is the most frightening story that can be imagined. But those who watch the great men do not know that they are shells inhabited by ghosts.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

Source: Archipelago (1979), Chapter Three, Pt. 5, A "ghost story" as narrated in its entirety by a character in the novel in a small ward gathering.
Context: "The perfect ghost story is the story of Possession," he said, "and that is hypnotism from beyond the grave. This is possible since hypnotism is by the will, and the will is immortal. A number of notable men have been possessed, and all of their lives seem to fit a pattern: the inconsequential early years, the hiatus when they stood where Faust stood, and the decision. And then the rise to power and influence and almost universal honor after they have made the deal. But it is not themselves, it is the devils within them that gain these things. They are the possessed men who do much of the running of the world, and theirs is the most frightening story that can be imagined. But those who watch the great men do not know that they are shells inhabited by ghosts."

Men , World , Imagination

“This doctrine, it is true, had been laid down in terms almost equally explicit by Strabo, to explain the occurrence of fossil shells in the interior of continents, and to that geographer, and other writers of antiquity, Hooke frequently refers; but the revival and development of the system was an important step in the progress of modern science.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 38
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: His [Hooke's] principal object was to account for the manner in which shells had been conveyed into the higher parts of 'the Alps, Apennines, and Pyrenean hills, and the interior of continents in general.' These and other appearances, he said, might have been brought about by earthquakes, 'which have turned plains into mountains, and mountains into plains, seas into land, and land into seas, made rivers where there were none before, and swallowed up others that formerly were, &c. &c.; and which, since the creation of the world, have wrought many great changes on the superficial parts of the earth, and have been the instruments of placing shells, bones, plants, fishes, and the like, in those places, where, with much astonishment, we find them.' This doctrine, it is true, had been laid down in terms almost equally explicit by Strabo, to explain the occurrence of fossil shells in the interior of continents, and to that geographer, and other writers of antiquity, Hooke frequently refers; but the revival and development of the system was an important step in the progress of modern science.

Science

“Hooke was aware that the fossil ammonites, nautili, and many other shells and fossil skeletons found in England, were of different species from any then known”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 37
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: Respecting the extinction of species, Hooke was aware that the fossil ammonites, nautili, and many other shells and fossil skeletons found in England, were of different species from any then known; but he doubted whether the species had become extinct, observing that the knowledge of naturalists of all the marine species, especially those inhabiting the deep sea, was very deficient. In some parts of his writings, however, he leans to the opinion that species had been lost; and in speculating on this subject, he even suggests that there might be some connection between the disappearance of certain kinds of animals and plants, and the changes wrought by earthquakes in former ages. Some species, he observes with great sagacity, are peculiar to certain places, and not to be found elsewhere. If, then, such a place had been swallowed up, it is not improbable but that those animate beings may have been destroyed with it; and this may be true both of aerial and aquatic animals: for those animated bodies, whether vegetables or animals, which were naturally nourished or refreshed by the air, would be destroyed by the water, &c.; Turtles, he adds, and such large ammonites as are found in Portland, seem to have been the productions of the seas of hotter countries, and it is necessary to suppose that England once lay under the sea within the torrid zone! To explain this and similar phenomena, he indulges in a variety of speculations concerning changes in the position of the axis of the earth's rotation, a shifting of the earth's center of gravity, 'analogous to the revolutions of the magnetic pole,' &c.; None of these conjectures, however, are proposed dogmatically, but rather in the hope of promoting fresh inquiries and experiments.

“Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.”

Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967) English poet, diarist and memoirist

"Counter-Attack"
The Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918)
Context: Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,— loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.

Hell

“When the first flint, the first shell, was shaped into a weapon, that action shaped man. As he molded and complicated his tools, so they molded and complicated him.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Old Hundredth” p. 162 (originally published in New Worlds Science Fiction #100, November 1960)
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)
Context: When the first flint, the first shell, was shaped into a weapon, that action shaped man. As he molded and complicated his tools, so they molded and complicated him. He became the first scientific animal. And at last, via information theory and great computers, he gained knowledge of all his parts. He formed the Laws of Integration, which reveal all beings as part of a pattern and show them their part in the pattern. There is only the pattern; the pattern is all the universe, creator and created.

