Quotes about stone
page 5

Aldo Capitini photo
Herbert Hoover photo

“[Engineering] is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.

The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned. That is the phantasmagoria that haunts his nights and dogs his days. He comes from the job at the end of the day resolved to calculate it again. He wakes in the night in a cold sweat and puts something on paper that looks silly in the morning. All day he shivers at the thought of the bugs which will inevitably appear to jolt its smooth consummation.

On the other hand, unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people’s money with which to finance it. But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolades he wants.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Excerpted from Chapter 11 "The Profession of Engineering"
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1929 (1951)

Charles Darwin photo
Sueton photo

“His wastefulness showed most of all in the architectural projects. He built a palace, stretching from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which he called…"The Golden House". The following details will give some notion of its size and magnificence. The entrance-hall was large enough to contain a huge statue of himself, 120 feet high…Parts of the house were overlaid with gold and studded with precious stones and mother-of pearl. All the dining-rooms had ceilings of fretted ivory, the panels of which could slide back and let a rain of flowers, or of perfume from hidden sprinklers, shower upon his guests. The main dining-room was circular, and its roof revolved, day and night, in time with the sky. Sea water, or sulphur water, was always on tap in the baths. When the palace had been decorated throughout in this lavish style, Nero dedicated it, and condescended to remark: "Good, now I can at last begin to live like a human being!"”
Non in alia re tamen damnosior quam in aedificando domum a Palatio Esquilias usque fecit, quam…Auream nominavit. De cuius spatio atque cultu suffecerit haec rettulisse. Vestibulum eius fuit, in quo colossus CXX pedum staret ipsius effigie…In ceteris partibus cuncta auro lita, distincta gemmis unionumque conchis erant; cenationes laqueatae tabulis eburneis versatilibus, ut flores, fistulatis, ut unguenta desuper spargerentur; praecipua cenationum rotunda, quae perpetuo diebus ac noctibus vice mundi circumageretur; balineae marinis et albulis fluentes aquis. Eius modi domum cum absolutam dedicaret, hactenus comprobavit, ut se diceret quasi hominem tandem habitare coepisse.

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Nero, Ch. 31

James Macpherson photo
Otto Weininger photo

“Great men take themselves and the world too seriously to become what is called merely intellectual. Men who are merely intellectual are insincere; they are people who have never really been deeply engrossed by things and who do not feel an overpowering desire for production. All that they care about is that their work should glitter and sparkle like a well-cut stone, not that it should illuminate anything. They are more occupied with what will be said of what they think than by the thoughts themselves.”

Große Männer nehmen sich selbst und die Dinge zu ernst, um öfter als gelegentlich »geistreich« zu sein. Menschen, die nichts sind als eben »geistreich«, sind unfromme Menschen; es sind solche, die, von den Dingen nicht wirklich erfüllt, an ihnen nie ein aufrichtiges und tiefes Interesse nehmen, in denen nicht lang und schwer etwas der Geburt entgegenstrebt. Es ist ihnen nur daran gelegen, daß ihr Gedanke glitzere und funkle wie eine prächtig zugeschliffene Raute, nicht, daß er auch etwas beleuchte! Und das kommt daher, weil ihr Sinnen vor allem die Absicht auf das behält, was die anderen zu eben diesen Gedanken wohl »sagen« werden—eine Rücksicht, die durchaus nicht immer »rücksichtsvoll« ist.
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 104.

Nick Drake photo

“And at the chime of the city clock
Put up your road block.
Hang on to your crown.
For a stone in a tin can
Is wealth to the city man
Who leaves his armour down.”

Nick Drake (1948–1974) British singer-songwriter

At the Chime of a City Clock
Song lyrics, Bryter Later (1970)

Emily Dickinson photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
Two vipers tangled into one.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819 http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/shelley/percy_bysshe/s54cp/section163.html (Published 1832), st. 4

Henry Suso photo
John Ralston Saul photo
Bill Bryson photo
Chinmayananda Saraswati photo
Gillian Anderson photo

“I don’t expect them to build a big stone monument to me; that’s not my goal in life. I’d like to think that if I did anything extraordinary, it was the work that we did in getting the corporation ready for the 21st century.”

