Stone Statue Quotes & Sayings

The outsiders stood always in awe in front of what they had surnamed the Celestial City with Mighty Walls. The great mystery that cloaked its very foundations kept impelling the youth of Crotona, as well as those of the adjacent cities, to seek admittance. In spite of the difficult rules of the Master, curiosity goaded many to venture inside its secrecy, with a passionate aspiration to discover the unknown. Yet, to enroll, young men and women should be introduced by their parents. Sometimes, it was one of the assigned Masters of the Pythagorean Society who assumed the introduction. At the massive wooden gated entrance, one could admire the marble statue of Hermes-Enoch, the father of the spiritual laws. A cubical stone formed its stall where a skillful hand had carved the words: No entry to the vulgar — Karim El Koussa

In creation myths, a god shapes mud or clay into living form, much like a potter throws a pot or a sculptor reveals the statue within a block of marble. But a writer has to create his own clay or stone before he can begin shaping life from it. — Stuart Dybek

When they asked Michelangelo how he made his statue of David he is reported to have said, It is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn't look like David. — Michelangelo

One grave in every graveyard belongs to the ghouls. Wander any graveyard long enough and you will find it - water stained and bulging, with cracked or broken stone, scraggly grass or rank weeds about it, and a feeling, when you reach it, of abandonment. It may be colder than the other gravestones, too, and the name on the stone is all too often impossible to read. If there is a statue on the grave it will be headless or so scabbed with fungus and lichens as to look like fungus itself. If one grave in a graveyard looks like a target for petty vandals, that is the ghoul-gate. If the grave wants to make you be somewhere else, that is the ghoul-gate. — Neil Gaiman

South Africans will kick down a statue of a dead white man but won't even attempt to slap a live one. Yet they can stone to death a black man simply because he's a foreigner — Robert Mugabe

As when, O lady mine,
With chiselled touch
The stone unhewn and cold
Becomes a living mould,
The more the marble wastes,
The more the statue grows. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

Roebling rejoined the Army of the Potomac in February 1863 back at Fredericksburg, where he was quartered late one night in an old stone jail, from which he would emerge the following morning with a story that would be told in the family for years and years to come. The place had little or no light, it seems, and Roebling, all alone, groping his way about, discovered an old chest that aroused his curiosity. He lifted the lid and reaching inside, his hand touched a stone-cold face. The lid came back down with a bang. Deciding to investigate no further, he cleared a place on the floor, stretched out, and went to sleep. At daybreak he opened the chest to see what sort of corpse had been keeping him company through the night and found instead a stone statue of George Washington's mother that had been stored away for safekeeping. — David McCullough

There's no hall of fame for that working class hero, no statue carved out of stone. And his greatest reward is the love of a woman and his children. — Alan Jackson

When carving stone, the sculptor removes everything that is not the statue. [ ... ] The art of revealing beauty lies in removing what conceals it. So, too, Patanjali [in the Yoga Sutras] tells us that wholeness exists within us. Our work is to chisel away at everything that is not essence, not Self. — Judith Hanson Lasater

Walking back across the St-Esprit bridge, to the ghetto I'd instinctively gravitated toward, I mentally erected a more appropriate statue on the square. It would depict an unknown Sephardic Jew, kneeling over a stone tripod covered with crushed cacao beans destined for a cup of chocolate for one of the gentiles of Bayonne.
It would be a symbolic piece, executed in smooth, chocolate-hued marble, and dedicated to all the other forgotten heroes--coffee-drinking Sufi dervishes, peyote-eating Native Americans, Mexican hemp-smokers--who, throughout history, have faced the wrath of all the sultans, drug czars, and Vatican clerics who have resorted to any spurious pretext to squelch one of the most venerable and misunderstood of human drives: the desire to escape, however briefly, everyday consciousness. — Taras Grescoe

Standing there, chisel and mallet in hand, gazing at the statue that was his vision in stone, was a moment when Richard could savor the supreme achievement of having his creation exist exactly as he had originally conceived it. For this singular moment in time, it was complete, and it was his alone. — Terry Goodkind

I'm fat, but I'm thin inside. Has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue inside every block of stone? — George Orwell

A marble cutter, with chisel and hammer, was changing a stone into a statue. A preacher looking on said: "I wish I could deal such changing blows on stony hearts." The workman answered: "Maybe you could, if you worked like me, upon your knees." — Arthur Tappan Pierson

She saw some boulders she would have wagered had once been toes on a statue, though why anyone would make a statue that large with bare feet she could not imagine, and another time the way led through a forest of thick fluted stones among the trees, the weathered stumps of columns, many toppled and all long since mined almost to the ground for their stone by local farmers. A pleasant — Robert Jordan

Shadowfax tossed his head and cried aloud, as if a trumpet had summoned him to battle. Then he sprang forward. Fire flew from his feet; night rushed over him. As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind. — J.R.R. Tolkien

