Shells Quotes - Page 9

• No,” he responded, reaching out to trace the shell of her ear. “They grew back even more beautiful. Blue edged with silver.” Elena laughed at the scowl in his voice.

  Nalini Singh

  Beautiful, Blue, Voice

  Nalini Singh (2009). “Angels' Blood”, p.71, Penguin

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• Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?

  C. S. Lewis

  Trouble, Force, Stillbirth

  C.S. Lewis (2012). “A Grief Observed”, p.11, Faber & Faber

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• She saw through the shell of me into the center of me

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Saws

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.113, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I’ve always felt almost human. I’ve always known that there’s something about me that’s different than other dogs. Sure, I’m stuffed into a dog’s body, but that’s just the shell. It’s what’s inside that’s important. The soul. And my soul is very human.

  Garth Stein

  Dog, Soul, Important

  Garth Stein (2011). “Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog”, p.2, Harper Collins

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• He piled upon the whale's white hump the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if his chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart's shell upon it.

  Herman Melville

  Hate, Heart, Race

  Moby Dick ch. 41 (1851)

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• We humans think we are smart, but an orchid, for example, knows how to produce noble, symmetrical flowers, and a snail knows how to make a beautiful, well-proportioned shell. Compared with their knowledge, ours is not worth much at all. We should bow deeply before the orchid and the snail and join our palms reverently before the monarch butterfly and the magnolia tree. The feeling of respect for all species will help us recognize the noblest nature in ourselves.

  Nhat Hanh

  Beautiful, Respect, Nature

  Thich Nhat Hanh “Thich Nhat Hanh: Essential Writings”, Orbis Books

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• The only fruit which even much living yields seems to be often only some trivial success,--the ability to do some slight thing better. We make conquest only of husks and shells for the most part,--at least apparently,--but sometimes these are cinnamon and spices, you know.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Life, Success, Yield

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.1651, Delphi Classics

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• He thinks of that ocean house and wishes he were back in his former life or that one could take one moment and remain inside it like an egg inside its shell, instead of constantly being hurried into the future by good luck or bad.

  Stephen Dobyns

  Ocean, Good Luck, Thinking

  Stephen Dobyns (1984). “Black dog, red dog: poems”, Owl Books

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• You build a character, a shell, and if you build it right, something comes to live inside it.

  Elizabeth Hand

  Character, Ifs

  Elizabeth Hand (2010). “Illyria”, p.52, Penguin

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• After a quarter of a century of personal experience and professional observation, I have come to understand that peace of mind is the true goal of the considered life. I know now that the sum of all other possessions does not necessarily add up to peace of mind; on the other hand, I have seen this inner tranquility flourish without the material supports of property or even the buttress of physical health. Peace of mind can transform a cottage into a spacious manor hall; the want of it can make a regal residence an imprisoning shell.

  Joshua L. Liebman

  Peace, Hands, Goal

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• In Ireland, there are the same fossils, the same shells and the same sea bodies, as appear in America, and some of them are found in no other part of Europe.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Europe, Sea, America

  Georges Louis Leclerc comte de Buffon (1817). “A Natural History, General and Particular: Containing the History and Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, the Brute Creation, Vegetables, Minerals, Etc. Etc”, p.128

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• A man that simply loads himself down with possessions of which he has no actual need, when he dies slips out of them--as a little insect might slip out of some parasite shell into which it has ensconced itself--into the grave, and is forgotten.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Men, Needs, Littles

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• Little minds mistake little objects for great ones, and lavish away upon the former that time and attention which only the latterdeserve. To such mistakes we owe the numerous and frivolous tribe of insect-mongers, shell-mongers, and pursuers and driers of butterflies, etc. The strong mind distinguishes, not only between the useful and the useless, but likewise between the useful and the curious.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Strong, Mistake, Butterfly

  Lord Chesterfield (1998). “Lord Chesterfield's Letters”, p.160, OUP Oxford

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• What makes philosophy so tedious is not the profundity of philosophers, but their lack of art; they are like physicians who soughtto cure a slight hyperacidity by prescribing a carload of burned oyster-shells.

  H. L. Mencken

  Art, Philosophy, Philosophical

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.617, Vintage

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• That's the thing about marriage. It's a shell game we play with ourselves. We're the suckers and we have to lose, but we play anyway because we lie to ourselves that we can win.

  R. K. Milholland

  Marriage, Lying, Winning

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• How then can we account for the persistence of the myth that inside the empty nest lives a shattered and depressed shell of a woman--a woman in constant pain because her children no longer live under her roof? Is it possible that a notion so pervasive is, in fact, just a myth?

  Lillian B. Rubin

  Children, Pain, Persistence

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• We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men's necessities, while elsewhereshe was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim's shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Men, Sight

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.98, Penguin

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• I suppose an entire cabinet of shells would be an expression of the whole human mind; a Flora of the whole globe would be so likewise, or a history of beasts; or a painting of all the aspects of the clouds. Everything is significant.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Clouds, Expression

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• The etymologist finds the deadest word to have been once a brilliant picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Long, Use, Earth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.457, Library of America

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• Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, / The muttering retreats / Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels / And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: / Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent / To lead you to an overwhelming question.../ Oh, do not ask, 'What is it?' / Let us go and make our visit"' 'I'm in love with you,' he said quietly.

  John Green

  Love You, Night, Oysters

  John Green (2012). “The Fault in Our Stars”, p.90, Penguin

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• I can't deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.

  Sylvia Plath

  Suicide, Real, Character

  "The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath".

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• It’s only the sea,’ said Moomintroll. ‘Every wave that dies on the beach sings a little song to a shell. But you mustn’t go inside because it’s a labyrinth and you may never come out again.

  Tove Jansson

  Song, Beach, Sea

  Tove Jansson (2014). “Comet in Moominland: Can Moomintroll save his beloved valley?”, p.132, Macmillan

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• The shell must be broken before the bird can fly.

  Jennifer Worth

  Broken, Bird

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• I stayed there, curled up into the warmth of your body, under the blankets, like something soft in a shell. Your arms were firm as rock around me.

  Lucy Christopher

  Rocks, Body, Arms

  Lucy Christopher (2014). “Stolen”, p.202, Scholastic Inc.

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• I don't think people realize, when they're just getting started on an eating disorder or even when they're in the grip of one, that it is not something that you just "get over." For the vast majority of eating-disordered people, it is something that will haunt you for the rest of your life. You may change your behavior, change your beliefs about yourself and your body, give up that particular way of coping in the world. You may learn, as I have, that you would rather be a human than a human's thin shell. You may get well. But you never forget.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Giving Up, Get Well, Thinking

  Marya Hornbacher (2009). “Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia”, p.10, Harper Collins

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