“There is, as it were, a degradation a gnostic fall, in thus folding one's wings and going back again into the vulgar shell of one's own individuality. Without grief, which is the string of this venturesome kite, man would soar too quickly and too high, and the chosen souls would be lost for the race, like balloons which, save for gravitation, would never return from the empyrean.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

8 November 1852
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries
Context: My privilege is to be spectator of my life drama, to be fully conscious of the tragi-comedy of my own destiny, and, more than that, to be in the secret of the tragi-comic itself, that is to say, to be unable to take my illusions seriously, to see myself, so to speak, from the theater on the stage, or to be like a man looking from beyond the tomb into existence. I feel myself forced to feign a particular interest in my individual part, while all the time I am living in the confidence of the poet who is playing with all these agents which seem so important, and knows all that they are ignorant of. It is a strange position, and one which becomes painful as soon as grief obliges me to betake myself once more to my own little rôle, binding me closely to it, and warning me that I am going too far in imagining myself, because of my conversations with the poet, dispensed from taking up again my modest part of valet in the piece. Shakespeare must have experienced this feeling often, and Hamlet, I think, must express it somewhere. It is a Doppelgängerei, quite German in character, and which explains the disgust with reality and the repugnance to public life, so common among the thinkers of Germany. There is, as it were, a degradation a gnostic fall, in thus folding one's wings and going back again into the vulgar shell of one's own individuality. Without grief, which is the string of this venturesome kite, man would soar too quickly and too high, and the chosen souls would be lost for the race, like balloons which, save for gravitation, would never return from the empyrean.

Soul

“Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse and hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Charge of the Light Brigade

St. 5
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)

Death , Hell , Horse

“The shell must break before the bird can fly.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate

From The Ancient Sage (1885), line 154

Bird , Flying

“Lister, to his accurate account of British shells, in 1678, added the fossil species,”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 35
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: Dr. Plot, in his 'Natural History of Oxfordshire.' (1677) attributed to a 'plastic virtue latent in the earth' the origin of fossil shells and fishes; and Lister, to his accurate account of British shells, in 1678, added the fossil species, under the appellation of turbinated and bivalve stones. 'Either,' said he, 'these were terriginous, or if otherwise, the animals they so exactly represent have become extinct. This writer appears to have been the first who was aware of the continuity over large districts of the principal groups of strata in the British series, and who proposed the construction of regular geological maps.

“…. Above all, he was ashamed of his world, for the world about him had branded his world as bad, inferior. Moreover, he felt no moral strength or compulsion to defend his world. That in him which had always made him self-conscious was now the bud of a new possible life that was pressing ardently but timidly against the shell of the old to shatter it and be free.”

Richard Wright (1908–1960) African-American writer

The Long Dream (1958)

Life , World

“When a High Explosive shell bursts in fifteen feet and does you no damage, you can bet your sweet life you bear a charmed life and no mistake.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

Letter to Bess Wallace (8 September 1918) https://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/ww1/documents/fulltext.php?documentid=1-15
Context: Now days battles are just sort of a "You shoot up my town and I'll shoot up yours." They say that Americans don't play fair. They shoot 'em up all the time. I hope so because I want to finish this job as soon as possible and begin making an honest living again... Have fired 500 rounds at the Germans, at my command, been shelled, didn't run away thank the Lord and never lost a man. Probably shouldn't have told you but you'll not worry any more if you know I'm in it than if you think I am. Have had the most strenuous work of my life, am very tired but otherwise absolutely in good condition physically mentally and morally... When a High Explosive shell bursts in fifteen feet and does you no damage, you can bet your sweet life you bear a charmed life and no mistake. I didn't have sense enough to know what was going on until the next day and then I was pretty scared. The men think I am not much afraid of shells but they don't know. I was too scared to run and that is pretty scared.

