Limestone Quotes

• If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

  John McPhee

  Motivational, Writing, Marine

  John McPhee (2000). “Annals of the Former World”, p.127, Macmillan

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• On limestone quarried near the spot By his command these words are cut: Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Death, Eye

  "Under Ben Bulben" l. 89 (1939). The final three lines are in fact inscribed on Yeats's gravestone.

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• I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and threw them out the window in disgust.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mind, Three, Pieces

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “Walden; Or, Life in the Woods”, p.23, Courier Corporation

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• My idea of an amusement park story is getting adventurers to go tour environmental disaster areas. After all, if the entire Great Barrier Reef gets killed, which seems like an extremely lively possibility, what are you going to do with all that rotting limestone?

  Bruce Sterling

  Ideas, Environmental, Parks

  22 Copy quote

• Peering, I heard the hooves come down the hill.
  The posse passed, twelve horse; the leader's face
  Was worn as limestone on an ancient sill.

  Allen Tate

  Horse, Leader, Faces

  Allen Tate (1960). “Poems”, New York : Scribner

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• It is so easy to waste our lives: our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the pale new growth on an evergreen, the sheen of the limestone on Fifth Avenue, the colour of our kids’ eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again. It is so easy to exist instead of live. Unless you know there is a clock ticking.

  Anna Quindlen

  Fall, Kids, Eye

  Anna Quindlen (2002). “A Short Guide to a Happy Life”, Arrow/Children's (a Division of Random House Group)

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• Isn't it wonderful that two of the most sacred and symbolic plants, the olive and the vine, live on almost nothing, a terrace of limestone, sun and rain.

  Janet Erskine Stuart

  Rain, Two, Vines

  31 Copy quote

• Well, I don't like the word 'rock star,' the two words, 'rock star.' Not even 'soft rock star. Not even limestone star. I don't like those words.

  Chris Martin

  Stars, Rocks, Two

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• When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone.

  John McPhee

  Ocean, Moving, Writing

  "Basin and Range". Book by John McPhee, 1981; reprinted in his book "Annals of the Former World", 1998.

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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, Shells

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

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• Cast a cold eye on life, on death Horseman pass by

  William Butler Yeats

  Life, Tombstone, Eye

  "Under Ben Bulben" l. 89 (1939). The final three lines are in fact inscribed on Yeats's gravestone.

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• We've had a wonderful, wonderful life together. We've been in many places, we've had the experiences, and now we have the memories. But most of all we have developed the solid knowledge and understanding and background regarding the foundation stones of life, so that we know for a surety that what we are doing [in helping to build the Kingdom of God] is true. Those foundation stones are granite stones; not soft, not limestones. They are granite.

  David B. Haight

  Life, Memories, Knowledge

  7 Copy quote

• You feel a certain way in a glass or concrete or limestone building. It has an effect on your skin - the same with plywood or veneer, or solid timber. Wood doesn't steal energy from your body the way glass and concrete steal heat. When it's hot, a wood house feels cooler than a concrete one, and when it's cold, the other way around.

  Peter Zumthor

  Glasses, House, Skins

  51 Copy quote

• The summit of Mount Everest is marine limestone.

  John McPhee

  Marine, Summit, Everest

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• Instead of feeling a poverty when we encounter a great man, let us treat the new comer like a travelling geologist, who passes through our estate, and shows us good slate, or limestone, or anthracite, in our brush pasture.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Travel, Greatness, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Essays (Annotated Edition)”, p.227, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Nelson Mandela once remarked that he befriended his jailers, those grim, khaki-clad overseers of his decades of hard labor in a limestone quarry, by "exploiting their good qualities." Asked if he believed all people were kind at their core, he responded, "There is no doubt whatsoever, provided you are able to arouse their inherent goodness." If that sounds like wishful thinking, well, he actually did it.

  Marc Ian Barasch

  Life, Thinking, Compassion

  Marc Ian Barasch (2010). “The Compassionate Life: Walking the Path of Kindness”, p.11, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Guess what it is that turns plants to coal. Pressure. Guess what it is that turns limestone to marble. Pressure. Guess what it is that turns Briony's heart to stone. Pressure. Pressure is uncomfortable, but so are the gallows. Keep your secrets, wolfgirl. Dance your fists with Eldric's, snatch lightning from the gods. Howl at the moon, at the blood-red moon. Let your mouth be a cavern of stars.

  Franny Billingsley

  Stars, Heart, Moon

  Franny Billingsley (2013). “Chime”, p.134, A&C Black

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• German is of stone, limestone, pudding stone, marble, granite even, and so to a considerable degree is English, whereas French is bronze and gives out a metallic resonance with tones that neither German nor English tolerate.

  Bernard Berenson

  Giving, Stones, Degrees

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• I am delighted, one more time, by the daring of my species and the audacity of our flying machines. There is poetry and music in our technology, a beauty as touching as that of eagle, moss campion, raven or yonder limestone boulder shining under the Arctic sun.

  Edward Abbey

  Technology, Eagles, Ravens

  Edward Abbey (1984). “Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside”, p.164, Macmillan

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• We passed hieroglyphic scrolls, gold jewelry, sarcophagi, statues of pharaohs, and huge chunks of limestone. Why would someone display a rock? Aren't there enough of those in the world?

  Rick Riordan

  Rocks, Gold, World

  Rick Riordan (2010). “The Kane Chronicles, The, Book One: Red Pyramid”, Hyperion

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• The apparent physical stability of reefs belies an underlying natural turmoil of growth, death and destruction of calcareous organisms. Much like a modern city, reefs are constantly being rebuilt and torn down at the same time. Corals are the bricks, broken pieces of plant and animal skeletons the sand, and algal crusts and chemical cements the mortar. Reef growth is determined by the production, accumulation, and cementation of all this calcareous stuff into solid limestone.

  Jeremy Jackson

  Nature, Animal, Cities

  5 Copy quote