Quotes on Stones

We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself.

Who, of men, can tell_x000D_ _x000D_ That flowers would bloom, or that green fruit would swell_x000D_ _x000D_ To melting pulp, that fish would have bright mail,_x000D_ _x000D_ The earth its dower of river, wood, and vale,_x000D_ _x000D_ The meadows runnels, runnels pebble-stones,_x000D_ _x000D_ The seed its harvest, or the lute its tones,_x000D_ _x000D_ Tones ravishment, or ravishment its sweet,_x000D_ _x000D_ If human souls did never kiss and greet?

Monuments! what are they? the very pyramids have forgotten their builders, or to whom they were dedicated. Deeds, not stones, are the true monuments of the great.

Prisons are built with stones of Law. Brothels with the bricks of religion.

When you smell our candles burning, what does it make you think of, my child?" Winterfell, she might have said. I smell snow and smoke and pine needles. I smell the stables. I smell Hodor laughing, and Jon and Robb battling in the yard, and Sansa singing about some stupid lady fair. I smell the crypts where the stone kings sit. I smell hot bread baking. I smell the godswood. I smell my wolf. I smell her fur, almost as if she were still beside me. "I don't smell anything," she said.

Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things.

O Time the fatal wrack of mortal things,_x000D_ That draws oblivion's curtains over kings;_x000D_ Their sumptuous monuments, men know them not,_x000D_ Their names without a record are forgot,_x000D_ Their parts, their ports, their pomps all laid in th' dust_x000D_ Nor wit nor gold, nor buildings scape time's rust;_x000D_ But he whose name is graved in the white stone_x000D_ Shall last and shine when all of these are gone.

Or have I passed my time in pouring words like water into empty sieves, rolling a stone up a hill and then down again, trying to prove an argument in the teeth of facts, and looking for causes in the dark, and not finding them?

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it's only intangibles, ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die.

I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life - but there was no one to tell me.

From the time an Aiel boy becomes a man he will not sing anything but battle chants, or their dirge for the slain. I have heard them singing over their dead, and over those they have killed. That song is one to make the stones weep.

Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.

Before I was humiliated I was like a stone that lies in deep mud, and he who is mighty came and in his compassion raised me up and exalted me very high and placed me on the top of the wall.

We feel surprise when travellers tell us of the vast dimensions of the Pyramids and other great ruins, but how utterly insignificant are the greatest of these, when compared to these mountains of stone accumulated by the agency of various minute and tender animals!

Love from its very nature must be transitory. To seek for a secret that would render it constant would be as wild a search as for the philosopher’s stone or the grand panacea: and the discovery would be equally useless, or rather pernicious to mankind. The most holy band of society is friendship.

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.

I wanted to wear her as you would a piece of clothing, to fold into her ribs, be a stone in her mouth.

If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

The moon was sharp enough to draw blood from a stone

Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.

The past is a stepping stone, not a millstone.