It might be suggested, and not easily disproven that anything, no matter how exotic, can be believed by someone. On the other hand, abstract belief is largely impossible; it is the concrete, the actuality of the cup, the candle, the sacrificial stone, which hardens belief; the statue is nothing until it cries, the philosophy is nothing until the philosopher is martyred. — Shirley Jackson

All over France, in every city there stand cathedrals like this one, triumphant monuments of the past. They tower over the homes of our people like mighty guardians, keeping alive the invincible faith of the Christian. Every arch, every column, every statue is a carved leaf out of our history, a book in stone, glorifying the spirit of France. — Sonya Levien

Some knitters say that they buy yarn with no project in mind and wait patiently for the yarn to "speak" to them. This reminds me of Michelangelo, who believed that every block of stone he carved had the statue waiting inside and that all he did was reveal it. I think I've had yarn speak to me during the knitting process, and I've definitely spoken to it. Perhaps I'm doing it wrong, or maybe my yarn and I aren't on such good terms, but it really seems to me that all I say is "please" and all it ever says is "no". — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Art is craft: all art is always and essentially a work of craft: but in the true work of art, before the craft and after it, is some essential durable core of being, which is what the craft works on, and shows, and sets free. The statue in the stone. How does the artist find that, see it, before it's visible? That is a real question. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Maybe in the morning, sunlight would to turn him back into a statue; then I could take Stone out to the forest where he could frolic among the ferns, gurgle at streams, and make friends with the other interesting rocks. — Devon Monk

Nobody ever built a statue to a committee. — Roger Stone

Now a gigantic statue of black stone dominated the scene. It was rather frightening, this vast sculpture of a witch and a wizard sitting on ornately carved thrones, looking down at the Ministry workers toppling out of fireplaces below them. Engraved in foot-high letters at the base of the statue were the words MAGIC IS MIGHT. Harry — J.K. Rowling

At first glance, she thought him a statue; an apparition in the deluge of rain. He sat perched on top of a mausoleum, crouched like a gargoyle with his elbows on his knees, hood shrouding his face. Three stone crosses rose behind him giving him the appearance a post-apocalyptic monk guarding a sacred shrine. That — Martina McAtee

Don't blink. Don't even blink." she whispered.
"What in the hell are you talking about?" Aiden looked around trying to identify a hidden threat.
"You blink and you're dead." Meryn stared at the two large stone angels on either side of a heavy looking wooden door unblinking. Aiden's hand went to his sidearm.
"Meryn, that is just a statue."
"But what if it isn't? I mean up until this week I didn't think paranormals existed and now you're all over the fucking place. I can't take the chance. — Alanea Alder

If I carried Catherine to the top of Mount Corcovado and placed her before the statue of Christ the Redeemer, Jesus would close his eyes and turn his back on her. If she touched his feet, the six million stone tiles that covered the religious figure would catch fire and fall like fiery rain, — Eric Jerome Dickey

There were impressive stone paths and benches and even a statue of an angel that gave Simon nervous fits, since he was a Doctor Who fan. The angel wasn't weeping, exactly, but it looked too depressed for Simon's liking. — Cassandra Clare

Out of the debris of a statue thoroughly shattered a new art work is born: a naked foot unforgettably resting on a stone; a candid hand; a bent knee which contains all the speed of the foot race; a torso which has no face to prevent us from loving it. — Stephanie Crayencour

The real sustains the same relation to the ideal that a stone does to a statue - or that paint does to a painting. Realism degrades and impoverishes. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. — Michelangelo

As I uttered these inspiring words the idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagram shown six years later in my address before the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and my companion understood them perfectly. The images I saw were wonderfully sharp and clear and had the solidity of metal and stone, so much so that I told him, "See my motor here; watch me reverse it." I cannot begin to describe my emotions. Pygmalion seeing his statue come to life could not have been more deeply moved. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally, I would have given for that one which I had wrested from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence ... — Nikola Tesla

A statue lies hid in a block of marble, and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter and removes the rubbish. The figure is in the stone; the sculptor only finds it. What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul. The philosopher, the saint, or the hero,
the wise, the good, or the great man,
very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light. — Joseph Addison

As sculptors chip away the stone in order to find the statue, writers chip away extraneous verbiage so readers can see the shape of an idea clearly. My gift is to see through the confusion, to bring order and simplicity to a story. — Leslie Parrish

I am carved like David,
every line of my body perfectly chiseled.
Hunger is the blade that has made me smooth.
I am a statue, yet I am only air at my center.
I go to hug myself and
-poof!-
my arms go right through me
finding nothing to hold on to.
My hands meet behind my own back
in a stone handshake.
This is not what you were expecting.
I'm so cold.
I'm so sharp.
I've been cut, now I'll cut you.
Come closer.
Yes, come closer to me.
I am going to make you see what I see. — Madeleine George