Spires Quotes

• A transition from an author's book to his conversation is too often like an entrance into a large city, after a distant prospect. Remotely, we see nothing but spires of temples and turrets of palaces, and imagine it the residence of splendour, grandeur, and magnificence; but when we have passed the gates, we find it perplexed with narrow passages, disgraced with despicable cottages, embarrassed with obstructions, and clouded with smoke.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fear, Book, Writing

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.13

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• It is the Late city that first defies the land, contradicts Nature in the lines of its silhouette, denies all Nature. It wants to be something different from and higher than Nature. These high-pitched gables, these Baroque cupolas, spires, and pinnacles, neither are, nor desire to be, related with anything in Nature. And then begins the gigantic megalopolis, the city-as-world, which suffers nothing beside itself and sets about annihilating the country picture.

  Oswald Spengler

  Country, Land, Cities

  Oswald Spengler (1991). “The Decline of the West”, p.246, Oxford University Press, USA

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• I want to build spires in their minds and dance shadows through like marionettes, chased by whispers and hints of the unspeakable.

  Laini Taylor

  Mind, Shadow, Hints

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• Spires whose "silent finger points to heaven."

  William Wordsworth

  Heaven, Silence, Silent

  William Wordsworth (1854). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth”, p.603

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• An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches with spire steeples which point as with a silent finger to the sky and stars.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Stars, Men, Sky

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1834). “Biographia Literaria: Or, Biographical Sketches of My Literary Life and Opinions”, p.291

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• Up up up up up up points the spire of the steeple but god's work isn't done by god it's done by people

  Ani DiFranco

  People, Done, Steeples

  Song: Up Up Up Up Up Up, Album: Up Up Up Up Up Up

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• And that sweet city with her dreaming spires, She needs not June for beauty's heightening.

  Matthew Arnold

  Dream, Sweet, June

  'Thyrsis' (1866) l. 19

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• And striving to be Man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, Progress, Strive

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1981). “The Portable Emerson: New Edition”, p.32, Penguin

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• Many men build as cathedrals are built-the part nearest the ground finished, but that part which soars toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Men, Forever, Heaven

  Henry Ward Beecher (1858). “Life thoughts gathered from the extemporaneous discourses of Henry Ward Beecher, by E.D. Procter”, p.99

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• What do we plant when we plant a tree?
  A thousand things that we daily see,
  We plant the spire that out-towers the crag,
  We plant the staff for our country's flag;
  We plant the shade from the hot sun free,
  We plant all these when we plant the tree.

  Henry Abbey

  Country, Tree, Sun

  Henry Abbey, “What Do We Plant?”

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• I saw the spires of Oxford As I was passing by, The gray spires of Oxford Against a pearl-gray sky. My heart was with the Oxford men Who went abroad to die.

  Winifred Mary Letts

  Heart, Men, Passing By

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• A transition from an author's book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city.

  Samuel Johnson

  Book, Cities, Transition

  Samuel Johnson (1827). “The Rambler”, p.13

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• I waited for the train at Coventry; I hung with grooms and porters on the bridge, To watch the three tall spires; and there I shaped The city's ancient legend into this.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Bridges, Cities, Watches

  Alfred Lord Tennyson (1851). “The Poetical Works of Alfred Lord Tennyson”

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• The world has a thousand creeds, and never a one have I;
  Nor church of my own, though a million spires are pointing the way on high.
  But I float on the bosom of faith, that bears me along like a river;
  And the lamp of my soul is alight with love, for life, and the world, and the Giver.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Love Life, Rivers, Soul

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• In every village marked with little spire,
  Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame.

  William Shenstone

  Tree, Village, Littles

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• The eastern light our spires touch at morning, The light that slants upon our western doors at evening, The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight, Moon light and star light, owl and moth light, Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade. O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!

  T. S. Eliot

  Morning, Stars, Twilight

  T. S. Eliot (2015). “The Poems of T. S. Eliot Volume I: Collected and Uncollected Poems”, p.175, Faber & Faber

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• How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light, streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen meadows.

  John Muir

  Pain, Islands, Light

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.351, Library of America

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• There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the night; there was no noise. The city lay behind him, lighted here and there, and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely distance lay around him everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking two.

  Charles Dickens

  Lonely, Distance, Dark

  Charles Dickens (2015). “Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Export”, p.863, Jester House Publishing via PublishDrive

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• and half of learning to play is learning what not to play and she's learning the spaces she leaves have their own things to say and she's trying to sing just enough so that the air around her moves and make music like mercy that gives what it is and has nothing to prove she crawls out on a limb and begins to build her home and it's enough just to look around and to know that she's not alone up up up up up up up points the spire of the steeple but god's work isn't done by god it's done by people

  Ani DiFranco

  Integrity, Moving, Home

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• New York is to the nation what the white church spire is to the village - the visible symbol of aspiration and faith, the white plume saying the way is up!

  E. B. White

  New York, White, Church

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.156, Cornell University Press

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• Strange that so few ever come to the woods to see how the pine lives and grows and spires, lifting its evergreen arms to the light,--to see its perfect success; but most are content to behold it in the shape of many broad boards brought to market, and deem that its true success! But the pine is no more lumber than man is, and to be made into boards and houses is no more its true and highest use than the truest use of a man is to be cut down and made into manure.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Cutting, Men

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “The Maine Woods: The Writings of Henry David Thoreau, Volume III (of 20)”, p.71, Trajectory Inc

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• Jack looked out the window as they passed the Mormon temple, just outside the beltway near Connecticut Avenue. A decidedly odd-looking building, it had grandeur with its marble columns and gilt spires. The beliefs represented by that impressive structure seemed curious to Ryan, a lifelong Catholic, but the people who held them were honest and hardworking, and fiercely loyal to their country, because they believed in what America stood for.

  Tom Clancy

  Country, America, People

  Tom Clancy (1990). “Clear and Present Danger”, p.448, Penguin

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• When, from the top of any high hill, one looks round the country, and sees the multitude of regularly distributed spires, one not only ceases to wonder that order and religion are maintained, but one is astonished that any such thing as disaffection or irreligion should prevail.

  William Cobbett

  Country, Order, Looks

  William Cobbett's letter to William Windham, May 27, 1802.

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• [London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic.... One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like spits of foam above the next glum wave of dirty buildings.

  V. S. Pritchett

  Dirty, Sight, Sea

  V.S. Pritchett (2009). “Mr. Beluncle: A Novel”, p.13, Modern Library

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• Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opiate of the people. Opium suggests something soporific, numbing, dulling. Too often religion has been an aphrodisiac for horror, a Benzedrine for bestiality. At its best it has lifted spirits and raised spires. At its worst it has turned entire civilizations into cemeteries.

  Phillip Adams

  Civilization, People, Atheism

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