Roger Smith (executive) (1925–2007) CEO

Smith cited in: Micheline Maynard (2007) " Roger B. Smith, 82, Ex-Chief of G.M., Dies http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/business/01smith.html" in The New York Times December 1, 2007.

L. K. Advani photo

“Dr Koenraad Elst, in his two-volume book titled The Saffron Swastika, marshals an incontrovertible array of facts to debunk slanderous attacks on the BJP by a section of the media. About the Rath Yatra, he writes: ‘But what about Advani’s bloody Rath Yatra (car procession) from Somnath to Ayodhya in October 1990? Very simple: it is not at all that the Rath Yatra was a bloody affair. While in the same period, there was a lot of rioting in several parts of the country (particularly Hyderabad, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh), killing about 600 people in total, there were no riots at all along the Rath Yatra trail. Well, there was one: upper-caste students pelted stones at Advani because he had disappointed them by not supporting their agitation against the caste-based reservations which V. P. Singh was promoting. Even then, no one was killed or seriously wounded. It is a measure of the quality of the Indian English-language media that they have managed to turn an entirely peaceful procession, an island of orderliness in a riot-torn country, into a proverbial bloody event (“Advani’s blood yatra”). And it was quite a sight how the pressmen in their editorials blamed Advani for communal riots of which the actual, non-Advanirelated causes were given on a different page of the same paper. Whether Advani with his Rath Yatra was at 500 miles distance from a riot (as with the riot in Gonda in UP), or under arrest, or back home after the high tide of the Ayodhya agitation, every riot in India in the second half of 1990 was blamed on him’.”

L.K. Advani, My Country My Life (2008). ISBN 978-81-291-1363-4, quoting Koenraad Elst, The Saffron Swastika (2001)

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan photo

“A stone is not self any more than a self is a stone.”

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) Indian philosopher and statesman who was the first Vice President and the second President of India

Eminent Indians (1947)

Ahad Ha'am photo

“We who live abroad are accustomed to believe that almost all Eretz Yisrael is now uninhabited desert and whoever wishes can buy land there as he pleases. But this is not true. It is very difficult to find in the land [ha'aretz] cultivated fields that are not used for planting. Only those sand fields or stone mountains that would require the investment of hard labor and great expense to make them good for planting remain uncultivated and that's because the Arabs do not like working too much in the present for a distant future. Therefore, it is very difficult to find good land for cattle. And not only peasants, but also rich landowners, are not selling good land so easily…We who live abroad are accustomed to believing that the Arabs are all wild desert people who, like donkeys, neither see nor understand what is happening around them. But this is a grave mistake. The Arab, like all the Semites, is sharp minded and shrewd. All the townships of Syria and Eretz Yisrael are full of Arab merchants who know how to exploit the masses and keep track of everyone with whom they deal – the same as in Europe. The Arabs, especially the urban elite, see and understand what we are doing and what we wish to do on the land, but they keep quiet and pretend not to notice anything. For now, they do not consider our actions as presenting a future danger to them. … But, if the time comes that our people's life in Eretz Yisrael will develop to a point where we are taking their place, either slightly or significantly, the natives are not going to just step aside so easily.”

Ahad Ha'am (1856–1927) Hebrew essayist and thinker

Source: Wrestling with Zion, pp. 14-15.

William Styron photo
Vitruvius photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Han-shan photo
Robert T. Bakker photo
Parker Palmer photo
Bob Dylan photo

“But I would not feel so all alone, everybody must get stoned!”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Blonde on Blonde (1966), Rainy Day Women #12 & 35

Albert Camus photo
El Lissitsky photo
Sarvajna photo
Billy Joel photo

“Don't forget your second wind;
Sooner or later you'll get your second wind.
It's not always easy to be living in this world of pain.
You're gonna be crashing into stone walls again and again.
It's alright, it's alright.”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

You're Only Human (Second Wind).
Song lyrics, Greatest Hits - Volume I & Volume II (1985)

William McDonough photo

“The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.”

William McDonough (1951) American architect

As quoted in "Eco-designs on future cities" by BBC News (14 June 2005) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4682011.stm
The quote “The Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil” appears in The Telegraph, attributed to Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, and precedes McDonough's reference by 5 years (2000 vs. 2005) Sheikh Yamani predicts price crash as age of oil ends http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1344832/Sheikh-Yamani-predicts-price-crash-as-age-of-oil-ends.html

Dylan Moran photo
Lin Yutang photo
Charles Dickens photo
Alauddin Khalji photo

“When Raja Sidhraj Jaisingh Solanki became the king, he extended his conquest as far as Malwa and Burhanpur etc. and laid foundation of lofty forts such as the forts of Broach and Dabhoi etc. He dug the tank of Sahastraling in Pattan, many others in Biramgam and at most places in Sorath. His reign is known as 'Sang Bast', the Age of Stone Buildings. He founded the city of Sidhpur and built the famous Rudramal Temple. It is related that when he intended to build Rudramal, he summoned astrologers to elect an auspicious hour for it. The astrologers said to him that some harm through heavenly revolution is presaged from Alauddin when his turn comes to the Saltanat of Dihli. The Raja relied on the statement of astrologers and entered into a pledge and pact with the said Sultan. The Sultan had said. 'If I do not destroy it under terms of the pact, yet I will leave some religious vestiges.”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

When, after some time, the turn of the Sultan came to the Saltanat of Delhi, he marched with his army to that side and left religious marks by constructing a masjid and a minar...[Sidhpur (Gujarat)]
Mirat-i-Ahmadi by Ali Muhammad Khan, in Mirat-i-Ahmdi, translated into English by M.F. Lokhandwala, Baroda, 1965, P. 27-29. Quoted in S.R. Goel: Hindu Temples What Happened to them. Sita Ram Goel adds the following comment "This account is obviously a folktale because ‘Alau’d-Din Khalji became a Sultan two hundred years after Siddharaja JayasiMha ascended the throne of Gujarat. Moreover, ‘Alau’d-Din never went to Gujarat; he sent his generals, Ulugh Khan and Nasrat Khan."
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

Vitruvius photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Hermann Hesse photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Firuz Shah Tughlaq photo

“The idol, Jwalamukhi, much worshipped by the infidels, was situated on the road to Nagarkot Some of the infidels have reported that Sultan Firoz went specially to see this idol and held a golden umbrella over it. But the author was informed by his respected father, who was in the Sultans retinue, that the infidels slandered the Sultan, who was a religious, God-fearing man, who, during the whole forty years of his reign, paid strict obedience to the law, and that such an action was impossible. The fact is, that when he went to see the idol, all the rais, ranas and zamindars who accompanied him were summoned into his presence, when he addressed them, saying, O fools and weak-minded, how can ye pray to and worship this stone, for our holy law tells us that those who oppose the decrees of our religion, will go to hell? The Sultan held the idol in the deepest detestation, but the infidels, in the blindness of their delusion, have made this false statement against him. Other infidels have said that Sultan Muhammad Shah bin Tughlik Shah held an umbrella over the same idol, but this is also a lie; and good Muhammadans should pay no heed to such statements. These two Sultans were sovereigns especially chosen by the Almighty from among the faithful, and in the whole course of their reigns, wherever they took an idol temple they broke and destroyed it; how, then, can such assertions be true? The infidels must certainly have lied!”