Life

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Book I, ch. 20.
Discourses

“So, it was argued, the Mediterranean had once opened a passage for itself by the Columns of Hercules into the Atlantic, and perhaps the abundance of sea-shells in Africa, near the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, might also be the deposit of some former inland sea, which had at length forced a passage and escaped.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

(1832) Vol.1 Chpt.2, p. 20
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: Strabo,... enters largely, in the Second Book of his Geography, into the opinions of Eratosthenes and other Greeks on one of the most difficult problems in geology, viz., by what causes marine shells came to be plentifully buried in the earth at such great elevations and distances from the sea. He notices, amongst others, the explanation of Xanthus the Lyclian, who said that the seas had once been more extensive, and that they had afterwards been partially dried up, as in his own time many lakes, rivers, and wells in Asia had failed during a season of drought. Treating this conjecture with merited disregard, Strabo passes on to the hypothesis of Strato, the natural philosopher, who had observed that the quantity of mud brought down by rivers into the Euxine was so great, that its bed must be gradually raised, while the rivers still continued to pour in an undiminished quantity of water. He therefore conceived that, originally, when the Euxine was an inland sea, its level had by this means become so much elevated that it burst its barrier near Byzantium, and formed a communication with the Propontis, and this partial drainage had already, he supposed, converted the left side into marshy ground, and that, at last, the whole would be choked up with soil. So, it was argued, the Mediterranean had once opened a passage for itself by the Columns of Hercules into the Atlantic, and perhaps the abundance of sea-shells in Africa, near the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, might also be the deposit of some former inland sea, which had at length forced a passage and escaped.

Sea

“Strabo,… enters largely, in the Second Book of his Geography, into the opinions of Eratosthenes and other Greeks on one of the most difficult problems in geology, viz., by what causes marine shells came to be plentifully buried in the earth at such great elevations and distances from the sea.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

(1832) Vol.1 Chpt.2, p. 20
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: Strabo,... enters largely, in the Second Book of his Geography, into the opinions of Eratosthenes and other Greeks on one of the most difficult problems in geology, viz., by what causes marine shells came to be plentifully buried in the earth at such great elevations and distances from the sea. He notices, amongst others, the explanation of Xanthus the Lyclian, who said that the seas had once been more extensive, and that they had afterwards been partially dried up, as in his own time many lakes, rivers, and wells in Asia had failed during a season of drought. Treating this conjecture with merited disregard, Strabo passes on to the hypothesis of Strato, the natural philosopher, who had observed that the quantity of mud brought down by rivers into the Euxine was so great, that its bed must be gradually raised, while the rivers still continued to pour in an undiminished quantity of water. He therefore conceived that, originally, when the Euxine was an inland sea, its level had by this means become so much elevated that it burst its barrier near Byzantium, and formed a communication with the Propontis, and this partial drainage had already, he supposed, converted the left side into marshy ground, and that, at last, the whole would be choked up with soil. So, it was argued, the Mediterranean had once opened a passage for itself by the Columns of Hercules into the Atlantic, and perhaps the abundance of sea-shells in Africa, near the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, might also be the deposit of some former inland sea, which had at length forced a passage and escaped.

Books , Problem , Sea

“Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson The Charge of the Light Brigade

St. 3
The Charge of the Light Brigade (1854)

Death , Hell

“Every word is an adamantine shell which encloses a great explosive force.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Report to Greco

"Massacre", Ch. 10, p. 88
Report to Greco (1965)
Context: Every word is an adamantine shell which encloses a great explosive force. To discover its meaning you must let it burst inside you like a bomb and in this way liberate the soul which it imprisons.

“It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Statement as president of the Air Council, War Office Departmental Minute (1919-05-12); Churchill Papers 16/16, Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge.
Early career years (1898–1929)
Context: I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas. I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gases: gases can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected … We cannot, in any circumstances acquiesce to the non-utilisation of any weapons which are available to procure a speedy termination of the disorder which prevails on the frontier.

Water

“The excavations made in 1517, for repairing the city of Verona, brought to light a multitude of curious petrifactions, and furnished matter for speculation to different authors, and among the rest to Fracastoro, who declared his opinion, that fossil shells had all belonged to living animals, which had formerly lived and multiplied, where their exuviæ are now found.”

Charles Lyell book Principles of Geology

Chpt.3, p. 26
Principles of Geology (1832), Vol. 1
Context: The excavations made in 1517, for repairing the city of Verona, brought to light a multitude of curious petrifactions, and furnished matter for speculation to different authors, and among the rest to Fracastoro, who declared his opinion, that fossil shells had all belonged to living animals, which had formerly lived and multiplied, where their exuviæ are now found. He exposed the absurdity of having recourse to a certain 'plastic force,' which it was said had power to fashion stones into organic forms; and, with no less cogent arguments, demonstrated the futility of attributing the situation of the shells in question to the Mosaic deluge, a theory obstinately defended by some. That inundation, he observed, was too transient, it consisted principally of fluviatile waters; and if it had transported shells to great distances, must have strewed them over the surface, not buried them at vast depths in the interior of mountains. His clear exposition of the evidence would have terminated the discussion for ever, if the passions of mankind had not been enlisted in the dispute; and even though doubts should for a time have remained in some minds, they would speedily have been removed by the fresh information obtained almost immediately afterwards, respecting the structure of fossil remains, and of their living analogues.

Light , Animals

“If you could come out of your shell, you would see what you are most afraid of is your power.”

Ralph Smart

“Death in your eyes, Earthman. Nothing in your mind but murder. Can that brain of yours comprehend nothing but battle? Is there no curiosity there? Have you no wonder of why I brought you here? Death awaits you, yes. But a not unpleasant death, and it awaits all, in one form or another. Listen, let me tell you—I have reason for desiring to break through that animal shell of self-defense that seals in your mind. Let me look deeper—if there are depths. Your death will be—useful, and in a way, pleasant. Otherwise—well, the black beasts hunger. And flesh must feed them, as a sweeter drink feeds me...Listen.”

C. L. Moore (1911–1987) American author

Black Thirst (1934); p. 63
Short fiction, Northwest of Earth (1954)

Hunger , Drink , Animals , Self-confidence

“People aware of their own birth and death in this way are said not to be lacking. Not lacking in what? Not lacking in birth. They’re acquainted with the births they’ve experienced through many lives and states of being in the past—so many that they’re weary of it all, to the point where they don’t want to take birth again. As for people who don’t know, who don’t have this awareness, they feel that they’re lacking. They want to take birth again and so they keep on creating birth over and over again. As for those who do have awareness, they’ve had enough. They’re smart enough. They won’t give rise to any more births or states of being. Whatever is good, they keep within themselves, like putting a ripe mango seed in a showcase to look at, or peeling off its hard outer shell and then putting it in a storeroom. No one will be able to plant it again, and we can take it out for a look whenever we want.”

Ajahn Lee (1907–1961)

Inner Strength (1956), as translated from the Thai by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

Death , Past , People , Way

“The king seizes the Brahmanas, pollutes their caste and even takes their lives. If a conch-shell is heard to blow in any house, its owner is made to forfeit his wealth, caste and even life. The king plunders the houses of those who wear sacred threads on the shoulder and put scared marks on the forehead, and then binds them. He breaks the temples and uproots tulsi plants… The bathing in Ganga is prohibited and hundreds of scared asvattha and jack trees have been cut down.”

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) Indian saint

Jayananda: Chaitanya-mañgala, (a biography of the great Vaishnava saint), about the Navadvipa region on the eve of the saint’s birth in 1484 AD. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2001). The story of Islamic imperialism in India.

Life , Wealth , Tree , Housing

“How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets?…How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?”

Smedley D. Butler book War Is a Racket

War is a racket (1935)

War , Night

“The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds… I have fallen victim to what T. S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.”

Brennan Manning book The Ragamuffin Gospel

p. 121 https://books.google.com/books?id=sUTZCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA121
1990s, The Ragamuffin Gospel (1990)

Self-confidence , Behavior , Life

“Today I tell you, and I declare it to the whole world, that we accept to live with you in permanent peace based on justice. We do not want to encircle you or be encircled ourselves by destructive missiles ready for launching, nor by the shells of grudges and hatreds.”

Anwar Sadat (1918–1981) Egyptian president and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

[Address by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to the Knesset, Anwar, Sadat, Visit to Israel by President Sadat, Jerusalem, November 20, 1977, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/address-by-egyptian-president-anwar-sadat-to-the-knesset, October 9, 2018]

World , Peace , Justice

“It is on this step that depends the fact that one can call upon the subject to re-enter himself in the unconscious—for, after all, it is important to know who one is calling. It is not the soul, either mortal or immortal, which has been with us for so long, nor some shade, some double, some phantom, nor even some supposed psycho-spherical shell, the locus of the defences and other such simplified notions. It is the subject who is called— there is only he, therefore, who can be chosen. There may be, as in the parable, many called and few chosen, but there will certainly not be any others except those who are called. In order to understand the Freudian concepts, one must set out on the basis that it is the subject who is called—the subject of Cartesian origin. This basis gives its true function to what, in analysis, is called recollection or remembering. Recollection is not Platonic reminiscence —it is not the return of a form, an imprint, a eidos of beauty and good, a supreme truth, coming to us from the beyond. It is something that comes to us from the structural necessities, something humble, born at the level of the lowest encounters and of all the talking crowd that precedes us, at the level of the structure of the signifier, of the languages spoken in a stuttering, stumbling way, but which cannot elude constraints whose echoes, model, style can be found, curiously enough, in contemporary mathematics.”

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981) French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist

Of the Network of Signifiers
The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho Analysis (1978)

Soul , Understanding , Dependency , Beauty

“His greatest delight was in dreaming up a new costume, a talent he displayed early on... One year he transformed his sister into King Neptune with a bodice made of shells and raffia skirt …Never without a notebook, he scribbled down ideas as they occurred to him.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

In p. 13
Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New

Idea , Sister , Dreams

“For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns
Without name, without resurrection, without stars,
His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour
With the smell of his many prisons — John Smith, John Doe,
John Nobody — oh, crack your mind for his name!
Faceless as water, naked as the dust,
Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison
And barbarous with portent.
This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Peace , Light , War , Star

“I try to think about ways to draw the public to the story of the planet, and seashells are something we’ve always wanted to listen to. It’s sort of irresistible to pick a shell up to the ear and listen to what it’s trying to tell us — and they are telling us a profound story about what we’re doing to the ocean. The tiniest shells are beginning to disintegrate in the acidifying sea. It really is a metaphor for something much bigger.”

Cynthia Barnett (1966) American journalist

Source: https://www.jou.ufl.edu/2019/01/30/cynthia-barnett-we-can-change-and-its-up-to-us-to-do-so/

Way , Sea , Drawing , Thinking

“America has been transformed from a land of growing economic plenty into a hollow shell.”

David Cay Johnston (1948) Investigative journalist and author

The Fine Print (2013)

“Simulation systems (mathematical models, philosophical thought experiments) that don’t have real world applications are like SPACs - shells with all the paperwork in place till something operational is ready to merge into them.”

Anand Gandhi (1980) Indian film director

World , Mathematics

“As the outsider, you can retreat into a shell, be anonymous, be invisible. Or you can go the other way. You protect yourself by opening up. You don't ask to be accepted for everything you are, just the one part of yourself that you're willing to share. For me it was humor. I learned that even though I didn't belong to one group, I could be a part of of any group that was laughing.”

Trevor Noah book Born a Crime

page 140/141
Born a Crime

Way , Parting , Learning

“We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there”

James Franklin Jeffrey (1946) American diplomat

Source: 12 November 2020 interview with Defense One https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2020/11/outgoing-syria-envoy-admits-hiding-us-troop-numbers-praises-trumps-mideast-record/170012/ affirmed 13 November 2020 by Washington Examiner https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/pentagon-shake-up-to-help-cement-trumps-legacy-bringing-troops-home-and-taking-out-enemies-white-house-source-says

Game

“Necromancy, and Goetia, which is Evil Magic, do produce such shells and demons, apparitions of deceit.”

Eliphas Levi (1810–1875) French writer

Miscellaneous Quotes On the Subjects of Magic and Magicians
Source: The Magical Ritual of the Sanctum Regnum, Eliphas Levi, Translated by W. Wynn Westcott, London, George Redway, 1896, p. 51.

Evil