Heart Of Shell Quotes & Sayings

Listen! Clam up your mouth and be silent like an oyster shell, for that tongue of yours is the enemy of the soul, my friend. When the lips are silent, the heart has a hundred tongues. — Rumi

I was woken by a shell-burst in the trench of sleep. Heart skipping, with eyes fighting light, my thoughts sprang up like a field of starlings startled by a farmer's gunshot, a thousand separate, autonomous specks that swirled into a single united black shape. — Will Wiles

Autunm eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
From the nuts we shell time and we teach it to walk:
then time returns to the shell.
In the mirror it's Sunday,
in dream there is room for sleeping,
our mouths speak the truth.
My eye moves down to the sex of my loved one:
we look at each other,
we exchange dark words,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in the conches,
like the sea in the moon's blood ray.
We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from
the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time the stone made an effort to flower,
time unrest had a beating heart.
It is time it were time.
It is time. — Paul Celan

They slept little that night, making their newfound love like people for whom the world is running out. Fern did not think of her Task, not because she had abandoned it, but because she felt it would present itself for her attention when the moment was right, and until then she had an intermission, a suspension of hostilities, given by whatever gods there were. They lay in the cave while outside the tide rose and fell, and she thought that in this life and maybe in all lives she would remember that love sounded like the sea, and the beat of her heart was waves on a beach, and she would hear its echo in the nucleus of every shell. — Jan Siegel

Come in, O strong and deep love of Jesus, like the sea at the flood in spring tides, cover all my powers, drown all my sins, wash out all my cares, lift up my earth bound soul, and float it right up to my Lord's feet, and there let me lie, a poor broken shell, washed up by his love, having no virtue or value; and only venturing to whisper to him that if he will put his ear to me, he will hear within my heart faint echoes of the vast waves of his own love which have brought me where it is my delight to lie, even at his feet for ever. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The Armadillo A big fiesta was announced on Lake Titicaca, and the armadillo, who was a very superior creature, wanted to dazzle everybody. Long beforehand, he set to weaving a cloak of such elegance that it would knock all eyes out. The fox noticed him at work. "Are you in a bad mood?" "Don't distract me. I'm busy." "What's that for?" The armadillo explained. "Ah," said the fox, savoring the words, "for the fiesta tonight?" "What do you mean, tonight?" The armadillo's heart sank. He had never been more sure of his time calculations. "And me with my cloak only half finished!" While the fox took off with a smothered laugh, the armadillo finished the cloak in a hurry. As time was flying, he had to use coarser threads, and the weave ended up too big. For this reason the armadillo's shell is tight-warped around the neck and very open at the back. (174) — Eduardo Galeano

In Allston, as generous as he was with his praise and encouragement, Sophia had come face-to-face with the male art establishment and its aesthetic. She had encountered it before when she was hustled out of Thomas Doughty's studio while a men's painting class was in session. More recently, at a gathering in the Reverend Channing's parlor, she had been stunned when the minister had quoted the influential British artist Henry Fuseli's sneering observation that there was "no fist" in women's painting - and then demanded Sophia's response. Flustered, Sophia had "sunk away into my shell," unable to speak, she confided in her journal. She had enough trouble summoning the confidence to paint each day, let alone defend women artists as a class. Channing's question struck to the heart of Sophia's ambivalence about taking the initiative to create original works of art. Virtually — Megan Marshall

Ever since I met you, even my feet stopped belonging to me and became yours because all they ever seem to want to do is travel to wherever you are. My heart only lives and beats when you're where I can see you. Touch you. Kiss your lips and show you the physical equivalent of how deeply I love you. My soul fucking died after I sent that stupid letter and you disappeared. I've spent the last fifteen years walking around as a shell. Not a living, breathing human, but a robot going through the everyday motions. You were, are, and will always be more than my life. More than my beating heart, or any other physical reaction my body has. You're my everything, my fucking essence. I cease to exist unless I'm with you. — Jessie Lane

The streets of Aqaba are shell spirals and, on summer nights, crowded and complicated as a woman's heart. — Diana Abu-Jaber

It has nothing to do with age, it's not our languages, religion, gender, coulour of our skin; It's a soul within a well, that echoes deep beneath the ego's shell. True life can't ever start, until we offer up our heart . — Dawud Wharnsby Ali

A heart of fire in a shell of ice. — Francine Du Plessix Gray

When I love God I love the beauty of bodies, the rhythm of movements, the shining of eyes, the embraces, the feelings, the scents, the sounds of all this protean creation. When I love you, my God, I want to embrace it all, for I love you with all my senses in the creations of your love. In all the things that encounter me, you are waiting for me.
For a long time I looked for you within myself and crept into the shell of my soul, shielding myself with an armour of inapproachability. But you were outside - outside myself - and enticed me out of the narrowness of my heart into the broad place of love for life. So I came out of myself and found my soul in my senses, and my own self in others. — Jurgen Moltmann

If love makes you sad, you acquire a little depth, a little compassion. If it makes you happy, you learn how to be joyous. Every relationship should color your soul to a certain degree, don't you think? Every friendship, every love affair - each one should build up the chambers of your heart the way a sea creature builds the chamber of his shell. — Sharon Shinn

When you start to really know someone, all his physical characteristics start to disappear. You begin to dwell in his energy, recognize the scent of his skin. You see only the essence of the person, not the shell. That's why you can't fall in love with beauty. You can lust after it, be infatuated by it, want to own it. You can love it with your eyes and body but not your heart. And that's why, when you really connect with a person's inner self, any physical imperfections disappear, become irrelevant. — Lisa Unger

With his back to Neferet, Kalona buried his face in his hands. How could I have ever thought she, or any other woman, could supplant Nyx's place in my heart? I have spent centuries as a broken shell of myself, attempting to fill what was missing within me through violence and lust and power. Nothing! Nothing has worked!
He felt her hands on his shoulders. They were soft and warm and seemed to radiate kindness. Gently, ever so gently, she turned him, coaxing Kalona to face her. When he lifted his head his body went very still. Neferet had not followed him. She had not moved. She could not have touched him. Neferet had never touched him with such kindness.
But Nyx had. — P.C. Cast

It is only through letting our heart break that we discover something unexpected: the heart cannot actually break, it can only break open. When we feel both our love for this world and the pain of this world-together, at the same time-the heart breaks out of its shell. To live with an open heart is to experience life full-strength. — John Welwood

If you should take the human heart and listen to it, it would be like listening to a sea-shell; you would hear in it the hollow murmur of the infinite ocean to which it belongs, from which it draws its profoundest inspiration, and for which it yearns. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

The Friend That You've Outgrown Here's to the friend that you've outgrown, The one whose name is left unknown. The one who wiped away your tears, And sought to hold your hand, When others turned the other way, No beginning, just an end. She's the one you turned to, The one that you called friend. She laughed with you, she cried with you, And felt it was her duty, To remind you of your worth, And all your inner beauty. When others' eyes could only dwell, Upon your exposed outer shell. They saw a fat girl steeped in braces, Not seeing you they turned their faces. But she was there to whisper, When others didn't care. She held your secrets in her heart, That friends like you could share. You never had to be alone, But now she is, 'cause you've outgrown Her for those others whose laughs you share, As you run carefree through the air. Time has eased your form and face, But she's the one who knew your grace When those who you now call your friend Saw no beginning . . . only end. C. S. Dweck — Jack Canfield

Within the oyster's shell uncouth
The purest pearl may hide,
Trust me you'll find a heart of truth
Within that rough outside. — Frances Sargent Osgood

It is an awfully sad misconception that librarians simply check books in and out. The library is the heart of a school, and without a librarian, it is but an empty shell. — Jarrett J. Krosoczka

She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer. — T.H. White

First, all I could see was this beautiful face, this beautiful girl's face; like a white, slightly luminous mask, swimming detachedly against enfolding darkness. As if a little private spotlight of its own was trained on it from below. It was so beautiful and so false, and I seemed to know it so well, and my heart was wrung.
There was no danger yet, just this separate, shell-like face mask standing out. But there was danger somewhere around, I knew that already; and I knew that I couldn't escape it. I knew that everything [ was about to do, I had to do, I couldn't avoid doing. And yet, oh, I didn't want to do it. I wanted to turn and flee, I wanted to get out of wherever this was. ("Nightmare") — Cornell Woolrich

When it comes to affairs of the heart, you need to look deeper than the plastic-coated shell — Daisy James

After an hour my senses begin to vibrate in a definite rhythm, I tune into the great stillness, I tune in. I gaze at the crescent moon sitting like a white shell in the sky, and I have a feeling of love for it, I feel I'm blushing. It's the moon, I say softly and passionately, it's the moon! And my heart beats toward it with a gentle throbbing. It lasts for several minutes. It blows a little, a strange wind is coming, an unusual blast of air. What is it? I look around and see no one. The wind calls me and my soul bows in answer to the call,37 I feel myself lifted out of my sphere, pressed to an invisible breast, my eyes are moist with tears, I tremble - God is somewhere near looking at me. This lasts for another few minutes. I turn my head, the strange blast of air is gone, and I see something like the back of a spirit wandering soundlessly through the forest. . . . — Knut Hamsun

Empty, empty, empty; silent, silent, silent. The room was a shell, singing of what was before time was; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold, holding the still, distilled essence of emptiness, silence. — Virginia Woolf

I am pure light, not just a fistful of clay. The shell is not me, I came as the royal pearl within. Look at me not with outward eye but with inward vision of the heart; Follow me there and see how unencumbered we become. — Rumi

The Beauty of It If all I have is Now, where will I look for Joy? Without hope for the future, without hope that things will change, with no hope of finding what's been lost, and no hope of restoring the past, with only the risk to crack open all that has hardened about me, what will I do with what I have? At first, this might seem scary or sad, but as a tired swimmer comes ashore surprised to find pearls washing through his legs, I lift my tired head again and again to find all I need is right where I am. But being human, I stray and dream of lives other than my own, and soon I am busy wanting something else, somewhere else, someone else; busy imagining something just out of reach to strive for. It leads me to say if you are unhappy or in pain, nothing will remove these surfaces. But acceptance and a strong heart will crack them like a shell, exposing a softness that has always been, exposing a soft thing waiting to take form. It glows. I think it is the one spirit we all share. — Mark Nepo

Every good rowing coach, in his own way, imparts to his men the kind of self-discipline required to achieve the ultimate from mind, heart, and body. Which is why most ex-oarsmen will tell you they learned more fundamentally important lessons in the racing shell than in the classroom. — Daniel James Brown

A creature that hides and "withdraws into its shell," is preparing a "way out." This is true of the entire scale of metaphors, from the resurrection of a man in his grave, to the sudden outburst of one who has long been silent. If we remain at the heart of the image under consideration, we have the impression that, by staying in the motionlessness of its shell, the creature is preparing temporal explosions, not to say whirlwinds, of being. — Gaston Bachelard

Emptiness felt like a living thing. A parasite growing in the center of your chest, somewhere behind your heart, taking every ounce of warmth and light and happiness and consuming it until there's nothing left. Emptiness feels like exhaustion, like there's no reason to fight, no reason to take another breath, no reason to try to survive. But emptiness also feels like freedom. Because it doesn't just take the good, it takes the bad, too--the anger, the bitterness, the pain--and when it's done, it leaves you with just you. A cold, shell-like echo of yourself, but still you. — Ava Jae

Living like an empty shell is not really living, no matter how many years it may go on. The heart and flesh of an empty shell give birth to nothing more than the life of an empty shell. — Haruki Murakami

No perfection can last forever. Time tears at it; wears it down until it's nothing, just an empty shell. — Cassandra Giovanni

I like to take the time out to listen to the trees, much in the same way that I listen to a sea shell, holding my ear against the rough bark of the trunk, hearing the inner singing of the sap. It's a lovely sound, the beating of the heart of the tree. — Madeleine L'Engle

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

At age 43, when I decided to run again, I realized that the images used to describe runners didn't fit me. I wasn't a rabbit. I wasn't a gazelle or a cheetah or any of the other animals that run fast and free. But I wasn't a turtle or a snail either. I wasn't content anymore to move slowly through my life and hide in my shell when I was scared.
I was a round little man with a heavy heart but a hopeful spirit. I didn't really run, or even jog. I waddled. I was a Penguin. This was the image that fit. Emperor-proud, I stand tallto face the elements of my life. Yes, I am round. Yes, I am slow. Yes, I run as thought my legs are tied together at the knees. But I am running. And that is all that matters. — John Bingham

Sometimes we push ourselves. We take a workout and we use it as a way to crack open our shell, let the pain rush in and push out the stagnant wounds of the heart. Sometimes a workout sets you free. — Lauren Fleshman

One night, lightning struck the oak tree. Eddie saw it the next morning. It lay broken in half, and he looked into its trunk as into the mouth of a black tunnel. The trunk was only an empty shell; its heart had rotted away long ago; there was nothing inside - just a thin gray dust that was being dispersed by the whim of the faintest wind. The living power had gone, and the shape it left had not been able to stand without it. Years — Ayn Rand

Didn't she know yet? People you loved, the ones you cared about the most, they all died eventually. No one was spared. When you lost them, everything you had, all of your heart, was lost, too. It crippled you. Left you an empty shell, functioning on instinct alone. "You're horrible," she whispered, so softly that — Sophie Jordan

The shell around his heart had never been endangered by any other lover, yet now it had developed a hairline crack and a weird mix of emotions was trickling out. - from Fly Away With Me — Susan Fox

But guilt is a ghost that takes the shape of the body it inhabits and consumes all that is tender within its shell: brain, bowels, and heart. — Kathleen Kent

Love Came ...
and became like blood in my body.
It rushed through my veins and
encircled my Heart.
Everywhere I looked,
I saw One Thing ...
Love's Name written
on my limbs,
on my left palm,
on my forehead,
on the back of my neck,
on my right big toe ...
Oh, my friend,
all that you see of me
is just a shell,
and the rest belongs to Love. — Rumi

Set fire to cities and nations, to hearts and minds, to the very core of every human spirit. Make sure your words seep into the skin of the reader, leaving trace minerals that sustain the ailing human shell. Make them pay attention. Set fire to the soul. Anything less is an abomination to creation. — Susan Marie

I have seen A curious child, who dwelt upon a tract Of inland ground, applying to his ear The convolutions of a smooth-lipped shell; To which, in silence hushed, his very soul listened intensely; for from within were heard Murmurings whereby the monitor expressed Mysterious union with its native sea. Even such a shell the universe itself Is to the ear of faith; and there are times, I doubt not, when to you it doth impart Authentic tidings of invisible things, Of ebb and flow, and ever enduring power, And central peace, subsisting at the heart Of endless Agitation. — William Wordsworth

Beneath the haunted castle lies the dungeon keep: the womb from whose darkness the ego first emerged, the tomb to which it knows it must return at last. Beneath the crumbling shell or paternal authority, lies the maternal blackness, imagined by the Gothic writer as a prison, as a torture chamber- from which the cries of the kidnapped anima cannot even be heard. The upper and the lower levels of the ruined castle or abbey represent the contradictory fears at the heart of Gothic terror: dread of the superego, whose splendid battlements have been battered but not quite cast down- and of the id, whose buried darkness abounds in dark visions no stormer of the castle had ever touched. — Leslie A. Fiedler

Despite my lifetime of declining rich desserts, my evenings spent jogging, regardless of all my careful moderation and self-discipline - I'm trapped, wadded inside a shell of steel and aluminum. My body, violated in countless places by fragments of broken glass. My low-cholesterol blood rushes to abandon me in hot, leaping spurts. Despite all my care, the heart-attack victim and I will both be just as dead. — Chuck Palahniuk

Atoms have a nucleus, made of protons and neutrons bound together. Around this nucleus shells of electrons spin, and each shell is either full or trying to get full, to balance with the number of protons-to balance the number of positive and negative charges. An atom is like a human heart, you see. — Kim Stanley Robinson

It was simple. His world was Kate. If he denied that, he might as well stop breathing right now.
"I have to go," he blurted out, standing up so suddenly that his thighs hit the edge of the table, sending walnut shell shards skittering across the tabletop.
"I thought you might," Colin murmured.
Benedict just smiled and said, "Go."
His brothers, Anthony realized, were a bit smarter than they let on.
"We'll speak to you in a week or so?" Colin asked.
Anthony had to grin. He and his brothers had met at their club every day for the past fortnight. Colin's oh-so-innocent query could only imply one thing - that it was obvious that Anthony had completely lost his heart to his wife and planned to spend at least the next seven days proving it to her. And that the family he was creating had grown as important as the one he'd been born into.
"Two weeks," Anthony replied, yanking on his coat. "Maybe three."
His brothers just grinned. — Julia Quinn

Once there was a gypsy queen who wore on her wrist a chain of six lucky charms - a golden crown, a silver horse, a butterfly caught in amber, a cat's eye shell, a bolt of lightning forged from the heart of a falling star, and the flower of the rue plant, herb of grace. The queen gave each of her six children one of the charms as their lucky talisman, but ever since the chain of charms was broken, the gypsies had been dogged with misfortune. — Kate Forsyth

You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no ... anything. There's no chance at all of recovery. You'll just - exist. As an empty shell. And your soul is gone forever ... lost. — J.K. Rowling

Love is never safe," Tina repeats. "It's weird. It's magical. It's the moment when you break through the dark shell that protects your heart and say, this, this person. I'm going to let this person in, let him come so close that he can hurt me more than I can possibly imagine. I'm going to let him hurt me." She inhales. "Love is never safe." "And yet," I say, "we do it anyway." "We do it anyway." Her voice is a quiet echo of mine, but her hands close on mine. — Courtney Milan

Why can you hear the ocean inside a seashell? This is just a trick your ears play on you. What you hear is not the sound of the ocean, but rather the sound of your own blood rushing through your ears. All the shell does is amplify the sound so that you can hear it, the way a stethoscope lets you hear the beating of your heart. Some people say you hear the sea inside a shell because the shell remembers its home even when it has been taken away, but this is just a story. — Jenny Offill

Obedience is not truly performed by the body of him whose heart is dissatisfied. The shell without a kernel is not fit for store. — Saadi

People get their hearts broken over and over and over again. But they keep on beating. They keep going. And each time they get stronger. Not a heart made of armor, not a hardened shell. They get stronger because it's like any muscle. You keep using it and it will grow, and if shit gets rough it will bounce right back. The heart is nothing if not resilient. — Karina Halle

Anyone can buy a car or a night on the town. Most of us shell our days like peanuts. One in a thousand can look at the world with amazement. I don't mean gawking at the Chrysler Building. I'm talking about the wing of a dragonfly. The tale of the shoeshine. Walking through an unsullied hour with an unsullied heart — Amor Towles

There is no true joy in a life lived closed up in the little shell of the self. When you take one step to reach out to people, when you meet with others and share their thoughts and sufferings, infinite compassion and wisdom well up within your heart. Your life is transformed. — Daisaku Ikeda

Fine Knacks for Ladies

Fine knacks for ladies, cheap, choice, brave and new!
Good pennyworths! but money cannot move.
I keep a fair but for the fair to view.
A beggar may be liberal of love,
Though all my wares be trash, the heart is true.

Great gifts are guiles and look for gifts again;
My trifles come as treasures from the mind.
It is a precious jewel to be plain;
Sometimes in shell the Orient's pearls we find.
Of others take a sheaf, of me a grain.

Within this pack pins points laces and gloves,
And diverse toys fitting a country fair.
But in my heart, where duty serves and loves,
Turtles and twins, court's brood, a heavenly pair.
Happy the heart that thinks of no removes! — John Dowland

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding ... And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy — Kahlil Gibran

A real man, the kind of man a woman wants to give her life to, is one who will respect her dignity, who will honor her like the valuable treasures she is. A real man will not attempt to rip her precious pearl from its protective shell, or persuade her with charm to give away her treasure prematurely, but he will wait patiently until she willingly gives him the prize of her heart. A real man will cherish and care for that precious prize forever. — Leslie Ludy

My mother looked back at me while my father drove. Her long auburn hair was shimmering in the flickers of light passing through the window from the oncoming highway traffic. Looking at her I admired her flawless, pearlescent skin. Her hazel eyes were flecked with bits of blue and teal like a true Mer. My mother was beautiful, and I looked nothing like her. — Zara Steen

The emotion I'd held back for years assaulted me with staggering intensity. Everything. All of it. I cried for Clay, for the lost years with Courtney, but most of all for myself and the cowardly person I'd become. They were right. I was a shell of who I used to be and lived a lonely little life. I'd been certain that protecting my heart had been the right way to go. That Courtney and I didn't mix in the long term. That love was not for me. I'd been wrong on all counts. — Melissa Brayden

Sunflowers and seashells and logarithmic spirals (said Kerewin); sweep of galaxies and the singing curve of the universe (said Kerewin); the oscilating wave thrumming in the nothingness of every atom's heart (said Kerewin); did you think I could build a square house? So the round shell house holds them all in its spiralling embrace. Noise and riot, peace and quiet, all is music in this sphere. — Keri Hulme

Pocock paused and stepped back from the frame of the shell and put his hands on his hips, carefully studying the work he had so far done. He said for him the craft of building a boat was like religion. It wasn't enough to master the technical details of it. You had to give yourself up to it spiritually; you had to surrender yourself absolutely to it. When you were done and walked away from the boat, you had to feel that you had left a piece of yourself behind in it forever, a bit of your heart. He turned to Joe. "Rowing," he said, "is like that. And a lot of life is like that too, the parts that really matter anyway. Do you know what I mean, Joe? — Daniel James Brown

From time to time I try to imagine this world of which he spoke
a culture in whose mythology words might be that precious, in which words were conceived as vessels for communications from the heart; a society in which words are holy, and the challenge of life is based upon the quest for gentle words, holy words, gentle truths, holy truths.
I try to imagine for myself a world in which the words one gives one's children are the shell into which they shall grow, so one chooses one's words carefully, like precious gifts, like magnificent gifts, like magnificent inheritances, for they convey an excess of what we have imagined, they bear gifts beyond imagination, they reveal and revisit the wealth of history.
How carefully, how slowly, and how lovingly we might step into our expectations of each other in such a world. — Patricia J. Williams

My very, very first professional job was when I was 19 years old - I got a job doing an educational industrial film on Shell Motor Oil's oil products. I really put my heart into it - I wrote a script for it, I did a lot of research. — Renny Harlin

*You are not yet in the Emerald Dream. First, you must remove your earthly shell ... * the voice in his head instructed. *As you reach the state of sleep, you will slip your body off as you would a coat. Start from your heart and mind, for they are the links that most bind you to the mortal plane. See? This is how it is done ... * - Chapter 4 — Richard A. Knaak

What can we expect from an empty shell
Where many hearts of pearl once beat to dwell
Waves fail to break hard layer's bond of love
Wailing shore sends memoir to the sky above — Munia Khan

Of course I want to look nice and have a good appearance, but more than the outer shell, I want people to want to be around me for my heart. — Tim Tebow

When the soul opens its shell, it liberates the fundamental center that is the spirit. And once born, the spirit spreads its wings and flies with all the freedom of love, going to nestle in the heart where resides true Divine love. Love is God in full flight, and it is found inside our own selves. It is the bird coming back to its nest, the spirit returning to its reality, and the creature to the Creator, all coming together in the domain of the One who is and always was. — Alex Polari De Alverga

Love is ordinary, love is dull, love is the natural condition of the human heart, love is the message we carry branded on us from the womb but only the best of us will dare to read it and, even when we dare to read it to people who can never understand, it is still there in us like the rings in a tree or the ridges in a shell, part of us, marking the years and the drought and the growth, even if nobody sees it until the tree is cut down. — Andrew Nicoll

Here's what I love about travel: strangers get a chance to amaze you. Sometimes a single day can bring a blooming surprise, a simple kindness that opens a chink in the brittle shell of your heart and makes you a different person when you go to sleep--more tender, less jaded--than you were when you woke up. — Tanya Shaffer