Firuz Shah Tughlaq (1309–1388) Tughluq sultan

Nagarkot Kangra (Himachal Pradesh) . Tarikh-i-Firuz Shahi, Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. Elliot and Dowson. Vol. III, p. 318 ff

Ann Coulter photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Tanith Lee photo
Horace Walpole photo

“If a passion for freedom is not in vogue, patriots may sound the alarm till they are weary.
The Act of Habeas Corpus, by which prisoners may insist on being brought to trial within a limited time, is the corner-stone of our liberty.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

Notes of 1758, published in Memoires of the Last Ten Years of the Reign of George the Second (1822), p. 226; also published as "Memoirs of the Year 1758" in Memoirs of King George II, Vol. III (1985), p. 10

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“5192. To kill two Birds with one Stone.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Robert Charles Winthrop photo

“I confess, Sir, I am at a loss to conceive how any man, who has ever read our Constitution as originally framed, or as it now exists, can listen a moment to such an argument. If anything be clearer than another on its face, it is, that it was intended to constitute a Christian State. I deny totally the gentleman's position, that the religious expressions it contains were intended only to show forth the pious sentiments of those who framed it. They were intended to incorporate into our system the principles of Christianity, — principles which belonged not only to those who framed, but to the whole people who adopted it. Sir, the people of that day were a Christian people; they adopted a Christian Constitution; they no more contemplated the existence of infidelity than the Athenian laws provided against the perpetration of parricide. They established a Christian Commonwealth; they wrote upon its walls, Salvation, and upon its gates, Praise; and Christianity is as clearly now its corner-stone, as if the initial letter of every page of our Statute Book, like that of some monkish manuscript, were illuminated with the figure of the Cross!”

Robert Charles Winthrop (1809–1894) American politician

Speech, "The Testimony of Infidels" (1836-02-11), delivered before the Massachusetts House of Representatives in opposition to a bill that would allow atheists to testify in court, quoted in Robert Winthrop, Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions, Little, Brown and Company, 1852, pp 194-195 http://books.google.com/books?id=NUizWSNaJpsC&pg=PA195&dq=robert+winthrop+christianity+addresses+and+speeches+on+various+occasions#PPA194,M1

Alauddin Khalji photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo

“The Sultan then departed from the environs of the city, in which was a temple of the Hindus. The name of this place was Maharatu-l Hind. He saw there a building of exquisite structure, which the inhabitants said had been built, not by men, but by Genii, and there he witnessed practices contrary to the nature of man, and which could not be believed but from evidence of actual sight. The wall of the city was constructed of hard stone, and two gates opened upon the river flowing under the city, which were erected upon strong and lofty foundations to protect them against the floods of the river and rains. On both sides of the city there were a thousand houses, to which idol temples were attached, all strengthened from top to bottom by rivets of iron, and all made of masonry work; and opposite to them were other buildings, supported on broad wooden pillars, to give them strength.
In the middle of the city there was a temple larger and firmer than the rest, which can neither be described nor painted. The Sultan thus wrote respecting it: - "If any should wish to construct a building equal to this, he would not be able to do it without expending an hundred thousand, thousand red dinars, and it would occupy two hundred years even though the most experienced and able workmen were employed."…
The Sultan gave orders that all the temples should be burnt with naptha and fire, and levelled with the ground.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Mathura. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 44-45 Also quoted (in part) in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi

Abraham Joshua Heschel photo

“The stone is broken, but the words are alive.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

(2008)

Christopher Hitchens photo

“There is a widespread view that the war against jihadism and totalitarianism involves only differences of emphasis. In other words, one might object to the intervention in Iraq on the grounds that it drew resources away from Afghanistan - you know the argument. It's important to understand that this apparent agreement does not cover or include everybody. A very large element of the Left and of the isolationist Right is openly sympathetic to the other side in this war, and wants it to win. This was made very plain by the leadership of the "anti-war" movement, and also by Michael Moore when he shamefully compared the Iraqi fascist "insurgency" to the American Founding Fathers. To many of these people, any "anti-globalization" movement is better than none. With the Right-wingers it's easier to diagnose: they are still Lindberghians in essence and they think war is a Jewish-sponsored racket. With the Left, which is supposed to care about secularism and humanism, it's a bit harder to explain an alliance with woman-stoning, gay-burning, Jew-hating medieval theocrats. However, it can be done, once you assume that American imperialism is the main enemy. Even for those who won't go quite that far, the admission that the US Marine Corps might be doing the right thing is a little further than they are prepared to go - because what would then be left of their opposition credentials, which are so dear to them?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Love, Poverty and War" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C78DC231-4599-4745-9CA5-A398398916A0, FrontPageMagazine.com (2004-12-29).
2000s, 2004

Yasser Arafat photo

“This child, who is grasping the stone, facing the tank, is it not the greatest message to the world when that hero becomes a martyr? We are proud of them.”

