Quotes about stone
page 3
1960s, (1963)
Source: I Have A Dream
Source: Mr Galliano's Circus
Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“On books and friends I spend my money;
For stones and bricks I haven't any.”
Source: Rain in the Mountains: Notes from the Himalayas
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer from Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), The Sentence
Context: Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless... Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.
“Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.”
Source: Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge
Variant: Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exists and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.
Source: Carmilla
“Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.”
Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter Four, Pappin
Context: I am a free man-and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion. I need sunshine and paving tones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me. Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to anyone, I would've responsible to God alone-if he exited!
“Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.”
Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), The Times They Are A-Changin'
Context: Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown.
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Source: Dance Dance Dance
Variant: Tragedy and adversary are the stones we sharpen our swords against so we can fight new battles.
Source: Infinity
Source: The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World
The Murderer (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
Context: 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 until—bang!
“Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.”
Source: The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard
“Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you.”
Source: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil
“Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.”
Mid-Winter http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/blrossettichristmas.htm, st. 1 (1872).
Source: The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti
“As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.”
Part 8, Chapter 10 (p. 196)
Source: Fiction, The Female Man (1975)
“The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway.”
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
“FABLEHAVEN: None who enter will leave unchanged. Trespassers will be turned to stone.”
“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but watch out for those damn words.”
Variant: Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.
Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 14
“Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.”
Source: Complete Poems
Interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April-May 1949), Einstein Archive 30-1104, as sourced in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 173
Differing versions of such a statement are attributed to conversations as early as 1948 (e.g. The Rotarian, 72 (6), June 1948, p. 9 http://books.google.com/books?id=0UMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9: "I don't know. But I can tell you what they'll use in the fourth. They'll use rocks!"). Another variant ("I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones") is attributed to an unidentified letter to Harry S. Truman in "The culture of Einstein" by Alex Johnson http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7406337/, MSNBC, (18 April 2005). However, prior to 1948 very similar quotes were attributed in various articles to an unnamed army lieutenant, as discussed at Quote Investigator : "The Futuristic Weapons of WW3 Are Unknown, But WW4 Will Be Fought With Stones and Spears" http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/16/future-weapons/#more-679. The earliest found was from “Quote and Unquote: Raising ‘Alarmist’ Cry Brings a Winchell Reply” by Walter Winchell, in the Wisconsin State Journal (23 September 1946), p. 6, Col. 3. In this article Winchell wrote: <blockquote> Joe Laitin reports that reporters at Bikini were questioning an army lieutenant about what weapons would be used in the next war. “I dunno,” he said, “but in the war after the next war, sure as Hell, they’ll be using spears!” </blockquote>
: It seems plausible, therefore, that Einstein may have been quoting or paraphrasing an expression which he had heard or read elsewhere.
1940s
Variant: I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Source: The Master Butchers Singing Club
“Everybody sounds stoned, because they're e-mailing people the whole time they're talking to you.”
Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad
Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)
Source: , said the shotgun to the head.
“Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.”
Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
Source: Luck in the Shadows
“Water and stone
Flesh and bone
Night and morn
Rose and thorn
Tree and wind
Heart and mind”
Source: Cybele's Secret
“Nothing is written stone, child. Even if it were, the stones can be shattered”
Source: Dragon Prince
“sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will make me cry by myself in a corner for hours.”
Source: Cosmic Trigger Volume I: Final Secret of the Illuminati
"The Truth the Dead Know"
All My Pretty Ones (1962)
“A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.”
Source: Silas Marner
Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Like a Rolling Stone
Source: The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Ch. 1
Context: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
“[Poetry] is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
Source: What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics