Steeple Quotes & Sayings

Personally, I'm not much for symbolism. I never get it. Why can't things be just as they are? I never thought to psychoanalyze Seymour Glass or sought to break down "Desolation Row." I just wanted to get lost, become one with somewhere else, slip a wreath on a steeple top solely because I wished it. — Patti Smith

For a house, somewhere near Los Angeles I found an old church. Very old, no longer used. So we moved the church to the land, and I took off the steeple, and I got my hands dirty. — Douglas Sirk

Dim loneliness came imperceivably into the fields and he turned back. The birds piped oddly; some wind was caressing the higher foliage, turning it all one way, the way home. Telegraph poles ahead looked like half-used pencils; the small cross on the steeple glittered with a sharp and shapely permanence. — A.E. Coppard

His fingers bent forward at the topmost joint pushing down against the tips of my nails, and his thumb rested lightly against the mole on my index finger. i thought of mosques and churches and prayer mats. Hands clasped together; one hand resting atop the other; fingers interlocked to mime a steeple. What sacred power is invested in hands?
This is not to say I was having pious thoughts. — Kamila Shamsie

The sharp white steeple of the Hawthorne First Baptist Church stuck up through the leafless trees like an admonishing finger. — Robert McCammon

[The] whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so much confusion. — Marianne Moore

Pasture, stone wall, and steeple,
What most perturbs the mind:
The heart-rending homely people,
Or the horrible beautiful kind? — Louise Bogan

At the end of the street the sharp white needle of the church's steeple poked into the sky as if heaven were a big balloon that needed to be popped. — Wendy Wunder

I think Miss Moore was right to cut "The Steeple-Jack" the poem seems plainer and clearer in its shortened state but she has cut too much ... The reader may feel like saying, "Let her do as she pleases with the poem; it's hers, isn't it?" No; it's much too good a poem for that, it long ago became everybody's, and we can protest just as we could if Donatello cut off David's left leg. — Randall Jarrell

When a founder has cast a bell he does not presently fix it in the steeple, but tries it with his hammer, and beats it on every side to see if there be any flaw in it. So Christ doth not presently after he hath converted a man, convey him to heaven; but suffers him first to be beaten upon by many temptations and then exalts him to his crown. — Richard Cecil

There were several recently dug graves in the churchyard, but I found only one that was freshly dug and covered with fresh flowers. I had known Anna only from a few laughing words, from the light in her eyes, a touch of hands and a fleeting kiss, but I felt an ache inside me such as I had not felt since I was a child, since my father's death. I looked up at the church steeple, a dark arrow pointing at the moon and beyond, and tried with all my heart and mind to believe she was up there somewhere in that vast expanse of infinity, up there in Sunday-school Heaven, in Big Joe's happy Heaven. I couldn't bring myself to think it. I knew she was lying in the cold earth at my feet. I knelt down and kissed the earth, then left her there. The moon sailed above me, following behind me, through the trees, lighting my way back to camp. By the time I got there I had no more tears left to cry. The — Michael Morpurgo

I sought to hear the voice of God and climbed the topmost steeple, but God declared: Go down again - I dwell among the people. — John Henry Newman

What do I consider myself now? A man attempting to be good. In this endeavor I have no use for church and steeple. If another man does, I only wish he finds what he needs. — David Ebershoff

CONGS CATASTROPHE
In their primal gladiatorial tourney N. Baddesley jousting on their own bailiwick encountered the full and furious blast of Steeple Sinderby's New Look Lads spearheaded by Sid Swift, long-lost Shooting Star idol of Brum fans a handful of time ago. The Ringers clocked up eleven strikes and only the inexorable march of time muffled a full peal of twelve. — J.L. Carr

I still say a church steeple with a lightning rod on top shows a lack of confidence — Doug McLeod

A throng of bearded men in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and other bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams. — Claude Debussy

Turning something upside-down elicits a reversal of content and pointing a steeple into the ground directs it to hell as opposed to heaven. — Dennis Oppenheim

I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star ... And I dance. — Arthur Rimbaud

I met you at the cornerstone on the highway to bedlam./Walked with you to the pinnacle, along that ledge to hell,/Traveled along the passageway of all things aching,/But would crawl with you if you wanted me to/On the steeple point to hope./So we can tip the stars and hold the moon,/Graze the sun, but make it soon. — Melina Marchetta

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people, they're drinking, thinking that they got it made. Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things, but you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it, babe. — Bob Dylan

At dawn, a ray of sunlight slanted from the steeple of St. Antoine's church, glanced off a window on Grant Street and finally alighted on a beer can lying in the middle of the pavement. — Yves Beauchemin

As to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church steeple minds the rooks cawing about it. — George Eliot

So they grew, and they grew, to the church steeple tops
And they couldn't grow up any higher;
So they twin'd themselves into a true lover's knot,
For all lovers true to admire. — Francis Lovell, 1st Viscount Lovell

The amplest knowledge has the largest faith. Ignorance is always incredulous. Tell an English cottager that the belfries of Swedish churches are crimson, and his own white steeple furnishes him with a contradiction. — Robert Aris Willmott

One bright sunny morning in the shadow of the steeple, by the Relief Office, I saw my people -As they stood hungry, I stood there wondering if God blessed America for me. — Woody Guthrie

The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their sphere. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

But it's what I call "The Valley Filled with Clouds" technique. You're at the edge of the valley, and there is a church steeple, and there is a tree, and there is a rocky outcrop, but the rest of it is mist. But you know that because they exist, there must be ways of getting from one to the other that you cannot see. And so you start the journey. And when I write, I write a draft entirely for myself, just to walk the valley and find out what the book is going to be all about. — Terry Pratchett

On my bedside table is a snow globe with a winterscape inside.
Church, park bench, girl standing shin-deep in snow. Tip the snow globe over and a blizzard of slow snow falls over church and bench and girl. What is it about snow globes that makes them fascinating and terrifying at once?
My heart lurches at the thought of the snow-globe girl waiting endlessly, with only the hope of a new snow blizzard to settle on her mantle when the next person tips her snow-globe world over. Not a gust of breeze may ruffle her skirt, not a bird may perch atop the steeple. The only way out of a snow globe is by shattering the glass dome that is its sky. — Amruta Patil

Readers want to know a few things right up front, like what the weather is like and the lay of the land, the color of that lake, or the steep pitch of that steeple. Now whether or not these things have one iota to do with your story doesn't concern the reader. — Ron Rozelle

In the crowd of a million people I'll find my valentine, and then I'll climb the highest steeple and tell the world he's mine. — Connie Francis

Last spring I was worried about what gloves to wear. What can I do against Keating?" "Always go with the white, and stay safe." Holmes made a steeple of his fingers. "Arm yourself against every eventuality and survive. There is only one thing to do once you have such distinguished enemies. Wait and watch. And when your moment comes, you make them pay dearly. Difficult times do not last." She finished his favorite piece of advice. "Difficult, obstinate, and impertinent people do. — Emma Jane Holloway

Proud Maisie"

Proud Maisie is in the wood,
Walking so early;
Sweet Robin sits on the bush,
Singing so rarely.

'Tell me, thou bonny bird,
When shall I marry me?'
'When six braw gentlemen
Kirkward shall carry ye.'

'Who makes the bridal bed,
Birdie, say truly?'
'The grey-headed sexton,
That delves the grave duly.

'The glowworm o'er grave and stone
Shall light thee steady;
The owl from the steeple sing,
'Welcome, proud lady. — Walter Scott

Throughout history people have gazed at the skies in wonder. You only have to stand at the base of a church steeple to understand why. — Fennel Hudson

The Lord takes care of his own, but church trustees still put lightning rods on the steeple. — Evan Esar

We said goodbye with a highball Then I got as high as a steeple But we were intelligent people No tears, no fuss, hooray For us! — Leo Robin

Why be content with stain class, a Church steeple and religious rituals when God invites you into a loving and intimate relation with Him because His son Jesus Christ paid the full and final price for all your sins. — John Paul Warren

When Mrs Ross asked him what he was thinking of, he shrugged. But he was thinking of the time he'd climbed the steeple of a church when he was ten-and had seen, for the very first time, the world spread out around him like a gift. — Timothy Findley

The Finger of God, Whose Body might have been concealed below among the crowd of human bodies without fear of my confounding It, for that reason, with them. And so even to-day in any large provincial town, or in a quarter of Paris which I do not know well, if a passer-by who is 'putting me on the right road' shews me from afar, as a point to aim at, some belfry of a hospital, or a convent steeple lifting the peak of its ecclesiastical cap — Marcel Proust

Asked. So far, in her brief time in Appalachia, she had become convinced that every five families had their own tiny church with a leaning white steeple. There were churches everywhere, all believing in the inerrancy of the Holy Scripture but evidently agreeing on little else. — Anonymous

O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple. — William Shakespeare

The Great Point lighthouse rose at the far end of the barrier beach, a tall white steeple to the sky, with a working light flashing at the top. Here was the end of the island, the great point where the Atlantic Ocean met Nantucket Sound in a froth of waves. All along the point, enormous fat seals lolled on the sand, occasionally lumbering in and out of the water, grunting and lounging like a tribe of overfed Roman emperors. — Nancy Thayer

A Seth Thomas steeple clock stood on a high shelf. When it struck ten, Grandma jerked awake. She looked around the room astonished. It was her belief that she never slept, not even in bed. — Richard Peck

Forgiveness to letting go of a bell rope. If you have ever seen a country church with a bell in the steeple, you will remember that to get the bell ringing you have to tug awhile. Once it has begun to ring, you merely maintain the momentum. As long as you keep pulling, the bell keeps ringing. Forgiveness is letting go of the rope. It is just that simple. But when you do so, the bell keeps ringing. Momentum is still at work. However, if you keep your hands off the rope, the bell will begin to slow and eventually stop. — Corrie Ten Boom

I won't go down the horrible street
To see the horrible people
I'll gladly climb the terrible stair
That leads to the terrible steeple
And the terrible rats
And the terrible bats
And the cats in the terrible steeple
But I won't go down the horrible street
To see the horrible people — James Thurber

An artist in my eyes, is someone who can lighten up a dark room. I have never and will never find difference between the pass from Pele to Carlos Alberto in the final of the World Cup in 1970 and the poetry of the young Rimbaud, who stretches cords from steeple to steeple and garlands from window to window. There is in each of these human manifestations an expression of beauty which touches us and gives us a feeling of eternity. — Eric Cantona

I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and saying "Ah!" in an encouraging way, as if he could see something I couldn't and then I would find words to tell him how I was so scared, as I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out.
Then he would lean back in his chair and match the tips of his fingers together in a little steeple and tell me why I couldn't sleep and why I couldn't read and why I couldn't eat and why everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.
And then, I thought, he would help me, step by step, to be myself again. — Sylvia Plath

Home"

It would take forever to get there
but I would know it anywhere:

My white horse grazing in my blossomy field.
Its soft nostrils. The petals
falling from the trees into the stream.

The festival would be about to begin
in the dusky village in the distance. The doe
frozen at the edge of the grove:

She leaps. She vanishes. My face -
She has taken it. And my name -

(Although the plaintive lark in the tall
grass continues to say and to say it.)

Yes. This is the place.
Where my shining treasure has been waiting.
Where my shadow washes itself in my fountain.

A few graves among the roses. Some moss
on those. An ancient

bell in a steeple down the road
making no sound at all
as the monk pulls and pulls on the rope. — Laura Kasischke

For acting, darlings, is the world's most perilous trade. Compared with actors, steeple jacks and deep-sea divers lead snug and placid lives. — Tallulah Bankhead

Where's the church, who took the steeple, Religion's in the hands of some crazy ass people, Television preachers with bad hair and dimples, The God's honest truth is, it's not that simple — Jimmy Buffett

Here we live in the shadow of the steeple, where the holy rubber meets the road, all crookedly blessed in God's mercy, in the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, race-riot-creating, oddball-hating, soul-shaking, love-and-fear-making, heartbreaking town of Freehold, New Jersey. Let the service begin. — Bruce Springsteen

Richard Hadlee has the appearance of a rickety church steeple and a severe manner which suggests that women are not likely to be ordained yet. — Peter Roebuck

Westminster Abbey, the Tower, a steeple, one church, and then another, presented themselves to our view; and we could now plainly distinguish the high round chimneys on the tops of the houses, which yet seemed to us to form an innumerable number of smaller spires, or steeples. — Karl Philipp Moritz

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

A beggarly people, A church and no steeple. — Thomas B. Macaulay

The beautiful in life ...
Some talk of it in poetry,
Some grow it from the soil,
Some build it in a steeple,
Some show it through their toil.
Some breathe it into music,
Some mold it into art,
Some shape it into bread loaves ...
Some hold it in their hearts. — Bernard Meltzer

Speed. O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible,
As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple!
My master sues to her, and she hath taught her suitor,
He being her pupil, to become her tutor.
O excellent device! was there ever heard a better,
That my master, being scribe, to himself should write the letter?
Valentine. How now, sir? what are you reasoning with yourself?
Speed. Nay, I was rhyming: 'tis you that have the reason. — William Shakespeare

In the midst of this scoured landscape, on a suburban street, I saw the church steeple, and Lucille slowed down and pointed, and waved me on. As I passed her to enter the parking lot, I thanked her, and she gave me a wonderful smile, and just before she drove on she said, "Be blessed." That seemed to be the theme in the Deep South: kindness, generosity, a welcome. I had found it often in my traveling life in the wider world, but I found so much more of it here that I kept going, because the good will was like an embrace. Yes, there is a haunted substratum of darkness in Southern life, and though it pulses through many interactions, it takes a long while to perceive it, and even longer to understand. — Paul Theroux

Established, tall-steeple, fixed-pew churches are like Budweiser. They work for plenty of people. But not for everyone. And the number of people they are working for is shrinking. The church needs to start thinking like a microbrew: offer something different. Not because you think it's going to be the next big thing; it may just be the next - thing. — Jerry Herships

What?" I ask. I don't get anything about this day. Everything is just off.
"Are you sure?"
"Am I sure where I live? Yeah. Steeple Drive."
"Your cabin is on this road?"
"Is it just me, or is everything I'm saying slightly freaking you out? — Travis Thrasher

Trying what?" cried Maury fiercely. "Trying to pierce the darkness of political idealism with some wild, despairing urge toward truth? Sitting day after day supine in a rigid chair and infinitely removed from life staring at the tip of a steeple through the trees, trying to separate, definitely and for all time, the knowable from the unknowable? Trying to take a piece of actuality and give it glamour from your own soul to make for that inexpressible quality it possessed in life and lost in transit to paper or canvas? — F Scott Fitzgerald

Journey by Train Stretched across counties, countries, the train Rushes faster than memory through the rain. The rise of each hill is a musical phrase. Listen to the rhythm of space, how it lies, How it rolls, how it reaches, what unwinding relays Of wood and meadow where the red cows graze Come back again and again to closed eyes - That garden, that pink farm, that village steeple, And here and there the solitary people Who stand arrested when express trains pass, That stillness of an orchard in deep grass. Yet landscapes flow like this toward a place, A point in time and memory's own face. So when the clamor stops, we really climb Down to the earth, closing the curve of time, Meeting those we have left, to those we meet Bringing our whole life that has moved so fast, And now is gathered up and here at last, To unroll like a ribbon at their feet. — May Sarton

In East Sussex, let us say, an old farm sleeps in sun-dapple, its oast-house with its cowls echoing the distant steeple of SS Andrew and Mary, Fletching, where de Montfort had prayed and Gibbon now sleeps out a sceptic's eternity. The Sussex Weald is quiet now, its bows and bowmen that did affright the air at Agincourt long dust. A Chalk Hill Blue spreads peaceable wings upon the hedge. Easter is long sped, yet yellow and lavender yet ornament the land, in betony and dyer's greenweed and mallows. An inquisitive whitethroat, rejoicing in man's long opening of the Wealden country, trills jauntily from atop a wall. — G.M.W. Wemyss

The mellow bells, soaring and singing in tower and steeple, told of time's flight through an eternity of peace; and Great Tom, tolling his nightly hundred-and-one, called home only the rooks from off Christ Church Meadow. — Dorothy L. Sayers