Yasser Arafat (1929–2004) former Palestinian President, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

On Palestinian Authority Television (15 January 2002).
2000s

Tomas Kalnoky photo
Upton Sinclair photo
Louis Pasteur photo
Octavio Paz photo
Báb photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Benito Mussolini photo

“Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Popolo d'Italia (14 July 1920) "The Artificer and the Material," quoted in Mussolini in the Making (1938) by Gaudens Megaro, p. 326
1920s

Orson Scott Card photo

“But I slew Goliath with the sling and stone,
It's not my time to go.”

The Angel of Death Came to David's Room.
It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All A Dream! It's Alright (2009)

Wallace Stevens photo
Harry Chapin photo
Thomas Hughes photo
Bernard of Clairvaux photo

“Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.”
Experto crede: aliquid amplius invenies in silvis, quam in libris. Ligna et lapides docebunt te, quod a magistris audire non possis.

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

Epistola CVI, sect. 2; translation from Edward Churton The Early English Church ([1840] 1841) p. 324

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux photo
Adrienne von Speyr photo
William H. Gass photo
Chris Cornell photo
Arthur Waley photo
Chris Cornell photo
Sugar Ray Leonard photo
Vannevar Bush photo
Théodore Rousseau photo
Michelle Obama photo
Philip K. Dick photo

“Spinoza saw… that if a falling stone could reason, it would think, "I want to fall at the rate of thirty-two feet per second."”

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) American author

"The Android and the Human" (1972), reprinted in The Dark-Haired Girl (1988) and in The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (1995), ed. Lawrence Sutin

Marshall McLuhan photo

“The Eskimo, like any pre-literate, leaps easily from the Paleolithic stone age to the electric age, by-passing the Neolithic specialism.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1970s, Culture Is Our Business (1970)

Brooks D. Simpson photo
Barbara Hepworth photo

“Light and space … are the sculptor's materials as much as wood or stone … I feel that I can relate my work more easily, in the open air, to the climate and the landscape.”

Barbara Hepworth (1903–1975) English sculptor

1947 - 1960
Source: Interview in Dialogues on Art, Edouard Roditi; London, 1960, pp. 91–92

Joaquin Miller photo
Heinrich Heine photo

“The whole system of symbolism impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in its architecture! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmoniously they accord with the worship of which they are the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself in them! Everything about them strives upwards, everything transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into branches and foliage, and becomes a tree; the fruit of the vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the man becomes God; God becomes a pure spirit. For the poet, the Christian life of the Middle Ages is a precious and inexhaustibly fruitful field. Only through Christianity could the circumstances of life combine to form such striking contrasts, such motley sorrow, such weird beauty, that one almost fancies such things can never have had any real existence, and that it is all a vast fever-dream the fever-dream of a delirious deity. Even Nature, during this sublime epoch of the Christian religion, seemed to have put on a fantastic disguise; for oftentimes though man, absorbed in abstract subtilties, turned away from her with abhorrence, she would recall him to her with a voice so mysteriously sweet, so terrible in its tenderness, so powerfully enchanting, that unconsciously he would listen and smile, and become terrified, and even fall sick unto death.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 26

Oscar Niemeyer photo
James Jeans photo
Pete Doherty photo
Glen Cook photo

“The best of the diviner breed are never wrong because they never set anything in stone.”

Source: She Is the Darkness (1997), Chapter 79 (p. 555)

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo